Beloved Community Faculty Scholarship Symposium 2024 (Overview of Offerings)

St. Norbert College faculty will offer brief presentations on their scholarship and creative work related to diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging. This hourlong session includes two presentations as well as time for Q&A; feel free to come and go as you’re able.

Note for faculty and instructors: If you plan to attend this session with a class, please register for yourself and all your students so organizers can have an accurate headcount. 

Laura Krull (Sociology) presents “The (Rainbow) Elephant in the Email: How Sexual Orientation Shapes Churches' Treatment of Potential New Members”
Most Christian denominations in the U.S. retain official statements claiming homosexuality to be incompatible with Christianity, but does that translate to unequal treatment of potential new members? In this presentation, I will share findings from my dissertation research examining how church representatives respond to emails from straight and from LG couples. Overall, I find more similarity than difference, suggesting that the polarizing rhetoric we hear from denominations may be less salient to local congregations who need to recruit new members.

Bridget Burke Ravizza (Theology and Religious Studies) presents “Same-Sex Marriage, Sacrament, and Sanctuary”
I will discuss research I conducted with twenty-two same-sex, married couples who have a meaningful relationship to the Catholic tradition. I will share some of what I learned from the couples about marriage and about what it means to "be church" when the Body of Christ is diverse.

St. Norbert College faculty will offer brief presentations on their scholarship and creative work related to diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging. This hourlong session includes two presentations as well as time for Q&A; feel free to come and go as you’re able.

Note for faculty and instructors: If you plan to attend this session with a class, please register for yourself and all your students so organizers can have an accurate headcount. 

Lauren Eriks Cline (English) presents "'A Past that Has Yet To Be Done': Janelle Monáe's Dirty Computer and Black Performance Archives"
This presentation will draw from the work of scholars in Black Studies like Saidiya Hartman and Daphne Brooks to explore the historiographical questions involved in studying Black performance in the context of what Hartman calls "the afterlife of property." After examining the forms these questions take in the archives of the late-eighteenth and nineteenth-century, I will turn to Janelle Monáe's 2018 emotionpicture Dirty Computer to suggest some of the ways contemporary Black performers have engaged with this unfinished, ongoing state of emergency for queer Black life.

Alexia Lopes (Business Administration) presents "'No tits in the pits!' An exploratory analysis of the challenges and coping mechanisms experienced by women decision makers in motorsports in the United States"
Despite the changing landscape, legal mandates, social pressure, and newer generations’ demand for more focus on diversity in sports (Cunningham et al., 2021), the management side of this industry in the United States has yet to see substantial change. In this presentation, the focus will be on the experiences of women working on the management side U.S. motorsports. The data will shed light on the challenges women encounter throughout their careers in this highly male-dominated industry, and the coping mechanisms they use to navigate and overcome those.

St. Norbert College faculty will offer brief presentations on their scholarship and creative work related to diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging. This hourlong session includes two presentations as well as time for Q&A; feel free to come and go as you’re able.

Note for faculty and instructors: If you plan to attend this session with a class, please register for yourself and all your students so organizers can have an accurate headcount.

Maia Behrendt (Sociology) presents “Defending Indigenous Lands: Indigenous Women's Art and Narratives of Reclamation and Transformation”
This presentation will examine the intersections of race, gender, and colonialism through a settler colonial and Indigenous feminist theoretical framework. In this presentation, I will highlight key narratives and works of art by some of the Indigenous women artists who describe the personal and cultural challenges of environmental justice. Their stories and their art articulate perspectives and realities that have been often marginalized in the mainstream. By giving space to these vocal and visualized narratives, I intend to demonstrate the transformative power of Indigenous women in the reclamation of their traditional lands through both personal and collective efforts.

Michelle Falter (Education) presents “Examining the Marginalization and/or Affirmation of Black Adolescent Girl Representations in 19 Young Adult Texts”
Black girls have often been subjected to the margins of society. Not only has this been the case on a large scale but particularly in the educational setting, Black adolescent girls have largely gone unnoticed. Seeking to focus our lens on that of Black girls, this qualitative inquiry included a critical content analysis of 19 young adult literature texts featuring Black female main characters. Through the lenses of frameworks that address and combat racial and gender oppression from multiple points of view—of Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Critical Race Feminism (CRF)—this presentation explores how these texts demonstrate a conflicting and multifaceted Black adolescent girl experience filled with both joy and sorrow. Implications for readers and educators are discussed.

St. Norbert College faculty will offer brief presentations on their scholarship and creative work related to diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging. This hourlong session includes two presentations as well as time for Q&A; feel free to come and go as you’re able.

Note for faculty and instructors: If you plan to attend this session with a class, please register for yourself and all your students so organizers can have an accurate headcount.

