For Arlene Stein, lesbian culture is not something to suppress – it should be embraced.
Stein, a professor of sociology at Rutgers University, will host the Women’s and Gender Studies department’s first Sally Miller Gearhart Lecture in Lesbian Studies this week. She has spent years focusing on the subject that she believes “everyone should take an interest in.”
Ellen Scott, director of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University, says Stein is fully qualified to be the first lecturer in the series.
“Arlene Stein is a great person to bring in because her entire career has been focused on lesbian life and communities, anti-gay movements and resistance to them, here in Oregon and elsewhere, and the politics of sexual dissidence in the United States,” Scott said.
Stein said her lecture, “The Incredibly Shrinking Lesbian World and Other Queer Conundra,” will call into question whether there is actually a decline in lesbian culture, and why people think there is. She said she will try to understand what is at stake for anyone involved in this “supposed decline.”
At a glance
| What: | “The Incredibly Shrinking Lesbian World and Other Queer Conundra,” the Women’s and Gender Studies department’s first Sally Miller Gearhart Lecture in Lesbian Studies |
| Who: | Arlene Stein, associate professor of sociology at Rutgers University |
| Where: | Gerlinger Alumni Lounge |
| When: | Wednesday at noon |
Women’s and Gender Studies major Abby Diskin doesn’t plan to attend Stein’s lecture, but is interested in her theories.
“When I hear that there is a decline, I feel it reflects the climate for people who are coming out, not that people have stopped becoming lesbians,” Diskin said. “It’s important to have awareness on this subject and to have a dialogue for this marginalized community.”
Stein has taught courses on the sociology of gender, sexuality, culture, religion and identities. She has written three books and edited two essay collections, including “Sex and Sensibility: Stories of a Lesbian Generation.” She serves on the graduate faculty of the Women’s and Gender Studies program at Rutgers, and previously taught at University of Oregon and University of Essex.
“It is an honor to be asked to be the first Sally Gearhart lecturer in Oregon,” Stein said. “I worked at the University from 1993 to 2000, so I have a great deal of respect for everyone there.”
In 2008, an endowment was established in Gearhart’s name to fund students in the Women’s and Gender Studies program. The endowment is intended to promote lesbian studies by enabling the program to bring guest scholars to campus and support faculty and student research in the field. One of the first self-identified lesbian professors to be granted tenure in the United States, Gearhart was one of the founders of the Women and Gender Studies Program at San Francisco State University. There, she taught some of the first courses in America with “homosexuality” in the title.
Gearhart is a model activist, Scott said.
“Sally is the kind of lesbian feminist leader for social change who made no distinction between her work within the university, the source of her livelihood, and her work on the streets, marching, yelling, sitting and generally protesting for change,” Scott said. “She was one of the feminists who appealed to academia to include women.”
[email protected]
