April 22 – Graduate Student Workshop on Pegagogy

Graduate Workshop: Pedagogies and Practices: Teaching Sociology at UCSC

April 22 – 12:30-2pm, College 8 Room 301

How do we practice sociology as pedagogy? What makes for fruitful learning experiences, successful classes? What difficulties do we encounter? How has our student body changed and in what ways are we responding to those changes?

Join Sociology faculty, lecturers and graduate students for the first of a series of roundtable discussions about teaching sociology here at UCSC. Each discussant will explore their own pedagogies and practices with attention to format (big lecture vs. discussion sections), evaluation (assignment construction, grading), teaching unruly sociological topics (race/class/gender/sexuality in the classroom), and finding the balance between exciting and overwhelming our students (and ourselves).

Organized by Ariana Kalinic
Facilitated by Jimiliz Valiente Neighbors

Discussants:
Prof. Craig Reinarman
Assoc. Prof. Debbie Gould
Ariana Kalinic, graduate student
Yvonne Kwan, graduate student
And another speaker TBA.

April 26 – Giovanna di Chiro

GIovanna di Chiro

Jessica Roy Memorial Lecture

“Embodied Ecologies: Connecting Sustainability and Environmental Justice”

April 26 – 4pm-6pm, College Nine, Namaste Lounge ***Please note alternate time/location***

Giovanna di Chiro is Director of Environmental Programs at Nuestras Raíces, Inc. in Holyoke, Massachusetts, and Research Associate at the Five Colleges Research Center in Amherst, Massachusetts. She has published widely on the intersections of environmental science and policy, with a focus on social and economic disparities and human rights. She is co-editor of the volume Appropriating Technology: Vernacular Science and Social Power and is completing a book titled Embodied Ecologies: Science, Politics, and Environmental Justice. Her current work examines environmental justice activists’ reframing of the climate change debate to focus on the local, bodily impacts of wide-scale environmental problems like global warming. She is widely known for her research and practice focusing on community-based approaches to sustainability and the intersections of social justice and sustainability. Di Chiro teaches environmental studies and collaborates with environmental justice organizations to conduct community-based research on environmental health concerns and on developing culturally relevant sustainability initiatives in poor and low-income communities. She has received numerous research fellowships and grants, including from the Rockefeller Foundation, the University of California Humanities Research Institute, the American Association of University Women, the Nathan Cummings Foundation, and the US Environmental Protection Agency. She serves on the international editorial board of Zed Books’ series on gender and environment.

Co-hosted by the Critical Sustainabilities Working Group of the Urban Studies Research Cluster, Institute for Humanities Research, and College 9.

May 6 – Imani Perry

Imani Perry

African-American Studies, Princeton University

Racial Inequality as Culture

May 6 – 12:30-2pm, ***College 8 Red Room*** (please note change from usual location)

In a talk based upon her book, More Beautiful and More Terrible: The Embrace and Transcendence of Racial Inequality in the United States, Perry will present a lecture on her argument that it is most effective to understand racial inequality as a cultural practice, reproduced by collective action, as opposed to as a simple institutional or individual injury.

Imani Perry is a Professor in the Center for African American Studies at Princeton University, and a faculty associate in the Program in Law and Public Affairs and Gender and Sexuality Studies. She is the author of two books: Prophets of the Hood: Politics and Poetics in Hip Hop (Duke University Press, 2004) and More Beautiful and more Terrible: The Embrace and Transcendence of Racial Ineuality in the U.S. (NYU Press, 2011) and numerous articles in the fields of law and cultural studies. Perry holds a Ph.D. and a J.D. from Harvard University, a L.LM. from Georgetown University Law Center and a B.A. from Yale College.

Event co-sponsors: the Program in Critical Race and Ethnic Studies, and the departments of Latina American and Latino Studies, Politics, and Literature

May 20 – Hector Perla

Hector Perla

Latin American and Latino Studies, UCSC

Salvadoran Transnationalism: Diasporic Mobilization & State Engagement

May 20 – 12:30-2pm, College 8 Room 301

This paper traces the history and evolution of Salvadoran Transnationalism. It seeks to lay out a chronological typology of transnational mobilization by the Salvadoran diaspora toward both El Salvador and the United States. At the same time, it documents the evolving relationship of the U.S. and Salvadoran states with the Salvadoran diaspora. The paper thus hopes to understand what aspects of current Salvadoran transnational engagement are traditional and ongoing, which are simply old wine in new bottles, and what if any practices are indeed novel.

Dr. Hector Perla Jr. (Ph.D. UCLA Political Science, 2005) is an Assistant Professor of Latin American Studies and Latino Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He earned his BA in International Relations from San Francisco State University and his MA in Latin American Studies from Stanford University. During 2007-2008, Professor Perla was a UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellow affiliated to UC Irvine’s departments of Political Science & Chicano/Latino Studies. He was also a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley’s Center for Latin American Studies. He is currently finishing his book manuscript, entitled Revolutionary Deterrence: U.S. Coercion & Transnational Resistance by Sandinista Nicaragua. Dr. Perla’s areas of specialization are International Relations (IR) and Latin American Studies. His research and teaching interests range from IR Theory, US-Latin American Relations, Latin American Politics, Asymmetric Conflicts, Transnational Social Movements, to Public Diplomacy, Media & Public Opinion, US Foreign Policy Formation, Latino Politics, and Political Psychology. Professor Perla has published or forthcoming work in: The San Francisco Chronicle, NACLA, Latin American Research Review, Latin American Perspectives, Socialism & Democracy, International Organization, Latino Studies, The Americas, Political Science Quarterly, Journal of Third World Studies, and Latin American Politics & Society.

June 3 – Penny Lewis

Penny Lewis

Labor Studies, City University of New York

“From Hardhats v. Hippies to Occupying Wall Street: Class and Social Protest in the U.S.”

June 3 – 12:30-2pm, College 8 Room 301

Penny Lewis will draw on her research of the Vietnam period and new research on Occupy to discuss class cultures and class representation in social protest in both eras. In her book, Hardhats Hippies and Hawks: The Vietnam Antiwar Movement as Myth and Memory, Lewis argues that our memory of class polarization during the Vietnam era obscures the diverse opposition to the war that existed at the time, and the multiple political orientations of workers in the US during the period. Our memory of “working class conservatism” in particular has helped delimit movement formation as well as our imagination of what’s possible in the present. Occupy offers both hopeful new directions for cross-class coalitions, as well as cautionary evidence that such coalitions continue to face obstacles in how they are created, recognized, and sustained.

Penny Lewis is Assistant Professor of Labor Studies at the Joseph S. Murphy Institute for Worker Education at the City University of New York [CUNY]. She received her B.A. at Brown University and holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from the CUNY Graduate Center. Her first book, Hardhats, Hippies, and Hawks: The Vietnam Antiwar Movement as Myth and Memory, will be published by Cornell University Press in spring 2013. Her current research continues to look at the social class dynamics of social movements. She has worked as a union organizer and has been active in various labor and community organizations, including Jobs with Justice. She serves as a university-wide officer for the Professional Staff Congress, the union that represents CUNY’s faculty and staff.