2020-2021 Funding Cycle
Fall Semester Deadline: October 15, 2021
Spring Semester Deadline: Feb 18, 2022
Funding up to $500 to support individual or collaborative student projects that address a common good issue / community need.
Summer 2021 Cycle
Deadline: April 12, 2021
Funding up to $3,500 to assist current students with the cost of living while interning for a mission-driven organization of their choice.
Funding to assist faculty in creating or augmenting courses that engage with issues of ethics and the common good.
Common Good Student Project Grants
Ashley Burns-Merrill | Division III Grant
The Hunger Hut: A Mini Food/Resource Pantry
Connor Honey B. Dandy | Division III Grant
Curating Emotional Experience through Multimedia Design and Communication
Chloe Knoble | Division III Grant
Disability and Work
Dwight Young | Division III Grant
Entry Barriers for Black Startup Fashion Enterprises
Daisha Dukes and Yaritza Bushell | Collaborative Division III Grant
The We Belong Project
Fiona Rodriguez Drake | Division III Grant
Community Compassion Project
Maria Molina | Division III Grant
‘Exchanging U For Eye”
Mecca Lewis | Division III Grant
‘Perspectives from “Nowhere”’
Serene Nembhard | Division III Grant
Black Hair/Memory Diaspora
Darleane Torres and Alison Smith | Collaborative Community Grant
Transitioning to Adulthood Workshop Series
Eli Alejo and Sierra Karas | Collaborative Community Grant
Re-Envisioning Another World at Hampshire Handbook
The 2021 Collaborative Community Project Grants were awarded in partnership with the Community Commons Peer Mentorship Program.
Urooba Ahmed | Division III Project
Menstrual Equity – The Road to an Equal World
Urooba Ahmed has taken her academic focus to real-world action on menstrual equity, through raising awareness and creating access to menstruation products and infrastructure in schools in Karachi, Pakistan and the United States. Urooba’s project is a continuation of a previous case study, in which she identified infrastructure gaps that represented barriers to school participation, especially for young women and girls, such as lack of access to restrooms at school. Returning to the school in Pakistan where she conducted initial research, Urooba’s project implementation plan involves construction of bathroom facilities and other tangible support for educational participation through menstrual equity.
Abigail Bevan | Division III Project
My Mother, The Red Light
Abigail Bevan has written and designed an experimental one-act play, My Mother, The Red Light, which uses creative animated projections to propel the story of a sex worker and her teenage daughter as they navigate life together. With this design-driven theatre piece, Abigail aims to collaboratively create a constructive dialogue about sex work beyond stereotypes and criminalization, explore journeys of trauma and healing, and continue to push for equity for those living below the poverty line across axes of experience.
Annielly Camargo | Division III Project
Lo que hay / What there is
Annielly Camargo is returning to Cuba to build her Division III as a continuation of her work in the 2019 Hampshire in Havana Program. Annielly will create photographic research and interviews, aiming to share histories of U.S./Cuba relations through the stories of Cuban families affected by migration and exile. Using mixed-media writing and imagery, Annielly will weave stories of leaving and staying, imperialism and resistance, and the water that surrounds and connects. By building relationships and sharing art and narrative across the intergenerational experiences of Cuban community members, Annielly hopes to shift perspectives and assumptions about Cuba for U.S. audiences.
Rejjia Camphor | Division III Project
Crafting Sisters & Mapping Labyrinths
Rejjia Camphor is designing creative arts collaborations that center mental health and emotional liberation through celebrating contributions from black girls and women. Rejjia hopes to introduce black feminist pedagogical models to support conversation on intersectional oppression, enviromental communication, and for people to evaluate their own positions in achieving black liberation. Rejjia’s Division III draws on map-making and path finding as a creative means of traversing the past, present, and future of our own liberation and healing.
Lexx Cespedes | Division III Project
Why is Mom Striking? The Strike Wave as told by Union Families
Lexx Cespedes is utilizing a creative interview-based methodology with parents, caretakers, young children, and expectant families from Massachusetts-based union locals and working class organizations to write and illustrate a children’s literature series. Expanding on the success of their previous grant-funded first edition of Why is Mom Striking, Lexx hopes that their second book will facilitate further conversations between parents and children on class struggle, workers’ histories, and relevant issues in organized labor.
Arianna Diaz-Celon | Division III Project
Making Art, Making Space
Arianna Diaz-Celon is exploring interdisciplinary curation by facilitating spaces where different types of performance and visual arts can be experienced together. She is interested in making the process of art-making more accessible, including the financial or physical accessibility of a space, but also how to create openness and social access across differences of lived experience. Overall, Arianna’s goal in organizing the “Making Art, Making Space” arts festival is to imagine new ways of facilitating collaboration on campus and to use the arts and art-making to bring people together and foster community.
Judah Doty | Division II Field Study
Cuba: A Model for Higher Education
Judah Doty is researching the Cuban education system as a comparative model for increasing access and innovation within U.S. higher education. As a Common Good and James Baldwin Scholars Program 2019 Intern, Judah worked in Cuba as research assistant and youth counselor for Acts of Liberation– a grassroots organization which engages with black and brown youth in the U.S. and abroad to explore what liberation means to them. Wanting to expand on this opportunity and further focus on comparative U.S./Cuba educational studies, Judah will pursue an immersive Spanish program in Cuba, with the goal of participating in the Spring 2021 Hampshire in Havana Program.
Sejeia Freelon | Division III Project
Blubone
In blubone, Sejeia Freelon is connecting decolonial and feminist scientific approaches, oral historical methodologies, black southern traditions of contemplation and action, and collective meaning making through art, media, and performance. Among a multiplicity of methods, Sejeia invited seven Black Femmes of southern origin to contribute oral histories providing insight to their experiences of birth and becoming, accompanying performance-based research. Sejeia, alongside collaborating artists, inquire together about the pursuit of pleasure within localities of grief and ontologies of violence.
