News2016December
News from the Graduate Program in Critical & Creative Thinking
University of Massachusetts Boston2 December 2016
Student Matters
Spring 2017 courses are open for registration. Hybrid courses involve weekly class meetings on campus, where online students can participate by web video conference. Register for the face-to-face or online section based on how you'll participate--see the class numbers below. Continuing students are encouraged to register soon on WISER, and non-degree students should see this page. Courses begin the week of January 30. All times are Eastern time zone.
CRCRTH 602 Creative Thinking (online). Class #5319.
CRCRTH 615 Transformative & Holistic Teaching (hybrid). Mondays, 4:00-6:45pm. (Face-to-face: #5327, online: #5320)
CRCRTH 616 Dialogue Processes (online). Class #5321.
CRCRTH 652 Conceptual Change and Learning (hybrid). Thursdays, 4:00-6:45pm. (Face-to-face: #5328, online: #5322)
CRCRTH 653 Epidemiological Thinking (hybrid). Tuesdays, 4:00-6:45pm. (Face-to-face: #5329, online: #5323)
CRCRTH 688 Reflective Practice (hybrid). Mondays, 7:00-9:45pm. (Face-to-face: #5330, online: #5324)
CRCRTH 693 Action Research for Professional, Educational, and Personal Change (hybrid). Thursdays, 7:00-9:45pm. (Face-to-face: #5331, online: #5325)
CRCRTH 694 Synthesis of Theory and Practice (hybrid). Tuesdays, 7:00-9:45pm. (Face-to-face: #5332, online: #5326)
Changing Life: Reading the Intersections of Race, Biology, and Literature (co-taught by Peter Taylor through a cross-campus consortium). Wednesdays, 5:00-8:00pm at MIT campus (and online by permission).
At the end of of the spring 2017 semester, the UMass Boston library is discontinuing access to Refworks, the online system for managing references and citations to research articles and other publications. Students using RefWorks to store personal information should plan to migrate to other systems, as this information will be deleted automatically after that time. See this library guide for more information and assistance.
Some courses in other programs are open to CCT students as electives; a few of these include the ones below:
==School for Global Inclusion and Social Development (face-to-face):
GISD 601 (class #12015): Current and Historical Perspectives on Global Inclusion and Social Development
GISD 625 (class #5495): Human Rights-Based Approaches to Social Justice
GISD 626 (class # 3600): Global Health and Human Rights
For more information, see the full descriptions.
==Applied Linguistics courses (please contact applied.linguistics@umb.edu if interested):
Face-to-face:
APLING 601 - Linguistics (Thursdays 4pm to 6:45pm)
APLING 603 - Cross-Cultural Perspectives (Tuesdays at 7pm to 9:45pm)
APLING 605 - Theories and Principles of Language Teaching (Thursdays 7pm to 9:45pm)
APLING 612 - Integrating Culture in the Curriculum (Mondays 7pm to 9:45pm)
APLING 623 - Sociolinguistics (Tuesdays 4pm to 6:45pm)
Online:
APLING 637 - Ethnography of Education: Culture, Language, & Literacy
APLING 697 - Critical Pedagogy (New Course)
CCT Community
Recently prepared and published by Peter Taylor: Ann(ie) Blum in Our Lives
What does it mean to have had Ann—Annie to some—Blum in our lives? The letters and stories from family and friends assembled in this book, together with photos and words of Ann’s own, evoke her presence. They allow us to think about what we want to carry forward, into the lives we still have. For sales, visit https://thepumpingstation.org/books/ or online retailers. Any net revenue from sales of this book is directed towards “The Ann S. Blum Memorial Scholarship in Latin American Studies” at the University of Massachusetts Boston. Gifts can also be made at http://www.umb.edu/giving
CCT Events
Fall 2016 Dialogues on Reflective Practice in a Changing World
Next Event (on campus and online): Wednesday, December 7th, 7:00-8:30pm EST: Reflective Practice for Lifelong Learning
UMass Boston Wheatley Hall, 4th floor, Room W04-170, or online participation through Google+ Hangout: RSVP cct@umb.edu for instructions or see here.
Topic: Reflective Practice for Lifelong Learning
Explore themes such as the following:
- Using reflective practice to support personal development in addition to work practices.
- Acting and reacting when confronting challenges/times of crisis.
- Making changes to our practices and learning from unexpected outcomes.
