Professor Mary Jo Festle's presentation, “American women’s sports: what’s gender got to do with it?”, prompted discussion at the Nov. 4 dinner.
Mary Jo Festle, Elon University’s Maude Sharpe Powell Professor of History and associate director of the Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning, led Global Neighborhood students, faculty, and staff on Nov. 4 in a lively dinner discussion of how pioneering female athletes from the 1950s and 1960s grappled with gender roles and expectations.
The community shared a meal and their thoughts on gender expectations and the types of behaviors that they encourage both in sports and in everyday life. The presentation was part of the monthly Global Neighborhood House Dinner series around this year’s theme of “Gender and Sexuality Across Cultures.”
The dinners are part of a broader campus initiative to strengthen student connections to Elon through deeper learning experiences in residential settings. Bridging departments together to foster interdisciplinary discussions, the dinner included faculty and staff discussants from across campus, including the School of Communications, the Departments of History and Geography, Performing Arts, World Languages and Culture, Human Services Studies, Sociology and Anthropology, the Center for Leadership, and Belk Library.
Upcoming dinners include presenters from the Isabella Cannon Global Education Center and the School of Law.