Dr. Amy Milligan, visiting associate professor of women and gender studies here at Elizabethtown College, is also a Blue Jay who has returned to the nest. Milligan graduated from Etown in 2004 with a bachelor’s degree in religious studies and German. After graduation, she spent a year in Marburg, Germany with a Fulbright scholarship. After returning to the states, she earned her masters of theological studies, along with a certificate in gender studies at Duke University. Milligan began working here at the College as an adjunct professor while she was completing her doctorate in American studies at Penn State University. “It’s always been my dream to come back to teach at my alma mater,” Milligan said.
Milligan said that her Fulbright year had a profound impact on her. She had time to study and take courses specific to her interests. The Fulbright gave her the opportunity to work closely with a mentor on her own academic research projects. She still visits Marburg when she can and loves going back to catch up with her contacts at the university there. Milligan is eager to travel elsewhere in the world, too. “I’m hoping to return to Israel for a second time or maybe visit Poland,” she said.
Aside from her teaching responsibilities, Milligan advises Hillel, a Jewish Culture Experience Living Learning Community (LLC) here on campus, and Etown Allies. She is also the faculty mentor for the Stonewall Hall LLC. Milligan serves on the Thinking about Gender, Sex, and Sexuality (TGSS) Think-tank Committee, the women and gender studies advisory committee, the Prestigious Scholarship Committee and as a Campus Diversity Advocate. Milligan said her office is also a safe zone. “I’m always happy to meet with LGBTQ community members to talk with them and help connect them to resources on campus or in the local community,” she said. “It can be a really emotional and difficult role, but it is one of the best parts of my job.”
Milligan chose to pursue these areas of culture and society because she always had an interest in how culture shapes people. “I’m an interdisciplinarian at heart,” Milligan said. She felt that American Studies and women and gender studies were the perfect fit for her. They allowed her to focus on analyzing people’s self-identities. Milligan carries these interests over into the classroom, as well. She makes a point of helping her classes talk about controversial topics. She hopes that her students will learn to form their own opinions about the issues facing our society, and to think critically about things they have learned through their society and culture. She wants her students to decide for themselves what it means to educate for service. “One of the things that gives our lives meaning is working toward improving the world,” she said. “My hope is that I can help to stir that passion in others.” Teaching at Etown has been a joy for Milligan. She loves being able to work with students in the classroom. “I tell people all the time that I have the best job,” she said.
Milligan is active on campus outside of her teaching responsibilities as well. “I really enjoy working on programming,” she said. This semester, Milligan has been organizing the Women and Gender Studies Roundtable discussion on the importance of feminism today. She has also been coordinating celebrations for National Coming Out Day and the Transgender Day of Remembrance. “I’ve also partnered with other groups on campus, like the Better Together Campaign, and enjoy fostering that type of cross-campus collaboration between departments!” she said.
Outside the classroom, Milligan loves spending time with her family. In her free time she cooks, takes walks with her dog, reads and visits ethnic restaurants. “I’m also a big professional soccer fan!” she said. Milligan is an ethnographer, so she also spends a decent chunk of her time outside the classroom interviewing people and compiling her research. Currently, she is hard at work on two different projects. One looks at the lives of Jewish lesbians, while the other considers the role that the blue nautical star and the pink triangle play in tattooing.
