Graves Lecture Series Opens Spring Schedule

Katelyn Lambert (Photo by Daniel Binkard/CSC)

.     The Graves Lecture Series at Chadron State College resumes tonight with the first of 3 talks in the spring semester.

Each will be free and open to the public, beginning at 7:00 on a Tuesday night in the Mari Sandoz Center Chicoine Atrium

      Tonight’s speaker is Katelyn Lambert, a CSC graduate who returned as a lecturer in Communications after earning a Masters degree at Nebraska-Omaha and winning that school’s Top Thesis Award and the Outstanding Graduate Teaching Assistant Award last year,

     Lambert’s presentation is titled “Women in the Marvel Cinematic Universe: From Iron Man to Black Widow,” a condensed version of her master’s thesis.

      Lambert says she was thrilled as girl to see a female secret agent, Sharon Carter, in the first Captain America movie but was later disappointed with the portrayal of the female superhero Black Widow.

Lambert says it’s been encouraging to see the Marvel Cinematic Universe move from having women primarily as hypersexualized sidekicks of male heroes to become stand-alone heroes in their own right.

Lambert is also encouraged by the way the Marvel movies have added more and more lead characters who are minorities because she says all groups need to see heroes they can relate to as being like them.

The Graves lectures began in 2006 in honor of the late Dr Dorset Graves, who taught English at Chadron State for 32 years before retiring in 1990. 

     King Library Outreach Librarian Shawn Hartman coordinates the Graves Lectures and says the goal of the series was and is to offer “informal explorations/discussions of ideas/thoughts that have stimulated and intrigued the guest speakers.”