Author’s note: Recently, the YWCA Lower Cape Fear announced winners of its 33rd Annual Women of Achievement Awards, raising key support for the YWCA’s programs and services that promote racial justice and gender equality for thousands of women and their families in southeastern North Carolina. This profile is one in a three-part series shining the spotlight on some of the region’s most inspiring women.
“I have a student in my office, can I call you back?” Dr. Julie-Ann Scott-Pollock’s response highlights her student-first focus. The busy UNCW associate professor of communication studies has a lot on her plate, teaching university-level courses, publishing books, raising three young boys (with another on the way), and spearheading a program to build empathy within the Wilmington community for diversity issues.
She is also a recent winner of the YWCA Lower Cape Fear Women of Achievement Award.
Scott-Pollock was recognized for her work directing UNCW students performing personal narratives at Wimington-area schools and public spaces. The performances are designed to help audiences feel more comfortable with individuals “living in stigmatized bodies” such as people with physical disabilities or individuals experiencing discrimination due to socioeconomic status, age or race.
It started with a love of performing
The road to community activism started with a love of performing. Scott-Pollock double majored in English and Theater in college, where one of her creative writing teachers convinced her to leverage her skills in creative nonfiction into a graduate degree.
“My plan was to do some acting in Boston, recreating the Salem Witch Trials and travel internationally with a theater group, then pursue my master’s degree,” she recalled.
The pursuit of a graduate degree led to a Ph.D. and UNCW, where Scott-Pollock has since garnered the UNCW Chancellor’s Teaching Excellence Award, the UNCW Distinguished Scholarly Engagement and Public Service Award, and the UNCW Janet Ellerby Women’s and Gender Studies Award.
In developing the student performance groups at UNCW, Scott-Pollock has found success utilizing biographical and children’s literature subject matter as well as personal stories to delve into important issues like literacy and diversity, among others, in an interactive setting with audiences ranging from K-12 students to adults.
“In so many ways I feel our audiences take this transformative knowledge through their lives as they become responsible people, which helps build stronger communities,” she said.
Performing in three groups — UNCW Storytellers, Hawk Tale Players, and Just Us — Scott-Pollock’s students produce 18 shows each year. Since 2010, about 200 students participating in the groups have reached about 18,000 students in the greater Wilmington area, generating questions, understanding, and a lot of thanks from audiences along with requests to stay longer after performances.
“Just Us audiences are amazed that an open enrollment 200-level college course can write, stage and promote their own original production with talkback. They’re always so impressed,” Scott-Pollock said.
Reaching where it is needed most
For now, her troupes are focusing on reaching out to as many schools as possible as opposed to committing to just one school, with a focus on “Title 1” schools with percentages of children from low-income families.
“What I’ve found is that the community is fairly segregated. My first year doing this I went to a variety of schools in Wilmington and was surprised to see how homogeneous they were,” she said, pointing out that many schools in the area have students with parents who aren’t involved in their children’s education, whether by choice or circumstance. This makes it harder on their teachers who have the same limited money and resources as teachers in schools with an active parent base.
By visiting a variety of schools, the UNCW student performers gain an understanding of different experiences students and teachers go through, including how students respond to teachers and vice-versa.
Each UNCW performer starts out his or her experience as an ethnographer, with an ethic of loving perception that seeks to understand, honor, and adapt to different cultures, centering on understanding historical dynamics of race and class in Wilmington.
Individual schools selected for a performance provide unique cultures to research, understand, honor, and graciously adapt to, Scott-Pollock explained. Although her performance groups strive for racial diversity, the demographics of UNCW make that difficult.
“Whenever we do have students of color performing, teachers thank us. I had one student who was biracial and another biracial boy smiled at him and said, ‘you have hair like mine.’ That helped all the students see how important representation is,” she said.
The biggest barrier the troupes face is not being able to reach people who don’t come to show. To solve this, they have uploaded many of their performances to the UNCW Performance Studies website.
Beyond the online videos and in-person performances, Scott-Pollock points to the Women’s Studies Department at UNCW as a good place for members of the Wilmington community find outreach, panels, and workshops open to the public. She also is a big fan of the YWCA.
“It’s a place for people empowering women and eliminating racism, and I’m really excited to be a part of that,” she says.
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