- Reflecting on past experiences to prepare us for future opportunities to grow.
For more information: cct@umb.edu
Please join us for one or more of these dialogues, free and open to the public.
Reflective Practice is relevant to any field -- education, health care, organizational leadership, arts, and sciences, activism and many others. It refers to ways that people continually develop or change the practices that they use in their workplaces, schools, and lives. Through reflection, we examine our experiences and seek to understand how they can guide us to make those changes. In this series of participatory dialogues, we'll explore together how we might then relate our individual directions to the bigger picture -- the changing world around us.
The sessions use a Dialogue Process format, centered around a group discussion where participants hear what others are saying and take a turn to speak when they are ready, and where the discussion emphasizes listening well, sharing thoughts-in-progress, and raising questions to help us get clear in supporting us as developing reflective practitioners. The goal is that learning emerges directly from the discussion among all participants, rather than through presentation or lecture.
Alum and CCT associates Notes
Suzanne Clark (CCT '02, and instructor of CCT course Seminar in Creativity) recently joined with Berklee College of Music students for a series of radio discussions around her courses focused on the work of the Beatles: http://www.thebirn.com/events/?event=9265#
Dr. Lori Kent (CCT '95) is now Director of the new MA program in Visual Arts Education at Hunter College, CUNY, New York City. For more information, contact hunterarted@gmail.com.
CCT alums and associates are encouraged to send items of interest to the Critical and Creative Thinking community to be included in future newsletters. Please submit events, announcements, and opportunities through this form: http://bit.ly/CCTSICWi
Events
Reading of Entries from the UMass Boston "Six Word Story" Contest
Monday, December 5, 2016, 1:00pm.
UMass Boston, Wheatley Hall, 6th floor, Room 47.
Sponsored by the MFA and Creative Writing programs at UMass Boston.
Decolonizing Educational Research: From Ownership to Answerability
Talk at UMass Boston by Boston College Professor Leigh Patel
December 5, 2016, 5:30-7:00pm
UMass Boston, Integrated Sciences Complex, 3rd floor, Room 3300
Sponsored by the UMass Boston College of Education and Human Development
In this talk, Professor Leigh Patel will speak to the ways that educational research has worked from the property logics and bankrupt theories of assimilation into racist capitalist societies. She will also discuss the ways in which educational research can and should steward learning and knowledge.
For more information, contact leadership.education@umb.edu
2017 Graduate Student Conference on Gender, Culture, Women, & Sexuality
Theme: The Personal is Still Political: Challenging Marginalization Through Theory, Analysis, & Praxis
March 31-April 1, 2017 at the campus of MIT.
For more information contact the Consortium for Graduate Studies in Gender, Culture, Women, and Sexuality at gcws@mit.edu and http://web.mit.edu/GCWS
Sponsored by the Graduate Consotium for Graduate Studies in Gender, Culture, Women, & Sexuality, MIT.
In the late 1960s, the statement "the personal is political" emerged as a central rallying cry for feminist activists. While salient before, it has become all the more urgent in light of the 2016 United States election results. Given this, the Consortium for Graduate Studies in Gender, Culture, Women, and Sexuality (GCWS) is hosting a graduate student conference, The Personal Is Still Political: Challenging Marginalization through Theory, Analysis, & Praxis, to investigate how this slogan has been, can be, or is now being mobilized as a concept for resistance by marginalized groups theoretically, analytically, and practically. Thirty years ago, Audre Lorde remarked that "the absence of [race, sexuality, class, and age] weakens any feminist discussion of the personal and the political." We build upon this inclusive declaration to examine the diverse reach of state oppressions, violence, hegemonic intervention, and marginality in the contemporary moment. We also aim to explore modes of resistance to such repression.
Public forums around arts education and accountability in Massachusetts public schools:
Tuesday, December 6th, 2016, 6:00-7:30pm at Collins Middle School, Salem, MA.
The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) is holding public forums across the state over the next month to discuss its new accountability system on what determines a successful school. These workshop-based sessions will allow attendees to insert arts education into the conversation. The public is welcome to join these forums. RSVP and for more information: http://www.mass-creative.org/salemforum
The Foundation for Critical Thinking welcomes registrations for 2017 Spring International Academies [San Diego, California (March 3-5, 2017), Seattle, Washington (April 28-30, 2017), and (coming soon) 37th Annual International Conference on Critical Thinking and Educational Reform (Sonoma State University, California, July 31-August 4)].
