Have you ever wondered why professors are passionate about their research? Located in Stevenson Hall at SSU periodically throughout each semester are “brown bag talks,” where professors discuss their work to an audience of students and faculty alike.
Dr. Estes, a History professor at SSU, talked about the peer-review process and ultimate progress of his unpublished book titled, “The Beats and Beyond: San Francisco and the Birth of an American Counterculture,” on March 16.
“It’s a tentative title,” he said. “They (the press) sell books for a living, so I usually defer to them as to what they think will help sell the book best.”
Estes’ book delves into the counterculture movement of the 1950s, focusing on five important characters. Bill Russel, a prominent civil rights activist and famous basketball player; Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, a notable couple who were ardent gay rights activists that started the first lesbian organization named Daughters of Bilitis (DOB); Chin Yang Lee, a novelist known for The Flower Drum Song: A Novel of San Francisco’s Grant Avenue; and lastly, Allen Ginsberg, a poet and writer.
What all these people have in common is their ties to San Francisco. In his book, Estes aims to answer questions such as the extent these people are inspired by the city, and how they make changes to the place they live in.
There are many interesting brown bag talks to discover, and Estes wants to make that known to students at SSU. “What I liked about the people that were there was that it was students, faculty and staff,” Estes said. “It does bring people together, so you get really all four of the groups that are on campus: students, faculty, staff, and administrators come to those talks, and that’s the coolest thing about them.”
The brown bag series has been at SSU for a long time, with a version of this series going back 15 years to Elaine Leeder, the Dean Emerita for the School of Social Sciences at SSU. Moreover, there’s a reason for the lecture series’ name.
“The idea of the brown bag talk is that people just bring their lunch and while they’re eating somebody gives a lecture,” Estes said. “That person then answers questions about their research. So it’s supposed to be like an informal academic exchange of ideas.”
It’s a very casual round table conversation that many students find engaging.
“Students learn about professors’ research on campus, and then maybe they’re inspired to take an upper division class with that person, even though they’re not in that major,” says Estes.
The events will continue into the fall semester, with Tom Robinson’s “Beyond the Classroom: A Self-Guided Natural Hazards Driving Tour Designed for Classes Too Large to Take Outside” lecture planned on Tuesday, Sep. 15. Find out more about upcoming brown bag lecture talks on the SSU Humanities, Social Sciences, and Arts webpage.