Bela Haye | Division III Project
High Tide: A Community-Based Installation
Addressing the importance of building vibrant and interdependent communities at Hampshire College, Bela Haye is designing “High Tide: A Community-Based Installation” for the Music and Dance Building. This interactive place-making experience would temporarily transform the building into a series of performances, interactive sound installations, creative and technical audio and recording workshops, and social gathering spaces. Bela has committed herself to working towards a wider goal of reconnecting humans to sounds, senses, and the natural world.
Jenny Gutierrez | Division III Project
An Exploration of Vulnerability: A Design Driven Performance
Jenny Gutierrez is creating an installation-based performance as the culmination of her studies of technical theater and social justice. Jenny’s performance, video, and design work will delve into stories of vulnerability, particularly within cultural and familial experiences. Beyond the space of the performance, Jenny hopes to create and facilitate creative conditions where reconnecting with vulnerability can help us grow stronger as a community.
Aubriana Mency | Division III Project
Blood At The Root
Aubriana Mency will be co-directing a choreopoem titled Blood At The Root, written by Domonique Morisseau. Blood At The Root is a historical fiction piece inspired by the cases of the Jena Six, created from interviews with residents of Jena, Louisiana in 2006. A focal point of the project centers on an educational outreach strategy with students from Amherst Regional Middle School. Through bringing students to campus for special performances designed for youth, Aubriana and her collaborators will invite their audience to reflect on their world through creative engagement with history and the arts, and explore ways we can create a community that recognizes and embraces differences.
Patricia Quispe | Division II Project
“Knowledge” / Quechua Alliance Annual Meeting
Patricia Quispe is working on a short documentary film, drawing inspiration from participation in the Quechua Alliance Annual Meeting, an event that brings together Quechua speakers, community leaders, college students and professors who share an interest and passion for Quechua language and Andean culture. Pati’s film, “Knowledge”, brings into question the relationship between livelihood and knowledge, acknowledging and seeking to repair the damage of isolation, inequity and death that the dominant modes of this dynamic often perpetrate. Pati’s film is situated in the larger community project of networking among diasporic Quechua peoples in order to sustain their common knowledge and values.
Jing Shang | Division III Project
Anthropological Significance and Commercial Sense of Plant-Based Meat Industry:
A Comparative Study of Whole Perfect Food and Impossible Foods
Jing Shang will be focusing on the values and ideological features of plant-based meat in China and the United States. By comparing plant-based meat enterprises located in the U.S. and in China, Jing aims to understand cross-cultural economics and practices of vegetarianism. Jing hopes the research will help shed light on the social dynamics of plant-based meat, a growing industry that will possibly shape dietary habits, food systems, and vegetarianism in the future.
Emma Symanski | Division III Project
English Through a Photographic Lens: Teaching English as a Second Language Using Photography
Emma Symanski is designing and facilitating a free photography-based course for English Language Learners, hosted at the International Language Institute in Northampton, MA. Emma appreciates the way that photography can be a tool for accessible learning and community building. Through a curriculum designed to support self-expression and connection across language, participants are encouraged to share their photography skills and interests. Emma also invited class members to collaborate with her on a portrait series, lifting up English Language Learners’ stories and journeys within their wider communities.
Lachlan Thompson | Division III Project
Finding Confluences: Re/Living Trauma and Cultivating Care
Lachlan Thompson is designing an art-infused storytelling and dialogue group for queer and trans survivors of interpersonal and intimate partner violence in collaboration with the Survivor Arts Project. In addition, they are designing a practice-based workshop series exploring the idea of nurturance culture, and also creating an art installation around these themes. Lachlan believes that peer-to-peer support models encourage relationship and community building, as well as empowering survivors to see themselves as experts in their own care and experience.
Aly Albertson | Division III Research
The Promises and Perils of Pleasure Positive Sexual Education
Aly Albertson will conduct interviews with educators bringing best practices in inclusive, pleasure-positive sex education into public school classroom settings, collating their experiences into a review of methods intended to serve as a resource for sex educators. Aly will also connect professionally with colleagues in their field at the National Sexual Education Conference, the largest conference in the United States exclusively devoted to sexuality education, as well as participating in Planned Parenthood’s Sexuality Education Cornerstone Seminar.
Amelia Margolis and Emma Jordan | Collaborative Division II Project
Hampshire Free Store
Amelia Margolis and Emma Jordan, along with a coalition of students from on-campus student groups, will offer pop-up spaces for resource redistribution, celebration, and connection throughout the Spring 2019 semester. Hampshire Free Store events provide a fun and accessible space for students to regularly donate, exchange, and reuse unwanted items while sharing free food, music, and connecting with fellow community members. The Hampshire Free Store team hopes to raise awareness and take action around challenges of campus waste, food insecurity, and the need for community in times of change.
Annie Wood | Division III Project
HIPS Oral History Project
Annie Wood will conduct an oral history of HIPS, a harm reduction center in Washington, DC that predominantly serves sex workers and injection drug users, providing services from a syringe exchange to housing support. Using interviews with current and former staff members, Annie will chart a trajectory of how HIPS has developed over the past twenty years, analyzing how they’ve practiced harm reduction, rooted themselves in local communities, and developed their philosophy of care.
Brianna Deane | Division III Project
Youth Day at Five College Queer Gender & Sexuality Conference
Brianna Deane will coordinate and organize the addition of a ‘Youth Day’ to the 10th Annual Five College Queer Gender & Sexuality Conference. Dedicated to empowering pre-college LGBTQ+ youth, Youth Day will be one of the only conferences of its kind in the Northeast region. Through a broad spectrum of free workshops, panels, performances, and lectures, Youth Day aims to offer an accessible platform for LGBTQ+ young people to explore youth-led initiatives and activism, grassroots organizing, professional skill development, personal and community wellness, and artistic expression.
Carmen Figueroa | Division III Project
Fragments of Belonging
Carmen Figueroa curated her thesis collection of large-scale photographic works and video installation of her family in New York and Puerto Rico in the Hampshire Art Gallery in December 2018. Part artistic exaltation and part institutional critique, her project Fragments of Belonging recreates and reimagines her family, herself, and their stories to shape wholeness from fragments of images and memories. Through her work, Carmen reflects on using photography to regain authorship and agency of her own narrative, recapture knowledge both stolen and lost, and reclaim historically limiting spaces to create a world of belonging that centers diasporic wisdom.
