Expert on Gender Violence Will Give Keynote Address

Jackson Katz, founder and director of Mentors in Violence Prevention Strategies, will give a multimedia presentation, "Tough Guise: Violence, Media, and the Crisis in Masculinity," on Tuesday, April 3. The presentation, which is free and open to the public, will begin at 7:30 p.m. in the Emerson Suites, Phillips Hall.

Using video clips, Katz will demonstrate how mainstream media images from sports, television, Hollywood film, and music video promote violent masculinity as a cultural norm. The intent of Katz’s presentation is to provide audience members with conceptual and practical tools for reading media images critically, especially those connected with masculinity and violence. Both negative and positive images will be considered.

Katz will be the keynote speaker at the annual meeting of Project Look Sharp, a media literacy initiative based at Ithaca College that promotes the integration of media literacy into classroom curricula at all grade and instructional levels. Project Look Sharp provides strategies, advice, and materials for media literacy instruction and functions as a liaison between local teachers and the media literacy field at large.

Katz’s organization, Mentors in Violence Prevention Strategies (MVPS), provides gender violence prevention education and training for men and boys. A member of the U.S. Secretary of Defense’s Task Force on Domestic Violence in the Military, Katz has spent the last five years directing the first worldwide gender violence prevention program in the history of the United States Marine Corps. The United States Navy is currently testing his program aboard the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson.

Following the 1999 Columbine High School shootings, MVPS was invited over the past year to implement its violence prevention model in the Jefferson County, Colorado, school district, which includes Columbine.

In addition to lecturing at over 500 colleges, high schools, middle schools, professional conferences, and military installations, Katz has appeared on numerous radio and television programs, including Good Morning America, Montel Williams, ABC News 20/20, and CBS Evening News.

He holds a master’s degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where his research concentration was the social construction of violent masculinities through sports and media.

Katz’s visit is cosponsored by the School of Humanities and Sciences, the Roy H. Park School of Communications, the Center for Teacher Education, the Diversity Awareness Committee, and Planned Parenthood of Tompkins County.

For more information visit www.jacksonkatz.com or call the Project Look Sharp office at 274-3471.