Celebrating MenSaint John's 6th Annual Men's Lives Series 2000-2001

"Men's Health: Get a Healthy Life!"
Will Courtenay, Ph.D., LCSW

Sunday, October 8, 2000, 7:00 p.m.
The Peter Engel Science Center Auditorium
Saint John's University

Will Courtenay is one of the few consultants in the United States whose work directly confronts the impact of manhood on men's health. He is the director of Men's Health Counseling, which he founded to educate the public about the health effects of American beliefs about manhood - and to help men live longer, healthier lives. Dr. Courtenay is considered one of the foremost leaders in the new field of men's health. He was the guest editor of the May 2000 special issue of the Journal of American College Health, which focused on college men's health. In 1996, he chaired the first national conference on men's health, and in 1999, he gave an opening address at the largest national men's health conference to date sponsored by the Philadelphia Department of Public Health.

Dr. Courtenay has specialized in working with men since the late 1970s. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley and is a licensed clinical social worker.  Dr. Courtenay is an adjunct professor at Sonoma State University, California, where he teaches the only men's health course currently offered in the United States. As a researcher and writer, Dr. Courtenay studies how attitudes about manhood influence the health risks of men and boys, and develops evidence-based, gender-specific inventions for men. Dr. Courtenay is a regular contributor to professional journals.

He is currently writing a book entitled Better to Die Than Cry: Confronting the Men's Health Crisis in America, as well as a book with Temple University Press that outlines his clinical practice guideline for health professionals who work with men.

"Men and Spirituality"

Sam Femiano, founding President of
American Men's Studies Association

Sunday, March 4, 2001, 7:30 p.m.
Centenary Room (Quad 264)
Saint John's University

Sam Femiano, Th.D., Ed.D., is a clinical psychologist in private practice in Northampton, Massachusetts where he specializes in treatment of men and particularly men who have suffered early trauma.  Dr. Femiano is also the founding president of the American Men’s Studies Association, an organization dedicated to research and teaching about men and gender.  He taught theology at the University of Saint Thomas in Houston and Seton Hall College in South Orange, NJ.   In addition, he has taught graduate and undergraduate courses in psychology at the University of Massachusetts and Antioch University in Keene, NH.  Femiano was a member of the Congregation of St. Basil for twenty years during which time he pursued his doctoral studies at the Institut Catholique de Paris.  He completed his doctorate in psychology at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.

Jonathan Katz, author of
The Invention of Heterosexuality

Monday, April 23, 2001, 7:45 p.m.
Centenary Room (Quad 264)
Saint John's University

Katz is an independent scholar and historian of sexuality whose most recent book, The Invention of Heterosexuality (1995), a history of the heterosexual norm, was acclaimed as thought-provoking, original, and amusing.

In 1976, Katz's Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A., provided the first, pioneering glimpse into the hidden history of same-sex love and lust in this country.  The book was featured in the Whitney Museum's "American Century" show (1999) as one of the cultural touchstones of the last half of the twentieth century.

On the same subject, Katz followed up with Gay/Lesbian Almanac, in 1983.  Gay American History remained in print almost continuously for twenty-five years, and his Almanac was also reprinted.

Katz's new book on men's sexual and affectional intimacies between men in the nineteenth century will be published  in 2001. It furthers his goal of writing history that is both original, popular, and scholarly. His historical work is unusual for presenting pathbreaking research in a form accessible and interesting to general readers. 

Jonathan Ned Katz is a widely known name in the gay and lesbian communities.  Katz was co-curator of the U.S. section of the exhibit on the international history of gay politics and culture at the Berlin Academy of the Arts, produced by the Gay Museum of Berlin and the Academy, 1997.  He published nineteen popular columns on lesbian and gay history in The Advocate, 1988-1990.  He received the annual Gay Book Award from the American Library Association, Task Force on Gay Liberation, for his General Editorship of the Arno Press-New York Times reprint series: "Homosexuality: Lesbians and Gay Men in Society, History, and Literature," 1975.  Katz received the Publishing Triangle's prestigious Whitehead Award for  "Lifetime Achievement in Lesbian and Gay Literature" (1995).  He was honored by the Monette/Horwitz Trust "for long term research and writing contributions to the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender communities" and for "fostering others' work" (1999).  He received a Community Service Award from the National Lesbian and Gay Task Force "for twenty years of research on gay and lesbian history" (1996).  From the German Association for Social Scientific Sex Research, Katz received The Magnus Hirschfeld Medal for Outstanding Contributions to Sex Research (1997).

Katz authored two theater pieces based on historical documents: Coming Out! was produced in New York, in 1972, by the Gay Activists Alliance, the first play to express a new post-Stonewall gay and lesbian consciousness.  A second theater piece, Comrades and Lovers, about Walt Whitman, was produced in the 1990s in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Chicago, and Atlanta.

Katz has delivered entertaining, thought-provoking talks at numerous colleges and universities, and appeared on the Oprah Winfrey show in 1998.