Fall 2017 Senior Citizen Lectures: Perspectives on American Politics & Policies Profs. Athena Devlin & Emily Horowitz, Co-Directors Tuesdays @ 11:10am in Room 3213 (unless noted) St. Francis College (180 Remsen St. in Brooklyn) // Reception to Follow

Sept. 12: Chase Madar - The Criminalization of Everyday Life

Chase Madar is a civil rights attorney and author of The Passion of Bradley Manning: The Story Behind the Wikileaks Whistleblower (Verso). Madar will talk about how we're using criminal law, police, and prisons to deal with nearly ALL of our problems, and why this is counterproductive. @ChMadar

Sept. 19: Adam H. Johnson - Media Bias and Inaccuracy

Adam H. Johnson writes for Fair Media Watch, the Nation, Alternet, and the Los Angeles Times (“How the media smears black victims”). He co-hosts Citations Needed, a weekly podcast about the intersection of media, PR, and power, with Nima Shirazi. @AdamJohnsonNYC

Sept. 26: Catherine Carpenter - The Unconstitutionality of Sex Offense Laws

Professor Catherine Carpenter (Southwestern Law School) is a nationally renowned criminal law scholar in the area of sex crimes and sex offender registration laws. Her scholarship has been cited by numerous courts and used as a guide by attorneys. She is also one of the foremost authorities on law school curricula and accreditation. Among her important law review articles is “Against Juvenile Sex Offender Registration.”

Oct. 3: Debbie Nathan - Politics on the U.S.-Mexican Border

Debbie Nathan has been a journalist, editor, and translator for almost three decades. She specializes in writing about immigration, the U.S.-Mexico border, sexual politics, and sex panics, particularly in relation to women and children. Debbie is author or co-author of four books, including Sybil, Inc (2012). She currently works for the ACLU as an investigator at the U.S.-Mexican border and recently published the piece “DPS Troopers Push Undocumented Immigrants Into a Deportation Pipeline.”

Oct. 10: Paul Beston - The Boxing Kings: When American Heavyweights Ruled the Ring

Paul Beston will talk about his book, The Boxing Kings: When American Heavyweights Ruled the Ring, with journalist Jacob Siegel. This event was organized by St. Francis Scholar-in-Residence Fred Siegel.

Oct. 17: Marty Tankleff - Being Wrongfully Convicted & Exonerated -- with Amy Marion, Esq. (Partner, Barket & Marion)

Marty Tankleff was wrongly convicted of murdering his wealthy parents when he was 17 years old after being pressured into a false confession. He served 17 years before his conviction was vacated. Tankleff received a settlement from the state after he settled his wrongful conviction lawsuit. He recently graduated from law school and passed the bar exam, and now plans to help the wrongfully convicted. He will be joined by his lawyer Amy Marion.

**Oct. 19 at 11:10am: A Conversation Between Michael Godwin and Harry Siegel

New York Post Columnist Michael Goodwin in conversation with New York Daily News Columnist Harry Siegel. This event was organized by St. Francis Scholar-in-Residence Fred Siegel.

**Oct. 19 at 2:55pm: Resistance at Tule Lake – Screening & Q + A

Documentary screening and discussion with Konrad Aderer, director of the new documentary Resistance at Tule Lake, about the people who fought back against World War II Japanese internment camps.

Oct. 24: I Am Not Your Negro - Screening & Discussion

Film screening of I Am Not Your Negro, a documentary about author and activist James Baldwin. After the film, Professor Athena Devlin will lead a discussion on James Baldwin and American Studies.

Oct. 31: Arun Venugopal - Post-Trump Politics

Arun Venugopal is a reporter and the host of Micropolis, WNYC's ongoing examination of race, sexuality, and identity, and a regular contributor to NPR's Morning Edition and All Things Considered. He also writes about Indian-American issues. He has appeared on PBS Newshour, Countdown with Keith Olbermann, On the Media, and Studio 360, and has been published in The Guardian, , the Associated Press, , and Salon. Micropolis has explored such issues as the global skin-lightening market, the problems with ethnic sitcoms, and the meaning of turbans.

Nov. 7: The War on Sex (Duke University Press, 2017) – Book Panel Discussion w/ co-editor Trevor Hoppe (Assistant Professor, Sociology, SUNY Albany) + contributors Mary Anne Case (Arnold I. Shure Professor of Law, University of Chicago) + Judith Levine (journalist)

From Duke University Press: “The past 50 years are conventionally understood to have witnessed an uninterrupted expansion of sexual rights and liberties...this collection tells a different story: while progress has been made in marriage equality, reproductive rights, access to birth control, and other areas, government and civil society are waging a war on stigmatized sex by means of law, surveillance, and social control. The contributors document the history and operation of sex offender registries and the criminalization of HIV, as well as highly punitive measures against sex work that do more to harm women than to combat human trafficking.”

Nov. 14: Dr. Belen Lowrey-Kinberg - The Application of Forensic Linguistics to Policing: The Case of Sandra Bland

Professor Belen Lowrey-Kinberg (Assistant Professor, Criminal Justice @ SFC) gives an overview of forensic linguistics, examines the escalation of language in Sandra Bland’s traffic stop, and discusses how theories from criminal justice and linguistics can help us understand police-citizen dynamics. She explores questions with implications for police-citizen interactions, such as: “How did a routine traffic stop become such a violent encounter?” and “What interactional factors could explain such rapidly escalating tensions between an officer and a civilian?” Her analysis, based in the field of forensic linguistics, provides some clues.

Nov. 21: Margee Kerr - Hijacking Fear: The Subtle and Not So Subtle Ways Politicians and the Media Use Fear to Motivate Action

Sociologist Margee Kerr teaches and conducts research on fear, specifically how and why people engage with “scary” material. She is the co-investigator on a first-of-its-kind study that measures how the brain and body respond to “fun- scary” experiences like haunted attractions, paranormal investigations, and thrill rides. Her book, SCREAM: Chilling Adventures in the Science of Fear, was named a must read by The Washington Post. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, Atlantic Monthly, and NPR’s Science Friday.

Nov. 28: Dr. Mical Raz - Making Child Abuse White? Parents Anonymous, Physicians and Child Abuse Policy in the 1970s

Mical Raz, M.D., Ph.D., received her M.D. from Tel Aviv University, where she also received a Ph.D. in History of Medicine. She has volunteered with Physicians for Human Rights, and completed her residency in Internal Medicine at Yale New Haven Hospital. She is the author of Psychosurgery (U of Rochester, 2013) and What's Wrong with the Poor? Race, Psychiatry and the War on Poverty (UNC, 2013). A historian of American psychiatry, she is interested in the intersection of psychiatry, poverty, and politics. Her new work focuses on how perceptions of mental health shaped child welfare services provided in the city of Philadelphia in the 1960s and early 1970s.

Dec. 5: Kathleen Gray - Imperceptible Privilege: How Whites Negotiate Conversations about Race

Dr. Kathleen Gray (Assistant Academic Dean @ SFC) earned her Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh with a research focus on race and racism. Her work explores how white people collectively construct, reinforce, and occasionally disrupt dominant racial ideology during conversations about race and politics. She also works on critical pedagogy and is the creator of a segregation simulation called “The Neighborhood Game,” which is used in sociology courses throughout the country to teach students about structural inequality.

Events sponsored by the St. Francis College American Studies Program; Departments of Criminal Justice, Sociology and History; the Institute for Peace and Justice; + the Center for Crime and Popular Culture

Special thanks for Rob Oliva & David Loutfi & the St. Francis College Office of Special Events

For more information, contact Prof. Emily Horowitz @ [email protected] or 718-489-5446