For some, it may indeed be a once-in-a-lifetime bucket-list ride.

For Cal State San Marcos women’s studies professor Jodie Lawston, it’s all part of her weekly routine.

Lawston has made the grueling climb up Palomar Mountain more than 200 times. Not even a 113-degree day this summer could deter her.

“I was pretty sure I was going to die on that one,” said Lawston, laughing.

Cycling has been Lawston’s passion for more than seven years. If she’s not on campus, there’s a good chance she’s on her bike, recording some of the 180-200 miles she aims to accumulate each week. And those miles usually include 15,000-20,000 feet of climbing.

“I love the challenge of Palomar Mountain,” Lawston said. “It’s never the same twice. There’s just something about it. I can’t imagine my life without it.”

Lawston began cycling in 2010. She and her partner were each working 16-18 hours a day and knew they needed to find more balance in their lives. He suggested cycling.

They bought mountain bikes and … well, it wasn’t an immediate hit. Lawston hated the mountain bike, frequently finding herself flying over the handlebars. But she purchased some skinnier tires for the bike and started riding along Pacific Coast Highway. She loved challenging herself to continually go farther and seeing how far she could push herself.

“I loved seeing the world from the bike,” she said. “You see it from a different perspective.”

Lawston soon switched to a road bike. Not only was she going faster, she quickly developed a passion for climbing.

It wasn’t long before Lawston started competing. She got a coach to help her train and entered a 40-mile road race. She had two goals.

“To not be last and to survive,” she said, laughing.

Having accomplished both goals, Lawston began entering other competitions.

In 2015, she won the women’s division of the Hoodoo 500, completing the 500-mile, three-day event that traverses multiple Utah national parks in 43 hours, 49 minutes.

Lawston completed an arduous task of a different kind earlier this year with the publication of her sociology book “Sociology: Structure and Change,” becoming the first female sociology author for Pearson, the world’s largest textbook company.

While Lawston loved writing the book, completing the project meant spending less time on her bike.

Though she is still helping with marketing and sales of the textbook, she has been able to return to her normal cycling routine.

On July 31, four friends joined Lawston for a 50-mile ride that included 7,400 feet of climbing up Palomar Mountain. Lawston had burned 1,800 calories by the end of the trek, and she would have been happy to make another trip up the mountain if she had time that day.

Lawston has tried to convince some of her CSUSM colleagues to give cycling a try, but when they learn of her typical week, the response is often, “Why would you do that?”

But Lawston isn’t one to give up.

“What I would say about cycling is anybody can do it,” she said. “You don’t have to go out and do 50 miles or 100 miles. You can go out and do 5 miles or 10 miles. You can build up. It’s really a sport that anybody can do. It’s really beneficial for your body. You can see beautiful places. Give it a try. You might surprise yourself.”

Media Contact

Eric Breier, Public Affairs Specialist

ebreier@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7314

She didn’t know it at the time, but when the Cal State San Marcos women’s studies professor accepted a job to write her first textbook in 2009, she was taking on an endurance activity of a different kind. Nine years and many marathon days of writing later, Lawston has reached the finish line. She’s the proud author of “Sociology: Structure and Change,” an introduction to sociology textbook that will come out this summer. In the process, she achieved a milestone as the first female sociology author for Pearson, the book’s publisher and the world’s largest textbook company.

Lawston has written three other books, but nothing could have prepared her for this.

“As much as I loved the process, I gave it everything I had,” Lawston said. “I’d be writing for 18 hours a day sometimes, not leaving my house for days. It took a long time, a lot of research.”

The book examines the balance between the macro and micro levels of society, how our social structure is made up of powerful, deeply ingrained institutions, values and beliefs that nonetheless can be shaped and changed by individuals -- specifically, in this case, the students who are reading the book as part of their class.

“I was interested in really helping students to see just how we’re affected by society,” said Lawston, who came to CSUSM in 2006 after earning a Ph.D. in sociology at UC San Diego. “By the end of the classes, they’re often really depressed, like, ‘Oh, nothing’s ever going to change because of social structure.’ But it’s about getting them to understand that, no, individuals make up that structure and how can we influence that structure.”

Part of Lawston’s challenge in writing the book was that, although it will be available in a print version, it’s the first in the Pearson sociology catalogue to be built from the ground up as a digital-first textbook, which means it includes activities and interactives that students complete as they read.

“I come from a traditional background where I read textbooks that I memorized and studied and then went and took exams,” Lawston said. “With this, I had to think about whether narrative was the best approach to teaching a concept or a theory. I had to make decisions on where to put interactives or maybe where a video might be better to describe what I’m trying to say.”

The benefit of a digital approach is that the content can be refreshed more easily, and indeed even last month, Lawston was still working on current events updates for each chapter that include some of the big social movements of the present time, including #MeToo and #NeverAgain, the student-led response to the February mass shooting in Parkland, Fla.

“I think that’s one of the strengths of the book, that it’s very, very up to date,” she said. “I would say that structure and agency are very relevant to what’s going on politically and socially.

“Of course, it can be overwhelming, especially when you’re going, ‘Something else changed, I need to rewrite it.’ ”

Media Contact

Eric Breier, Public Affairs Specialist

ebreier@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7314

“That made me hang over the bed and peer underneath throughout the night,” recalled Natalie Wilson, Ph.D., a literature and women’s studies scholar and writer at California State University San Marcos. “I’ve been looking for witches and other monsters ever since.”

Indeed, Wilson has become a nationally recognized expert on the subject.

