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CSB | SJU - Men's Center for Leadership and Service

Celebrating Men
Saint John's 8th Annual Men's Lives Series

2002-2003

August 25, 2002
8:00 p.m.
Stephen B. Humphrey Auditorium, SJU

"If an institution is going to be single sex, a space must be created to critically discuss gender. Saint John's does this exceptionally well. Men can talk with each other in different and more meaningful gender-aware ways."

"The thing I remember [about my last visit to SJU] was a meeting with a group of men the evening after the Crimes Against Nature performance. It was the most special conversation I have ever had with a group of college men. We talked about fathers, feelings, women, masculinity - a whole range of topics. It made me cry."

Chris Kilmartin, February 1, 2002

Crimes Against Nature is an original solo piece written and performed by Chris Kilmartin. The product of a year-long collaboration between him and Gregg Stull, Assistant Professor and Chair of the Theatre Department at Mary Washington College, Crimes Against Nature is a humorous, compelling, and very personal look at the pressures of masculinity.

Crimes Against Nature cleverly points out the absurdities and contradictions of masculinity. The piece promotes an awareness of the demands of masculinity and also provides a sense that one can choose whether or not to acquiesce to these demands. Never preachy, Kilmartin pokes fun at the experiences of his adolescence and young manhood.

Witty humor punctuates Kilmartin's heartfelt stories: the Halloween day that his mother dressed him as a girl and sent him to kindergarten, the day that he discovered pornographic magazines in his neighbor's garage, the day that he tried out for the junior high baseball team. Kilmartin recalls how he was taught the idea of masculinity. Sports, puberty, communication, homophobia, girlfriends, sex education, drag queens--Crimes Against Nature uses touching personal accounts to weave an important statement about the pressures of masculinity.

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Chris Kilmartin is the author of The Masculine Self, 2nd Edition (2000) and co-author with John Lynch of The Pain Behind the Mask: The Origins, Consequences, and Remedies of Masculine Depression. Kilmartin is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Mary Washington College in Fredericksburg, VA. He has been a professional stand-up comedian since 1985, having performed as opening act for Richard Lewis, Paula Poundstone, George Miller, and Norm MacDonald.

Kilmartin and Stull's collaboration was supported by a Jepson Funds for Excellence Grant, a program that supports collaborative interdisciplinary faculty projects. Director Stull's recent directing credits include Six Characters in Search of an Author, Cloud 9 and Inspecting Carol. He consults with arts organizations throughout the country on program planning and resource development.

Allan Johnson

“The Struggle For Gender Equality
Doesn’t Have To Be A Battle”

January 29, 2003
8:00 p.m.
Stephen B. Humphrey, SJU
Co-sponsored with Women’s Lives

Unraveling the gender knot begins with getting clear about what patriarchy really is, about what it's got to do with each of us, and about how both men and women can see themselves as part of the process of change toward something better. Based on more than twenty years of work on gender issues, The Gender Knot charts a course organized around three questions:

What are we participating in and how are we choosing to participate in it?
How do typical ways of thinking about gender blind us to what's going on?
What can men and women do to make a difference?

Dr. Johnson is a sociologist, writer, teacher, and public speaker who has worked on issues of privilege, oppression, and social inequality since receiving his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 1972. He teaches at Hartford College for Women of the University of Hartford and has worked with a variety of schools and organizations. He is the author of numerous books, including The Blackwell Dictionary of Sociology: A User's Guide to Sociological Language, 2e (2000); and Human Arrangements: An Introduction to Sociology, 4e (1996); The Gender Knot: Unraveling Our Patriarchal Legacy (Temple University Press, 1997) and Privilege, Power, and Difference (Mayfield, 2001).

“Becoming a Man: The Inner Workings of Male Identity Development”
with Dr. Tracy Davis and Jason Laker, Dean of SJU Campus Life

March 27, 2003
8:00 p.m.
Quad 264, SJU

Sociologist Michael Kimmel (2001) has said“…the important fact of men’s lives is not that they are biological males, but that they become men. Our sex may be male, but our identity as men is developed through a complex process of interaction with the culture in which we both learn the gender scripts appropriate to our culture and attempt to modify those scripts to make them more palatable (in "Men's Lives" (2000)).” This presentation will include a discussion of the socially constructed roles imposed on boys and men, and the various influences that inform and enforce these roles. Participants will have an opportunity to excavate their own assumptions and complicity with these expectations.

Dr. Tracy Davis is Associate Professor of College Student Personnel at Western Illinois University. His most recent publications (both in the Journal of College Student Development) include "Getting Inside the House: The Effectiveness of a Rape Prevention Program for College Fraternity Men" (with Deborah Liddell in Vol. 43, No. 1, January/February 2002) and "Voices of Gender Role Conflict: The Social Construction of College Men's Identity" (Vol. 43, No. 4, July/August 2002). Dr. Davis is currently the Chair of the American College Personnel Association's Standing Committee for Men.

Jason Laker is SJU's Dean of Campus Life. He has produced four documentaries about male identity and is the Immediate Past Chair of the American College Personnel Association's Standing Committee for Men. Dean Laker's dissertation (in progress) is about Student Affairs staff's work with male students. He has presented numerous sessions about men's studies at campus, regional and national conferences.