Dr. Catherine Connell, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Boston University, will be the first speaker in the Women's and Gender Studies Fall 2015 Colloquium Series on Teaching and Social Justice. The lecture, with a brief Q & A to follow, will take place on Friday, October 2, 2015 at 12:30pm in the Georgian Suite in the Nebraska Union on City Campus.
Her book, also the title of her talk, School's Out: Gay and Lesbian Teachers in the Classroom, considers the experiences of gay and lesbian identified teachers in California and Texas. In the book, Connell asks: how do gay and lesbian teachers grapple with their professional and sexual identities at work, given that they are constructed as mutually exclusive, even indeed as mutuall opposed? The book explores the tension between the rhetoric of gay pride and the professional ethic of discretion in the context of other complicating factors, from local law and politics to race and gender privilege.
Dr. Connell's talk is co-sponsored by Department of Sociology and the UNL Faculty Senate Convocations Committee.