“Learn about your own racism and learn about how your own racism affects the world,” said Dale, of one of the subjects in senior Nicole Litwiller’s pieces, during an interview with Litwiller.

This summer, Litwiller did just that and asked 11 other people to do the same during her internship with Mistress Syndrome, an entity that uses cultural expression to examine issues of class, gender, and race. Litwiller, looking to combine her love of art and social justice, followed a suggestion to pursue an internship with Mistress Syndrome, officially created a year ago by Amanda Gross, ’13.

Despite it being only a seven-week position, Litwiller was pushed mentally and emotionally in ways comparable to a cross-cultural. “I think the growth and change that I experienced there is similar to the amount of growth and change that people talk about experiencing on cross-cultural … Having a lot of intensity throughout the time in India was helpful because I knew how to process [the intensity], but it was really hard because I didn’t know anybody in Pittsburgh. In India, I had my closest friends with me,” she said.

Her project, titled “It’s Personal: Investigating (My) Whiteness,” focused on looking at whiteness and how it shapes people. Before beginning her interviews, she participated in a training to undo racism with the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond. By going through that training, she was able to develop the language that her interviewees would be using. “[Litwiller] put a lot of intention up front and was thoughtful with the questions she was asking,” said Gross, who mentored Litwiller throughout her process.

Litwiller’s intentionality allowed her to self-reflect so that she could begin seeing her own whiteness and become vulnerable with the EMU community. “I am sharing things that I don’t like thinking about and don’t want to share with this community because they’re things that I’m not proud of, but I think that’s part of what doing this means,” said Litwiller. “It means owning up to those things and being willing to be vulnerable and hopefully be an example so that others can feel safe to be vulnerable too.”

Vulnerability is a key component to discussing whiteness and anti-racism. “Unless we’ve been vulnerable with ourselves, we can’t expect others to be vulnerable with us … I really appreciated that Nicole did her own story because she not only asked others to be vulnerable, but also opened herself up to criticism,” said Gross.

By sharing Litwiller’s work with EMU, Gross is “hopeful Nicole’s work will not only inspire students but gatekeepers that are less transient … I hope any human being who sees it will be encouraged to be vulnerable.”

To promote a space for growth and vulnerability, Litwiller stresses that it is important to “love ourselves more, take these really crazy expectations of perfectionism, always saying the right thing, and never messing up [and take] some of these expectations off of ourselves … we don’t expect others to be perfect so why do we expect ourselves to be perfect?”

Litwiller’s stories and paintings will be up in Common Grounds until early October.