Che Williams | Division II Project
Exploitation in Amateur Basketball
Che Williams will travel around the United States to film and produce a full-length documentary on the exploitation of student athletes in the world of amateur basketball. The documentary hopes to shine a new light on the collusion between basketball associations, like the NCAA, AAU, and NBA, aided by the sneaker industry and Hip Hop icons, all raking in huge profits off the labor of Black and brown youth trying to make it big in the competitive world of amateur sports. Che will center the voices of the athletes as they speak on the challenges and supports they face moving towards their dreams, and their visions for the future of the amateur basketball system.
Dunan Herman-Parks | Division III Project
Movement to be Better Men
Dunan Herman-Parks will craft and facilitate an 8-week workshop series on disentangling cultural patterns of harm through embodied investigations making meaning of masculinities. Dunan will guide an intergenerational cohort of men, who will support one another in understanding themselves, their stories, and messages about masculinity that they’ve internalized. In moving through and reflecting upon their experiences, Dunan hopes to lead the group in healing from harm they’ve seen in themselves and others, reconnecting mind and body, and creating ethical visions of healthy masculinity.
Emi Link | Division III Project
Peer Mentorship at Hampshire College
Emi Link will lead a cohort of students in a day-long training, developing skills to create a network of Peer Mentors within the academic structure of Hampshire College. In this pilot program, peer mentors would support fellow students within the context of academic advising, creating a systematic approach to increasing access to key knowledge, support, and resources learned through the process of participation in the uniquely self-directed and interdisciplinary Hampshire educational model.
Emmett DuPont | Division III Project
Trans People, Trans Bodies: in and out of birth, parenthood, and pregnancy
Emmett DuPont will create an episodic audio podcast exploring narratives of transgender people in birth and pregnancy. Through interviews with transgender parents, doctors, and loved ones, the podcast will weave personal narrative, technology, and education together, highlighting seldom-heard stories of transgender birth and parenting, as well as the voices of trans people who choose not to pursue biological parenthood. Emmett hopes to challenge stereotypical narratives of transgender lives and elevate the stories that transgender people wish to tell about their own bodies, pregnancies, and reproductive decisions.
Forel Kourouma | Division III Project
NKO Abroad
Forel Kourouma is developing a summer internship program, NKO Abroad, that offers a platform for U.S. university and college students to work with local entrepreneurs in Touba, Senegal on pre-established businesses, using a framework of Asset-Based Community Development. Through collaboration between these entrepreneurs and student interns, he hopes to subvert the extractive culture of “voluntourism”, and create a unique relationship-building opportunity for students to learn directly from entrepreneurs’ experiences of commerce and development in Touba.
Hannah Davidson | Division III Research
Situating Postpartum Knowledge(s): Maternal and Provider Understandings of Postpartum Depression
Hannah Davidson will interview parents, physicians, and behavioral health providers on their experiences with postpartum depression as a diagnostic category, mental illness, and vulnerable period of human growth and transition. Through the lenses of reproductive justice and critical ethnography, this investigation will expand the frame of postpartum depression, inviting in the wider context of identity, isolation, access to resources, environment, and cultural narratives of motherhood. Hannah hopes this work will contribute toward building a more intersectional understanding of postpartum experiences and mapping future directions and nodes of inquiry for mental health work in the fourth trimester.
Joseph Newlin | Division III Project
Make Shift Coffee House: Creating Shared Understanding Across Political Divides
Joseph Newlin is partnering with Make Shift Coffee House to host a community event in Lewiston, ME that aims to build bridges across political divides through food, music, and face-to-face conversation. Through intergroup dialogue and culinary diplomacy, he hopes to bring people across the political spectrum together at the table to discuss civic issues in a guided format with the purpose of listening to and understanding one another across potentially vast differences.
Jules Petersen | Division III Project
Facilitators Weaving
Jules Petersen will create a three-day residency at Hampshire College for students interested in the art of group facilitation. Participants will share their practices and learn from each other’s skills and experiences leading effective meetings and workshops. The residency will focus on the dynamics of the group learning process, communication design, and the powerful potential of collaboration to produce creative space-making and healthy dialogue.
Mercedes Loving-Manley | Division III Project
City Limits: Black queer & trans life in Boston, MA
In City Limits, a photo & video series, Mercedes Loving-Manley will interview queer, trans, and gender non-conforming people of color about their lived experiences of surviving at these social intersections in Boston, MA. In addition to these interviews, she will research Black femme, queer, and trans existence throughout U.S. history, envisioning Black femme liberation by pinpointing underlying themes and methods of survival and resistance. Mercedes hopes the narrative she crafts will serve as an archive by and for Black queer communities in Boston, and that it will be used as a resource for city policymakers to provide safer communities.
Moira Tan | Division III Research
Litigation and Legislation: State Responses to the Overturning of Roe v. Wade (1973)
Moira Tan will be investigating abortion laws within the United States and the various levels of access to abortion experienced by people throughout the country. In partnership with the National Network of Abortion Funds, Moira will lead a Heart to Heart Abortion dialogue on campus, opening space to challenge myths and assumptions and learn facts about abortion access. As a New York State Political Intern at the National Institute of Reproductive Health, Moira will be exploring the possibility of a post-Roe v. Wade political landscape and its impact.
Nadia Issa | Division III Research
To’ Iban Eshu: Spiritual Reparations in Regla de Ocha-Ifá and other Black Caribbean Diasporic Traditions
Nadia Issa is producing auto-ethnographic work at the intersections of African-diasporic spiritual and religious traditions, reparations theory, dance, and music. From their extensive research in Cuba on the religion of Regla de Ocha-Ifá, they are working to expand reparation politics to make a case for spiritual reparations. They hope to highlight the ways in which Black spirituality and religions have been targeted and suppressed, and the historical violences that practitioners confront within the Black Caribbean Diaspora. They will share their findings through a performance incorporating dance and music from Yoruba traditions.
