An internationally known environmental psychologist from the City University of New York will give talks on Oct. 19 and 20 at West Virginia University.
Cindy Katz will discuss Topographies of Social Change: Reworking the Contours of Everyday Life at 7:30 p.m. Thursday in WVUs National Research Center for Coal and Energys Assembly Rooms A&B.
Dr. Katzs first talk is sponsored by the WVU Eberly College of Arts and Sciences Center for Womens Studies with partial support from the Universitys Regional Research Institute.
“This talk,”Katz said,”will look at what happens to everyday life, and particularly, what happens to social reproduction with the globalization of capitalist production and the broadened embrace of what is termed global culture.”
Katz is the recipient of the second WVU Womens Studies Residency in Honor of Judith Gold Stitzel.
Dr. Stitzel, a former WVU English professor, helped to establish the Center for Womens Studies in 1984 and served as its first director.
Current Director Barbara Howe said Katz was chosen to receive this years residency because of her research combining environmentalism and feminism.
“We are delighted that Dr. Katz will be this years speaker,”Dr. Howe said.”We hope her residency, as well as those to come, will perhaps spark some ideas for further work in students or faculty or staff, and help women’s studies fulfill its mission to offer programs that attract people from throughout the university and broader community.”
The second talk, sponsored by the Institute for Regional Research, is titled The Hidden Geographies of Social Environmental Psychology. It will be held at 12:30 p.m. Friday in the Mountainlair Rhododendron Room.
This talk will be about the privatization of public space and its impact on social reproduction, Katz said.
“Generally speaking, privatizing public space can have a great social cost,”she said.”I will talk about the kinds of things, people, places and projects that get hidden with privatization.”
Both talks are free and open to the public. For more information, contact the Center for Womens Studies, 304-293-2339.
