Although she enjoyed working in magazine publishing for the most part, Suzanne Leonard eventually realized she was more suited to writing about magazines than for them. An academic career focused on literature, media, and popular culture has kept her engaged for decades though lately worrying trends within the national and local dialog about appropriate school curricula have led her to engage in new ways just outside her comfort zone. Find out how moving from doing what you know to casting a critical eye toward it can sometimes make more impact.
Guest Suzanne Leonard joined the staff of The Dartmouth, but realized the pace of a daily paper didn’t give her time to spend with the stories or the words she was writing. A work-study job at the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine gave her a taste of a different pace that suited her better. A double English and psychology major, she found the perfect internship, working as an assistant at Psychology Today and left college convinced she would work in magazine publishing. Landing at Fitness magazine, she didn’t end up feeling comfortable with either the content or the paycheck. She took advice from her professor father that she might want to consider graduate school, applied, and found herself—and her people—in a master’s program in Wisconsin. Realizing she was better suited to write about magazines than for them, she pursued her PhD in literature and worked across a variety of media, ultimately concentrating in gender, media, and popular culture.
When she realized that the winds of popular opinion were blowing in ideas about what constituted “appropriate” curricula for schools across the country and particularly her middle-class town in Massachusetts, she realized that she her knowledge of critical race and gender theory needed to be applied to the debate and she ran for an open seat on the school committee in her town.
In this episode, find out from Suzanne how moving from doing what you know to casting a critical eye toward it can sometimes make more impact…on Roads Taken with Leslie Jennings Rowley.
About This Episode’s Guest
Suzanne Leonard is Professor of English and the Director of the Graduate Program in Gender and Cultural Studies at Simmons University. She is on the board of Console-ing Passions, an organization devoted to the study of Television, Video, Audio, New Media, and Feminism. Her recent books include Wife, Inc.: The Business of Marriage in the Twenty-First Century (2018); and the edited volume Imagining We in the Age of I: Romance and Social Bonding in Contemporary Culture(2021). She is an elected member of the Winthrop School Committee in Winthrop, Massachusetts, where she lives with her husband and daughter.
Mentioned in this Episode
Suzanne wrote a piece, "Knowing the Dead," for the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine about her work-study job prepping class secretaries to write obituaries. Read the piece from the DAM archives.
Executive Producer/Host: Leslie Jennings Rowley
Music: Brian Burrows
Find more episodes at https://roadstakenshow.com
Email the show at RoadsTakenShow@gmail.com
Suzanne Leonard: So my dad, he had a job that, you know, he just, he really liked, but it didn't take over his life in any way. and he gave me this bit of advice when I was in New York and he said, Suzanne, you can either have time or you can have money, but you can't have both. But right now you have neither you're, you're not making any money and you're working really hard. And he said, I think you should think about graduate.
Leslie Jennings Rowley: Although she enjoyed working in magazine publishing for the most part, Suzanne Leonard eventually realized she was more suited to writing about magazines than for them. An academic career focused on literature, media, and popular culture has kept her engaged for decades though lately worrying trends within the national and local dialog about appropriate school curricula have led her to engage in new ways just outside her comfort zone. Find out how moving from doing what you know to casting a critical eye toward it can sometimes make more impact…on today’s Roads Taken, with me, Leslie Jennings Rowley.
Today, I'm here with Suzanne Leonard and we are going to talk about writing our story and figuring out our story and who we are at various times in our life. So, Suzanne, thank you so much for being here.
SL: Thanks, Leslie. Happy to be here.
LJR: So as you know, we start this the same way each time with two questions and they are, when we were in college, who were you? And when we were getting ready to leave, who did you think you would become?
SL: So I think I started college with a pretty clear sense that I wanted to be an English major. I loved English. I had, you know, I just always felt myself to be somebody who loved reading and analyzing stories. And I loved writing. I was the editor of our newspaper back in high school. And so I started, I started Dartmouth with what I think was a pretty clear sense of that's what I wanted to do. And I joined The D, as one does. And the, I guess I was gonna say the sort of like punishing schedule of a daily paper was a bit of a shocker as was something that the editor in chief at the time said and it was meant to be a motivational speech to us about the need to kind of keep writing every day and the need for news stories and you'll be chasing news stories. And he said, what you will write today, you know, is likely going to line somebody's kitty litter box tomorrow. And it was the least bit of motivational thing or piece of advice I think that I could have been given. Cause I thought, well then what's the point? I found it really quite discouraging and that wasn’t the only reason I stopped writing for the D, but I just realized that I'd like to have more time sort of with language and to kind of collect my thoughts and think about writing as an art. And that was, you know, sometimes that's a luxury that I think isn't allowed in a daily paper.