Quinn Davis and Aidn James | Collaborative Division III Project
Intimacy in Motion
Quinn Davis and Aidn James will co-create a multidisciplinary arts Division III project, including a series of collaborative learning spaces culminating in a performance,Intimacy in Motion. They aim to honor the unique voices of their creative ensemble, while creating a community that sees individuals as part of a collective. They will investigate the conditions that allow people to create their own intentional communities, moving at the speed of trust to ensure that all members are valued, and ultimately celebrating their shared learning process through reflection and performance.
Justin Taft-Morales, Division III Project: Authentic Connections for Transformative Change. Justin Taft-Morales will be presenting a podcast and research paper that explores what it means to facilitate authentic spaces for connection while living in a culture of separation. Through interviewing organizers, facilitators, teachers, friends, and community members, Justin will question himself and his community about experiences of extraction, suspicion, and retribution in order to move towards imagining a future built on sharing, appreciation, and transformation. He hopes the podcast will provide listeners with concrete tools to assess their daily interactions and engage with the world in a more connected, relational way.
Leila Kaplan, Division III Project: The Body as a Relational Tool. Leila Kaplan will be creating a two-week summer program curriculum for teenagers that explores embodied relationships to self, to each other, to land, and to its histories. Using contemplative somatic practices, storytelling and resonance tools, and place-based education, the curriculum will share how building these kinds of relationships can better facilitate the reinhabitation and care of the land and the body.
Malaika Ross, Division III Research: Agroecology in the Caribbean: The role of Caribbean women in the conservation of crop genetic diversity. Case Study: St. Croix and St. Thomas, United States Virgin Islands (U.S.V.I.). Malaika Ross will be traveling to St. Croix and St. Thomas of the United States Virgin Islands (U.S.V.I.) to quantify and document the roles small-scale women farmers of African descent play in the cultural, agricultural, and ecological resiliency of the Caribbean region. Through field research and interviews, Malaika will explore how these small-scale women farmers of African descent are sustaining and restoring their ecosystems in the face of colonialism’s historical extractive economy and engage in their connection to cultural identity and empowerment.
Nisaa Jackson, Division III Project: Reimagining Blackness in Art and Media. Nisaa Jackson will be researching black women playwrights and will direct, slot, and act in one of their plays alongside black marginalized students at Hampshire in order to depict blackness in diverse and holistic ways as a positive opposing narrative to those negative ones that already exist about black people in art and media. Nisaa will partner with a local community organization to bring black marginalized youth to one of her shows and will be using Theatre of the Oppressed methodologies to call people in to build consciousness and creativity in pushing back against oppressive systems.
Noa Coffey-Moore, Division III Project: Black Femme Survival. Noa Coffey-Moore will be creating a social justice online platform called Black Femme Survival, in which they will build a transformative space to support black & brown queer femmes in learning, healing, and thriving together. Noa will create a website that features a podcast, artist blog, workshop curriculums, and resources like the Black Femme Survival Guide, a workbook in service of developing a movement and community of practice for black & brown femme care. They hope this multi-media approach will increase access to community and resources for young femmes of color in need of support with survival and resilience.
Olivia Brochu, Division II Field Study: Washington, D.C. Political Internship. Olivia Brochu will be spending her field study interning at Elizabeth Warren’s office in Washington, D.C. to engage with politics and public policy. This will contribute to her on-going studies of political science and women’s and immigration studies at Hampshire. Olivia hopes to learn more about the inner workings of the American government and specific strategies that work to bring about social change through policy and campaigning. She also hopes to gain experience working with both politicians and constituents from all different communities and backgrounds, and learn how to confront and constructively engage with those who have different political opinions.
Taran Wilkens-Plumley, Division III Research: Welcomed Into Being: A Case Study of Collectivism. Taran Wilkens-Plumley will be exploring the ethics of sustainable design for land-based community purposes by building a comprehensive design plan for a collective community space in Millerton, NY. Taran’s architectural design will focus on how people forge relationships with the land around them and with each other by creating a design that is informed by the land’s history, blends with the local site, and will facilitate community interaction and personal connection.
Tess O’Day, Division III Project: Somatic Geography: Embodied Displacements in Urban Environments. Tess O’Day asks how does the trauma of displacement and loss of place manifest in the body, and how does this affect emotional experience of the world, culture, and community? Instead of looking at how people move through places, Tess will look at how places move through and resonate in people, connecting physical geographies with histories and bodies. Using her own personal family histories in Chicago to explore these themes, Tess will interview, research, and choreograph a process that examines urbanization, privatization, and gentrification to invite herself, her collaborators, and her audience into their own embodied experiences about place and loss.
Yasmina Mattison-Sudan, Division II Project: Photographic Witness. Yasmina Mattison-Sudan will be exploring what it means to see and be seen in vulnerability by using photography as a powerful method of witnessing. Yasmina’s images will capture the young women of color in the Community Dance Program of the Embodied Leadership Project. She hopes these images will add rare visual representations of young women of color facilitating healing, embodying vulnerability, and working in leadership positions to the world of fine art photography.
Andrea Wong, Division III Research: Disguised Distress in Asia’s Saving Face Culture: Self-Concealment and Perfectionistic Self-Presentation as Potential Mediators of Anxiety and Depression among Asian Youth. A mixed-methods clinical psychology study investigating experiences of disguised distress among Asian youth. Andrea will present her preliminary research into the relationship between cultural barriers to accessing emotional health support and maladaptive perfectionism at the 2017 CUDCP Diversifying Clinical Psychology Event in San Diego, CA.
Emily Rose Brown, Division III Project: Embodiment. This portrait series features images of community members who are working in collaboration with Emily Rose to create images of visual protest, sharing the ways their bodies, lives, and identities are filled with strength, pride, and aliveness in a culture of violence, exploitation, and misrepresentation.
Eri Svenson, Division II Field Study: Tibetan Studies in India. Eri will be attending a Tibetan Studies program in India through the Five College Exchange Program. During their field study, Eri will engage with the Tibetan exile community’s ethical and spiritual commitments and see first hand what justice frameworks and restorative practice can look like in the context of conflict and migration.
