High up on the fifth floor of Talley Student Union lies the Women’s Center at NC State, a place that is equally high in its productivity and aspirations. Books line shelves, beaming with works of feminist and queer theory. They are accompanied by flyers and posters of campus events championing these same theories and by the Women’s Center staff — the hands, feet and voices that carry out the center’s mission.
One such individual is María Asunción Tudela, a graduate assistant majoring in liberal studies, who is tasked with curating many programs and discussions at the center for students. Her work is centered by a common focus on intersectional feminism on campus, which includes discussing prominent LGBT women and women of color, as well as more conversations with men on the vision of gender equity.
A western North Carolina native of Spanish and Bolivian descent, Tudela has also spent much of her life invested in different Latinx circles and cultures. She hails from a rich culturally and linguistically diverse background, making her anything but a stranger to dealing with diverse topics with diverse students. As a result, she feels at home in the world of multifaceted and, at times, contradictory critical thinking of feminist theory and philosophy.
“Working with María is amazing,” said Beth Shank, a graduate student studying social work and fellow Women’s Center graduate assistant. “She is an empathic person who is great at cultivating a productive work environment. The passion she brings to the work is unlike any I’ve ever seen.”
The sound of Tudela’s work comes from rapid keystrokes engaged in writing and her conversations with others united by a specific dialogue. This is uniquely characterized by her cultural identity as a Latina as she code-switches in every other sentence between English and Spanish, even requesting to speak in her interview in a mix of the two languages.
She demonstrated some of her linguistic prowess as she spoke about embracing the NC State slogan of “think and do,” moving from theory to praxis.
“Well, tu sabes,” Tudela said. “The way that students prefer to engage in any kind of activism that is practical embodiment or a manifestation of theory is something that is muy personal, something that, you know, los estudiantes can do however they want.”
She harbors concentrated eyes behind glasses and an occasional bright smile as she fervently studies, leaving words still warm from being read. Tudela surrounds herself with literature that has informed her views, including works by authors of similar backgrounds to her, such as Gloria Anzaldua, a Chicana theorist and writer who authored the monumental work “Borderlands/La Frontera” and has inspired her to study and discuss the works of marginalized women.
Tudela described how her approach to fighting for women is one reinforced by much studying and conversation on moving from complex theories into practice.
“The way that I conceptualize moving from a theoretical perspective into something tangible and something that people can act on is something very personal, but it doesn’t need to stay that way,” Tudela said. “The transformative part of moving from theory to praxis is that it can occur on an individual level, but it can also existir on a very collective level, and that is where a lot of power is located.”
In correspondence to the ideological and practical resilience of her feminist beliefs and actions, Tudela believes that theory can be embodied and continually seeks to educate the student body on what this looks like on campus through her initiatives. Though she spends much time engaged in academia, her work extends beyond campus as she lives her life outside of school in regards to her responses to the theoretical texts she engages in.
As part of her initiatives at the Women’s Center, Tudela has collaborated with a student to host meetings titled “Womxn, Justice & the Media” to discuss issues of social justice centered on women and the involvement of the media through the lens of academia.
“The reason for wanting to create a group with a student like this is because academia is an intimidating conglomerate of thinkers, ideas, theories and concepts which are not easy to form part of,” Tudela said. “This working group is a way to understand literature that is very theoretical. This group is a way to get students thinking in a way that’s doable.”
Tudela grounds herself in realizing that approaching thinking that lies outside of societal structures, norms and conventions is a difficult task while they are reinforced within universities, but she hopes to demystify this for all students in the fieldwork of feminism and social justice at NC State.
