South African Solidarity with Palestinians: Motivations, Strategies, and Impact

South African support for Palestine received a compelling articulation in 1990 by the late President Nelson Mandela. This article examines a more recent grassroots activism by South Africans for Palestinian self-determination. It discusses the historical legacy of anti-apartheid resistance as well as current economic and political realities within South Africa that have led to the emergence of a robust popular movement for Palestinian rights since 2005. Both South African civil society organizations and the ANC-led government have responded to the 2005 call by Palestinian civil society for a boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) campaign against the state of Israel. The article discusses the different motivations of these two groups for participating in the BDS movement, presents the scope of BDS within South Africa, and analyzes its symbolic, economic, and political impact for South Africans and Palestinians, in the near and long term. Finally, it addresses the question of why South Africans consider themselves to be central participants in the Palestinian struggle

International Epidemics: Interdisciplinary Thinking and Global Citizenship

The Honors College aims to serve as a crucible for curricular innovation by enriching and deepening classroom study with on-the-ground learning. The symposium is a year-long course, with the winter session field trip giving students a two-week immersion in the details of HIV/AIDS health care delivery in one province of South Africa. Upon return, students volunteer at health centers or nonprofits exploring related topics, while continuing to study the complexity of South Africa’s history and its attitudes and approaches toward HIV/AIDS at the medical, cultural, economic, and social levels

CSEF: An internship program at community arts organizations for Honors College students

CSEF (the “Creative and Social Entrepreneurship Fellowship”) runs from August 2013 through May 2014 as part of the Creative Economy Initiative, funded by the UMass President’s Office. CSEF aims to provides students the opportunity to intern at a community arts organization, and provides local organizations the opportunity to work closely with UMass Boston students & faculty. Three intern teams immersed themselves in issues their sites were facing, proposed potential solutions, and are now using a $4000 mini-grant to implement those solutions at their partner sites

Constructing the Innocence of the First Textual Encounter

Three faculty members from UMass Boston's English Department—a team responsible for the department’s M.A. course on the Teaching of Literature and for the training of novice teachers of literature—examine the complex process of reading texts that they teach as if they are encountering them as their students do, for the first time. Accepting the proposition that reading texts in the classroom places the student at the center of an experience that originates in the instructor, they sug- gest that teachers must be prepared to relinquish their “expert” attachment to the text by defamiliar- izing it to themselves. Instructors must work to “construct” the innocence of a first encounter, recognizing the artifice of the constructed innocence even as they seek it. The authors share three approaches to this process of estrangement, what they call “the innocence of the material text,” “the pedagogy of restraint,” and “the suspension of mastery.” By having their students read first print- ings of novels, interpret poetry without the aid of scholarly commentary, and defer their desire to fully comprehend literary texts, teachers can use these “innocent” encounters to balance confident and uncertain readings and enrich the literary experience in the classroom

Building Civic Participation of Undergraduates: UMass Boston’s Civic Engagement Scholars Initiative (CESI)

The Civic Engagement Scholars Initiative (CESI) is a professional development program that supports faculty and community partners to effectively engage undergraduate students in service-learning and community-based research activities. CESI aims to reinforce classroom learning, foster civic habits and skills, and address community-identified needs

"Mother-weights" and lost fathers: parents in South Asian American literature

That parent-child relationships should play a significant role within South Asian American literature is perhaps no surprise, since this is crucial material for any writer. But the particular forms they so often take – a dysfunctional mother-daughter dynamic, leading to the search for maternal surrogates; and the figure of the prematurely deceased father – are more perplexing. Why do families adhere to these patterns in so many South Asian American texts and what does that tell us about this œuvre? More precisely, why are mothers subjected to a harsher critique than fathers and what purpose does this critique serve? How might we interpret the trope of the untimely paternal death? In this article I will seek to answer these questions – arguably key to an understanding of this growing body of writing – by considering works produced between the 1990s and the early twenty-first century by a range of South Asian American writers

Concurrent Session 2: Projects and Initiatives – Affordable Textbooks

Presenters will share their consideration for using Open Source materials to reduce schooling costs and their commitment to keeping the educational experience affordable for students