By Sean Olson, University Relations
This year's Lawther Lecture features Dr. Mary Jo Kane, a nationally recognized Title IX expert.
UNCG will host an expert on the federal Title IX law for its annual Ethel Martus Lawther Lecture.
Dr. Mary Jo Kane will deliver a speech entitled “Media Representations of the Post-Title IX Female Athlete: the Good, the Bad and the Dangerous.” The Lawther Lecture, sponsored by the School of Health and Human Performance, will be 7 p.m. Oct. 27 in the Elliott University Center auditorium. As part of the lecture, the School of Health and Human Performance Distinguished Alumni Awards will also be presented. A reception will follow.
Title IX is the federal law that prohibits sex discrimination in any educational program that receives federal funding. While there is nothing specific about athletics in the law, sports have been the most publicized legal battleground for gender equality in the more than 30 years since Title IX was approved.
“The obvious impact of Title IX has been a significant increase in the number of girls/women’s school-based sports teams, and thus a correlated increase in the number of girls/women who participate,” said Katherine Jamieson, assistant professor in the Department of Exercise and Sport Science. “Some argue that an even more powerful impact of Title IX has been a cultural shift in how we think about women and men in society.”
Ethel Martus Lawther.
Kane is a professor in the School of Kinesiology and director of the Tucker Center for Research on Girls and Women in Sport at the University of Minnesota. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois and has been a faculty member at the University of Minnesota since 1989. She has published extensively on media representations of females in athletics and been quoted in major regional and national publications, including in the Miami Herald and Reason Magazine. She is considered an expert on Title IX and a national expert on the social and political implications of the law.
As part of the ceremony, Dr. Joan S. Hult will receive the Distinguished Alumni Award from the School of Health and Human Performance. Hult, professor emerita of the University of Maryland College Park, received her master’s degree in 1958 in physical education from Woman’s College of the University of North Carolina, now UNCG.
In his nomination, UNCG Professor Dick Swanson said, “Dr. Hult has been a pioneer in the modern movement for equality in women’s intercollegiate sports in the United States.” As a faculty member at Concordia College in Morehead, Minn., she helped establish the Minn-Koda Women’s Intercollegiate Conference, one of the few such conferences at that time. She worked behind the scenes in Washington for the passage of Title IX.
The Lawther Lecture remembers Ethel Martus Lawther, the first dean of the School of Health, Physical Education and Recreation, now HHP. She served in this capacity from 1947 to 1971. During her tenure, she helped expand the scope of the department, which eventually became a school unto itself.
Paid parking for this event is available at the Walker Street deck across from the EUC. For a map of the campus, click here.
For more information on this or other events in the School of Health and Human Performance, call the school at 336 334-5744.