Fangzhou Zhu, Division III Project: Being Away: Photographing International Students in Their Space. Fangzhou is creating photographs of international students in the Five College Consortium, collaborating with her subjects to tell their own stories by taking their pictures in a place where they feel a sense of belonging and comfort, opening dialogue about their experience of studying abroad, isolation and connection, and the meaning of home.
Forel Kourouma, Division II Field Study: New African Diasporas. Forel will travel to Senegal, Italy, and China as he studies transnational communities, cultures, and economies emerging from contemporary migration in the African Islamic diaspora. This field study with the School for International Training will deepen his ongoing work in Africana Studies, social entrepreneurship, and technology, and prepare him for a planned self-designed field study in the future.
Graciela Rodriguez Carmona, Division II Field Study: Trajectories of a Caribbean Artist: Artistic Expression in 21st Century Cuba. Graciela will create an ethnographic documentary film focused on the lives of Cuban artists who see their art as activism. She will weave stories of the intersections of daily life, identity, politics, and artistic expression in by tracing everyday spaces, encounters, and processes of the artists she meets on field study.
Jennifer Maxwell, Division III Project: One Step Forward. Jennifer is creating a short animated film that will use storytelling to address stigma surrounding mental illness. She will travel to more than 50 recovery and support groups in the region and invite others with lived experience of mental illness to collaborate with her by drawing on one frame of the film, which she will re-assemble into the final product.
Kira deCoudres, Division III Project: Methods of Ontological Remix. Kira will bring a series of artists, scientists, and innovators to campus to present interactive, performative, experimental lecture-labs. In this project, the “remix” sparks community engagement in the many complex layers of being a human in the present and future, supported by a socially-engaged ensemble of visitors working between art, technology, and biology.
Makenna Finch, Division II Field Course: Intensive Dance Therapy. Makenna will expand her studies of dance as a modality for individual and collective healing by participating in an intensive course in dance therapy. She will bring her learning back to campus by collaborating on the creation of embodied and resonant community spaces for healing through movement.
Michelle Falcon, Division III Field Study: Esclavitud, Dependencia, Liberación. Michelle is creating a short documentary to raise awareness about the current economic crisis in Puerto Rico. The film will shed light on the details of the crisis, the role the U.S. has played, show the impact on individuals and families, and shed light on potential paths forward.
Mikaela Gonzalez, Division III Project: Campus Mural: Wall of SOURCE Healing and Resilience. Mikaela plans to facilitate a collective mural making process by and for the SOURCE community on campus, bringing students of color together to envision and create a permanent public mural as an intentional act of community building for resilience in the present and future.
Rene Pedraza, Division II Project: Cuban Women: Art as Mental Health, Social Development, and Cultural Progress. This field study in Miami and Havana will yield a series of video interviews and photographs with female-identified Cuban artists across creative fields, carrying the story of art as a medium for survival, healing, and self-expression amid experiences of exile and exodus.
Rikkia Pereira, Division III Project: Remembering the Body. A choreographic process aimed at building balance between Rikkia’s own artistic vision and her vision of dance as a vehicle for community transformation and social justice. Rikkia has been invited to present her research at the 2017 American College Dance Association Regional Conference, and will lead an ensemble of Hampshire students to present a full performance of her work in the spring.
Sara Berliner, Division III Project: Student Teaching in Theatre Classrooms. As part of obtaining her theatre teaching licensure through the Mt. Holyoke Licensure program, Sara will be completing observation and facilitation in schools under the mentorship of currently licensed teachers working with a variety of ages. As a student who was influenced significantly by theatre in high school herself, Sara believes in the power and necessity of theatre in public schools, where it is accessible to those who most benefit from it.
Sheila Brown, Division II Field Study: An Exploration of Birth and Women’s Empowerment in Mexico. Sheila will be traveling to San Cristobal de las Casas, Mexico to volunteer at Luna Maya Chiapas, a birth clinic that promotes safe, healthy, and empowering pregnancy and birth. This field study will support her ongoing studies in reproductive justice, birth work, and holistic healthcare.
Tenzin Sangpo, Division II Project: A Study on the Status of Mental Health Care in Tibetan Refugee Communities Located in Northern Parts of India. While in India, Tenzin will visit three main centers that provide health care to Tibetan refugees as well as several monastic institutions. Tenzin will conduct interviews to illuminate the role of society, economic, religious tradition, and political situation in determining the mental health of people living in a community.
Victoria Lee, Division III Project: Sleep Safe Pod. The Sleep Safe Pod will be a prototype of a mobile, insulated sleeping pod intended to shelter individuals experiencing homelessness from the freezing temperatures winter can bring. Victoria will design and fabricate the Sleep Safe Pod to be low-cost, made from as many reused materials as possible, environmentally sustainable, and designed with the specific needs of the homeless community in mind.
Kamika Bennett, Division III Research: An investigation of the experiences of racialized criminalization and deportation of Jamaican im/migrants in the U.S., examining through interviews the connections between state policies around the “War on Drugs” and state policies around immigration, and connecting these to larger histories of racialization and economic exploitation.
Maya Berenholz, Division III Project: They Didn’t Know We Were Seeds: Growing Heart-Centered Movements from the Ground Up, is a zine and collective art show gathering a collection of stories from a year of exploring what resiliency means in the context of movement-building through interviewing local change-makers on and off campus.
April Dunlop, Division III Project: April’s work focuses on supporting LGBTQIA people through storytelling and spirituality. She will develop a writer’s group for local emerging queer and trans writers. She is also writing a YA novel about a young person understanding herself as a queer witch. Both projects draw on the power of creativity and spirituality to create community, strength, and visibility.
Dylan Fitzwater, Division III Research: Dylan has been invited back to the Zapatista Language School in Chiapas, Mexico to participate in their 15th anniversary celebration, and will be sharing his work inspired by an ECG-funded placement at the school last summer. Dylan’s thesis focuses on the contemporary practices of autonomous government of the Zapatista movement through the lens of several political categories unique to the Mayan language Tsotsil, which is spoken in the highlands region of Zapatista territory.