Author of Seduced by Twilight (which examined the Twilight cultural phenomenon from a feminist perspective) and editor of Theorizing Twilight, Wilson researches the deeper meaning of horror in pop culture. Besides teaching at CSUSM, Wilson is writing two new books, Feminist Perspectives on Zombies, Vampires and Witches: Radical Monstrosity in Literature, Film & TV (Routledge) and Feminist Shorts: A Succinct and Savvy Introduction to Feminism (Palgrave), while blogging for Ms. Magazine, Bitch Flicks and Girl with Pen.

“Natalie is a phenomenal colleague, professor and researcher, and I cannot emphasize enough how lucky we are to have her in our department,” said Jodie Lawson, chair of the Department of Women’s Studies. “She is able to successfully teach research and theory to students in ways that resonate with their lives. She has a gift for analyzing popular culture and deconstructing it in such a way that students see the relevance to their lives and just how culture affects them.”

On October 29, Wilson will be presenting a lecture entitled, “Scary Stories: What do Horror Stories Tell Us About Ourselves, Our Society and Social Injustice?” as part of CSUSM’s Arts and Lectures series. The purpose of her talk, Wilson said, is to motivate those in attendance to reflect upon stories that circulate in American culture and consider why certain stories scare us and how they often bolster sexism, racism and classism.

So what do television shows and feature length films such as The Walking Dead and Twilight tell us about ourselves?

“They tell us quite a bit,” Wilson said. “Horror as a genre is often more political than people give it credit for. Nothing is just for entertainment.”

Wilson says one need only look to the origins of witches and zombies in folklore and early literature. Wicked witches began to appear in literature more frequently during the transition to an industrial society due to changing gender and work roles. Witches, Wilson said, represented the bad that would happen to women who ventured outside their new roles. The film The Wizard of Oz is the epitome of such thinking in modern times: the Wicked Witch of the East gets what she deserves for being an independent woman and Dorothy—who had been looking for adventure—learns her lesson that a young woman’s place is in the home.

Zombies, on the other hand, evolved from Haiti and represent Haitians’ collective feelings about colonialism and being forced into slavery by white masters. After zombies immigrated to American literature, they came to represent enslavement to capitalism. The insatiable appetite was a metaphor for a consumer society on steroids. No wonder, Wilson says, that the seminal 1978 zombie film Dawn of the Dead is set in a shopping mall.

“I love literature and film, but I really like to look at texts through a political lens,” says Wilson, who regularly presents at national and international conferences and delivers talks at college campuses and for feminist organizations.

Wilson earned her Bachelor of Arts in English from Sheffield Hallam University, England; she earned her Master of Arts in English from San Diego State University; and she earned her Ph.D. in English from the University of London, Birkbeck College.

Students and professors at CSUSM are among her biggest fans.

“She is super innovative, really on the cutting edge, especially when it comes to using social media in the classroom,” said Matt Atherton, an assistant professor of sociology who incorporates popular comics into larger lessons on crime and punishment. “She has so many great ideas, and some of her research on female filmmakers has just been wonderful work.”

Preston Witchell, who took Wilson’s Women Before and Behind the Camera class agrees:

“Her energy and accessibility inspire students to actively learn and engage with the material that is being discussed.”

Don’t Miss These Related Upcoming Events

Forever Hollywood: A Short Horror Film

Forever Hollywood is a short dark comedy/horror film that uses zombies to satirize the Hollywood movie industry. Following the film, Associate Professor of Literature and Writing Studies Rebecca Lush will facilitate a Q & A session with Angie Baggett, the film’s screenwriter, director and producer. This event is free and open to the public.

When: Thursday, October 22 at 7 p.m.

Where: Markstein Hall, Room 125

Scary Stories: What Do Horror Stories Tell Us about Ourselves, Our Society and Social Injustice?—with Dr. Natalie Wilson

Zombies, vampires, ghosts, witches and werewolves continue to haunt our cultural imagination. This event will examine scary stories and monstrous figures, exploring them as social barometers revealing individual and collective fears as they pertain to race, class, gender and sexuality. Offering an historical overview of scary stories in relation to the socio-historical contexts in which they emerge, the discussion will reveal horror as an expressly political genre infused with underlying social commentary.

When: Thursday, October 29 at 7 p.m.

Where: University Student Union, Ballroom

Tickets: Purchase online. CSUSM Students are free; CSUSM faculty, staff and alumni are $5; and community members are $10.

With the upcoming season six premier of The Walking Dead on October 11, followed by Halloween on October 31, Wilson is available to speak to media about zombies, monsters and the upswing in popularity of horror shows and films. She can also speak to the success of AMC’s The Walking Dead and why AMC’s new original series Fear the Walking Dead is not raking in audiences. Other relevant programs also include the new Fox series Scream Queens, the returning A&E series Bates Motel and the popular FX series American Horror Story.

On October 29, Wilson will be presenting a lecture titled “Scary Stories: What do Horror Stories Tell Us About Ourselves, Our Society and Social Injustice?” as part of CSUSM’s Arts and Lectures series. The public is invited to attend and tickets are available online.

Wilson is currently co-authoring the text, Feminist Perspective on Zombies, Vampires, and Witches: Radical monstrosity in Literature, Film & TV, with CSUSM Associate Professor of Literature and Writing Heidi Breuer. Her first book, Seduced by Twilight, examined the cultural phenomenon of the Twilight series from a feminist perspective.

To schedule interviews, please contact Margaret Chantung at 760-750-4011 or mchantung@csusm.edu.