Drawing on the works of Sigmund Freud, Michel Foucault and Virginia Woolf, University of Southampton Prof. David Glover united gender perspectives from the past, present and future during his Wednesday lecture on gender issues of the new millennium.
“‘Gender is no more property of individuals than capital is a thing,'” said Glover, who kicked off the Post-Millennial Gender lecture series sponsored by Northwestern’s gender studies program and the Center for Law, Culture and Social Thought.
An audience of 45 students and faculty members gathered in University Hall to hear Glover’s lecture, “Masculinity and the Future of Gender.” The speech drew from Glover’s paper of the same name that examines contemporary cultural theories on masculinity, as well as Pierre Bourdieu’s book “Masculine Domination,” which presents a general theory about gender relations.
Glover, an English professor on leave from Southampton, cited Woolf’s groundbreaking book “To The Lighthouse” as the first literary work to challenge commonly held gender identities. He argued that Woolf wrote the book from a male perspective.
He also referred to Freud’s study of homosexuality and Foucault’s history of Western sexuality to illustrate how gender roles have evolved in society.
The weekly lecture series is part of a seminar that was designed for eight faculty members and seven advanced graduate students with an interest in gender studies. The lectures are open to the public. Cora Kaplan, leader of the seminar, is a visiting professor from Southampton in NU’s gender studies program and co-wrote the book “Genders” with Glover.
This seminar is the first product of a partnership between gender studies and the Center for Law, Culture and Social Thought.
“The seminar and this lecture series are designed to strengthen, build and facilitate the intellectual community at NU, as it relates to gender,” said Alexandra Owen, director of NU’s gender studies program. Both Owen and Kaplan hope the seminar will help graduate students and faculty from different disciplines develop a focus on gender issues.
“It will be a place to bring people with common interests together in an area that’s outside their teaching or research,” Kaplan said.
Weinberg freshman Adrian Frandle, whose professor recommended that he attend the lecture, said he enjoyed how Glover addressed sexuality from all possible angles and the way he looked at masculinity from historical, social and cultural positions.
“In our (Queer Theory) class, we analyze respective roles of gender and how society perceives gender as an identity or performative issue,” Frandle said.
Glover teaches Victorian and Edwardian literature and culture, Irish literature, popular culture and cultural theory, and wrote “Vampires, Mummies, and Liberals: Bram Stoker and the Politics of Popular Fiction.”
Although Glover said he does not see the subject of this lecture turning into a book, he will present the same paper at colleges in Europe.
On Oct. 25, Glover will discuss his upcoming book “Literature, Immigration, Diaspora: A Cultural History of the 1905 Aliens Act” in Harris Hall 107.