So I continued apace with my English major, again still loving literature and writing. And then I discovered the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine. I actually got an internship with them and I have to just say the pacing was so much better, right. Putting out a monthly magazine was, again, it just seemed to me to give the kind of time and space for the type of writing that I was a little bit more attracted to.
And there I had this kind of kooky job. And again, this will sound very 90s where, when someone passed away, they would send kind of clippings from their Dartmouth file, like physical clippings, to whoever was writing the obituary. And so I would photocopy all of these clippings of you know, of alums that had passed away.
And it was kind of fascinating. It was just fascinating. And again, this was all paper, right? I mean, again, it seems so antique now, but it was all like, clips that had been collected. And so I actually wrote something for the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine about kind of like looking through these lives. And it was a very, very short piece that was published in the magazine, but I really was very proud of it and really excited about it. And so I thought, okay, magazines. Like, this is kind of gonna be the answer. And I was also really fortunate in the summer after my junior year, I got an internship at Psychology Today in New York and concurrently to my English major, I was actually pursuing a psychology major which I realized now I'm was much more interested in the counseling and clinical side of psychology, but that's not what the Dartmouth psych department is about. They're much more scientific. They're much more social science-y. Regardless, Psychology Today was this perfect blending of my two interests. So I interned there for $25 a week, I recall , which was kinda a token bit of compensation. And I loved it. I loved writing for Psychology Today and I did get to do a little bit more writing there.
And it was a lot about sort of translating studies, you know, scientific studies into kind of more common accessible language. I got one feature there that I realize completely related to the career I would later have, cuz it was a feature about marriage which has become sort of a pet topic for me in my in my writing. But the story was about how, if you ask people to tell the story of their relationship, you can actually tell if they're having problems in their relationship by how they narrate their first meeting. So in other words, people recast what their first meeting was like, based on how they're currently feeling about the relationship.
LJR: Oh, that's fascinating.
SL: It's really kind of neat. So, you know, they, there was basically these various signs of like, you know, if you tell the story and you were like, he was kind of a jerk, you know, but I guess I went out with him anyway, you know, it's, I mean, anyways, really? It was, it was fun. Right. So I thought, well, here we go. Here's like the meeting with my two, my two passions.
So I graduated from Dartmouth thinking I wanted to work in magazines. And then I attended something called the Radcliff Publishing Course, basically it's like a finishing school for graduates who wanna get into publishing and need access, right? And it's kind of interesting to think about it, but we got introduced to all of the New York book and magazine publishing, which again, this was 1996. So book and magazine publishing was still thriving.
LJR: Yeah. And so. It's interesting though, because you found this seemingly perfect magazine to intern for and then you're still casting it as I wanted to work in magazines. So it's the writing part or the editorial part that seemed to kind of trump the content. Did that remain true for a little bit or a long bit?
SL: It's a very perceptive question, Leslie. In hindsight, I didn't think all that much about what kind of the different identities and different commitments of magazines and Psychology Today is a pretty unique little place. They'll come back in my story in just a second.
So I ended up getting a job at a magazine called Fitness. And I was an, I got a job. I was an editorial assistant making $23,000 a year, which was not a lot to live on, even in 1996. And I assisted the woman who was the executive editor, I think at that point.
LJR: And this was in New York City.
SL: Yeah, I was living in Brooklyn with three roommates. And it was really tough. It was tough in ways. I didn't imagine for one thing, I was answering phones, you know, and I was assigned with like the billing system. So I had to make sure that the stylist was getting paid and, you know, just literally running numbers through a spreadsheet or what, I don't remember what it was, but it was, it was just like really mind numbing. And it was also incredibly lonely, you know, I just…It was lonely living in New York on $23,000. And it was also really lonely living in New York, feeling like I was not living the Sex and the City life. And Sex and the City came out a few years after. I think it started a few years after I started my job in New York. And to be honest with you, I wouldn't watch that. Because I just knew that it was so not representative of the life that I had led in New York. And I was almost a little angry about it, to be honest.
