CWG Brown Bag Lunches

‘17-‘18 Brown Bag Lunches

The CWG’s Brown Bag lunches give professors and other researchers the opportunity to discuss their ideas with an interdisciplinary audience.

The following Brown Bag lectures are hosted on the Center for Women and Gender’s website under the events tab. cwg.usu.edu /featured_speakers

ABOUT BROWN BAG LUNCHES

Brown Bag lunches began many years ago with the Women and Gender Research Institute (WGRI, now part of CWG) to provide a forum for women to share their research and become acquainted with women researchers in other disciplines.

Dr. Karen Lang

Buddha’s Daughters: The Women’s Roles in Buddhism

Dr. Karen Lang, professor of Buddhist Studies and Indian Religions at the Center of Asian Studies, University of Virginia, shared her research on the earliest women in Buddhism. “Female ordination is a right that Buddha gave us,” Lang said. “Ordaining women as Buddhist nuns continued until the middle ages when the ordination of women was lost.”

Dr. Lynne McNeill

Slender Man is Coming: The History and Significance of a Modern Horror Legend

On October 31, 2017, as the audience munched Halloween cookies, Dr. Lynn McNeill, USU assistant professor of English, unnerved the group with a discussion of her research on Slender Man.

“Who is Slender Man?” She demanded. “Is he real and is he a real legend?” She discussed his introduction into pop culture; his fame on the folkloric website, Creepypasta; the 2014 Slender Man-inspired stabbing; and his press coverage thereafter.

Dr. Rebecca McFaul

Art, Collaboration, and Making it Matter: Lessons from a life in Chamber Music

As part of USU’s year-and-a-half focus on the arts, Associate Professor of Professional Practice and founding member of the Fry Street Quartet Dr. Rebecca McFaul discussed how art forms can raise awareness of science. She shared a creative project she and USU physicist Robert Davies developed focusing on changing climates. McFaul explained her deep satisfaction at being able to use her beloved medium to help make a compelling statement about the environment.

STEM Panel:

Building Relationships for Career Success: Mentors, Collaborators, and Colleagues

Several female STEM faculty, Dr. Elizabeth Vargis, Dr. Claudia Radel, Dr. Lisa Berreau, and graduate student Cindy Hanson, spoke on a panel moderated by Dr. Christy Glass. The panelists shared their experiences in graduate school in the context of the results of the 2016-2017 USU STEM Climate Survey sponsored by the USU Diversity Council.

Col. Marianne Waldrop, (Ret.) Ph.D.

Successful Women: Insights from the Lived Experiences of Marine Corp Generals

Only a handful of women have ever been promoted to general in the US Marine Corps, and Dr. Col. Marianne Waldrop, retired Marine officer herself, interviewed almost all of them for her doctoral dissertation. Marianne wondered if there was a single pattern for their career trajectory. To her surprise, there was not. Each women’s journey was unique. On the other hand, every woman had the same primary motivation, her identity as a U.S. Marine.

Dr. Qwo-Li Driskill

Weaving Together Arts. Activism and Academics

Dr. Laura Gelfand

Women and Wolves

Dr. Li Guo

Self, Sisterhood and the Secret Script: Women’s Nüshu Writing System in South China

Nüshu was a secret language created by rural women in South China. Shared only among women, Nüshu was written on fans and other personal belongings and served as an important means of communication for women who, for many centuries, were excluded from formal education. Dr. Guo, USU associate professor of languages, devotes much of her research to unraveling the history of Nüshu and documenting its impact on the women who used it.

Dr. Maureen Hearns

Creative Healing:

A Sojourn of Health

Dr. Maureen Hearns, USU associate professor of Music Therapy, shared how the intersection of arts and sciences in her career helps her guide students through the healing process, whether the injury is emotional or physical. Different art forms have different benefits,

Hearn said. With the creative arts, structure becomes useful to healing, while the expressive arts help facilitate a relational approach to recovery.

Dr. Susan Shaw

Thinking About God at the Intersections of Gender, Race, and Class

Dr. Susan Shaw, Oregon State University professor of Women, Gender and Sexuality, discussed intersectionality in religious thought beginning with the 20th-century Theologies of Liberation, centering on gender and the marginalized. She challenged the audience with several “what-ifs”. What if Jesus were gay, or black, or a woman? Or what if Jesus were a gay, black woman?

Dr. Amanda Eubanks Winkler

Too Publick a Show: Female Performance at Early Modern English Boarding Schools

Dr. Amanda Eubanks Winkler, Syracuse University associate professor of Music History and Cultures, presented her research on boarding school performances in the late 1600’s in Chelsea, England. The Globe Theatre was outside city walls, whereas Chelsea was an affluent fashionable suburb. In Chelsea, Girls took on male roles, demonstrating in several plays how passion resulted in death and tragedy. Parents expressed reservations about the plays as they felt their daughters were not performing as students, but rather as entertainers.