UConn Stamford Faculty Member Oscar Guerra Film to be Broadcast on Frontline

August 10, 2020

Love, Life & the Virus, a documentary film by Oscar Guerra, Assistant Professor of Digital Media Design at UConn’s Stamford campus, will air nationally on the acclaimed PBS in-depth journalism program, Frontline, Tuesday, 11 August, 10PM.

The film follows the struggle for survival of two immigrant families struck by COVID-19 infections in southwestern Connecticut. A Spanish-language version of the film will air a week later on air on Univision’s acclaimed news magazine program Aquí y Ahora on Sun., Aug. 16 at 7PM.’

 

 

El Instituto apoya el Proyecto Diarios de la Pandemia

July 20, 2020

El Proyecto Diarios de la Pandemia (Spanish) 

Esta primavera, cuando la fuerza y la magnitud de la pandemia de COVID-19 empezaron a hacerse cada vez más claras, un equipo interdisciplinario de investigadores en la University of Connecticut, la Brown University, y el Trinity College se apuró a crear el Proyecto Diarios de la Pandemia, una plataforma digital para escribir diarios, que también incluye una investigación académica. El Proyecto Diarios de la Pandemia permite a cualquier persona, en cualquier parte del mundo, crear un registro semanal de sus experiencias en estos tiempos turbulentos, usando texto, grabaciones de voz, y imágenes, para si mismos y la posteridad. Cualquier persona que tenga acceso a un celular, tableta, o computadora puede contribuir, en inglés y en español, en sólo 15 minutos cada semana. El Proyecto está abierto a todos, pero nuestro equipo está especialmente comprometido a grabar las experiencias de comunidades que están afectadas desproporcionadamente por la pandemia – especialmente trabajadores esenciales (en la salud y otros sectores) y comunidades de color, que se enfrentan con proporciones de riesgo e infección de COVID-19 significativamente más altas. Los participantes pueden visualizar y bajar un archivo completo de sus respuestas en una página web protegida por contraseña, y si lo desean, pueden dar su permiso para compartir sus anotaciones de diario en nuestra página Diarios Recientes. Después de 25 años, todas las contribuciones pasarán a ser parte de un archivo histórico accesible al público.

En colaboración con un Consejo Asesor diverso, compuesto por expertos en historia, psicología, las humanidades digitales, y otras disciplinas, las fundadoras del Proyecto Sarah Willen (UConn) y Katherine Mason (Brown) – las dos antropólogas – se alegran de que la plataforma esté surgiendo como un espacio para compartir reflexiones significativas cada semana. Al mismo tiempo, el equipo está trabajando en “pre-diseñar un archivo” que tendrá valor para investigaciones en las humanidades, las ciencias sociales, y las ciencias de la salud, hoy y en el futuro. Antes de crear sus primeras anotaciones de diario, los participantes responden algunas preguntas básicas sobre si, su exposición al COVID-19, y su estado de salud. Siguen dos oportunidades para realizar anotaciones de diarios, incluyendo una pregunta recurrente sobre el impacto de la pandemia en su vida, y la opción de elegir entre dos preguntas sobre temas como trabajo y financias, salud, discriminación y racismo, y también experiencias de conexión social, comunidad, y arte. Aunque inicialmente el Proyecto fue desarrollado para captar las experiencias de la pandemia de COVID-19, su meta ha expandido, por necesidad, para incluir las reacciones de los participantes a la muerte de George Floyd, y el consecuente descontento social y político que este asesinato ha encendido en los Estados Unidos y en el mundo entero. Este nuevo enfoque es coherente con el mandato del Proyecto, que saluda a los visitadores de la página web con la frase: “Usualmente la historia está escrita por personas en posiciones de poder… La meta del Proyecto Diarios de la Pandemia es de asegurarse que se hagan oír las voces de las personas ordinarias que están viviendo esta pandemia, y que sus experiencias sean recordadas.”