Sackona Fitts, Division III Research: A field study at Sa Sa Art Projects located in The White Building in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Sackona is taking art classes instructed in Khmer, and assisting with The White Building Archival Project, documenting the history and artwork of this unique housing complex created in 1963 and reunited by a community of artists after the Pol Pot regime. Sackona is researching, photographing, and filming stories of genocide survivors, including her family members in Cambodia.
Dykee Gorrell, Division III Research: Dykee is traveling to Durban, South Africa to study nation building, reconciliation, memory, and development, and conduct interviews on people’s experiences with the political history of South Africa during and post-Apartheid.
Abbas Hirji, Division III Research: A field study on the effects of climate changes on farmers and nomads in northeast Tanzania through a watershed perspective, analyzing the hydrologic aspects of the Pangani River Basin.
Nadia Issa, Division I Project: Nadia is training as a doula in the Full-Circle Doula Training by the International Center for Traditional Childbearing in Boston, MA. This organization centers Black women and tackles the infant mortality gap through education and training.
Tika Lifton-Herman, Division III Research/Project: Tika is crafting a narrative poem/story/essay that critically and reflectively explores her connection to, reading of, interaction with and contribution to the online accessibility of two books written by Native American women between 1886-1916 and now housed in the Amherst College archives.
Omnia Hamdan, Division III Project: No Address At the Ghost House is a non-fiction narrative based on oral histories of state repression in 1990’s Sudan to communicate the brutal history of the Omar Al-Bashir dictatorship and make legible the lessons of this generation of activists to a wide audience. This work is primarily based on the words of survivors, and the stories, hopes, and lessons that they feel the world needs to hear.
Jamila Jackson and Rikkia Pereira, a collaborative Division III and Division II Project: (So)ul Connected: Community Education through Dance is a project dedicated to using a body-centered approach to act as a model for healthy community. Using exercises and games to bring attention to the body, collaborators Jamila and Rikkia bring Amherst High School students to Hampshire campus to explore ways to create connection, build sustainable community, and practice an embodied approach to self-empowerment.
Emily Keppler, Division III Project: Pasamontaña: A Zapatista Graphic Novel aims to provide an accessible and engaging resource for organizers, activists, and educators to learn about the history and strategies of the Zapatista movement, as well as to give insight into the worldview and values shared by Zapatista communities.
Cory Blair Seyler, Division III Project: Soul Portraits is a study of activists who share a relationship to the Five College area of Western Massachusetts. The study consists of conversations, interviews, and collaborations to create portraits of participating social justice leaders. Community meals and a publication of the participants’ reflections will accompany the portraits and expand the dialogue between Cory and participants.
Adisa Stewart, Division III Project: Somatic Impact of Black Lives’ Trauma: Resisting and Transforming Embodied Oppression as Descendants of Enslaved Africans. Through partnership and training with Oakland-based Generative Somatics, Adisa explores how culturally relevant healing practices can build the capacity to resist and transform state violence and trauma in the ongoing fight for Black liberation and systemic change.
Xavier Torres de Janon, Division III Project: Racialization and Persecution of ‘Latin@’ and ‘Muslim’ Bodies under U.S. Security Systems is a collection of stories that show how law and security apparatuses have worked to racially monitor and control Latin@ and Muslim populations, regardless of actual intentions, innocence or histories.
Summer 2015
Elizabeth Kleisner, Division III Research: Participated in Body & Earth, a weeklong training that cultivates an embodied and empathic approach to engaging ourselves, each other and our environment.
Grusha Sai Prasad, Division II Project: Led workshops and presentations on cognitive science and experimental design with young people at schools in Bengaluru, India.
John Sinclair, Division II Project: Worked with a rotating group of artists and performers to establish a summer residency program in Bonner County, Idaho that offers a community-based and affordable alternative to artists to other institutional residency programs.
Aurelis Troncoso, Division II Project: Collaborated with mirArte diaDia, a community based arts and culture organization in Havana, Cuba to curate Addimu pa’ mi, a celebration of neo-african art that makes visible and honors African ancestry.
Common Good Internship Awards
Iyanu Bishop | Division II Project Grant
“Nurture Us and We Grow: Embodied Theater Praxis for Healing and Transformation”
Tenzin Choedup | Division III Project Grant
“Universal ethics based on our common experience of pain and pleasure”
Hayven Crockett | Division III Project Grant
” “A Wicker Tree in Paradise”: Creating an Experimental Short Film”
Judah Doty | Division II Project Grant
“A Seat at the Table: Creating Space for Students of Color through the James Baldwin Scholars Orientation Program at Hampshire College”
Fiona Rodriguez Drake | Division II Internship Grant
“Community Compassion Project with the LA Commons”
Michael Garcia | Division II Internship Grant
“Technical Artist Internship with Open-Source Software Blender’s Open Movie Project”
Katharine Godsil-Freeman | Division III Internship Grant
“Computer Farming with Organic Community Dairy Farm and CSA”
Sierra Karas | Division II Project Grant
“The Portfolio: A Digital, Commons-Inspired Student Collective and Archive at Hampshire College”
Lauryn McGill | Division II Internship Grant
“Social Justice Outreach with People’s Hub Training Network”
Najaih Muhammad | Division II Project Grant
“Paralegal Certification”
Patricia Quispe | Division II Project Grant
“Theater Cyber Commons Launching Project”
Moussa Siby | Division II Internship Grant
“Justice for Immigration with the Pioneer Valley Worker’s Center”
Taos Washington – Division III Internship Grant
“Lobbying for the reduction of extreme global poverty to become a focus of U.S. foreign policy.”
Anton Kaplan | Division III
Make-It Springfield, Springfield, MA
Anton will be interning with Make-It Springfield, a community makerspace in downtown Springfield that seeks to empower individuals to make and create. Anton will be facilitating mixed-ability arts workshops in an open studio environment, aiming to create accessible space for individuals with diverse bodyminds to explore the arts and develop their own relationships with artistic materials and the process of art making.
Aubriana Mency | Division II
GLAD Legal Advocates and Defenders, Boston, MA
Aubriana will be interning with GLAD Legal Advocates and Defenders, supporting their use of strategic litigation, public policy advocacy, and education to create a just society free of discrimination based on gender identity and expression, HIV status, and sexual orientation. Working in the Public Affairs & Education Department, Aubriana will be learning how to create and advocate for safer spaces, educate with LGBTQ+ stories, and generate supportive communties for all families.
