This Week in Sociology: February 23-27, 2009
Welcome to Week 5 of Spring 2009! As your work load increases, don’t forget to explore the great events and resources offered in sociology community. Here’s what is going on in and around Sociology this week that might interest you:
Monday, Feb. 23
Advising Hours:
Peer Advising: 2:30-4:30, 722 Thompson
Interfaith Dialogue: “Challenges and Opportunities in a Changing World”
A panel of faculty members from Hartford Seminary (www.hartsem.edu) will be discussing interreligious dialogue in light of President Obama’s election. Specifically, the panel will explore the role that students, colleges and graduate schools can play in interreligious dialogue in the future.
6:30 p.m.-8:00 p.m.
Room: Friedmann (Amherst College)
Contact: Sarah Barr
413-542-2982
Tuesday, Feb. 24
Advising Hours:
Advising Appointments with the Director of Advising: 11:30-1:30, 704 Thompson
Peer Advising: 9:00-5:00, 722 Thompson
Talk: “Remembering Lincoln in the Age of Obama”
Harvard professor John Stauffer will join UMass professors Manisha Sinha and John Bracey in a talk celebrating the 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birth. Stauffer’s book Rebel Giants, regarding Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, garnered recent attention from a blog entry by President Obama. He has also written The Black Hearts of Men, a history of some of the more radical abolitionists. Manisha Sinha’s Counter-Revolution of Slavery provides an analysis of the Southern politics in Lincoln’s day. Her essay “Allies for Emancipation” appears in Our Lincoln. She also edited the book Contested Democracy. The authors will be present for a book signing and reception after the talk.
5:30 pm – 6:30 pm
Memorial Hall
UMass Amherst Campus
Contact: Manisha Sinha
(413) 545-4779
“Race and Feminism: Latina Perspectives.”
Nosotras presents a discussion around feminism and Latinas, with a panel of informative and intellectually stimulating speakers speaking on a wide range of subjects. The goal of this event is to bring many perspectives together to honestly speak to each other about where Latinas have historically and presently diverge from feminist movements and where they have and can meet.
4:15 pm
Neilson Library Browsing Room. (Smith College)
Wednesday, Feb. 25
Advising Hours:
Advising Appointments with the Director of Advising: 11:30-1:30, 704 Thompson
Peer Advising: 2:00-4:30, 722 Thompson
“The Challenges of Governance in Africa”
Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
a world of global forces, the state in Africa is in perilous condition; governance in Africa today reflects that fact. Professor Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja has been an important contributor both to African politics and to scholarship on Africa. Prof. Nzongola has also served as a senior official in the United Nations Development Program (UNDP); an active participant in the democratization movement in Zaire, he served as Deputy President of the National Electoral Commission of Zaire (1996). His latest work is The Congo: From Leopold to Kabila; A People’s History (Zed Press).
7:30 pm
Neilson Library Browsing Room (Smith College)
Thursday, Feb. 26
Advising Hours:
Advising Appointments with the Director of Advising: 11:30-1:30, 704 Thompson
Peer Advising: 9:00-5:00, 722 Thompson
“Gender, Power and Religion: Women’s Leadership in the Aladura Church in West Africa and the United States of America”
Speaker Mojubaolu Okome
The experiences of contemporary African Christian immigrants in terms of gender are yet to be understood. These developments generate important questions on contemporary African immigrant Christianity in America. This paper will focus on the Aladura (*Prayerful ones*) churches among the AICs, founded among the Yoruba of Southwestern Nigeria, in response to missionary marginalization of the new Christians and spiritual, existential and material problems encountered by Africans in the early 20th century. As well, it should contribute to deeper understanding of the relationship between space, religion, culture, translocality, gender and power.
4:00 pm
MHC Five College Women’s Studies Research Center, South Hadley, MA
Peace Corps Panel and Information Session
Students interested in the Peace Corps are invited to attend this panel and information session. Join several returning Peace Corps volunteers and hear their stories. Also on hand will be a Peace Corps recruiter, who will discuss the available opportunities and the application process.
7:00 p.m.-8:00 p.m. Career Center (Amherst College)
Contact: Carol Sharick
413-542-2265
Friday, Feb. 27
Advising Hours:
Peer Advising: 11:30-2:00, 722 Thompson
Faculty Colloquia: Ute Brandes, “Destination Utopia: Anna Seghers in East Berlin”
12:00 p.m. Description:
Location: Room: Valentine Terrace Room A
Valentine Dining Hall (Amherst College)
Contact: Theresa Lazier
413-542-2208
Conference: “New Worlds of Adoption: Growing Up in Complex Families”
The Rudd Adoption Research Program, the Center for Research on Families, the Department of Psychology, and the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. An increasing number of American children grow up in “complex families” – families in which adults other than or in addition to the child’s biological parents are strongly involved in the child’s life. This is becoming more and more frequent in adoption, as evidenced in the rise in open adoptions, kinship adoptions, adoptions by same-sex couples, and so on. The focus will be on new perspectives on adoption, and the conference will be valuable for professionals and students in the human services fields, social science researchers, and community members.
8:00 am – 4:30 pm
Marriott Courtyard
Route 9 Hadley, MA
To register, visit http://www.umass.edu/family/adoption_conference/conference_adoption.htm
Contact: Janet Barstow, jbarstow@psych.umass.edu