October 30, 1998

Women’s Center sponsors brown bag lunches

In an effort to promote greater scholarship on, by, and about women, the Women’s Center is proud to announce its First Mondays Brown Bag Lunches for the 1998 ­ 1999 academic year. The lectures are scheduled for the first Monday in each month, 12:30 ­ 1:30 p.m. in Mercy, Room 103. Faculty, staff, and students are encouraged to attend the talks.

Barbara Ewell, professor of English for City College, helped to begin the program at Loyola in 1995. According to Ewell, the brown bag lunches give the faculty an opportunity to informally share their work and asserts that the brown bag lunches provide a chance to “present research, share their work with their colleagues, explore new ideas, and receive wonderful feedback.” Lecturers discuss their current scholarship and field questions from their colleagues.

The value of exchanging ideas is often underestimated, but Ewell is pleased that at Loyola the lectures are well received and are very enriching. The first lecture of the year, “Writing About St. Francis,” was presented on October 5 by Valerie Martin, a writer-in-residence from New York. Martin discussed the biography of St. Francis on which she is currently working. In her presentation, she mentioned facts about St. Francis’s life, discussed the sources of her sources, and read a scene from her work. Martin notes that in the biography, she takes a unique approach to portraying his life; she depicts the story in several vignettes that are taken from fictional portraits of St. Francis.

The remaining lectures that are scheduled for the 1998 ­ 1999 academic year include:

• November 2, 1998, “A Matter of Fact: Hostile Environments and Summary Judgements,” presented by Isabel Medina, associate professor, School of Law;
• December 7, 1998, “Women in Saudi Arabia: Experiences of a Nurse Consultant,” given by Gail Tumulty, associate professor, nursing, City College;
• February 1, 1999, “‘Painted Jezebels,’ ‘Cowboy Girls,’ and ‘Sailor Maids’: Women and New Orleans Street Masquerade, 1850 ­ 1930,” given by Karen Leathem, history instructor, College of Arts and Sciences;
• March 1, 1999, “The New Canon Law, Catholic Feminists, and Women’s Ordination” given by Cecelia Bennett, assistant director, Loyola Institute for Ministry, City College;
• April 12, 1999, “Women’s Studies and the Digital Revolution,” presented by Crystal Kile, education coordinator and webster, Newcomb Center for Research on Women [author of Surfergirls];
• May 3, 1999, “Making a Life, Creating Community Through Music: The New Orleans Years of Alma Lillie Hubbard, 1896 ­ 1931,” given by Rosalind Hinton, doctoral candidate in religious studies, Northwestern University.

For more information, contact Barbara Ewell at ext. 2160 or e-mail bewell@loyno.edu.

–Angelique Narcisse, A’98, Intern in the Offices of Publications and Public Affairs