Desta Cantave | Division III
Relational Uprising, Great Falls, MA and Millerton, NY
Desta will be interning with Relational Uprising, a training and coaching institute co-founded by Hampshire College alumna Cedar Landsman 99F. Desta will work with frontline social justice movement organizers to build resilient, interdependent, and relational culture within communities working for social change. As the Participant Coordinator, they will work with the training team to coordinate registration, communicate with participants, and join the trainers in facilitation of relational culture training sessions.
Elí Alejo | Division II
Victory Congressional Internship, Washington, D.C.
Elí is one of twelve outstanding students nationwide who were selected for the Victory Institute’s Congressional Internship. This intensive summer leadership development program works to increase the number of LGBTQ people in public office, and provide the training and professional network to support their success. Elí will be a Legislative Aide with U.S. Representative Sharice Davids of Kansas’ 3rd Congressional District, assisting with the legislative process and learning about careers in policy-making.
Isabelle Linguiti | Division II
Nationalities Service Center, Philadelphia, PA
Isabelle will be interning with the Nationalities Service Center, which aims to protect the legal rights of immigrants and refugees in Philadelphia, providing comprehensive services that strengthen families. Isabelle will be interning with the Health Team, accompanying clients as they navigate the healthcare system. She hopes to learn more about creating strong connections and well-being within and between communities in Philadelphia and beyond.
Judah Doty | Division I
Acts of Liberation and Upward Bound/AmeriCorps, Havana, Cuba and Springfield, MA
As an Acts of Liberation ambassador in Cuba, Judah will work primarily with Dr. Asantewa Sunni-Ali on Seedz of Revolution, a film ethnography series that examines and documents the ways in which young people of African descent experience, perform, and create liberation for themselves and their communities. Judah will also serve as an AmeriCorps teaching fellow with the Upward Bound UMass Summer Institute, supporting low-income and/or first generation high school students in the greater Springfield area with immersive academic and social justice programming as part of a year-long college preparatory program.
Lachlan Thompson | Division II
Survivor Arts Collective, Easthampton, MA
Lahclan will be interning with the Survivor Arts Collective, a community healing initiative offering peer-led, art-infused support groups and peer-to-peer counseling for survivors of sexual and relationship violence and trauma. Lachlan will be facilitating an online queer and trans survivor support group as well as assisting in organizing local support and community events for LGBTQ+ survivors and their allies.
Lexx Cespedes | Division III
Why Is Mom Striking? An Exploration of Labor Militancy in Children’s Fiction, Amherst, MA
Lexx will be working with labor advocacy organizations and unions across Western Massachusetts including United Auto Workers, UNITE HERE!, United Food and Commercial Workers, Jobs with Justice, and Pioneer Valley Workers Center to produce a children’s book that will help families and working parents have conversations about labor organizing. Lexx will be conducting ethnographic interviews with union families and documenting their conversations as an illustrated storybook titled “Why Is Mom Striking?”
Luis Guevara | Division II
Gasworks NYC and Atlas:DIY, Brooklyn, NY
Luis will be returning to Gasworks NYC, continuing his work with ceramics, sculpture, education, and arts entrepreneurship. He aims to partner with Atlas:DIY to connect undocumented youth to arts programming in the city, bridging youth spaces to resources and opportunities in the art community. Luis plans to connect youth members of Atlas:DIY with Gasworks and 8-Ball Community, to learn about how to create spaces that engage and support artists through collaborative and educational exchange.
Micael Sobel | Division III
Northampton Survival Center, Northampton, MA
Micael will be interning with the Northampton Survival Center, which works to improve the quality of life for low-income individuals and families throughout Hampshire County by providing nutritious food and other resources in an atmosphere of dignity and respect. Micael will gain direct service experience connected to food systems anthropology by working closely with clients and supporting the annual Food Drive.
Najaih Muhammad | Division I
The Law Offices of James F. Cyrus IV PLLC, Charlotte, NC
Najaih will be interning with Attorney James F. Cyrus, drawing connections between racial justice and the legal defense process in cases related to Immigration Law, Criminal Law, and Personal Injury. Najaih will learn more about the field of law by observing court cases in real time and assisting with case work, clients, and taking steps to further her legal studies education and her goal of becoming a lawyer.
Selassie Williams | Division II
ARC-Southeast, Atlanta, GA
Selassie joins Access Reproductive Care-Southeast to assist with their work building reproductive justice by eliminating economic barriers to healthcare access, initiating and encouraging community involvement in reproductive wellness, and advancing equal rights. For his Division III, Selassie hopes to create a work of creative fiction for social change that addresses the needs of women, trans people, and queer people of color, inspired in part by his direct outreach experiences and relationships built through working with ARC-Southeast.
Sophiatou Faye | Division II
ARC-Southeast, Atlanta, GA
Sophiatou will be returning to intern with Access Reproductive Care-Southeast (ARC-Southeast), continuing her work with reproductive justice and the experiences of black femmes in the South. Sophiatou will be building power with local community members to respond to the impact of current legislative attempts to restrict abortion access, especially within BIPOC communties. She hopes to break down isolation and restore justice while advocating for access to safe, compassionate, and affordable reproductive care.
Veronica Israel | Division II
Dance Practices and Education in African American and Diasporic Communities, Springfield, MA and Bayonnais, Haiti
Veronica will be learning about ways to connect dance with therapy as she interns with Whitney Dodds at her Springfield-based mental health practice, Wellness for the Culture. Veronica will support the planning of their annual Wellness Expo, which aims to dismantle the cultural stigma that can be a barrier to Black and brown community members accessing and receiving mental health services and education. Veronica will end the summer by returning to her work in partnership with Grace Church of Amherst, where she will co-direct a children’s summer art and dance program in Haiti.
