The Arrow’s “The Museum of Me”

Dr. Sandra Cox is an assistant professor in the English department at Southeast. If you have never had a class with Cox, you might not know her or her story. Here, she shares three treasured pieces of her past to give a glance into her life. (Photo by: Alyssa Lunsford)

Dr. Sandra Cox's wedding band. She and her partner, Dr. Susan Kendrick, waited almost 10 years before it was legal for them to marry in 2013. "It's still one of my most precious possessions," Cox said of her wedding ring. "I know it is just a simple platinum band and not very expensive or embellished. I remember when I was younger saying to my girlfriend at the time, 'I'm sure that it will be legal for gay people to get married in the United States, but it will never happen in our lifetime.' So, it is kind of amazing that in a couple years, I will get to celebrate my 10th wedding anniversary.  In 2013, Cox married her partner, Dr. Susan Kendrick, in Iowa because it was the only Midwestern states where same-sex marriage was legal."We drove six hours with our two gay best friends, and we got married in a little coffee shop that sold flowers out of the front," Cox said. "It really was the happiest day of my life." (Photo by: Alyssa Lunsford)

This is the collar and name tag for Jazz, Cox's Pembroke Welsh corgi. Jazz was Cox's first pet as an adult. She was a gift for Cox's birthday, as well as a congratulatory gift from her wife for starting her doctoral program. Cox believes Jazz was the solution to a lot of her anxiety issues. Jazz was a herding dog breed, so she needed a lot of exercise."I would walk her a good two or three miles a day. Not all at once, especially when she got older. It really helped me manage a lot of my anxiety and nerves, especially with the pandemic,"Cox said.Jazz was 16 years old when she passed away from renal cancer last May. Cox said she believes she felt her loss more keenly because of the pandemic."I think that maybe all of us are more invested in our pets than we used to be because we spent so much time at home," Cox said. "So, it was really hard to watch it happen and unfold so slowly and spend so much time every day seeing the little differences. I also think that it made me a kinder person."The death of Jazz taught Cox to never give up on anything important, and even when in a lot of pain, people can make things easier for others, which can lessen their own pain. (Photo by: Alyssa Lunsford)

"An Ethics of Reading." This is the first book Cox published back in 2015. The book is based on her dissertation."This book is specifically about how people with privilege can look at the narratives of people who have less privilege than them and respectfully interpret them, which is really the focus of everything that I do," Cox said. Other than what is inside the book, Cox thinks the book itself is pretty."My friend, Emi Gennis, is a cartoonist who designed this font just for me. I really love the cover of it, as well as the inside," Cox said. Cox has another book coming out this September that is an edited collection of essays by other scholars called"Intersectional Feminist Readings of Comics." (Photo by: Alyssa Lunsford)