Brenda Bethman

Dr. Brenda Bethman is an Associate Teaching Professor in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC). She has served as Director of the Women’s Center since January 2007 and holds a joint appointment in the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program (WGS). She teaches interdisciplinary courses in the Race, Ethnic, and Gender Studies department and co-directs UMKC’s study abroad program in Senegal, demonstrating a strong commitment to global education and feminist pedagogy.

Her research focuses on feminist literary criticism, gender equity in academia, and Central European literature. Primary areas of expertise include:

• Women’s and Gender Studies institutional frameworks
• Feminist literary analysis of Austrian/German authors
• Intersectional studies of race, ethnicity and sexuality
• Literary adaptation in cinematic forms

She has published significant scholarly works including a co-edited volume University and College Women’s and Gender Equity Centers: The Changing Landscape and the monograph "Obscene Fantasies": Generic Perversions in Elfriede Jelinek.

Her publication corpus (1997-2010) shows consistent focus on feminist reinterpretations of European literature, with particular emphasis on deconstructing works by Elfriede Jelinek and Ingeborg Bachmann. Major themes include alienation in gendered societies, intertextuality in film adaptations, and subversion of literary genres through feminist frameworks.