On Dec. 2, Associate Professor Aline Gubrium (public health) will discuss her recent work in a talk titled “WOAA! (Women Organizing Across Ages): Hear Our Stories for Justice.”
Gubrium’s presentation will focus on the Ford Foundation-funded “Hear Our Stories” project, which uses new media to reveal how pregnant and parenting Latina youth experience and negotiate sexual health disparities. Existing programs and policies focused on these women fail to use relevant local knowledge and rarely involve them in messaging efforts. In collaboration with project partners, including the Massachusetts Alliance on Teen Pregnancy, National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, and the Gaston Institute for Latino Community Development and Public Policy, “Hear Our Stories” aims to transform assumptions about young parenting Latinas through the novel use of digital storytelling to recalibrate the conversation on young motherhood and sexuality, health and rights across generations.
The project is based at The Community Adolescent Resources and Education (Care) Center, an alternative education program for pregnant and parenting teens in Holyoke, Mass. Gubrium and other project participants have organized a cadre of Care Center students to develop their capacity as sexual and reproductive rights advocates as they engage in project-sponsored trainings, workshops, meetings and conferences, and this presentation will focus on that work.
Gubrium’s research uses participatory, digital, visual and narrative methods to study the sexual and reproductive health knowledge and decision-making of marginalized women and youth. From early research with African-American women living in a southern rural community, to work with women using Depo-Provera contraception and more recent projects working with Latino/a youth to address barriers to sexual communication and sexuality education, Gubrium explores how the participants view their sexual and reproductive health experiences, in particular, how they make sense of, respond to, and confront the many influences that shape their sexuality. She is the co-author of Participatory Visual and Digital Methodologies.
This lecture is part of CPPA’s fall 2013 Faculty Colloquium series, which consists of informal talks, often about works-in-progress, with presenters providing a significant amount of time for audience discussion and feedback. All talks will be in Thompson 620, from noon to 1 p.m. They are open to the public and brown bag lunches are welcome.