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Past Events

Voices that Matter Report Release

December 20, 2022 from 12:00 - 1:00 PM
Speakers: Lorena Estrada-Martinez, Assistant Professor School for the Environment, Paul Watanabe, Professor and Director of the Institute for Asian American Studies College of Liberal Arts, Katsyris Rivera-Kientz Ph.D. candidate McCormack Graduate School. 
Online

Join us for the release of the Sustainable Solutions Lab's latest report "Voices that Matter: Boston Area Resident of Color Discuss Climate Change" by Assistant Professor Lorena Estrada-Martinez (School for the Environment), Professor and Director of the Institute for Asian American Studies Paul Watanabe (College of Liberal Arts), and Ph.D. candidate Katsyris Rivera-Kientz (McCormack Graduate School).

This report is a continuation of the 2020 report, "Views that Matter: Race and Opinions on Climate Change of Boston Area Residents", which surveyed 964 Boston area residents about their opinions on the existence of climate change, its causes, manifestations, preparations for its impacts, and the policy and personal responses needed to address it. The authors worked to further amplify the voices of Greater Boston’s Asian American, Black, Latino, and Native American residents of color by conducting in-depth focus group discussions to build upon their previous findings. The research centers around:

• the health impacts of climate change
• climate change preparedness
• the ways that individuals and government can address climate change.

The main objective in this report is to highlight residents’ insights and personal experiences.

Additional Information: This will be an online event. If you will learn more or join us then register at Voices That Matter Report Release.

Teaching in Freedom: Centering Silenced Histories and Knowledges

May 3, 2022 at 02:00 PM
Speakers: Dr. Lorgia Garcia-Pena, Tufts University 
Campus Center, Ballroom B & Zoom
Sponsor: Latino Studies Program and Critical Ethnic and Communith Studies
Professor Garcia-Pena will lead a discussion on "teaching in freedom," a collective learning process that centers the knowledges, histories, and epistemologies of the Global South as well as Indigenous, Black, and Latin communities. She is a first generation Latinx Studies scholar who studies global Blackness, colonialism, migration, and diaspora with a special focus on Black Latinidad. Dr. Garcia Pena is the co-founder of Freedom Universitty Georgia and of Archives of Justice (Milan-Boston). In addition to her award-winning scholarship, she is the author of Community as Rebellion: A Syllabus for Surviving Academia as a Woman of Color.   

Additional Information: This will be a hybrid event. If you will join us via Zoom register at https://bit.ly/TeachingInFreedom.

Colonialism's Cascading Disasters: Climate Change and Social Vulnerability in Puerto Rico

April 27, 2022 at 12:00 PM
Speakers: UMass Boston professors Marisol Negrón and Rosalyn Negrón 
Wheatley-6-47 and via Zoom
Sponsor: UMass Boston High Impact Humanities Initiative 
In 2017 Hurricane Maria struck as Puerto Rico was already reeling from a cascade of economic and political disasters rooted in its colonial relationship to the US. Professors Marisol Negrón and Rosalyn Negrón draw on poetry, music, documentary film, and scholarly work to lead an interactive discussion on the role of the humanities in producing complex understandings of how structural inequities contribute to climate change and exacerbate racial, gendered, and class hierarchies.
Additional Information and Zoom Info

Decolonial Research Collaborative Inaugural Lecture

April 22, 2022 at 10:00 AM - 11:30 AM EST (03:00 PM - 04:30 PM UK Time)
Speakers: Dr. Urmitapa Dutta, Department of Psychology, University of Massachusetts Lowell
Via Zoom
Sponsor: Decolonial Research Collaborative
The Decolonial Research Collaborative aims to build a supported research environment where academics, PhD researchers and other students can share ideas and learn about decolonial inquiry from each other. A decolonial research environment is crucial to grow decoloniak research and scholarship and contribute to knowledge production in the westernized university. The aim of the group is also to develop international networks with scholars and activists doing decolonial work that interrogate coloniality and foster decolonisation. UMass Professor and Latino Studies Steering Committee member Devin Atallah will be one of the discussants.   

Stateless 

April 6, 2022 at 12:30 PM
Campus Center, Ballroom A
Sponsor: Latino Studies 

Director Michèle Stephenson brings to light the crisis of those of Haitian descent in the Dominican Republic, many of whom have been left stateless by the Dominic Republic’s 2013 decision to deprive/deny/take away citizenship from Haitian immigrants and their descendants. This event is sponsored in part by the FSU Anti-Racist Initiative.

April 20, 2021 @4pm
Virtual book launch for Distributing Condoms and Hope
Please join us for the virtual launch of "Distributing Condoms and Hope: The Racialized Politics of Youth Sexual Health" (University of California Press, 2020) by Chris Barcelos, Assistant Professor, University of Massachusetts Boston.

Click here to register: https://tinyurl.com/DCHlaunch
Get your copy now with a 40% off code: 13W0801
https://www.ucpress.edu/.../distributing-condoms-and-hope

^{Moderated by: Rickie Solinger, Senior Editor, UC Press Series "Reproductive Justice: A New Vision for the 21st Century"
Discussants: Krystale Littlejohn (University of Oregon), author of "Just Get on the Pill: Gender, Compulsory Birth Control, and Reproductive Injustice" Natalie Lira (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) **Event will feature auto-captioning. Please contact us 2 weeks ahead of time to request CART or other access needs for this virtual event**}

May 22, 2020

COVID-19 Family Portraits: Stories of Vulnerability, Love, and Resilience
Students in the Latino Leadership Opportunity Program presented their short documentaries about their lives during the COVID-19 pandemic and, together with community leaders, discussed the broader public policy issues highlighted in the stories. This event was sponsored by the Mauricio Gastón Institute of Latino Community Development and Public Policy, the Office of Community Partnerships, and the Latino Studies Program. View the films. 

News

July 30, 2020
The Latino Studies Program congratulates the grantees from six projects at UMass Boston that were awarded $2,000 by the Gastón Institute to do research about COVID-19 impacts on Latinx students at UMass Boston, including Latino Studies Steering Committee members Ester Shapiro, professor of psychology, whose project builds on her work with students in AMST 201: Latinos/as in the United States, and Academic Advisor Albis Mejía, who works extensively with first-generation college students.

July 25, 2020
Latino Studies minors Norioscar Cabello and Celine Voyard among students who presented short documentaries about the Covid-19 pandemic as part of the LLOP research seminar led by Professor Rosalyn Negrón and filmmaker Monica Cohen. View the films.

July 7, 2020
Lorna Rivera, Core Faculty in Latino Studies and Director of the Gastón Institute, and Professor Eduardo Siqueira discuss how health and economic inequities impact Covid-19 rates in Latinx communities.

July 1, 2020
Gastón Institute for Latino Community Development and Public Policy at UMass Boston releases key research about Covid-19 impact on Massachusetts Latinos and issues recommendations for further research and public policy.

June 26, 2020
Lorena Estrada-Martínez, Core faculty in Latino Studies and Assistant Professor of Public Health receives $800K grant from the Environmental Protection Agency.

June 21, 2020
The Gastón Institute for Latino Community Development and Public Policy has partnered with the city of Chelsea to help the Latinx community complete the 2020 Census.

April 14, 2020
UMass Boston professors Lorna Rivera, director of the Gaston Institute for Latino Public Policy, and Paul Watanabe, director of the Institute for Asian American Studies, join COVID-19 Health Inequities Task Force.