Dr. Lisa McClain earned three degrees from the University of Texas, Austin: a B.A. with High Honors in History and Journalism; an M.A. in History; and a Ph.D. in History, with an emphasis on the Renaissance and the Reformation. Her dissertation title was "As One in Faith: The Reconstruction of Catholic Communities in Protestant England, 1559-1642". In 2001, she joined the faculty of the Department of History at Boise State University where she has also served as the Director of the Gender Studies Program. In addition to her work on campus, Dr. McClain has been active in the community, perhaps most notably as a founding member and partner of the Idaho Equal Access Collaborative (IEAC) whose mission is to assist women with disabilities who are seeking safety and protection from sexual assault and/or domestic violence through the collaborative efforts of Domestic Violence, Sexual Assault, and Disability organizations in Idaho. She has been featured as an expert in national blogs, and by the National Council for Research on Women on issues of violence and education in the Debate Kit on women’s issues used by the Obama and McCain campaigns in the last two nationally televised presidential debates in 2008.
Articles & Conference Proceedings
Troubled Consciences: New Understandings and Performances of Penance Among Catholics in Protestant England, Church History (2013)
Prior to Protestant reforms of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Catholic clerics frequently preached about...
Women, Disability and Violence: Strategies to Increase Physical and Programmatic Access to Victims’ Services for Women with Disabilities, Barbara Waxman Fiduccia Papers on Women and Girls with Disabilities (2011)
Many studies conducted in the United States, Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom corroborate a...
Improving Campus Climate for Faculty from Underrepresented Groups (with Cheryl Schrader and Janet Callahan), ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition, Conference Proceedings, Pittsburgh, PA (2008)
A continuing challenge in engineering in higher education is that of professional equity regarding opportunity...
"They Have Taken Away My Lord": Mary Magdalene, Christ's Missing Body, and the Mass in Reformation England, Sixteenth Century Journal (2007)
In early modern Protestant England, traditional Catholic worship and sacraments, particularly the Mass, declined, and...
Changing Understandings and Interpretations of European Christianity, Connections: European Studies Annual Review (2006)
We tend to think of contemporary European society as having moved beyond the scenario of...
Books
Lest We Be Damned : Practical Innovation and Lived Experience Among Catholics in Protestant England, 1559-1642, Faculty Authored Books (2004)
Through compelling personal stories and in rich detail, McClain reveals the give-and-take interaction between the...
In the News
Swing State Women Speak Out on Election Eve, The Huffington Post (2008)
With the election only a day away, we asked members of our network based in...
Presentations
Catholicism, Gender and the English Mission: New Models of Piety and Gender Among Jesuits and Mary Ward’s English Ladies, North American Conference on British Studies (2012)
Re-Negotiating the Rules: Elizabeth Cary, Viscountess Falkland, and Intersections of Religion and Gender in Early Modern England, Pacific Coast Conference on British Studies (2011)