Members of the community are invited to join California State University, Northridge’s students, faculty and staff in a series of workshops next week that delve into the research opportunities available in CSUN’s library in the areas of sex and gender studies.

“Sex in the Library: Scholarship, Exploration and Intersectionality in the Archives” is scheduled to run from Monday, April 28, through Monday, May 1, in the Jack and Florence Ferman Presentation Room on the garden level of the CSUN’s Delmar T. Oviatt Library, located in the center of the campus at 18111 Nordhoff St. in Northridge.

The series is being presented by CSUN’s Department of Gender and Women’s Studies, the queer studies program and CSUN’s recently inaugurated Pride Center. Each participating department will host a unique program each consecutive day.

The Department of Gender and Women’s studies will present Monday’s events, which will include: students presenting their research projects; a keynote address by Andrea Smith, associate professor of the Department of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of California, Riverside; and a talk by Teresa Langle de Paz, founder and co-director of Women’s Knowledge International (WKI), at the Foundation for a Culture of Peace.

On Tuesday, April 29, CSUN’s Pride Center will present, “An Evening with Miss Major: Trans History and the Movement Today,” featuring pioneer, activist and current executive director of the Transgender Gender Variant Intersex Justice Project, Miss Major, who will discuss transgender history and the movement today.

On Wednesday, April 30, will feature a presentation by Oviatt Library staff, featuring a dialogue with special collections and archives librarian Ellen Jarosz, who will discuss the Oviatt Library’s Vern and Bonnie Bullough Collection on Sex and Gender. Joseph Hawkins of the ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives at the University of Southern California will join Jarosz during this discussion.

On Thursday, April 24, students from CSUN’s Queer Studies Program will present their culminating research papers.

Gregory Knotts, coordinator of the Queer Studies program, said, “Students have been challenged to use the archival materials held in the Vern and Bonnie Bullough Collection on Sex and Gender.”

The students will report on how the collection primed their research, coupled with a discussion regarding the ways in which the archival material itself can lead to a revised understanding of the history and practice of queer theory.

Two students, one from the queer studies program and one from gender and women’s studies, will be selected to receive special scholarships. Funding for these scholarships is provided by the Vern and Bonnie Bullough Endowment, which was also a catalyst for the creation of these series of events.

All events are free and open to the public. A complete schedule of all “Sex in the Library” programming can be found online at, http://library.csun.edu/blogs/goingson/sex-in-the-library/#more-1062. More information about all Oviatt Library events can be found at http://library.csun.edu/blogs/goingson or at (818) 677-2683.

The Oviatt Library serves as the main research facility in the San Fernando Valley. For more information about the library or its hours please visit http://library.csun.edu or call (818) 677-2285.