Category: Events

The spring 2014 CPPA Faculty Colloquium Series offers an exciting lineup of innovative researchers and practitioners who will speak on a range of topics with substantial policy implications. This semester’s speakers will talk about the growing and unlikely relationship between the U.S. and Brazil; policies in the Academy that affect mothers and motherhood; the intersection of wicked problems and social entrepreneurship; and federal oversight of workplace discrimination.

The talks are informal and often are 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 12:15 to 1:15 p.m. They are open to the public and brown bag lunches are welcome.

International Partnership and the Unexpected U.S.-Brazilian Rapprochement
Javier Corrales (political science, Amherst College)
January 27

Bearing Witness to Mothers’ Lives in Academia
Mari Castañeda (communication)
February 3

Addressing Wicked Problems Through Social Entrepreneurship
Megan Briggs Lyster (social entrepreneurship, Hampshire College)
March 3

Identifying Equal and Unequal Opportunity Workplaces
Donald Tomaskovic-Devey (sociology)
April 7

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.

The Center for Public Policy and Administration is turning 15 — and you are invited to help us celebrate.

On Friday, Nov. 15, 2013, from 4 to 6 p.m., CPPA will hold a reception at Gordon Hall to mark this milestone and look toward our future.

Memorabilia representing our events and the work of CPPA’s faculty over the last 15 years will be on display. Speakers will include Robert Feldman, dean of the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences; John Hird, associate dean of the college and CPPA’s founding director; and Kathryn McDermott, associate professor of education and public policy and CPPA’s current acting director. A CPPA alumnus and a current student will also make a few remarks.

Please join us for what promises to be a memorable occasion. RSVP today.

Next week, the Five College Public Policy Initiative welcomes Tina Reynolds for the first of two week-long stays with educational and community events throughout the Pioneer Valley. Reynolds is the final participant in the Social Justice Practitioner-in-Residence program. The second part of her residency will be Nov. 17-23.

Reynolds is the co-founder and executive director of Women on the Rise Telling HerStory (WORTH), a nonprofit organization in New York City that works with women to confront barriers they and their families face during and after prison. WORTH has been instrumental in passing state legislation that protects the rights of incarcerated women.

During her residency, Reynolds is co-teaching a two-credit course with Professor Michael Ash (economics and public policy). The course, “Impact of Mass Criminalization on Women,” is offered through the Social Thought and Political Economy program and is open to Five College students. For more information about the course, email Professor Ash.

The following events during the first week of Reynolds’ residency are open to the public:

• Tuesday, Oct. 22 at 5 p.m.
  Workshop on Gender and Incarceration
  West Lecture Hall, Franklin Patterson Hall, Hampshire College
  Dinner is provided; RSVP to Lucy Trainor.

• Thursday, Oct. 24 at 4 p.m.
  A Human Rights Perspective: Reproductive Justice and Mass Criminalization of Black and Brown Women (lecture)
  Commonwealth Honors College Events Hall East, UMass Amherst

The Social Justice Practitioner-in-Residence program is part of the Five College Public Policy Initiative, which aims to enhance collaboration among Five College faculty and students who are interested in curricula, research and outreach related to public policy. The residency program was made possible by a generous grant from Five Colleges, Incorporated.

The Center for Public Policy and Administration (CPPA) and the Political Economy Research Institute are proud to host Gar Alperovitz next Thursday, Oct. 10, when he will present a talk titled “Is there an America Beyond Capitalism?”

Alperovitz, a political economist and historian, is the Lionel R. Bauman Professor of Political Economy at the University of Maryland. He is also the co-founder of the Democracy Collaborative, a research institute developing strategies to build community wealth that helped establish the Cleveland-based Evergreen Cooperatives, worker-owned co-op businesses that provide living wage jobs to residents of that city’s poorest neighborhoods. The Evergreen Cooperatives served as a model for the Wellspring Collaborative, an economic and job development program that CPPA has helped establish in Springfield, Mass.

In addition to his work as a leader in the new economy movement, Alperovitz is an acclaimed historian of the decision to drop the atomic bomb, and the author of numerous books, including most recently, What Then Must We Do? Straight Talk About the Next American Revolution.

Thursday, Oct. 10 at 4 p.m., Gordon Hall third floor.