Opportunities
Call for Proposals for 2017 Graduate Student Conference on Gender, Culture, Women, & Sexuality, to be held March 31-April 1, 2017 (see conference details above under Events).
Academic Paper Submission: Paper submissions should be for 15-minute presentations. Please submit a 250-300 word abstract to http://tinyurl.com/GCWS2017 by January 6, 2017. Submissions should also include your name, program, university affiliation, e-mail address, a short bio (3-5 sentences), three to six keywords, and any audio/visual requirements. Participants will be notified about the status of their proposal no later than February 6th. The conference itself will be held on March 31, 2017 and April 1, 2017. Projects: Project proposals should include a 250-300 word abstract as well as your name, program, university affiliation, e-mail address, a short bio (3-5 sentences), three to six keywords, and any audio/visual requirements. Also include the scale and duration of your piece (if relevant), as well as space or presentation preferences. Lastly, please provide a web link to relevant visual, audio, portfolio, or support materials (no more than 5 images or 5 minutes of audio or video). Please submit this to http://tinyurl.com/GCWS2017 by January 6, 2017.
Call for Proposals: Ninth Annual Interdisciplinary Conference of the English Graduate Organization. UMass Amherst
Theme: Splintered Boundaries: Encounters/Challenges/Disruption
April 8th, 2017 at UMass Amherst.
Submission deadline for proposals: January 27, 2017.
For more information, contact umassegoconference@gmail.com
Keynote Speaker: Jennifer Wingard (University of Houston)
Discussions about figurative and literal boundaries are ubiquitous. Transnational scholars are faced with a globalizing world, and seek to navigate the ways in which boundaries are (de)constructed in these spaces. Humanities scholars and students alike are faced with disciplinary or genre boundaries that are both maintained and simultaneously resisted. In the 21st century, new meanings, new technology, and new global crises force us to confront these boundaries that are meant to divide, classify, define. In facing them, we have the choice to maintain and uphold, or splinter, challenge, disrupt. Rupturing these boundaries doesn't make them invisible, but rather gives rise to new forms of discourse. For our 9th annual interdisciplinary conference, the English Graduate Organization at the University of Massachusetts Amherst invites submissions that question differing notions of boundaries, and explore the ways in which boundaries can be splintered, ruptured, resisted, or maintained. We are particularly interested in the thinking of boundaries as both physical and geographical borders, as well as the abstract boundaries that envelop scholarly and creative work. How do we encounter these boundaries, and when we do, how might we challenge or disrupt the structures they seek to maintain? Further, are there boundaries that should be maintained, and how do we parse these from those we seek to splinter?
Call for Proposals: Words Matter: Politics, Rhetoric, and Social Justice
Conference at Indiana University Bloomington, March 24-25, 2017.
Submission deadline: December 16, 2016 (send by email to iugradconference@gmail.com and see here for full description of requirements).
This conference aims to interrogate politics, rhetoric, and social justice in moments of national and international upheaval. We aim to address these terms individually, but also their entanglements across historical moments and geographical locations.
Resources
The UMass Boston Department of Human Resources offers the following trainings for all university employees:
December 8, 2016; 10:00 am – 11:00 am
Laughter, Humor and Play to Reduce Stress and Solve Problems: Audience is for those who would like to build relationships, reduce stress and explore new ways of interacting and being creative. For complete descriptions please visit the Training Registration System at: http://univmassboston.gosignmeup.com/public/course/browse
Food for Thought
(additional web links and posts can also be found on CCT's Diigo pages. General critical and creative thinking focus: https://groups.diigo.com/group/ccreflect; Science in a Changing World focus: https://groups.diigo.com/group/sicwumb)
First Impressions are Often Wrong, and These Photos Prove It
Constantly Claimed By Atheists, Neil deGrasse Tyson Responds To That Whole Concept — Wonderfully
The Ethics and Lessons of Being a Hobo
The Psychology of What Makes a Great Story
We've Got Human Intelligence All Wrong
Riddle of the Day: Samuel was born first, but his twin brother Ronan is older. How is that possible?
Electoral Divisions and the Role of Public Universities
We Tracked Down A Fake-News Creator In The Suburbs. Here's What We Learned
Research Paper: The brain adapts to dishonesty (Garrett et al.)
Is citizen science the future of research or a recipe for bad science?
Humor
Comics: The "Science" of Parenting