Jennifer Hockenbery (Philosophy & Dean of Humanities) presents “Gender and Inclusion in the Rule of St. Augustine”
St. Augustine regularly presented a theology in which God as Mother cherished her people and lifted them to herself.  Furthermore, he wrote his Rule for African women living in community to help them live together well.  My presentation will focus on my scholarship regarding the translations of Augustine's Confessions and Rule alongside Augustine's own work encouraging women's leadership, advocating for mutuality in marital relationships, and proclaiming the supremacy of a leadership style  for all people based in love not fear. More importantly, I will discuss specifically the way his Rule encourages community engagement, reconciliation within communities, and holding members to account in how they deal with each other and the broader world.

Erica Barnett (Education) presents “Ancient Religious Mothers Art Gallery”
Too often history and social studies textbooks typically relay the “White Social Studies” narrative of religion as a “white” cultural sphere and place men as the central agents of religious historical change. As educators, my colleagues and I pondered how to interrupt these racist, male-centric patterns and, in response, created the “Pillars of Strength: Ancient Religious Mothers'' Online Art Gallery Resource as a solution for us to learn more about religious women leaders. Attendees will learn and engage with the “Ancient Religious Mothers” Online Art Gallery as an ethnically-accurate, professionally researched digital image collection portraying the prominent ancient mothers of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity.  (Note: attendees should bring laptops, tablets, or ipads.) 

St. Norbert College faculty will offer brief presentations on their scholarship and creative work related to diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging. This hourlong session includes two presentations as well as time for Q&A; feel free to come and go as you’re able.

Note for faculty and instructors: If you plan to attend this session with a class, please register for yourself and all your students so organizers can have an accurate headcount. 

Danielle Geerling (Psychology) presents "Understanding and Facilitating Women's Thriving in STEM Doctoral Programs"
My collaborators and I investigated women's experiences in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) doctoral programs, in which women are underrepresented relative to men. We were most interested in how women doctoral candidates defined what it meant to "thrive" in STEM, including what factors facilitated their own thriving during graduate school. This work illustrates women's daily experiences at the highest level of STEM education and points to pathways for institutions to better retain diverse women in STEM.

Katie Garber (Chemistry) and Elizabeth Danka (Biology) present “Teaching Towards Gender Equity in STEM”
The inaugural session of the NSCI 302: The History of Women in STEM 2+2 Global Seminar wrapped up in J-Term 2024! In Fall 2023, students learned about many historical women in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields, the barriers that were historically and are currently faced by women pursuing STEM careers, and paths towards pursuing equity in STEM. In J-Term 2024, we traveled to multiple sites in Europe with key historical significance to the contributions women have made. Readings, assignments, and class discussions were used to study ways to promote the participation and success of women in STEM. In this session, we will discuss several assignments designed to highlight the contributions of women in STEM and to propose mechanisms to increase equity in STEM fields.

St. Norbert College faculty will offer brief presentations on their scholarship and creative work related to diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging. This hourlong session includes two presentations as well as time for Q&A; feel free to come and go as you’re able.

Note for faculty and instructors: If you plan to attend this session with a class, please register for yourself and all your students so organizers can have an accurate headcount.

Laura Krull (Sociology) and Erin Lamm '24 (Sociology) present “Prophetic, Pragmatic, or Perturbed? Clergy Responses to Kyle Rittenhouse's Acuittal”
In 2020, Kenosha, WI witnessed extensive protests in response to police violence against a Black man. Kyle Rittenhouse, a White teenager from IL, came to the protests with an automatic rifle, and he ultimately shot and killed two men, and injured another. How did pastors in Kenosha, WI respond to Kyle Rittenhouse's acquittal in November 2021? In this presentation, we examine how pastors discuss (or not) the trial and the protests, with some taking a prophetic stance against structural racism and others validating multiple perspectives.

Erinn Brooks (Sociology) and Frances Foote '24 (Sociology) present “Serving or Saving? How to do community-engaged work when you're an outsider”
How do students at predominantly white institutions (PWIs) understand their work in racially, linguistically, and socioeconomically diverse environments? Dr. Brooks' research project explores this question by examining students' experiences in two sections of a community-engaged sociology course. This presentation will invite audience members to consider the “white savior complex” as a common misstep in service work, and it will cover asset-based approaches as an alternative framework for community-engaged experiences.

St. Norbert College faculty will offer brief presentations on their scholarship and creative work related to diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging. This hourlong session includes one presentation as well as time for Q&A; feel free to come and go as you’re able.

Note for faculty and instructors: If you plan to attend this session with a class, please register for yourself and all your students so organizers can have an accurate headcount. 

Valerie Kretz (Communication and Media Studies) presents “Grey's Anatomy as Sexual Assault Prevention?”
This presentation will describe an experiment that examined whether entertainment television could be used to as a tool within college sexual assault prevention programs. A specific focus was on what features and viewing context would be most beneficial. The results provide important insights for students, faculty, and staff who want to influence attitudes and intended behaviors related to sexual assault.