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CORVALLIS - Lois W. Banner, author of one of the first textbooks on the history of women in the modern U.S., will give a lecture on Monday, Feb. 11, at Oregon State University.

Her lecture, "Passion and Dissension: Reading Gender and Sexuality in the Lives of Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict," will begin at 4 p.m. in Memorial Union Room 208. It is free and open to the public.

Banner is a professor of history at the University of Southern California. Her lecture will focus on the personal relations, sexuality and evolving identities of two of the most important anthropologists and public figures in 20th-century America, Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict.

Mead and Benedict were friends and colleagues for decades, according to Robert Nye, the Horning Professor of Humanities at OSU.

"They were instrumental as scientists in popularizing the new cultural anthropology, and as friends they shared a culture of romantic friendships and wrote and speculated about gender and sexuality," Nye said.

In her lecture, Banner will discuss how the women defined themselves, and how their identities influenced their work.

Banner is also the author of a book on women and aging: "Full Flower: Aging Women, Power and Sexuality - A History."

Her lecture is sponsored by the Horning Endowment for the Humanities, the Women Studies Program, the Department of History, and the Department of Anthropology.