Upcoming EE Related Free Public Events at Bowdoin College

MEEA Members are invited to these upcoming events at Bowdoin College, all of which are open to the public free of charge:

Meet Your Farmer- a series of 8 short films about farming in Maine
Wednesday, April 4 at 7:30 pm
Searles Hall, room 315.

The evening event will also include remarks by John Piotti, one of Maine’s leading farm advocates, as well as a panel discussion by local farmers.

Released last year by Maine Farmland Trust, these films have now been shown on Maine Public Television and at over sixty venues across the state, but never before at Bowdoin.  The films depict the great diversity of Maine agriculture, while portraying both the challenges and opportunities facing farmers in Maine. The films are the work of Cecily Pingree and Jason Mann, award-winning filmmakers from North Haven.

John Piotti, executive director of Maine Farmland Trust, will introduce the films by providing an overview of what’s happening within farming in Maine. Piotti is uniquely qualified for this task, having worked at the forefront of agricultural issues in Maine for seventeen years.  Outside of Maine, Piotti has served as chairman of the Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Working Group (NESAWG) and a director of the National Campaign for Sustainable Agriculture. In 2005, Piotti was one of only eight Americans awarded a prestigious Eisenhower Fellowship, which he used to study sustainable agriculture in Europe.

Following the films, Piotti will moderate audience questions addressed to a panel of local farmers and food supporters.   

The New Politics of Parenthood: Family, Citizenship and Inequality in America Today

A Symposium to examine the role of family and parenthood in the nation’s current atmosphere of extreme social inequality and extreme political partisanship
Thursday & Friday, April 5-6, 2012
Main and Lancaster Lounges, Moulton UnionFamily and the Reproduction of Class: Keynote address by: June Carbone, Author of Red Families v Blue Families, Edward A. Smith/Missouri Chair of Law, University of Missouri-Kansas City (Thursday, 7:30 pm), and
How Children Succeed: Schools, Parents, and the Cultivation of Character: Lecture by Paul Tough, Author of Whatever it Takes Geoffrey Canada’s Quest to Change Harlem and America, and editor of the New York Times Magazine. Mr. Tough is a leading author on poverty, education and the achievement gap (Friday 12:30 pm).

Today the way people parent - when they have children and how they raise them - closely correlates both to social class and to political loyalties.  Many commentators believe that that the nation is "splitting apart" into two groups with different kinds of families.  They believe that differences in parenting, especially the rise in single parenthood among low income groups, is the driving force behind this growing inequality.  They wonder how public policy might address it, and how we might agree on a strategy to adopt.

The New Politics of Parenthood examines both the premises of this debate, and the political difficulties of finding solutions.  Bringing together scholars and leaders of organizations confronting the problems of poverty, the symposium will address the fundamental questions:  What is the role of family and parenthood in creating the profound inequality that marks America today?  And do our ideas about family make it harder to find political solutions to the problems of inequality?

For more information, see the webpage: bowdoin.edu/coastal-studies-center

The Redneck Legacy: King Coal and Appalachian Activism, 1912-2012Thursday, April 5, 7:00 pm
Smith Auditorium, Sills Hall
Bowdoin College

Chuck Keeney—a local activist, and labor and environmental justice historian from West Virginia—discusses the impacts of mountaintop removal mining, what the people of Appalachia are doing to stop it, and how we can help here in Maine.

Dr. C. Belmont (Chuck) Keeney is the great-grandson of Frank Keeney (president of the United Mine Workers of America in West Virginia from 1917-1924 and a leader in the 1921 Armed March on Blair Mountain). In 2011, Dr. Keeney, acting chair of the Friends of Blair Mountain, helped organize a protest reenactment of the 1921 march in an attempt to save the battlefield from the practice of mountaintop removal.

Sponsored by the McKeen Center for the Common Good, the Environmental Studies Program, the Departments of History and Sociology & Anthropology, and the Natural Resources Council of Maine.


Mother: Caring for 7 Billion (film screening)
Friday, April 6th, 7pm
Smith Auditorium, Sills Hall

There will be a showing of the film Mother: Caring for 7 Billion, the award winning film about the impact on people and the Earth posed by human's growing population. The film breaks a 40-year taboo by bringing to light an issue that silently fuels our largest environmental, humanitarian and social crises - population growth. Since the 1960s the world population has nearly doubled, adding more than 3 billion people. At the same time, talking about population has become politically incorrect because of the sensitivity of the issues surrounding the topic- religion, economics, family planning and gender inequality. The film illustrates both the over consumption and the inequity side of the population issue by following Beth, a mother, a child-rights activist and the last sibling of a large American family of twelve, as she discovers the thorny complexities of the population dilemma and highlights a different path to solve it. Click here to watch the trailer for the movie.

We are excited to be able to partner with Brunswick community members and so many groups at Bowdoin. The supporting departments and organizations at Bowdoin include: Bowdoin Film Society, Environmental Studies Program, Green Bowdoin, Hillel, McKeen Center for the Common Good, Muslim Student's Association, Sustainable Bowdoin, Women's Resource Center.
(SAVE THE DATE) John Rooks and Sustainable Organization Advocacy PartnersEvent Sponsored by Bowdoin Green Global Initiatives
Thursday, April 19^th 7:30 pm
ES Commons Room, Adams Hall

Green Global Initiatives is excited to have John Rooks, Founder of The Soap Group, come to campus on Thursday April 19th.  The Soap Group, which stands for Sustainable Organization Advocacy Partners, works with organizations, governments, and companies across the globe such as Cliff Bar, the World Bank Institute, the state of Maine and Clynk. The consulting group helps them to "understand, improve, communicate, and own their impact in the world" through a "holistic-systemic approach to sustainability."  John Rooks will be speaking about his experiences with these organizations and his career path in sustainability.

Johns Rooks is the Founder and President of The SOAP Group, author of the book More Than Promote – A Monkeywrencher’s Guide to Authentic Marketing, and a frequent speaker and writer about the intersection of sustainability, language and culture. With nearly 20 years of experience in the environmental and business consulting space, John has worked for an environmental engineering firm, an environmental compliance software company, and as a partner at an ad agency. John is also an adjunct professor of marketing and writing theory, and has consulted with Fortune 500 companies, the federal government and international NGOs on sustainability and business. John is husband to one, father of two and nerds out on zombie movies. He is currently writing his next book - an expose on the seedy underbelly of sustainability consulting.

Click here to go to the SOAP Group website

 

 

Rosemary Armstrong

Environmental Studies Program Coordinator

Coastal Studies Program Coordinator

Bowdoin College

6700 College Station

Brunswick, ME  04011

Phone: 207-725-3396

Fax: 207-725-3989

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