Celebrating Prof. Becki Ross’ contributions to UBC Sociology and GRSJ

Becki and I began our UBC careers together in 1995, the first out queer faculty in the Sociology Department. Since then, we have remained close colleagues, fabulous friends, and fierce colleagues. Among my proudest moments as a member of this department was taking students from the Urban Ethnographic Field School on the Sex Workers Memorial Stroll through the West End, led by Becki and her collaborator Jamie-Lee Hamilton. I never looked at my neighbourhood the same way again, and now I take friends and visitors to visit the Memorial that Becki and Jamie-Lee fundraised for and opened at a wonderful ceremony in 2016. Becki has left a lasting legacy on countless students, faculty, and community members.

Becki has been so supportive of me and other junior colleagues. It is embarrassing to share that I once sat in Becki's office, telling her about the difficulty I encountered, with tears in my eyes. Becki passed me a box of tissues, and showed incredible understanding and empathy. She told me not to be embarrassed, "over the years, so many people sat in that chair and cried in my office." This was the moment that I felt so grateful for. I am grateful that I have such supportive colleagues like Becki to help me cope with extremely high levels of stress during my pre-tenure years.

Becki was a member of my mid-term reappointment committee and my tenure promotion committee. She took time to sit down with me to discuss my teaching and research. She also came to observe my class. She wrote careful, detailed reports to assess my performance and support my case for re-appointment and promotion. I felt deeply grateful for her time, support, and thoughtfulness.

I co-supervised an undergraduate student with Becki, and I felt really inspired by the mentorship, support, encouragement, and compassion that Becki provided to her students.

Becki is my (and many other people's) feminist icon, and all her efforts to advocate equity, diversity, and inclusion are a rich source of inspiration for me. Becki's passion, bravery, advocacy, scholarship, and activism are truly tremendous assets to us, our community, and our society!

I came to UBC as an international exchange student and uninvited guest on Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Territory in 2022 after several delays due to the Covid-19 pandemic. I consider myself extremely lucky that I was eventually able to travel and got to be part of the last cohort of students who experienced Becki as a teacher and mentor. In fact, she was one of the reasons I wanted to come to UBC because of her incredible work in sexuality studies. And what a fantastic teacher Becki was! She encouraged me to boldly step into the interdisciplines, radically expanded how I think about reciprocity in research and taught me so much about qualitative, feminist, decolonizing methodology and research ethics, which I am humbled to say has had a huge impact on my own research, teaching and work as a research assistant since then. Everything I know about intersectional sex work justice, I know from Becki’s classes. Becki also gave the most extensive, critical and constructive feedback I have received in my entire graduate career and cared deeply about her students. I will forever be indebted to Becki for her rich advice and for supporting my PhD applications with three strong reference letters that no doubt helped two out of the three applications to be successful. Last but not least, I will remember Becki as an absolute style icon (!), and a rad femme with a great, witty sense of humor. Becki, thank you for everything! I am celebrating with you.

This story is about Becki Ross but it's also about a moment in feminist materialism which includes of course, Gillian Creese and myself along with many others across the disciplines who may be here today: Geraldine Pratt, Sneja Gunew, Richard Cavell, Penny Gurstein, Rose Marie San Juan, Patricia Vertinsky, and Kate McInturf. We were "The Discipline and Place Collective", a feisty and edgy group of interdisciplinary Hampton-funded scholars determined to discover how disciplinary discourses and material realities shaped and mediated local and global understandings of universities in/as contested spaces. Along with this we read, interviewed several prominent intellectuals such as Rey Chow, and finally, Lisa Lowe, Renate Salecl and Terry Threadgold. Our interviews appeared in Society and Space and Anglistica, an Italian cultural studies journal. They captured many moments of the tensions among post-structuralism and feminist materialism, queer and post-colonial and psychoanalytic theory, resonant in and brought forward by vibrant scholars and voices, sometimes daring the collective to be collective; other times, navigating the actual tensions between materialism and post-modernism. Two memories and take-aways stand out: While Becki's commitment to public sociology and feminist materialism always made it into the conversations and challenging questions for the interviewees, her architectural fashion style and spontaneous laugh could cross over apparent divide, "Ain't no mountain high enough" as Aretha Franklin sang. And, while the three of us in conversational asides after our Collective's meetings would wonder out loud how the literary-inspired versions of postmodernism could ever think the world was merely or predominantly "discursive", we had no doubt that Becki would win the postmodern fashion show, a drag show that would question the normative place of an academy without the communities of women, of sex workers and ordinary people...You see the three of us were after all from working class families, not supposed to be in the academy as women, but here we are...doing what we have loved, pushing "river", against the tides of de-materalization. I will always celebrate Becki and Gillian as outstanding public intellectuals, who challenged the idea by asking "whose not here".

I've had the privilege to work with Dr. Becki Ross for six courses over four years. I was her teaching assistant for Sociology of Sexualities (2018-2021), teaching hundreds of upper-level UBC students together. Through anti-colonial, intersectional feminist frameworks Becki’s class explored topics related to sexual pleasure and violence, sexual communities and their evolving identities, the historic developments of sexual spaces, representations, enactments and embodiments, and contemporary enacted forms of sexualities in various global contexts and settler states. Perhaps most importantly, Becki taught us all about the value of paid, consensual sex as a form of labour deserving of labour rights and legal protections. Becki as an educator is nothing short of electrifying. She quite literally brightens up any space she enters, radiating joy, compassion, feistiness, and lots of razzle-dazzle shine and sparkle. Her outfits are the most stunning and fashionable ones of all the faculty and most of the students in our department. Becki wields adjectives around topics in ways that create stunning mental visual scenes and evocative, playful encounters. When communicating a social injustice, a fierce sense of urgency that commands your full attention emerges. You might find yourselves in tears alongside Becki, or you might find yourself in a chorus of laughter inspired by her. Emotion is Becki’s forte.

I must shamefully report that Becki beat me twice in golf, and I thought I was peerless among my contemporaries. For years I've been aching for a rematch. Now I'm just aching. Oh well, just another department-inflicted humiliation I've had to bear. No doubt Becki will carry on with her work, which will be more widely read than ever since retirement is about the age when dementia takes hold and enables us to forget all the jargon that separates us from the literate masses. Good luck in the future, Becki, and thanks for recommending me for that position at Alexander College which I still enjoy. Will caddy for you anytime.

Becki, I'm so incredibly grateful to have been mentored by a such committed feminist powerhouse. Thank you for your guidance.

I was reading through some old emails the other day from 2000 or so, and came across one that Becki sent to me. She was writing about some work-related issue but also took the opportunity to warmly welcome me to the department. We hadn't even met in person yet! This is typical Becki -- kind, warm and welcoming to everyone. I have developed a great respect (so smart, so articulate!) and liking for Becki these past 23 years, and count myself privileged to be counted one of her colleagues.

Becki has been a cherished colleague and friend since I arrived at UBC. As my office neighbour, I always looked forward to our conversations in the hallway, the doorway, and the stairwell. I must have spoken regularly about Becki at home. When my son, Sayeed, was a toddler, and when he would get angry with me, he would threaten to tell Becki Ross, my "office teacher"! Love you Becki!