Unfairness in student debt is topic

10/08/2019

College debt is such a heavy burden for many former students to haul around that it’s hard to imagine that one sex might usually drag along behind them a greater weight than the other.

How can that possibly happen?

Silvia Fedirici, a professor emerita and Teaching Fellow at Hofstra University, will make exactly that case on Tuesday, Oct. 29, at SUNY Cortland.

Her talk, on the devaluation of care through student loan debt and its relation to gender inequality, will run from 5 to 6:30 p.m. in Sperry Center, Room 104.

The talk continues the SUNY Cortland Cultural and Intellectual Climate Committee’s (CICC) year-long series on “Debt,” a concept that will explore a wide range of issues spanning criminal justice, inequality, immigration and climate change.

The series events are free and open to the public.

Federici is an Italian-American scholar, teacher, and activist from the feminist autonomist Marxist tradition.

In the 1970s, she was a founding member of the International Network for Wages for Housework and was also involved with the Midnight Notes Collective. She lived and taught in Nigeria in the 1980s, where she also worked with women’s organizations and against the politics of structural adjustment that were then being tested throughout Africa.

Federici is the author of a number of highly influential books, including the feminist classic Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation, and Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction and Feminist Struggles. Her most recent publication is Wages Against Housework, a documentary history of the Wages for Housework Movement.

Additional talks in the “Debt” series through late October are as follows:

WEDNESDAY, OCT. 9. Professor Todd McLane, farm director at Tompkins Cortland Community College, and Kelly Wessel, chair of TC3’s Environmental Studies Program, will give a talk on ecological services and the food system. The lecture relates to TC3’s five-year-old Farm-to-Bistro Program, which offers a sustainable farming and food systems degree track. The presentation is from 5 in 6:30 p.m. in Brockway Hall Jacobus Lounge.

THURSDAY, OCT. 24. A student-created, graphic design exhibition, “Care, Crisis, Climate, and Debt,” opens at 4:30 p.m. in Old Main Colloquium. The display is hosted by Szilvia Kadas, SUNY Cortland assistant professor of art and art history; Benjamin Wilson, an assistant professor of economics; and Dowd Gallery.

Sin_Eater_painting_WEB — This painting of a 19th century Scottish funeral occurs during a time people believed in the tradition of "sin-eating," a tradition that evolved into a profession of "sin-eaters," people who got paid to absorb the sins of the recently deceased.

Featured Conversations in the Disciplines guests as well as Cortland faculty, staff and students are invited to contribute original works, which the committee plans to publish the collected works under the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity’s ongoing book series under an agreement with publisher Palgrave-MacMillan. The institute is an independent public policy think-tank dedicated to the promotion of interdisciplinary research.

The “Debt” series programming is supported by a $5,000 grant from SUNY Conversations in the Disciplines, a program created to build connections between SUNY faculty and visiting faulty from non-SUNY institutions. The series is co-sponsored by the Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Office, the Campus Artist and Lecture Series, the Research and Sponsored Programs Office, the President’s Office and the Cortland College Foundation.

To submit an event, a Field Guide contribution, volunteer to support this year’s activities and programming, or for more information, contact organizer and Assistant Professor of Economics Benjamin Wilson at 607-753-2436. Stay current with the series news on Twitter at @SUNYCortCICC.