Lenskyj, Helen Jefferson 1943-

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Lenskyj, Helen Jefferson 1943-

PERSONAL:

Surname is pronounced "len-skee"; born April 15, 1943. Ethnicity: "English and Scottish."Education: Earned an early childhood education teaching certificate, 1963; University of Toronto, B.A., 1977, M.A., 1980, Ph.D., 1983. Politics: "Combination of radical, socialist, and feminist." Hobbies and other interests: Swimming, walking, canoeing.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Department of Sociology and Equity Studies in Education, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, 252 Bloor St. W., Toronto, Ontario M5S 1V6, Canada.E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Ontario Ministry of Culture and Recreation, supervisor of parents' and preschool English and orientation programs, 1972-77, instructor, 1975-77;James Cook University, Townsville College of Advanced Education, Townsville, Queensland, Australia, lecturer in pre-service and graduate programs, 1978; University of Toronto, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, Toronto, Canada, part-time instructor, 1986-91, associate professor, 1991-97, professor of sociology and equity studies, physical education, and community health, 1997—, senior research officer, 1987-90. Guest lecturer, visiting lecturer, or visiting scholar at institutions in Canada and elsewhere, including University of New South Wales, University of Otago, and University of Technology, Sydney, Australia. Sport Canada, member of research advisory committee for Fitness and Amateur Sport Women's Program, 1991; Premier's Council on Health, Well-being, and Social Justice, member of research network, 1992-95; Project Affirmative (gay and lesbian health survey), member of management board, 1995-97; conference coordinator and presenter; workshop leader; consultant to Ontario Ministry of Tourism and Recreation.

Resources for Feminist Research, coeditor, 1987-90; member of editorial board, 1987-92; member of editorial board, Women in Sport and Physical Activity Journal, 1993-96, and Journal of Sport and Social Issues,1994—.

MEMBER:

North American Society for the Sociology of Sport, Canadian Association for the Advancement of Women and Sport.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Breakthrough Award, Canadian Association for the Advancement of Women and Sport, 1990, for research on women's sporting history; Riddell Award, Ontario History Society, 1991, for a journal article; inducted into National Girls and Women in Sport Hall of Fame, Slippery Rock, PA, 1995; Person's Day Award, City of Toronto, 2004, for promoting equality for women; grants from Canadian Association for the Advancement of Women and Sport, Ontario Arts Council, and Canadian Ministry of Colleges and Universities.

WRITINGS:

Out of Bounds: Women, Sport, and Sexuality,Women's Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1986.

Women, Sport, and Physical Activity: Research and Bibliography, Fitness and Amateur Sport (Ottawa, Ontario, Canada), 1988, revised edition, Ministry of Supply and Services (Ottawa, Ontario, Canada), 1991.

Women, Sport, and Physical Activity: Selected Research Themes, Sport Information Resource Centre (Ottawa, Ontario, Canada), 1994.

Inside the Olympic Industry: Power, Politics, and Activism, State University of New York Press (Albany, NY), 2000.

The Best Ever Olympics: Social Impacts of Sydney 2000, State University of New York Press (Albany, NY), 2002.

Out on the Field: Gender, Sport, and Sexualities,Women's Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2003.

A Lot to Learn: Women and Education in Twentieth Century Australia and Canada, Women's Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2005.

Author of instructional manuals for educators. Contributor to more than twenty books, including From "Fair Sex" to Feminism: Sport and the Socialization of Women in the Industrial and Post-industrial Eras,edited by J.A. Mangan and R. Park, Frank Cass (London, England), 1986; Limited Edition: Voices of Women, Voices of Feminism, edited by G. Finn, Garamond (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1993; Consuming Passions: Feminist Counselling Approaches to Weight Preoccupation and Eating Disorders, edited by C. Brown and K. Jasper, Second Story Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1993; MediaSport: Cultural Sensibilities and Sport in the Media Age, edited by L. Wenner, Routledge (New York, NY), 1998; and Hazing and Sport, edited by J. Johnson and M. Holman, Women's Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2004. Writer forBroadside: Feminist Review, 1984-89; newsletter writer, Canadian Association for the Advancement of Women and Sport, 1985-88.

Contributor of about seventy articles and reviews to periodicals, including Canadian Woman Studies, Fireweed, International Review for the Sociology of Sport, Aethlon: Journal of Sport Literature, Sporting Traditions, International Journal for the History of Sport, World Leisure and Recreation Association Journal, Historical Studies in Education, Gender and Education, and Culture, Sport, and Society.

SIDELIGHTS:

Helen Jefferson Lenskyj told CA: "My book, A Lot to Learn: Women and Education in Twentieth Century Australia and Canada, is a book of stories about education and women's lives—my mother's and my own. It is biography and autobiography written as social history.

"In Part One, I present the background for my mother's narrative, beginning in 1811 when her grandfather arrived in Sydney, Australia, as a convict. The first chapter charts my mother's family history, her childhood and young adult years, and our interconnected lives in the 1940s and 1950s. In the next two chapters, I examine my own girlhood experiences in the 1950s as a child of working-class parents and an outsider in a private girls' school. In this discussion, I reflect on learning lessons about time, place, and space, the influences of female teachers and peers, and my later coming out as a lesbian. Using sources from Australian women's history, women's studies, and critical social theory, I situate the two stories in the broader Australian sociocultural context, 1900-1960.

"Part Two moves to the Canadian educational context. Chapter four documents the interventions of mothers involved in community activism in the 1960s and 1970s in the Toronto Board of Education and presents my own experiences in a school-community council. The next chapter examines lesbian and gay activism aimed at educational changes in the 1980s and 1990s, including my own role on the writing team that prepared curriculum guidelines on homophobia and sexual orientations for Toronto teachers. Finally, in Chapter six, I reflect on my experiences as an openly lesbian professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, since 1986, and discuss developments in antioppression teaching in the university in the 1990s.

"My primary motivation for writing is to change the world!"

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Lenskyj, Helen Jefferson, A Lot to Learn: Women and Education in Twentieth Century Australia and Canada, Women's Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2005.