Professor of Sociology Judith McDonnell, Ph.D., opened her talk with an apology. She’s sorry, she told the packed room, if she gets emotional. This is her 36th and final year teaching at Bryant and recalling so many personal memories takes on additional resonance.
Also, she noted to the HERstory crowd gathered to hear from prominent women in the Bryant community, “so much of my story involves you as well.”
But even with emotions running high, McDonnell, ever the dedicated professor, couldn’t help but give her audience an assignment — one designed to make them think, empathize, and establish connections. “I’ll tell you a lot of little stories,” McDonnell said. “Then I’ll let you decide how they fit together and what they mean.”
She was aided in her presentation by a large laundry bag filled to bursting with t-shirts, in random order, that she had collected at Bryant and elsewhere over the years, each with its own backstory and special meaning.
The first shirt she pulled from the bag was a blue one created for a hospice care center’s swimming fundraiser. The center photo is of her and her sister Jackie leaping into Cayuga Lake holding hands. McDonnell’s eyes lit up when she sees it, as they would for nearly every item she displays today — an old memory sparked to life. “Family has always been such a key part of who I am — the family into which I was born and the families that I've made since then,” she said.
McDonnell's father was a businessman by trade but a philosopher by nature. “His favorite question was why,” she explains. Her mother had been a teacher before she had children and always encouraged her to explore, including taking her to see Soviet Union Prime Minister Nikita Khrushchev when she was just three years old and protests when she was older.
“My parents’ approach was always, “Look broadly. Think about everyone else's stories, too. Have empathy,’” says McDonnell. “When I think about those moments, and then I think, well, you're a sociologist who teaches about racial and ethnic inequality; no surprise.”
Her parents, notes McDonnell, encouraged all of their children to do whatever they put their mind to and they went on to be a highly-regarded supply chain expert, the CEO of a restaurant group, a middle school teacher, a college professor, and two-time Academy Award-nominated actress Mary McDonnell, who Judith once recruited to speak at Bryant’s Women’s Summit™. Her sister Jane, who passed away at a young age, was “the most brilliant person I ever met in my life,” McDonnell reflects. She affectionately refers to the sibling bond they all shared as “The Sisterhood” – her brother an honorary member.
The next few shirts had messages supporting a range of causes, from marriage equality to immigrants’ rights to Black Lives Matter. “It’s one thing to wear the shirt — anyone can do that,” McDonnell noted. “It’s putting in the work that is the important thing.”
McDonell has been doing that important work for more than three decades, including as a passionate advocate for Rhode Island’s legalization of marriage equality — activism that led to a picture of her and her partner celebrating its passage that was used in publications around the world.
But she has also, quietly, made an important difference at Bryant as well. When Michael Chagros ’92 and Eric Albee ’93 founded what would become the Bryant Pride Club — it was known, at first, simply as "the group" — in 1992 during a time of hostility toward gay students, McDonnell, an openly gay faculty member who had both students in her classes, was one of the Bryant community members who would unlock the door to their meeting space before each session.
“I get to be part of that rare moment where a student discovers something and their life is changed forever and there's nothing more important than that.”
Now, when McDonnell, who was also a founding member of Bryant’s LGBTQ and Allies Faculty and Staff Caucus, talks about those years, she’s still honored and a bit taken aback by the trust those students placed in her.
She also gets emotional, she admits, when she sees Bryant Pride celebrating its 33rd year — and holding its meetings in the Bryant Pride Center.
The following shirt was emblazoned with the logo for Bryant’s Center for Teaching Excellence, which McDonell noted was once directed by Terri Hasseler, Ph.D., now the university’s interim dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, and someone McDonnell proudly called “one of my best friends in life.”
Teaching excellence has been McDonnell’s wheelhouse throughout her career, and her classes offer a mix of passionate discussion and thought-provoking reflection, interspersed with expert speakers eager to share their first-hand expertise.
Her signature course, “The Sociological Imagination — What We See When We Watch TV” — in which students use the lens of television programs such as the HBO series “The Wire” to critically analyze society, culture, gender roles, and power dynamics — was so popular that she pushed her retirement back a semester so an eager backlog of students would have one more opportunity to take it.
“It was about having a real space where people could make their voices heard and have a gathering place for visibility. But it was symbolic as well.”
McDonnell chose to study and teach sociology because, in many ways, it encompasses everything: fundamental questions about who human beings are, and how they treat each other. And in that vein, the lessons it contains are useful for everyone, no matter their chosen profession, she argues.
“Many of my courses are centered around issues of social inequality,” says McDonnell. “The things that keep me up at night and probably are more pronounced now than ever. Questions like ‘Why do some people have so much and some people have so little?’”
These topics are not only important to building a better world; they can be a source of enlightenment, she points out. “I get to be part of that rare moment where a student discovers something and their life is changed forever and there's nothing more important than that,” McDonnell notes. “It is an extraordinary thing to witness.”
McDonnell reached into the bag again and this time grabbed a shirt that featured the classic toy Mr. Potato Head and the slogan “I only have eyes for Bryant College,” part of a cross-promotional campaign between the toy company Hasbro and the state of Rhode Island to celebrate some of the state’s landmarks. There’s not much of a story to this one, McDonnell admitted, she just likes it.
