Women Studies Brown Bag Lecture Features Minrose Gwin

Former University of New Mexico Professor of English Minrose Gwin, now of Purdue University, presents two lectures in association with the Women Studies Brown Bags Series.

The first, “Gender and Space,” is Thursday, April 22 from noon to 1 p.m. in the Women Studies Conference Room, located in Mesa Vista Hall, room 2130. Gwin presents a general and informal discussion about theorizing space and language associated with discussion of space, particularly in social and cultural theory.

The second lecture, “Wishing for Snow: A Reading,” is Friday, April 23 from 11 a.m. to noon in the same location. Gwin will read from her recent memoir, “Wishing for Snow,” the story of her mentally ill poet mother, Erin Taylor Clayton Pitner. Gwin will discuss the difficult mother-daughter relationship they had, linked with personal and cultural psychoses in the U.S. South while reflecting both her mother's despair and brilliance.

“Mothers and daughters each have their own personal imaginative lives that are not always visible to the other person and this is compounded with mental illness,” Gwin said.

“The memoir became not only a way of knowing my mother, if only incompletely, but a way of imagining her as she might have been. Not just giving a fair and balanced picture, which I tried to do, but a full and deep one that acknowledged her passion and possibility, her own imaginative life, despite her mental illness,” Gwin said.

Gwin, UNM professor from 1990-2001, taught courses and directed dissertations in women's literature, feminist theory and Southern studies. She served on various Women Studies committees and directed the Feminist Research Institute. Now at Purdue University, she is affiliated with American and Women's studies.

Contact: Carolyn Gonzales (505) 277-5920