I recently interviewed Professor Paula Moya, a Professor of the Humanities and Professor of English at Stanford University. She researches and thinks critically about a diversity of topics, including feminist theory, race and ethnicity, narratives, and more. Her bio reads:
“PAULA M. L. MOYA, is the Danily C. and Laura Louise Bell Professor of the Humanities and Professor of English at Stanford University. She is the Burton J. and Deedee McMurtry University Fellow in Undergraduate Education and a 2019-20 Fellow at the Center for the Study of Behavioral Sciences.
Moya’s teaching and research focus on twentieth-century and early twenty-first century literary studies, feminist theory, critical theory, narrative theory, American cultural studies, interdisciplinary approaches to race and ethnicity, and Chicanx and U.S. Latinx studies.
She is the author of The Social Imperative: Race, Close Reading, and Contemporary Literary Criticism (Stanford UP 2016) and Learning From Experience: Minority Identities, Multicultural Struggles (UC Press 2002) and has co-edited three collections of original essays, Doing Race: 21 Essays for the 21st Century (W.W. Norton, Inc. 2010), Identity Politics Reconsidered (Palgrave 2006) and Reclaiming Identity: Realist Theory and the Predicament of Postmodernism (UC Press 2000).
Previously Moya served as the Director of the Program of Modern Thought and Literature, Vice Chair of the Department of English, Director of the Research Institute of Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity, and also the Director of the Undergraduate Program of the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity.” (bio from Stanford University Directory).
Could you talk about how you personally got involved in studying feminist theory, culture, ethnicity, and race? What interests you about these topics and/or their intersectionalities?
My interest in these questions developed gradually, largely due to my experiences moving from one space to another. In high school, for instance, these issues weren’t on my radar. I grew up in a family of three girls, with no brothers to create a contrast in terms of attention or treatment. I also grew up in New Mexico, where most people are of Spanish or Mexican heritage, and so were most of my friends. It wasn't until I left New Mexico at 18 and started my undergraduate studies at Yale University that I encountered culture clashes and became aware of differences in how people lived and thought.
At Yale in 1980, I was suddenly in a primarily white space, which was a significant contrast to what I had known. 1980, there were only a few African Americans and even fewer Chicanos and Chicanas. I realized that, in this new environment, I was no longer part of the majority but instead was part of "the other." This shift made me start thinking about culture and race.
My interest in feminist issues emerged when I got married and found myself in the role of a wife, where I truly began to feel the impact of patriarchal structures in both American and Mexican American societies. I became a feminist through the experience of being a wife. When I went to graduate school, I finally gained the theoretical language to better understand and articulate what I had been feeling for years.
What were your motivations for writing “Learning From Experience: Minority Identities, Multicultural Struggles?”
I think it starts from that experience of having felt othered. It also relates to what was happening when I began researching after entering graduate school. When I lived in Houston as a young married woman, I was a political wife—my now ex-husband was a politician. During that time, I had two daughters and was deeply involved in the role of a political wife. This experience helped me understand where I fit in the world, where I was okay with my place, and where I was not. By the time I started graduate school in 1991, I was about 29 or 30 years old, so I had gained some life experience.
When I entered literary studies, there were trends in the field focused on the concept of identity. It wasn't just my experience—there were conferences centered around identity politics. Several prominent theorists emerged during that period. For example, Judith Butler wrote Gender Trouble, which questioned the extent to which knowledge could be grounded in identity. Another feminist theorist, Joan Scott, questioned whether experience could serve as a foundation for knowledge.
From my own experience, particularly over the 10 years I lived in Houston, I felt strongly that experience is absolutely the ground for knowledge—it’s often the only way we know anything. That’s why my book was titled Learning from Experience. It engaged with, and to some extent pushed against, the idea that we can’t or shouldn’t learn from our experiences. I’m not saying that we always learn from our experience. I think there’s a difference between believing that we always learn from experience and believing that we never do. In terms of knowledge production, experience must be interrogated, filtered, and questioned.
The idea is not to simply take experience for granted. For instance, we've all been in situations where someone claims something is true simply because it happened to them. That’s not enough. Experience needs to be examined in context, compared with others' experiences, and checked for validity. My motivation for writing Learning from Experience was partly a response to these trends in the field, but it was also deeply informed by my own life—my role as a political wife, mother, wife, and a Latina growing up in New Mexico.
Additionally, I have always been interested in the experiences of those in positions of subordination, as most of us occupy both privileged and subordinate positions in different contexts. Understanding what those experiences mean, what we can know from them, and what remains to be learned has always driven my work.
Can you please discuss your work serving as Director of the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity? What does this work entail?
