Professor Victoria Hesford on McKenzi Thi Murphy:
It is my great pleasure to introduce the recipient of the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGSS) 2021 Academic Excellence Award, McKenzi Thi Murphy. McKenzi is graduating with a 3.96 GPA—a very impressive achievement for someone who is majoring in two subjects—WGSS and Communications and Journalism—and minoring in Theater. You might have listened to McKenzi’s contribution to the WGSS Pandemic Playlist on this blog. If not check it out below—she chose a live performance by Elaine Stritch of “I’m Still Here” by Stephen Sondheim. McKenzi’s explanation of her choice might help you get a sense of how McKenzi, like Stritch, can command a stage: “Look, I’ve got a whole playlist with musical theatre songs about women going absolutely feral, but this one seems appropriate given *everything* that’s happened. “I got through all of last year, and I’m here,” indeed.”
For the WGSS senior seminar, McKenzi combined her interest in queer studies and theater by writing a very impressive paper on queer female representation and absence on the Broadway Stage. McKenzi organized the paper around an analysis of Lisa Kron and Jeanine Tesori’s Fun Home, and Marsha Norman’s The Color Purple in order to contrast their complex representation of queer femaleness with the simplistic or absent queer femaleness of mainstream and queer male centered theater. McKenzi was interested in exploring how the theater can be both a “queer artform” and a creative space which routinely marginalizes queer female experience. According to Professor Diedrich, McKenzi’s presentation of her thesis for the seminar was “very smart and very funny.” As one of her classmates declared, “McKenzi is the boss!”
McKenzi took two upper-level WGSS classes with me, Sexual Citizens: Sex, Publics, and Space in the US, and Fantasy Worlds: Gender, Race, and Class in Twentieth Century American Mass Culture. I always looked forward to reading McKenzi’s comments and papers and hearing her incisive, always engaged, and often amusing responses to the course materials. For my fall 2020 Fantasy Worlds class, McKenzi created a Voicethread presentation on the 1997 film of Rogers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella, starring Whitney Houston as the Fairy Godmother and Brandy as Cinderella. Not only was McKenzi’s presentation a super smart analysis of the race and class dynamics of the film, it also showcased McKenzi’s talents as a performer with the last slide a rendition of a song from the film sung by McKenzi. It was amazing! So, as someone who has witnessed McKenzi’s sharp intellect and droll wit in the classroom on more than one occasion, I can confirm that McKenzi is indeed “the boss”!
Congratulations, McKenzi, on being the 2021 WGSS Academic Excellence award winner!