Marginalized Communities in Contemporary America<\/strong><\/a><\/h2>\nMasha Gessen<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\nOctober 17, 5 p.m.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\nHawkins-Carlson Room<\/em><\/strong>
\nRush Rhees Library<\/em><\/strong>
\nFree and open to the public<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\nThis talk is part of the 2019\u201320 Humanities Center Public Lecture Series<\/a>, this year exploring the theme of communities.<\/p>\nMasha Gessen is the author of the National Book Award-winning The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia<\/em> as well as The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin<\/em>, The Brothers: The Road to an American Tragedy,<\/em> and several other books. A staff writer at The New Yorker<\/em> and the recipient of numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Carnegie Fellowship, Gessen teaches at Amherst College and lives in New York City.<\/p>\n<\/div>\nGessen will come to Rochester on October 17 to give a talk titled \u201cMarginalized Communities in Contemporary America.\u201d Gessen will also take part in a conversation moderated by Bakhmetyeva and Rachel Haidu, an associate professor of art history and chair of the Department of Art and Art History. Gessen is the second speaker in the 2019\u201320 Humanities Center Public Lecture Series.<\/p>\n
The process of marginalization<\/strong><\/h3>\nThe subject of marginalization is one that Gessen has plumbed in\u00a0her work as a journalist and activist. \u201cGessen has written on a number of marginalized communities in Russia specifically, but also more generally\u2014Jewish communities, LGBTQ communities, political dissidents,\u201d says Bakmetyeva.<\/p>\n
Scrutinizing the marginalization of groups within a community is also central to Bakhmetyeva\u2019s work as a teacher and a scholar. A professor of gender studies, she says marginalization is \u201cwhat I teach about daily\u2014the marginalization of women, of women of color, of transgender people, of people with disabilities, of people with certain sexual identities.\u201d She is the author of the biography Mother of the Church: Sofia Svechina, the Salon, and the Politics of Catholicism in Nineteenth-Century Russia and France<\/em> (Northern Illinois University Press, 2016), winner of the 2018 Harry Koenig Book Award from the American Catholic Historical Association<\/a>.<\/p>\nBakhmetyeva sees the activity of marginalizing people as both political and cyclical. It\u2019s about power, she says, excluding groups of people in an effort to make them powerless. Over time, different groups can be excluded, then included, and then excluded again. \u201cIt\u2019s a highly political process, this need to create insiders and outsiders,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
In the classroom and in the field<\/strong><\/h3>\nIn her teaching, Bakhmetyeva makes a concerted effort to break down the idea of inside and outside as it relates to the University and the community. In her course Politics of Nature, she partners with the Rochester area\u2019s Taproot Collective, an urban agriculture group. Through their work together, Bakhmetyeva\u2019s students get hands-on experience with environmental and food justice issues, while the collective gains a requested digital design project created through the students\u2019 digital-savvy. Bakhmetyeva also collaborates with Heather Layton, a senior lecturer in the Department of Art and Art History, on the community-based course Food Matters: Gender, Religion, Ethnicity, and Nation.<\/p>\n![\"Group](\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/fea-Tanya-Bakhmetyeva-630x378.jpg\")
Historian Tanya Bakhmetyeva (second from right) in Ladakh, India, with fellow researchers (left to right) Mingyur Stanzin, Sonam Wangchok, Geshe Konchok Wangdu, Nancy Perini Chin, and Stewart Weaver. (University of Rochester photo \/ Tanya Bakhmetyeva)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nShe\u2019s also co-leading a project that aims to adapt for the discipline of history the kind of community-based research that\u2019s common in such fields as public health and environmental studies. With her colleague and spouse Stewart Weaver<\/a>, a professor of history, and anthropologist Nancy Perini Chin<\/a> \u201993 (MPH), \u201998 (PhD), an associate professor of public health, Bakhmetyeva is carrying out research on climate change in the Trans-Himalayan region of Ladakh, India. As part of a mountainous environment, Ladakh is extremely sensitive to the effects of global warming.<\/p>\n
October 17, 5 p.m.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Hawkins-Carlson Room<\/em><\/strong> This talk is part of the 2019\u201320 Humanities Center Public Lecture Series<\/a>, this year exploring the theme of communities.<\/p>\n Masha Gessen is the author of the National Book Award-winning The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia<\/em> as well as The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin<\/em>, The Brothers: The Road to an American Tragedy,<\/em> and several other books. A staff writer at The New Yorker<\/em> and the recipient of numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Carnegie Fellowship, Gessen teaches at Amherst College and lives in New York City.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Gessen will come to Rochester on October 17 to give a talk titled \u201cMarginalized Communities in Contemporary America.\u201d Gessen will also take part in a conversation moderated by Bakhmetyeva and Rachel Haidu, an associate professor of art history and chair of the Department of Art and Art History. Gessen is the second speaker in the 2019\u201320 Humanities Center Public Lecture Series.<\/p>\n The subject of marginalization is one that Gessen has plumbed in\u00a0her work as a journalist and activist. \u201cGessen has written on a number of marginalized communities in Russia specifically, but also more generally\u2014Jewish communities, LGBTQ communities, political dissidents,\u201d says Bakmetyeva.<\/p>\n Scrutinizing the marginalization of groups within a community is also central to Bakhmetyeva\u2019s work as a teacher and a scholar. A professor of gender studies, she says marginalization is \u201cwhat I teach about daily\u2014the marginalization of women, of women of color, of transgender people, of people with disabilities, of people with certain sexual identities.\u201d She is the author of the biography Mother of the Church: Sofia Svechina, the Salon, and the Politics of Catholicism in Nineteenth-Century Russia and France<\/em> (Northern Illinois University Press, 2016), winner of the 2018 Harry Koenig Book Award from the American Catholic Historical Association<\/a>.<\/p>\n Bakhmetyeva sees the activity of marginalizing people as both political and cyclical. It\u2019s about power, she says, excluding groups of people in an effort to make them powerless. Over time, different groups can be excluded, then included, and then excluded again. \u201cIt\u2019s a highly political process, this need to create insiders and outsiders,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n In her teaching, Bakhmetyeva makes a concerted effort to break down the idea of inside and outside as it relates to the University and the community. In her course Politics of Nature, she partners with the Rochester area\u2019s Taproot Collective, an urban agriculture group. Through their work together, Bakhmetyeva\u2019s students get hands-on experience with environmental and food justice issues, while the collective gains a requested digital design project created through the students\u2019 digital-savvy. Bakhmetyeva also collaborates with Heather Layton, a senior lecturer in the Department of Art and Art History, on the community-based course Food Matters: Gender, Religion, Ethnicity, and Nation.<\/p>\n She\u2019s also co-leading a project that aims to adapt for the discipline of history the kind of community-based research that\u2019s common in such fields as public health and environmental studies. With her colleague and spouse Stewart Weaver<\/a>, a professor of history, and anthropologist Nancy Perini Chin<\/a> \u201993 (MPH), \u201998 (PhD), an associate professor of public health, Bakhmetyeva is carrying out research on climate change in the Trans-Himalayan region of Ladakh, India. As part of a mountainous environment, Ladakh is extremely sensitive to the effects of global warming.<\/p>\n
\nRush Rhees Library<\/em><\/strong>
\nFree and open to the public<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\nThe process of marginalization<\/strong><\/h3>\n
In the classroom and in the field<\/strong><\/h3>\n