El Proyecto Diarios de la Pandemia se ha puesto en marcha con fondos de varias unidades en la University of Connecticut, incluyendo El Instituto (Institute of Latina/o, Caribbean, and Latin American Studies), la Oficina de Asuntos Globales (Global Affairs), el Instituto de Derechos Humanos (Human Rights Institute), el Instituto de Colaboración en Salud, Intervención, y Políticas Públicas (InCHIP), y también el Centro de Estudios Urbanos y Globales (Center for Urban and Global Studies) del Trinity College y el Centro de Entrenamiento para el Estudio de Poblaciones (Population Studies and Training Center) en la Brown University.

 

 

The Pandemic Journaling Project (English)

This spring, as the force and magnitude of the COVID-19 pandemic became increasingly clear, an interdisciplinary team at the University of Connecticut, Brown University, and Trinity College raced to create the Pandemic Journaling Project, a combined journaling platform and research study that lets anyone around the world create a weekly record of this turbulent time using text, voice recordings, and images, for themselves and for posterity. With versions in English and Spanish, anyone with access to a smartphone, tablet, or computer can contribute in only 15 minutes each week. While the Project is open to all, the team is especially committed to recording the experiences of communities disproportionately affected by the pandemic – especially essential workers (in health and other sectors) and communities of color, who face significantly higher rates of COVID-19 risk and infection. Participants will be able to view and download a full archive of their own responses via a password-protected website and, if they choose, give permission to share their entries on the project’s Public Journal Entries page. After 25 years, all contributions will become part of a publicly accessible historical archive.

Teaming up with a diverse Advisory Board comprised of experts in history, psychology, digital humanities, and other fields, Project founders Sarah Willen (UConn) and Katherine Mason (Brown), both anthropologists, are pleased to see the platform emerge as a meaningful space for weekly reflection. At the same time, the team is working to “pre-design an archive” that will have value to researchers in humanities, social sciences, and health fields, now and in the future. Before creating their first journal entries, participants are asked basic questions about demographics, COVID-19 exposure, and current health status. Two journaling opportunities follow, including one recurring question about the impact of the pandemic on one’s life and a choice of two weekly questions on topics such as work and finances, health, and encounters with discrimination and racism, as well as experiences of social connection, community, and the arts. Although the Project initially was developed to capture experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic, its scope has expanded, by necessity, to include participants’ reactions to the death of George Floyd and the widespread social and political unrest his murder has ignited across the United States and around the world. This expanded focus hews closely to the Project’s declared mandate, which greets website visitors: “Usually, history is written only by the powerful. … The goal of the Pandemic Journaling Project is to make sure that ordinary people struggling through this pandemic have their voices heard, and their experiences remembered.”

The Pandemic Journaling Project was launched with seed funding from various units at the University of Connecticut, including El Instituto (Institute of Latina/o, Caribbean, and Latin American Studies), the Office of Global Affairs, the Human Rights Institute, and the Institute for Collaboration on Health, Intervention, and Policy (InCHIP), as well as the Center for Urban and Global Studies at Trinity College and the Population Studies Training Center at Brown University.

 

 

Instituto MA Student Caesar Valentín Honored in Obama Foundation Class of 2020 Video

July 15, 2020

The work of UConn Philosophy/Political Science graduate and joint Public Policy/Latinx Studies MA student, Caesar Valentín, is featured in a recent Obama Foundation Class of 2020 Video. After joining the Obama Foundation Community Leadership Corps in the summer of 2019, Valentín started a peer mentoring program at his local high school, Connecticut River Academy (CTRA) in East Hartford, CT. The program (still in development) was proposed with the intent creating greater student and teacher unity at the school. Valentín attended CTRA from 2012 to 2016 and was a part of the school’s original graduating class. He noticed a disconnect growing among the students and the teachers as the school became larger and moved into a bigger building. His group, called ‘Bout That Action, paired upper class-men with underclassmen so that younger students would have a friend from the moment they started school. This would also give upperclassmen valuable mentoring experience. Implementation was halted due to COVID-19, but ‘Bout That Action and Caesar still intend to follow through with this mentoring program.