Yes, I am currently the Director of the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity at Stanford University. This Center has existed since 1996, which is ironically the same year I arrived as an assistant professor. I have been involved with the Center since then, starting out as an assistant professor and growing alongside the program.
Over the 28 or 29 years I have been here, I have served as the Director of the Undergraduate Program, the Director of the Research Institute, and now I am the director of the entire Center. It is a thriving center at Stanford, housing a Research Institute with graduate programs, fellowships, and seminars. Additionally, we offer five majors: Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity, Asian American Studies, Native American Studies, Chicano Latino Studies, and Jewish Studies. Overall, we have about 75 to 90 majors at any given time, and we graduate students each year while continually attracting new ones.
The students who are drawn to the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity (CCSRE) have diverse interests. Some are focused on art, others on writing, and some on sustainability or sociological issues. However, most are interested in identity—questions about who they are and why they find themselves in certain situations. It’s a busy, vibrant program within the broader ecosystem of Stanford University.
CCSRE is what we call an Interdisciplinary Program (IDP), which means it operates differently from traditional departments. IDPs do not hire faculty; instead, we borrow faculty from other departments.
Although CCSRE is a thriving entity with twelve staff members, IDPs tend to be less stable than traditional departments because we lack our own faculty. Faculty members come and go, which can affect the program's continuity. I am committed to the study of race and ethnicity, as evidenced by my co-edited book, Doing Race: 21 Essays for the 21st Century. All of my books focus on comparative race studies, so I felt it was important to take on this role.
I saw that you also look at narrative theory–can you please talk more about this? Do you notice any specific patterns about narratives from women?
That's a great question. When I teach a class on narrative theory, I cover several key elements like plot. We discuss what plot is, the components of it, and how it’s more complex than just a beginning, middle, and end. I also cover characterization—how a writer renders a character in a way that makes the reader feel like the character is a real person. Writers use specific techniques to achieve this.
Additionally, I talk about focalization, which is how a writer conveys which character is orienting the narrative. I also cover how time is handled in narrative, as well as narrative frames. For instance, you might start a story where one character is reading a story to another, which acts as the frame, and then it shifts into the story being read before returning to the original framing. These strategies and techniques are what make a novel what it is.
I find this interesting because I read a lot, and I’ve gotten to a point where I can predict what will happen based on foreshadowing in a novel. For example, if there’s a plot point where the best friend of someone threatened by an abusive boyfriend goes on a trip, you know the abusive boyfriend is going to show up. These kinds of foreshadowings are common, which is why I enjoy being surprised when something unexpected happens. Sometimes my husband, who’s also a literary critic, and I will be watching a show, and we’ll say, “Oh, he’s going to die,” because we can often see it coming. But when we’re wrong, it’s a nice surprise!
As for your second question—do I see specific patterns in narratives from women? Yes, I do. While I’d need a large study to confirm it, I’ve noticed that women, and people in subordinated positions, tend to create more dispersed narrative structures. This means their novels often feature multiple characters who orient the narrative, rather than focusing on just one character.
For instance, if you’ve read anything by Toni Morrison, especially A Mercy, you’ll notice this: in A Mercy, each chapter is narrated by a different character: a slave girl named Florens, a slave owner, the slave owner’s wife, and an enslaved Indigenous woman, among others. You get a view of society from multiple perspectives, which creates a more dispersed character space. It’s not focused on just one person; instead, there’s a weaving together of characters and how they affect one another.
This challenges the myth of the lone genius or the “man unto himself” ideal. Women and people of color tend to push against that idea, highlighting instead how interconnected we all are.
What are your goals for how you hope to see your research develop, specifically within the next few months?
I'm currently working on a book, though it’s unlikely I'll be able to focus on it in the next few months due to my schedule. The book explores dispersed narrative structures, a trend I’ve noticed proliferating across many writers—not just women or people of color; many people are adopting this approach. These narratives involve different characters sharing space within a novel, often across different time periods or experiences.
I’m most interested in novels where characters have distinct perspectives, showing how these viewpoints interact or conflict with one another. A great example of this is Marlon James' A Brief History of Seven Killings—it's definitely worth reading if you have the chance! Another is There There by a Native American writer named Tommy Orange. These novels illustrate this phenomenon, where events are seen from different–sometimes even conflicting–perspectives, creating a narrative that’s rich in conversation and contesting viewpoints.
What advice do you have for those interested in fields similar to your areas of interest?
I would say, read—a lot! And read historically, not just contemporary works. It doesn’t make sense to limit yourself. While I mostly read contemporary stuff now, understanding how literary forms have changed over time makes you a better reader of modern literature. So, I’d recommend reading and writing. Often, I learn what I'm really thinking when I’m forced to/when I make myself write.