LJR: Right. Right. Cause there's a bit of like, that was gonna be the path that we took in the big city and all of that. So yeah, I totally get it.
SL: I mean, and I just remember, I didn't have the right fashion. You know, a friend of mine who was also the editorial assistant, but she had like grown up in the New York/New Jersey area. She took me shopping and she was like, you need better. And I just tell like, well, I can't afford better clothes, right? But also having better clothes was like part of the image that you were supposed to project when you worked at a women's magazine. And then I certainly would not have identified myself as a feminist like at the time I was 22 years old, but in hindsight, I felt some sort of, there was a disconnect between the content, right? And sort of where my passions and interests lie. So it was a lot about how to like tone your abs, right? And there were some health stories and I, I was able to write, you know, little blurbs. And it was funny because I actually interviewed for an assistant… I had been an executive assistant at fitness, but I interviewed for an assistant editor position at Psychology Today. And I almost. But I didn't get it. And they went with somebody who was just a little bit more experienced and a little bit older. And I think, I mean, it's hard to say, but I think if I had gotten that job, I might have stayed in magazines because it was such a good—in terms of your content question—it was such a good fit for what I was interested in. And ultimately Fitness magazine was not a good fit for what I was interested in or the type of writing that I wanted to do.
LJR: Right. So was it that interview process that made you think now I kind of need to move out of this industry or would that have come anyway?
SL: Yeah. You know, it was a couple things. I mean, I so desperately wanted that other job, the Psychology Today job. And when I didn't get it, I think it was a real reevaluation of like, okay, well, what are you doing? Also, my dad was a professor. He was an accounting professor and he had you know, he had a job. You know, he just, he really liked but it didn't take over his life in any way. And he gave me this bit of advice when I was in New York and he said, Suzanne, you can either have time or you can have money, but you can't have both. But right now you have neither. You know, you you're not making any money and you're working really hard. And he said, I think you should go think about graduate school.
So I applied to English master's and PhD programs, you know, in that way, when one is 24 years old and coming out of Dartmouth, they think, well, the world's my oyster, I could get into any PhD program I want. And I didn't. In fact, I barely got into anything, but a program that I did get into that I went to was the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee for their MA program in English.
And it wasn't the flagship of the state, which is Madison, as most people will know, whose English program I didn't get into. And I moved to Milwaukee to start a master's program again in English. And I loved it. I just loved it. I started TA-ing my first semester as a master student, which was kind of comical. I mean, I was like literally, almost the same age as a lot of my students. I'd never taught before. But I was teaching freshman composition and, you know, I had a lot of good, good support. And oddly enough—and I'd never lived in the Midwest. I knew nothing about Milwaukee, but I've been thinking about this—like, there was just a sense of belonging there, right. And a sense of like, oh, these are my people, right. These are, you know, and it was there that I think I sort of discovered, I basically sort of discovered women's and gender studies, which ultimately became my intellectual home. And I discovered a real interest in studying feminism through a lens of popular culture. So not just books, but television shows and films.
LJR: Women's magazines.
SL: Women's magazines. Exactly. I started studying women's magazines instead of writing for them, which was so just liberating. I mean, it was just, it was such a joy and it was frankly, such a joy not to live in New York city, you know, anymore.
LJR: Yeah. So when you took that master's program—feeling as though this is generally what I was interested in, maybe not where I thought I had seen myself—was the idea then still to pursue a life of research and academia, or just a writing life? What was the thought?
SL: I think pretty quickly once I got into the program, I knew I wanted to pursue the PhD and probably pursue the professorate. Because for me, and I think to be honest with you, part of what was so great about going to Milwaukee was the feeling of being back in academia.You know, I was, as I said, my dad was a professor, my mom was a high school teacher. I loved school. I've loved school since I was like in kindergarten, right? And so it felt, I mean, not to be kind of treacly about this, but it just sort of felt like coming home. Right. And so I think that as soon as I really, as soon as I started that master's program, I just thought this is what I want. You know, I wanna be a…of course, I didn't know how hard it is to get a job as an English professor.
