Lectures on Gender and Extremism

Professor Kathleen Blee and professor Michael Kimmel lectures on the relations between Gender and Extremism.

10.00 - 10.15: Welcome and Introduction - Katrine Fangen and Inger Skjelsbæk

10.15 - 10.45: Professor Kathleen M. Blee: Next Steps in Gender Analysis of Far-right Extremism

Decades of scholarship show that gender matters in far-right extremism.  And we are getting close to understanding the specific ways that gender shapes how people join, leave, and operate in far-right extremist groups and movements.  In this talk, I examine the state of the field, suggesting avenues of inquiry that are becoming exhausted and proposing next steps for scholars of gender and the far-right.

10.45 - 11.15 Professor Michael S. Kimmel: Healing from Hate: How Young men get into - and out of - Violent Extremism

Based on in-depth interviews with ex-white nationalists and neo-Nazis in the United States, as well as ex-skinhead and neo-Nazis in Germany and Sweden. A gendered political psychology asks the following question: Why and how do young men join extremist movements? Understanding their experiences of entry, and their experiences in the movement, we can better understand how to help them get out.

11.15 - 12.00 Discussions and Q&A - Chair: Katrine Fangen


Kathleen M. Blee is a professor of sociology and Bettye J. and Ralph E. Bailey Dean of the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences and the College of General Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. Her areas of interest include gender, race and racism, social movements, and sociology of space and Place.

She is notable for her expertise on how gender influences racist movements, such as her work on women in the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s. She is the author of several books, including Women in the Klan: Racism and Gender in the 1920s, Organized Racism: Women in the Hate Movement , Making Democracy: How Activist Groups Form and Understanding Racist Activism: Theory, Methods and Research.

Sociologist Michael Kimmel is among the leading researchers and writers on men and masculinity in the world. He's the executive director of the Center for the Study of Men and Masculinities at Stony Brook University, where he is also Distinguished University Professor of Sociology and Gender Studies.

He is the author of many books, including Manhood in America, Angry White Men, The Politics of Manhood, The Gendered Society , and the best seller Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men. An activist for gender equality for more than 30 years, he was recently called "the world's preeminent male feminist" by the Guardian.

Published Jan. 26, 2018 10:06 AM - Last modified Mar. 10, 2022 11:26 AM