Sometimes a shirt is just a shirt.
The next item she retrieved was not a shirt at all but a small, white button, with the words “ASK ME WHERE THE WOMEN’S CENTER IS.” The simple button, she said, holds an especially important meaning for her.” “It’s a testament to the idea that if there’s something really important to you, and you gather enough people, and you keep at it, you might one day make your wish come true,” she said.
The trick, of course, is that there was no Women’s Center on Bryant’s campus in 2001 when, in a move orchestrated by Hasseler — who led the effort to establish the center — students and faculty members wore the button at Commencement (McDonnell remembers giving hers to a student at the last moment so she could wear it onstage).
The struggle was worth it, she says. The center offers educational resources and programming for the entire Bryant community to discuss issues that affect women, both on and off campus. It’s also created a welcoming place for Bryant’s women to build solidarity.
“It was about having a real space where people could make their voices heard and have a gathering place for visibility,” says McDonnell. “But it was symbolic as well.”
Though not publicly acknowledged, the button gambit worked, she believes, and the Gertrude Meth Hochberg Women’s Center opened in 2002 (McDonnell has the shirt for that as well).
The last shirt featured an anchor, a symbol of Rhode Island, surrounded by a pink triangle and the words “Team RI Unity 94,” a souvenir from McDonnell’s softball team’s appearance at the inaugural Gay Games. The team was terrible, McDonnell admitted: “They said we were most likely to succeed at anything but softball. We did not win any of our games, but it was a magical time.”
Sports have always been an important part of McDonnell’s life — another thing her parents encouraged — even when she needed to blaze her own trail. She remembers having to build her softball team’s backstop (It ended up being pretty crooked, she admits) and clear the rocks out of the vacant lot that would be their diamond as a student at Cornell University. “We didn’t even think about how strange that was at the time,” she muses. “We just wanted to play.”
McDonnell brought that passion with her to Bryant as the longtime coordinator of the university’s interdisciplinary Sport Studies program, which looked at the games we play through a variety of lenses, including sociology, biology, politics, law, and other angles. Sports, she notes, is very much a microcosm of life. “It’s foundational to who we are.”
“We have to stay together, show empathy, find people to work with and issues we care about, and get involved — and bear witness if we can't get involved.”
Her interest in them, though, is more than academic; McDonnell is a fierce competitor — something else she shares with her family. “My father was very competitive,” she laughs. “The worst thing we ever did was give him a stopwatch, because he timed everything. He timed how fast we ate. He timed how fast we did puzzles. He timed how fast we played chess — though that never made me a better chess player.”
One story she seems a little abashed to tell is how she met her wife, Wendy, who was working as an umpire at one of her softball games. A contested call led to a heated argument, which sparked a romance as McDonnell found someone whose fire matched her own.
“She looked at me and she said, ‘You take care of your position. I'll take care of mine.’ And I fell in love,” McDonnell recalls.
Noticing time is running short, McDonnell opened up the floor for questions — and was immediately knocked for a loop by the first one, about an item that had yet to make it into the bag. “Are those the same shoes?” Professor Emeritus of Sociology Gregg Carter, Ph.D., queried, pointing to the bright red Converses McDonnell is wearing.
Confused, she asked what he means, and Carter recalled that on the first day of teaching remotely during the pandemic, their department gathered over Zoom and McDonnell — in an attempt at raising spirits in a difficult time — showed off her brand-new sneakers. Delighting in the memory, McDonnell confirmed that they are.
When McDonnell earned her Ph.D. from Brown University, it was Carter who interviewed her for a job as a Bryant associate professor. He would go on to become a mentor, a role model, and a close friend to McDonnell for more than three decades until he passed shortly after her HERStory talk. “He was a phenomenal sociologist,” she says, some of the highest praise she can give.
The connections she’s made, McDonnell notes, have meant the most to her over the course of her career: The many friends she’s made among the faculty and staff, the colleagues she’s collaborated with, and the students she’s taught.
“Bryant has become part of my family,” she notes.
McDonnell’s bag was still more than half full of shirts, of memories, and of stories about family when an audience member asked a final, fitting, question: As someone who’s seen the university change so much over the years, what does she make of it all?
McDonnell paused a moment before answering, gathering her thoughts and perhaps looking back over the years. Then she shared her final lesson, one too long for a t-shirt. “Yes, we have come so far,” she acknowledged, “but we still have so far to go — and we need to always take care of the ground we’ve gained.
“We have to stay together, show empathy, find people to work with and issues we care about, and get involved — and bear witness if we can't get involved.”
She encouraged them to create their own collection, if not of t-shirts, then of the meaningful memories behind them. “Even if you disagree with my take on things,” McDonnell concluded, “find what you do believe in and get involved in it.”
Editor’s note: Professor McDonnell retired from teaching at the end of the fall semester. A farewell post by Bryant’s Department of Politics, Law, and Society puts it best: “We will miss her as a colleague, mentor, and friend…Bryant University will not be same without her wisdom and caring.”