LJR: No. Yeah. So what was the path after Milwaukee?
SL: So I was there for a really long time. So I did my master's and then I did my PhD. So I was there for about seven years. And then I applied, as one does for about 75 jobs, right? To try to get a professor job and a position opened up at Simmons, formerly College but now University, which is a women-centered college in Boston. There was a one year position that opened up and I applied for it and I got it. And the amazing thing was, this was 2006 and they were still, this was again 2006 being two years before the economy crashes in 2008, they paid moving expenses for me to move from Milwaukee to Boston, which for a one year position is like, frankly, unheard.
I loved being a women's-centered college. It was just so perfect for my interests. And then a tenure track job opened up pretty quickly after I got there and I ended up getting this full time job. And I've been at Simmons ever since.
LJR: Yeah. Yeah. And so with the discovery of women's studies, gender studies, how did you package that with kind of of course the burgeoning feminism that you knew inside of you, but you're writing the English. What did that tend to look like either in your scholarship or your teaching?
SL: Mm-hmm, you know, I feel like this is so fortuitous and when I tell the story, I sometimes kind of can't believe it myself, because what ended up happening was, as I went through my PhD, I got more interested in, at that time, film. And because it, for me, that was a way to really talk about kind of more contemporary issues than you couldn’t talk about in literature. And so what happened at Simmons was, though it was an English department, decided—this is kind of common in places that don't have dedicated film and media studies departments—they will often house media studies in English because it's a similar type of thinking, right? Your object is different, right? Instead of literature, your object is film, but in terms of the analysis and the critical cultural analysis. So because the film person left and I actually got their job, my job was basically split between teaching film studies and like gender and literature. So I have this job that kind of cobbles together, both of those interests. And there was also a program, which I now run, but it's historically always been at Simmons called a master's in gender and cultural studies, which is again, a terminal master's program offered by Simmons. It's one of the programs, at least I think that's really aligned with Simmons’ mission as a women-centered university. Although the master's program is, is co-ed. You know, it accepts any gender affiliation and I love that program. Right. And I think that that, to me, that program encapsulates kind of the scholar that I, the scholar that I became, but also where my kind of intellectual passions lie.
LJR: Yeah. And did you have any of the film studies in undergrad or was that just something that kind of came along?
SL: I didn't, you know, it's really funny. I took one film class over the summer. I think I feel comfortable saying this, but I dated someone in when I was in grad school—pretty seriously—who's a film guy and, basically, he taught me most of what I know about film, which I think he's a little bitter about; we're not together anymore. But yeah, and I did, I took some, I took some film classes as a graduate student of course. [LJR: Yeah.] And my dissertation did have something to do with film too. So I wasn't a complete interloper, but I definitely came to it pretty late.
LJR: Right. Well, that's great. You can always expand what you know, and doesn't matter how you get there, right? And actually that's a great theme and segue into the now. So you have this academic and professional life kind of squared away being in the same place for a long time. And yet you've just dipped your toe into some new ways of speaking up and speaking out. Tell us a little bit about that.
SL: Yeah, sure. So to be completely frank, when the pandemic started my husband and I—who's an airline pilot—we'd always thought that we had a sort of professionally diverse portfolio in so far as, well, if one of our industries failed, the other industry would, you know, hopefully thrive. And we basically had a moment in March of 2020, as many people did, of looking at each other and realizing, you know, both of our industries could fail. I mean, who knew, right? Like we weren't even sure. We just didn't know. And we were both really fortunate and things kind of, you know, have come back online in certain ways for both of our professions. But last summer, so yeah, about a year ago I was feeling particularly grateful, right? Grateful for the stability that I realized that, you know, had been much more precarious than I thought it had been.