About his upcoming entry into the Instituto and Department of Public Policy joint MPP/MA program, Valentín said, “The skills I hope to get from the MPA/MA program are wide, but they start with being able to help out Black and Brown communities. I never saw any faces involved in the public sector growing up, and as I have gained age, finding those who look like me is very slim. The MPA will allow me to develop myself as a professional and be able to make quality connections and change, while the MA will allow me to understand the structural forces that necessitate these shifts in culture. Whether I go into government, politics, non-profits, diversity and inclusion work, or anywhere else my life may take me, I know that the MPA/MA program will have prepared me for doing so.”

New Director Named for La Comunidad Learning Community

June 18, 2020

A new Faculty Director has been appointed to lead La Comunidad, UConn’s Latinx heritage first-year learning community. First Year Program and Learning Community Program Director, Melissa Foreman writes of Dr Nienhusser, “We believe he is well suited to continue developing an impactful experience for the amazing students involved in this community.” Dr. Nienhusser is an Assistant Professor in the Higher Education & Student Affairs Program in the University of Connecticut’s Neag School of Education. He holds an EdD in Higher and Postsecondary Education from Teachers College, Columbia University, as well as an MSW (Master of Social Work) and a BA in Economics, both from Stony Brook University. As a first-generation Latino college student who grew up in a working class household of immigrant parents from Chile, diversity, equity, and inclusion are at the core of his work as a researcher, teacher, advisor, and scholar-citizen. His research examines the postsecondary education access of minoritized youth in the United States with a focus on the origins of public policies and their implementation, as well as how youth navigate higher education access barriers. His work also investigates the public policy landscape and experiences of undocumented immigrant youth, including those with DACA status. Dr. Nienhusser aims to help address social and educational inequities by reconceptualizing contemporary issues in their daily practice and how we reframe sensemaking, moral reasoning, information networks, and critical practice of institutional agents’ and its impact on underserved students’ college access.

In his spare time, Dr. Nienhusser enjoys spending time with his family and practicing photography.

You can view his full profile here: http://nienhusser.com

Publication Scholarship Articles on Puerto Rican Studies

June 16, 2020

In recognition of Puerto Rican Heritage Day (14 June) we highlight recent public scholarship from three UConn faculty and former students:

From Hilda Lloréns (Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of Rhode Island), the article ‘Racialization works differently here in Puerto Rico, do not bring your U.S.-centric ideas about race here!’

and short book Ustedes tienen que limpiar las cenizas!

From Ismael García-Colón (Associate Professor of Anthropology, CUNY State Island), the book Colonial Migrants at the Heart of Empire https://sum.cuny.edu/the-us-recruited-400000-puerto-rican-farm-workers-this-is-their-story/

From Charles Robert Venator Santiago (Associate Professor of Political Science and Latina/o Studies, UCONN), Holyoke Hurricane María Response Study (soon to be published with the CUNY Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueños)

Felicidades, Hilda, Ismael y Rob!

Three UConn Faculty Awarded NEHC Seed Grants

June 15, 2020

The University of Connecticut Humanities Institute (UCHI) is pleased to announce that three UConn faculty are among the 30 recipients of the New England Humanities Consortium’s 2020 seed grants for research in the humanities. These NEHC grants seek to capitalize on the collaborative network of the consortium’s 11 member institutes. UCHI is the current executive hub and the founding member of the NEHC

Jason Oliver Chang of UConn History and Asian and Asian American Studies and Fiona Vernal of UConn History & Africana Studies (both former UCHI fellows) are co-Principle Investigators on a project entitled Shade: Labor Diasporas, Tobacco, Mobility, and the Urban Nexus.

