12 Questions: With Lauren Visconti

 Lauren Visconti has been on staff at LBCC since 2018, and has greatly improved and reimagined the Anthropology Department, as well as the Women’s Studies department in that time.

The same can be said about her impact on her students.

As if her near perfect 4.7/5 rating on Ratemyproffesors.com wasn’t telling enough, her passion for highlighting intersectionality between cultures, current events, everyday phenomena— and drawing connections between the stories of the past— as well as in our own lives, is sure to be felt by all who are present for her lectures. 

From her cross-cultural upbringing, her tendency to people-watch in public, and innate desire to ask unanswerable questions, it was only natural that she would align herself with the study of humans.

Q: Have you been to Italy before?

Lauren Visconti: Yes, I have family there. My grandma was actually born in Rome, and my grandfather — who passed down the paternal last name — is from Milan. I’m kind of your classic Italian-American from Jersey. However, I don't really identify as a first-generation person in many ways because they came when they were 4 and 11.

Q: Who was the first generation in your family to emigrate to the U.S.?

Visconti: My mom and dad. Technically, that makes me first-generation since neither of them was born here, but I don’t really identify that way because they immigrated when they were 4 and 11. By the time I was born, they had fully assimilated. So while I grew up with little cultural cues like, “What even is Thanksgiving?” I also grew up in a very American context.

Q: Did your parents speak English before coming to the U.S.?

Visconti: My dad did, but my mom didn’t. My dad actually grew up in Saudi Arabia in an oil family, then went back to Italy before moving to the States. So it’s a pretty global story.

Q: No wonder you ended up in anthropology. When did your interest in it begin? Was it rooted in a love of history?

Visconti: Definitely. I love history. I don’t know how anyone can make sense of the world without understanding history. But anthropology — being the study of humans — is such a vast and essential discipline. I think I’ve always been drawn to asking unanswerable questions and observing people. My favorite thing to do is sit in an airport and stare at people’s shoes, then try to see if I’ve gotten a good image of the person.

Q: Do you approach those questions with a method?

Visconti: Yes. Anthropology is brave in that it leans into questions we’ll never fully answer. It’s about understanding what we know, what we don’t, and even what we don’t know we don’t know. That tension is part of the work. In my Anthropology 101 class, I often walk students through this narrative framework:

1. What is the story you were told?
   
   

2. What is the story you hold?
   
   

3. What is the anthropological story?
   
   

4. And how do we fit the anthropological story into your personal narrative?

Q: What is the importance of stories that people are told culturally speaking?

Visconti: I think that the stories we tell ourselves are also who we are as people. They shape who we are. Learning others’ stories helps us better understand our own. Cultural anthropology reveals how people do similar things differently, and when we expose ourselves to those stories, it reveals the narrative we tell ourselves — often for the first time.

Q: Did your multicultural upbringing make you more attuned to these differences?

Visconti: Absolutely. I grew up in both the Greek Orthodox and Italian Catholic traditions. They’re both conservative, but in very different ways. For example, one uses statues and 3D representations, the other only icons. Even when I couldn’t understand the Greek being spoken at church, the symbols, food, mosaics, and community left a deep impression on me.

Q: You’re also a farmer? Tell me about that.

Visconti: My husband Josh and I run J&J Organics, a 12-acre certified organic and biodynamic farm. We sell at the Corvallis Farmers Market all summer. We also operate Sun Gold Botanicals, Our processing facility. 

Q: What does agriculture mean to you personally?

Visconti: Food is complicated—but at its heart, it’s community. In North America, we often treat food as fuel. But food is also nourishment, connection, identity. I love teaching the transition from foraging to agriculture. It wasn’t overnight—it took thousands of years.

Q: How would you define feminism, and why is it culturally significant?

Visconti: I’ve said this before, but feminism really is the F word. There are other F words that are easier to say — and no one says anything. Feminism has been attacked and turned into a slur over the past 30 years. That said, I’m drawn to Bell Hooks’ definition of feminism as “a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression.” My generation has really latched onto that because it’s intersectional. 

But what inspires me the most is how students continue expanding the definition — looking critically at systems of oppression while also honoring small, everyday acts of resistance. For example, Tricia Hersey’s work on “rest as resistance” reframes something as simple as napping as an act of reclaiming bodily autonomy. Hersey talks about watching her grandmother close her eyes for 10 minutes a day on the couch. That was her grandmother’s definition of feminism — sovereignty over her body after generations were denied it. 

Q: Would you say people’s idea of feminism has been skewed by social media?

Visconti: That’s a great question. You brought up 2016, so I’ll bring up 2017 — that was the year feminism became the most looked-up word on Merriam-Webster’s website. When they went digital, they started collecting data on word searches, and feminism topped the list that year. 

But yes, we could talk about the overlap between social media and feminism for a long time. There’s no question that social media has shaped — and skewed — how people understand feminism. You’re talking about the rise of algorithm-driven outrage.  It became cultural currency to mock or discredit feminist voices, often by reducing them to caricatures. That kind of content was profitable, viral — and damaging.

We haven’t fully come back from that. It’s created a lasting cultural bias that makes real, nuanced conversations about feminism harder to have. But that’s why the classroom is so powerful — it gives us space to slow down, reflect, and reframe.

Q: Anything else readers should know about?

Visconti: We’re offering our very first biological anthropology lab this fall — a four-credit science lab class. That’s a big deal because it's the first science class offered by our division. We’re ordering lots of plastic bones and anatomical models to support the lab work. It’s going to be hands-on and really exciting. 

At a glance:

Lauren Visconti

Occupation: Full time Faculty, Anthropology, Women’s Studies at LBCC 

Started at LBCC: 2018

Education: M.A, Applied Anthropology, Oregon State University, M.S, Applied Linguistics, California State University Northridge

What else: Run's J&J Organics with her husband, Josh. They sell at the Corvallis Farmer's Market every Saturday.

What’s next: Medical Anthropology Lab starting in Fall Term