"Living Care-fully: Understanding Interdependence in Livelihoods through Inter-generational Relationships in northern Ghana"

This talk will explore the potential contribution of a feminist ethics of care to livelihoods approaches. I argue that autonomy and independence frame our current approaches to understanding how people support themselves, obscuring the interdependent nature of connections that found our lives. Drawing on fieldwork in rural northern Ghana, I will explore interdependencies by focusing on the experiences of women engaged in intergenerational relationships as they encounter emerging dependencies associated with ageing and illness. I will briefly discuss the unfolding negotiations of strategies between an elderly woman and her daughter-in-law, examining the challenges of producing a morning meal. I will then move to explore how married women face constraints from strong patriarchal values that require her to focus labour and resources on her husband and his family. However, illness in an elderly parent may compel a daughter to provide end of life care. Women then work to legitimize a reorganization of their strategies to ensure that they can meet the needs of an ailing parent. These stories demonstrate how women's lives are deeply connected to others and their strategies address the needs of others. They highlight the need for consideration of an ethics of care in livelihood approaches, where interdependencies, dependencies and vulnerabilities can be acknowledged for their foundational roles in shaping strategies.

Title: Massacres and Protesting Hateful Capitalism: Lessons to be learned from Mexico's activists



Abstract: Protests sparked by news of the September 26 massacre of rural students in Iguala, Mexico have spread across the country as people demand their return. Even with news of their deaths, the demand for their return, ALIVE, does not change. This demand echoes four decades of protest for the return of the desparecidos, those who were forced to disappear by corrupt governments. Such a declaration indicates the fight of the eternal revolutionary, that is of the one who will stop fighting once the dead can be brought back to life. The revolutionaty potential in this message explains, in part, the government's violent repression of this demand and of the refusal of the US government to acknowledge it. In Mexico, such protests have woven together with those against feminicidio (the killing of women with impunity) and against the juvencidio(the killing of youth with impunity) as part of the Mexican drug war funded by the United States. In this paper, I triangulate the struggles sparked by the Iguala massacre, feminicidio and juvenicidio to show how they seek to generate an international and activist public engaged in related struggles across the Americas, including in northern North America, where socially vulnerable populations battle the forces to disappear them from history and geography. Such struggles require a theoretical and activist openness to the lessons to be learned from Mexico and other struggles across the Americas where a vernacular of protest reveals insightful theorizations of these neoliberal times.

Research workshop on the unfinished Flavian Epics, Valerius Flaccus' Argonautica and Statius' Achilleid presented by students enrolled in CLA 525/625. There will be coffee breaks, lunch and a reception, followed by dinner with our Keynote Speaker.

Ödön von Horváth’s plays, although popular in Germany, are notoriously difficult to translate due to the stylized speech and cultural references von Horváth used in his desire for a realistic portrayal of the bourgeoisie of the Weimar Republic. Under the guidance of the skilled Scottish director and writer Alan McKendrick, students in GER 352 will perform a dramatic reading of their own translation of von Horváth's Kasimir und Karoline. There will also be a Q&A with the students and director after the reading. Reception with refreshments to follow.

Viewer discretion is advised. Both the original text and the translation contain phrasing that is sexual in nature which might make some viewers uncomfortable.