This is an interdisciplinary collective of humanities scholars investigating the ways that U.S. imperialism, colonization, corporate industry, and white settler normativity have evolved and matured in the Connecticut River Valley. The Shade Collective engages interdisciplinary collaborations to center the history and culture of the region’s local communities and global labor diasporas. While migration and labor histories associated with the valley’s tobacco industry remain politically invisible, laborers continue to shape the rural and urban spaces of the region in the course of giving their life meaning. Tobacco laborers attached their own meaning of place and space to their memories and their imaginations of the Connecticut River Valley.

Kevin McBride of UConn Anthropology is co-Principle Investigator on a project entitled Public Memory, Place, and Belonging: Unearthing the Hidden History of the Native and African American Presence on Block Island. 

This team grant will support fieldwork and planning that will lead to the development of a temporary, traveling exhibition, opening in July 2022, titled “Public Memory, Place, and Belonging: Unearthing the Hidden History of the Native and African American Presence on Block Island.” In collaboration with members of the Gobern family of Block Island and East Providence, scholars at the University of Rhode Island (URI) and University of Connecticut (UConn) are working with the Tomaquag Museum and a number of local museums with an interest in hosting this exhibit, which will include audiovisual content created by award-winning documentarian, Kendall Moore, Native and colonial cultural artifacts, archival and contemporary photographs and images, written records, and interpretive materials designed to provoke audience engagement and reflection. After its initial display at a number of regional museums, the exhibit will eventually find a permanent residence at the Gobern family homestead on Block Island, the future site of a Manissean community center.

 

Statement from Centers, Institutes, and Programs on Racial Injustice and Ending White Supremacy

June 4, 2020

We, the faculty and staff of the interdisciplinary Centers, Institutes, and Programs, stand together to express our shock, our heartbreak, and our outrage at the horrific and senseless killing of George Floyd and the ongoing violence against Black people.

George Floyd, David McAtee, Tony McDade, Ahmaud Arbery, Eric Garner, Breonna Taylor, Kathryn Johnston, Ayiana Stanley-Jones, Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, Alton Sterling, Freddie Gray, Philando Castile, Sandra Bland. Too many to list and too many to forget.

Each of these names represents a human being, dehumanized, rendered invisible, a Black life cut short by brutality and wanton violence.

We cannot look away. We cannot remain indifferent. We cannot be silent.

We must expose and confront the deep, pervasive, systemic issues that continue to fuel one tragedy after another. We must work together to bring real change. As academic units and programs of the university founded on principles of social justice and human rights we reaffirm our commitment to educating the next generation of healers and freedom fighters. The vision of change, which this crisis on top of a catastrophic pandemic calls for, is a broad, systemic, and intergenerational strategy. We recognize that broad societal change cannot be legislated alone, but must be cultivated community by community, day by day.  To that end, we reaffirm our commitment to creating communities of accountability; implementing actions that dismantle the status quo of white supremacy; and amplifying the voices and experiences of people of color.

As a first step, we encourage you to join us in programs that will bring communities into conversation including tonight’s AACC Town Hall Meeting, presented by The H. Fred Simons African American Cultural Center:

The COVID-19 Pandemic and Racism in the African-American Community

Thursday, June 4, at 6 PM

https://preview.mailerlite.com/k8h6u0/1435486084640281891/n9g0/

 

 

We also encourage you to read the public statement on anti-black violence from the Africana Studies Institute:

https://africana.uconn.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/2732/2020/06/ASI-Statement_final.pdf

 

We stand together with communities of color across the country as they yet again are subject to pain and suffering at the hands of a racist and unjust system. We support our students, from the African American, Asian American, Puerto Rican and Latin American, Women’s and Rainbow Centers, and Native American Cultural Programs, and all who are struggling to demand recognition of their rights and transformation of the conditions in which they live.  We are not silent. We are not indifferent. We are implicated and, therefore, responsible. We will not stand idly by while the blood of our community members cries from the ground.

