The third and final Sarah Talk will discuss a study regarding how students view those with different sexual orientations and the change of students’ attitudes to gender and sexuality over time at 4 p.m. Wednesday in Lamar 320.
The Sarah Isom Center for Women and Gender Studies has hosted two previous Sarah Talks focusing on community members in the Oxford area. The upcoming talk will be more of a classroom-style presentation according to Jamie Harker, director of the Isom Center.
“This one is about a research project,” Harker said. “You’ve got biology, psychology and English all talking about a joint project that we are working on.”
Psychology professor Kate Kellum, graduate student Yash Bhambhani and biology professor Lainy Day are working on the research project along with Harker and will join her for the panel discussion.
Harker said she hopes people get a sense of how much more complicated gender is than we tend to think.
“What’s interesting is when you think about science or biology you think about it as being very straightforward — you’re a man or you’re a woman,” Harker said. “But when you hear Dr. Day talking about gender, it’s much more complicated; there are so many more ranges. We stop and say, ‘Wait a minute, do I know what science actually says?’”
Day’s goal of the project is to see if teaching about physiological components will be what helps students understand that people are born the way they are born and that there is a huge amount of variation for everybody.
“When you explain that gender and orientation are fluid, you say you don’t want to label people — you want to understand people,” Day said. “I think that goes a long way.”
According to Bhambhani, the study will be separated into three data points that will be tracked over the course of the semester. This will be a design similar to an intervention where the thoughts, feelings and behaviors will be measured before, during and after the project is complete.
Kellum said there will be a variety of classes that will be approaching this topic differently. They will be observing if it changes the way people view or act toward people who identify as different sexualities.
“I think all professors know that when we are teaching whatever our subject is that we are influencing not only people’s content knowledge, but their thoughts and feelings about those things,” Kellum said. “We are presenting a way that people can measure that to help professors see that we are teaching all kinds of stuff when we are teaching.”
Harker said partnership with students is a big part of the project.
“We’re doing surveys of our students in various classes, so students in a very real sense are building this scholarship,” Harker said. “They are helping us understand it.”
Harker said she is excited to work with experts from different fields to put everything together and see the different ways they can learn about this subject.
“I hope you get a sense, even in terms of brain theory and science, that there’s a lot we don’t know,” Harker said. “There’s a lot more range and variety than we usually give credit for.”
This article was submitted to The Daily Mississippian from an advanced reporting class.
