Public Voices Greenhouse

Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity

The OpEd Project at Connecticut College is sponsored by the College's Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity.

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Connecticut College is proud to be the first liberal arts college to take part in the Public Voices Greenhouse through The OpEd Project. In a unique partnership, a cohort of faculty from Conn and Brown University will work together to build their profiles as public intellectuals.

Overview

Over a three-month period, 11 faculty from Connecticut College and 10 from Brown University are taking part in the first Public Voices Greenhouse offered between a large research university and liberal arts college. The OpEd Project is a national initiative “founded to increase a range of voices and quality of ideas we hear in the world.” Journalists associated with The Project work with major universities, foundations, and nonprofit organizations to increase the public impact of the nation’s underrepresented thought leaders.

How it works

The Public Voices Greenhouse program matches professional journalists with faculty in a highly creative, experimental environment designed to surface and cross-pollinate ideas. Thought leaders from each institution will meet with mentors March 10 and 11, April 28 and June 2 to “think more expansively about their knowledge, why it matters, and how to use it.” Participants will apply these skills to generate ideas for publication in top media outlets.

Impact

The OpEd Project has a nearly 100 percent placement rate for participating faculty in media outlets, which have included The Washington Post, The New York Times, CNN and Inside Higher Ed.

Public Voices Scholars

Lauren Anderson

Associate Professor of Education, Chair of the Education Department

Lauren Anderson's research interests are situated at the intersections of education policy, teacher education, and K-12 school and classroom practice. In particular, she explores how teachers and school leaders make sense of and mediate federal, state and local policy in the context of their daily work. Lauren teaches courses focused on educational foundations, urban schooling, literacy pedagogy and elementary teaching.

Waed Athamneh

Assistant Professor of Arabic Studies in the Department of Classics

Waed Athamneh is a specialist in Arabic literature. Her work focuses on modern Arabic literature and 20th-century Arab politics. Her book on the major literary movements and new directions in modern Arabic poetry is forthcoming with University of Notre Dame Press.

Sunil Bhatia

Professor of Human Development

Sunil Bhatia's research focuses on the development of self and identity within the context of postcolonial migration, globalization, and formation of transnational diasporas. In particular, his research attempts to reformulate the concept of culture and identity in cultural psychology and human development by showing how critical concepts, such as diaspora and transnational migration, force us to redefine theories of culture, identity, cultural difference and development.

David Canton

Associate Professor of History, Director of the Africana Studies Program

David Canton believes that African-American urban history illustrates the impact of racism, classism, and sexism in the black community. It also provides insight to the origins of 20th century black urban poverty, civil rights struggle, black class formation, and black community development.

Sheetal Chhabria

Jacob and Hilda Blaustein Assistant Professor of History

Sheetal Chhabria (Ph.D. Columbia University) is a historian of South Asia with interests in the global histories of capitalism, urban studies, governmentality, and postcolonial theory.

Nathalie Etoke

Associate Professor of French and Africana Studies, Chair of the French Department, Interim Director of the Center for the Critical Study of Race and Ethnicity

Nathalie Etoke has taught a first-year seminar, France/Africa: An Encounter; Conversations on Post-Colonial Africa; Pensez Francais I: French Cultural Experience and Contemporary Issues in Francophonie; Pensez Francais I: French Cultural Experience; Black Blanc Beur Cinema/Literature; and French 407: La Caraïbe Francophone hier et aujourd'hui ( Slavery, memory and identity through literature and film).

Sandy Grande

Professor of Education, Director of the Center for the Critical Study of Race and Ethnicity (CCSRE)

As a teacher and scholar, Sandy Grande centers her work in the belief that education is the heart of a critical democracy. She asserts that questions about education cannot be reduced to disciplinary parameters, but must include issues of power, history, self-identity and the possibility of collective agency and revolutionary struggle. Thus, rather than reject the language of politics, Professor Grande constructs teaching as the link between public education and the imperatives of democracy.

Afshan Jafar

Associate Professor of Sociology, Bodies/Embodiment Pathway Coordinator

Afshan Jafar’s research and teaching interests include globalization, transnational women's movements, fundamentalist and nationalist movements, gender, media, and the body. Professor Jafar regularly teaches, Introduction to Sociology; Sociology of the Body and Embodiment; Sex Gender, and Society; Sociology of Globalization.

Eileen M. Kane

Associate Professor of History, Co-Director, Global Islamic Studies Program

Eileen Kane is a historian of modern Russia and Eurasia interested in comparative and global approaches to history. Her research and teaching focus on modern Russia, and she always seeks to consider Russia within broader histories of Europe, Eurasia and the world. Her interests include empires, migrations, religion and historical connections between the Russian and Ottoman empires.

David K. Kim

Professor of Religious Studies, Professor in American Studies, Peace and Conflict Pathway Coordinator

David Kyuman Kim is a teacher, cultural critic, philosopher of religion, and scholar of race, religion and public life.

Elizabeth Reich

Assistant Professor of Film Studies

Elizabeth Reich teaches and writes about race and cinema. Her first monograph, "Militant Visions: Black Soldiers, Internationalism and the Transformation of American Cinema," will be out from Rutgers University Press in August 2016.

The OpEd Project

For questions please contact:

Sandy Grande, Director, CCSRE

Sunil Bhatia

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