 

“Justice is not a natural part of the lifecycle of the United States, nor is it a product of evolution; it is always the outcome of struggle.”

― Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, From #BlackLivesMatter To Black Liberation

You are not alone. We are with you.

 

In solidarity,

African American Cultural Center

Africana Studies Institute

American Studies Program

Asian American Cultural Center

Asian and Asian American Studies Institute

Center for Judaic Studies and Contemporary Jewish Life

El Instituto (Institute of Latina/o, Caribbean, and Latin American Studies)

Human Rights Institute

Puerto Rican/Latin American Cultural Center

Rainbow Center

Thomas J. Dodd Research Center

The Women’s Center

Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies Program

New State Course in African American, Latino, And Puerto Rican Studies

May 22, 2020

Anne Gebelein

El Instituto’s Associate Director and Associate Professor-in-Residence Anne Gebelein has been assisting the State Education Resource Center (SERC) in the development of a new high school course on African-American, Latino and Puerto Rican Studies. This new curricular mandate was passed by the Connecticut State Legislature in 2019; it requires all high schools to offer African-American and Latino history as a one-year elective starting in 2022. Gebelein leads SERC’s Syllabus Committee, which is one of a small number of committees getting the course ready to launch. The focus of the Syllabus Committee includes assessment, planning, teacher training, focus groups for both content areas, and surveys of teachers and students. Committee participants come from a variety of professions and perspectives, and the democratic process of deciding what should be in the course has been lively and invigorating. A principal challenge is having to decide what parts of African American and Latinx history can be included in under 90 days of class time, when people in both groups feel that their histories have not been addressed in meaningful ways in high school to date. There has been a lively debate about whether the two histories should be taught as a sequence of two courses or intertwined in one, two-semester course.

The SERC process has benefited from the voices of multiple UConn faculty and students. Africana Studies core faculty members Shayla Nunnally and Fiona Vernal are sharing their expertise with the Syllabus Committee, while Instituto undergraduate student Yadiel Rodríguez and Spanish Associate Professor Guillermo Irizarry have shared theirs with the Latino and Puerto Rican Content Committee.

On the basis of her leading role in the SERC initiative, Dr Gebelein has also gotten her 17 students in “Latino CT: Writing for the Community” actively participating in the process. Given that the state survey committees got a slow start, students in LLAS 2012 — a core course in UConn’s Latina/o and Latin American Studies major — decided to create their own survey and articulate what they, as Latinx students from across the state, would want in such a course. For example, LLAS 2012 student María Mejía Girón traveled to Waterbury High School where she interviewed teachers and students. The class combined this kind of external information with their internal research and deliberation as the basis for writing a report for the SERC Syllabus Committee. Students brainstormed essential questions for an introductory course and what content focus areas they found important as emerging Latinx studies scholars. They organized and prioritized critical sources and themes, and all this information was turned over to both the Syllabus and the Latino Content Focus Group for consideration in the shaping of the course objectives, essential questions, and content.

Inspired by their ability to contribute, while also responding creatively to the challenges of learning on-line while in COVID-19 sheltering-in-place, LLAS 2012 students switched gears halfway through the semester and began a web project to support teachers who will be teaching the course in 2022. Students divided into 8 teams, each of which researched a theme in Latinx studies that aligned with the new statewide mandate. Each team met regularly through live video conferencing with Gebelein. Justin Feliciano, a LLAS major with strong web design skills, led the way in reimagining El Instituto’s existing community-facing Website, La Plaza Virtual, as a platform for students to curate and upload tips for teachers on sources, content, key words and timelines for teaching Latinx history. Dr Gebelein aims to debut this teaching Latinx history section of the Plaza Virtual site sometime in the Fall.

The next steps in the SERC course design are as follows. A draft of the scope and sequence of the entire course is due to the state on June 5th; the summer will be spent filling out the skeleton with content, unit objectives, and measures of assessment. The complete draft of the course is due in November, and will be presented to the state legislature in January.