Lisa McClain

Dr. Lisa McClain is an Associate Professor of History and Gender Studies at Boise State University. Her fields of specialty also include history of Catholicism, the history of religion during the Renaissance/Reformation era, and gender and popular culture in early modern Europe. She is the author of the book Lest We Be Damned: Practical Innovation and Lived Experience among Catholics in Protestant England 1559-1642 published by Routledge in 2004, and articles in journals such as the Sixteenth Century Journal, the Journal of Religious History, and upcoming articles in Church History and Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature.

She served as Director of Gender Studies from 2002-2011, during which time the program received the Emerging Center Award from the National Council for Research on Women in 2010. In the field of Gender Studies, Dr. McClain has researched the issue of domestic violence and sexual assault perpetrated against women with disabilities as part of her work in Gender Studies. Her work has been published in Barbara Waxman Fiduccia Papers on Women and Girls with Disabilities published by the Center for Women Policy Studies based in Washington DC.

Dr. McClain is an activist for equity issues—particularly gender, disability, and sexual orientation—in academia, in Boise, and throughout the state. For her work, she was named an Idaho Woman of the Year by the Idaho Business Review in 2008, an Idaho Woman Making History in 2009, and was a Les Bois Awards finalist in 2009 as well.

Dr. McClain is married with a daughter and son. She enjoys many athletic activities, especially swimming, hiking, snowshoeing, tennis and racquetball. She also reads avidly in many genres and cooks in many types of cuisines, especially country French and Italian and Indian. She considers vegetables a particular specialty, because she has to convince her children to eat them, but baking cookies, pies, and cakes is her true passion. That’s why she engages in so much athletic activity.

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