Gender Issues Expert to Lecture on Life of Margaret Mead

Micaela di Leonardo, an expert on gender issues, will discuss “The Real Margaret Mead” in a lecture at Wake Forest University Wednesday, Oct. 29, at 4 p.m.

The lecture in Benson University Center’s Pugh Auditorium is free and open to the public.

Di Leonardo, anthropology professor at Northwestern University, will seek to illuminate the life of anthropologist Margaret Mead, looking beyond the views of her presented by both feminist and right-wing groups.

“The real Mead is easily available to anyone actually reading her books and historical information about her. But, powerful mythologies are in play and have thrown a veil over the truth,” said di Leonardo.

Part of her latest book, “Exotics at Home: Anthropology, Mothers, and American Modernity,” is devoted to discussion of Mead. The book will be published by the University of Chicago Press next spring. Also the author of “Gender at the Crossroads,” di Leonardo has written extensively about gender, race, ethnicity, culture theory and political economy. She has previously taught in the women’s studies and American studies programs at Yale University and in the women’s studies and sociology departments at Oberlin College.

The talk is the first of the Wake Forest American ethnic studies program’s 1997-98 lecture series and is also supported by the anthropology department and the women’s studies program.

For information, call 910-758-1891.

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