An Introduction

Hey ladies and gent, my name is Sara Matthews. I grew up in southeast Florida (Port St. Lucie, to be exact) and migrated to Orlando when I was 20. I’ve been living in the downtown area for five years and have really come to love this city, although my time here is coming to a close — I plan on making a big move upon graduation this semester. I transferred to UCF with an A.A. in Economics and quickly discovered that, while practical, the business program made me rather miserable. I chose the Interdisciplinary Studies program to utilize the credits I had earned thus far, while taking advantage of the opportunity to study Communications and Humanities. With this triad, I’m hoping to pursue journalism, specifically for a magazine that focuses on fashion, culture, and art (think: Flaunt, Paper, or V Magazine), or follow in the footsteps of someone like Bill Cunningham or Grade Coddington.

I took Intro to Women’s Studies on a whim because it fit into my schedule. A novella that we read, “Women at Point Zero,” inspired me to take Islamic Thought and Culture the following semester. We discussed the concept of Islamic feminism briefly, but the complexities of it sparked my interest in global feminism…so here I am.

I expect to be overwhelmed, humbled, and inspired by the different historical, political, social, economical, and geographical conditions that women occupy around the world. I think the challenge of organizing women worldwide lies in the fact that we do inhabit such different spaces. I look forward to analyzing the challenges and dissecting the practicality of uniting women on a global scale and understanding cultural relativism in this context. I think the bigger picture will be discouraging at times, but that this will only lead to greater knowledge and perspective of the inequalities faced by women around the world and what “forward progress” actually means.

Outside the realm of school, I manage at Eola Wine Company on Park Ave. in Winter Park. I’ve been there for four years and I love it. I also intern for Pat Greene, the programming director at Urban ReThink, a non-profit organization in Thornton Park. Methods for maintaining my sanity include: bike riding, Bikram/Power yoga, crossword puzzles, coffee and wine consumption, writing funny anecdotes about my daily life, random craft projects, and two felines named Margot and Eleanor. I think my Netflix queue knows me better than anyone else.

-S

*I have read, understand, and agree to the terms of the course syllabus and the blogging protocols*