Feminist Research Institute Spring 2011 Inaugural Lecture: Cordelia Fine

The Feminist Research Institute announces their inaugural and marquee spring 2011 lecture:

Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds Society and Neuroscience Create Difference

Cordelia Fine
Thursday, January 20th
7 p.m.
SUB Lobo A & B

Dr. Fine will be discussing her wildly popular 2010 book, Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neuroscience Create Difference.

About the book:
The neuroscience that we read about in magazines, newspaper articles, books, and sometimes even scientific journals increasingly tells a tale of two brains, and the result is more often than not a validation of the status quo. Drawing on the latest research in neuroscience and psychology, Cordelia Fine debunks the myth of hardwired differences between men’s and women’s brains, unraveling the evidence behind such claims as men’s brains aren’t wired for empathy and women’s brains aren’t made to fix cars. She then goes one step further, offering a very different explanation of the dissimilarities between men’s and women’s behavior. Instead of a “male brain” and a “female brain,” Fine gives us a glimpse of plastic, mutable minds that are continuously influenced by cultural assumptions about gender.

Reviews:
"a fabulous combination of wit, passion, and scholarship ... This marvelous and important book will change the way readers view the gendered world."
-Publishers Weekly

"[B]oth sexes should rejoice at Cordelia Fine's new book, Delusions of Gender, a vitriolic attack on the sexism masquerading as psychology that is enjoying a renaissance. ... impeccably researched and bitingly funny"
-London Evening Standard

Dr. Cordelia Fine is an academic psychologist and writer who studied at Oxford, Cambridge, and University College London. She is currently a Senior Research Associate at the Centre for Agency, Values & Ethics at Macquarie University, and an Honorary Research Fellow at the Department of Psychological Sciences at the University of Melbourne. She has been described as "that rare academic who's also an excellent writer" (Library Journal), a "cognitive neuroscientist with a sharp sense of humor and an intelligent sense of reality" (The Times), "a brilliant feminist critic of the neurosciences" (Times HES) and "a science writer to watch" (Metro).