And also, as you know, I think there's just a lot of debate in the kind of national like ether, right? About critical race theory and what was being taught to our students and, you know, this is actually my specialty, right? I mean, gender and cultural studies is really my specialty, but I know quite a bit about, you know, what it really means to study critical race theory. And I just became really worried, you know, I became really worried about this kind of what I saw as rhetoric that was very anti a kind of a social justice agenda. And again, in the national sphere. And I still also say I live in Massachusetts, so I live in a place that tends to be pretty hospitable to ideas of social justice. But I live in a town that is one of the, I think, kind of last bastions of like actual middle class life, right? A number of people have gone to college in my town, a number of people haven’t. Up until pretty recently, it was quite affordable despite its proximity to Boston, but it's also has a, there's a certain provinciality about my town. People who live there forever and they don't want anything to change. And there was some talk that there were going to be people running for school committee that were a bit in that older camp. Let's not change anything. And I just thought, you know, I'm pretty secure in my career. I think I actually had something to say in this debate. This is something that I'm really worried about. I'm worried about the curriculum of my town. I also have a daughter who at the time was starting first grade. And so I thought, It's time to step up. So I ran for school committee and it was, I mean, it was kind of a tight race. There were, there were six people running. Two of them were incumbents. There were three places open. I won the last open seat.
LJR: Wow. Congratulations. I think. I think.
SL: Yeah. No, thank you. It's really….I think the one thing I would say is I have learned a lot about policy, right? And that, you know, we talk a lot in academia about the need to make structural change, right? You, you have to change the structures in order to change people's mindsets and the system. And so I kind of felt like I had to put my money where my mouth is by joining the school committee. which was to say, like, I can write as many letters as I want and, you know, talk to the superintendent all I want, but unless I have the institutional power to actually be the one at the table and put the time in to be the one at the table, unless you do that—and not that everybody's in a position to do that—but I was in a position to do that. So that's partly why I decided to run. And then serve.
LJR: Great. And it's interesting because one of the things that you talked about early on, and then your father hit home is kind of this time trade off. And you had said pacing of the D job, the daily paper versus magazines. And then there's kind of the time that you get by being an academic, but then you fill it with this thing that is on a completely different schedule. You know, how have you seen kind of the pace of your life shift in various times? And where are you in thinking about like what the next chapter's gonna bring for that?
SL: Oh, thanks. You know, again, not to sound Pollyannish about this, but one thing I've really appreciated about my job at Simmons is, and I don't think a lot of jobs have this, but the ability to sort of, kind of change the pacing based on sometimes my life circumstances. So right after I had a child, you know, of course I taught my classes and I did my committee service, but you know, people were really good about not asking me to sort of step up and take, you know, a lot of leadership roles at that time. And I think I've also discovered something about myself, which is despite the fact I like having a job that affords me a lot of time, I also like to be busy. So, you know, I'm saying this and I, we just sound a bit masochistic, but I'm also now president elect of our faculty Senate. I've just started doing that.
LJR: Oh, whoa.
SL: But again, I would never have been interested in that role if not for the school committee. LJR: Right.
SL: Because I see, I see the importance of, again, policy and the importance of sort of…
LJR: …being able to affect the change
SL: Like being able to affect the change and sort of stepping up to the table. I guess I like, I mean, as I'm trying to be reflective about this, I like to have a lot of balls kind of up in the air at the same time and I thrive on that, you know? So for me, that's a kind of a rich life. And I think if I'm honest about it, I don't wanna say I was bored at my job, but I think I had figured my job out. I've been at Simmons for 17 years, so I was ready to take on some slightly new and different challenges, some of which related to Simmons, like the faculty Senate and some of them related a little bit more to my community. And so I've been, I think, redefining what it means to be a citizen, not just of a university or not just in relation to my family and putting in the time that that takes. But being a citizen of my community in this case, the town that I live in.
LJR: I love that. Yeah. Well, it sounds like whatever the pace that you decide, it'll be a full life and a full set of things that take your energies and really will impact a lot of change. So we wish you the best in that. And thank you so much for sharing this.
SL: Oh, thank you, Leslie.
LJR: That was Suzanne Leonard, Professor of English and the Director of the Graduate Program in Gender and Cultural Studies at Simmons University. She is on the board of Console-ing Passions, an organization devoted to the study of Television, Video, Audio, New Media, and Feminism. Her recent books include Wife, Inc.: The Business of Marriage in the Twenty-First Century and Imagining We in the Age of I: Romance and Social Bonding in Contemporary Culture. She is an elected member of the Winthrop School Committee in Winthrop, Massachusetts, where she lives with her husband and daughter.
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