Category: Program Updates
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May his memory be a revolution: Mike Rotkin’s legacy in community studies
Mike Rotkin, a co-founder of the Community Studies Program, died on June 19th of leukemia at the age of 79. For many years, he was a lecturer and field study leader for our program, placing students with organizations, reading field notes, and guiding their senior capstone work. Mike’s commitment to the innovative vision of community…
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Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor speaks on what’s behind the attacks on diversity and racial justice
Renowned public scholar, author, activist, and professor of African American Studies Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor joined us for a conversation at the Hay Barn on the conditions of possibility for diversity and racial justice in this era of retrenchment. This talk was in conversation with Community Studies Program Director Michael McCarthy, author of The Master’s Tools: How Finance…
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Alkon publishes two articles on experiential pedagogies
In the winter of 2025, Associate Teaching Professor Alison Hope Alkon published two articles about experiential pedagogies. The first, “A Pedagogy for the End of the World: Teaching Environmental Health and Justice in a Sacrifice Zone,” appeared in a special issue of Environmental Studies and Sciences dedicated to Practicing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. The second piece, “A People’s Pedagogy:…
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2025 Poster Session
Thank you to everyone who came out to this year’s Community Studies Poster Session to support our cohort! The posters will be hung up on the second floor of the Rachel Carson Building for a couple more months. Thank you Alex Unger for these wonderful photos!
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Professor Alkon featured speaker at the Homeless Garden Project’s Day of Service
In January, Professor of Community Studies Alison Alkon was one of the featured speakers at the Homeless Garden Project’s Day of Service in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. The event brought together the organization’s staff, volunteers, and trainees, who got their hands dirty with meaningful hands-on activities, from planting and weeding to preparing the…
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The Master’s Tools: How Finance Wrecked Democracy (And a Radical Plan to Rebuild It)
Director of Community Studies Mike McCarthy published The Master’s Tools: How Finance Wrecked Democracy (And a Radical Plan to Rebuild It), which examines how finance interacts with politics, social theory, and democracy. He explores new forms of governance led by working-class people and historically excluded groups that have the power to reshape financial institutions. This…
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The Problem with Solutions: Why Silicon Valley Can’t Hack the Future of Food
Community Studies professor Julie Guthman published a new book, The Problem with Solutions: Why Silicon Valley Can’t Hack the Future of Food. It takes on the solution culture of Silicon Valley and how it has made its way into universities, to the detriment of preparing students to engage critically with the world’s problems.
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Bloomsbury Handbook of Theories in Childhood Studies: “Protagonismo and Power: Building Political Theory with Young Activists”
Associate Professor of Latin American and Latino Studies and community studies affiliated faculty member, Jessica Taft, contributed a chapter to this book for Bloomsbury Publishing in 2023, arguing that young activists’ strategies and tactics for change illuminate the contours and limits of young people’s collective political power, including their symbolic power, disruptive power, prefigurative power,…