Yasmina Mattison-Sudan | Division III
Harriet’s Apothecary, Brooklyn, NY
Yasmina will be interning with Harriet’s Apothecary, a collective of Black people, Indigenous people, and people of color that aims to create accessible, liberatory spaces for healing. As a fellow in their Alchemy Fellowship program, Yasmina will be learning about present and historical challenges to healing spaces for people of color and working with mentors to facilitate a healing justice project that builds equity and care.
Alana Young-Morrison | Division II
Child Institute at An-Najah University Nablus, Palestine
Alana will be serving as a teacher’s assistant in the Child Institute’s Early Learning Center at An-Najah University, which provides a Montessori education rooted in peace studies for children of all abilities. During the day, she will be teaching general education, English, and art in a multi-aged bilingual classroom. In the evening, she will be facilitating storytelling and art projects with two youth groups for women in high school and college.
Annie Wood | Division II
Helping Individual Prostitutes Survive (HIPS) Washington, DC
Annie will be interning with HIPS (Helping Individual Prostitutes Survive), a non-profit organization in Washington, DC that provides harm reduction services, education, and advocacy to individuals and communities impacted by sexual exchange and/or drug use due to choice, coercion, or circumstance. In her work as a direct service intern, Annie will support the mobile outreach program and drop-in center by providing harm reduction counseling, making referrals, and assisting in community education around HIV/HCV prevention and treatment.
Carmen Figueroa | Division II
All Hands and Hearts Yabucoa, Puerto Rico
Carmen will be volunteering with All Hands and Hearts, a non-profit organization committed to effectively addressing the immediate and long-term needs of communities impacted by natural disasters in relational and resilient ways. She will be assisting in their hurricane recovery program on the ground, as well as creating a photography project to witness and remember the history, culture, and stories of Puerto Ricans.
Cheyenne Palacio-McCarthy | Division II
Double Edge Theatre Ashfield, MA
Cheyenne will be interning with Double Edge Theatre as their Art Administration Intern, assisting with theatre management and programming, including planning and preparing the Art and Survival Gathering, a 3-day conference where theatre practitioners and artists come together to discuss the role of art in today’s world and its impact on culture and social movement building.
Eddy Ongweso, Jr. | Division II
Independent Drivers Guild New York, NY
Eddy will continue his work with the Independent Drivers Guild, an organization that brings together app-based drivers and gig economy workers to fight for collective bargaining rights and worker benefits. He will be join existing community organizing efforts in outreach and education to protect and empower exploited drivers and expand their support network.
Emmett DuPont | Division II
COLAGE Provincetown, MA
Emmett will return to their ongoing work with COLAGE, the only national youth-driven organization for people with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and/or queer parents and caregivers. Emmett will be coordinating, leading, and organizing a volunteer facilitation team for COLAGE’s Family Week summer camp, the largest annual gathering of LGBTQIA+ families in the world. They will be collaboratively creating workshops and teaching trainings on topics like allyship, transgender identities, adoption, and racial justice.
Ethan Alejo | Division I
Arts-Based Youth Mentoring Los Angeles, CA
Ethan will pursue an internship with an LA-based organization mentoring underserved youth through the arts. They will also be working with CalArts-based researchers on a project that investigates strategies to connect trans and femme artists with museums and galleries for greater artistic representation.
Forel Kourouma | Division II
Hizbut Tarqiyya Touba, Senegal
Forel will be interning with Hizbut Tarqiyya, a grassroots entrepreneurship organization located in Touba, Senegal. Forel will return to Senegal to continue his immersive studies of technology and entrepreneurship in the developing world, learning from local innovators and offering his asset-based community development training. He’ll research local economic and community development projects, uplifting asset-based strengths and solutions while collaborating with local entrepreneurs to solve pressing social issues in their community.
Jules Petersen | Division II
Sexual Minorities Archives Holyoke, MA
Jules will assist with archival preservation, community outreach, and local research endeavours at the Sexual Minorities Archive, one of the oldest and most unique LBGTQIA+ archives in the country, making accessible the literature, history, and art of all sexual and gender minorities of all races and ethnicities. Jules will contribute to ongoing stewardship and increasing accessibility of online and print resources available to the public through this commons-based grassroots community archive.
Lexx Cespedes | Division II
Pioneer Valley Workers’ Center Northampton, MA
Lexx will be working with the Pioneer Valley Workers’ Center, a base-building organization in Western Massachusetts working towards justice for immigrant and low-wage workers through legal assistance, labor education, coalition-building, and community engagement. As the Event Organizing Intern, Lexx will be responsible for planning a variety of events to support the organization in fundraising while building and maintaining strong relationships with the communities they serve.
Saturn Renge | Division II
Levantamos Salvador da Bahia, Brazil
Saturn will be interning with Levantamos: The Center for Afro-Brazilian-American Cooperation, a non-profit organization with the vision to affect profound educational, social, and economic change in the lives of Afro-descendant communities in Brazil and the United States. Saturn will continuing building on her internship work in Bahia through the fall semester, pursuing a self-designed Division III field study on art and healing as acts of resistance, community, and identity.
Tasheena Stewart | Division II
Super 8 Filmmaking: Geographies of Identity Paris, France
Tasheena will be going abroad to research, interview, and create a short film on the lives and stories of Black communities in France. She will participate in workshops, visit film studios, and attend screenings that will support her in her own filmmaking exploring the connections between blackness in the media in France and in the United States.
Veronica Israel | Division II
Generation Teach Springfield, MA
Veronica will be serving as a teaching fellow with Generation Teach, building her skills as an educator and contributing to her vision of young students of color experiencing a supportive and engaging education that reflects their communities. Adding to this, she will be attending a training with Relational Uprising on somatics to support her holistic and healing-oriented teaching style.
Zanya Andrade Fitz | Division II
Day One: The Gladioli Project New York, NY
Zanya will be interning with Day One, the only organization in New York City that focuses their resources exclusively on ending dating abuse and sexual violence among youth. Zanya will be supporting The Gladioli Project: Youth Empowerment & Community Engagement by assisting in the Peer Leadership Summer Institute, creating and facilitating workshops on healthy relationships and violence prevention, and developing and managing Day One’s resources and presentations.
Anuhea Sebstad | Division III
Community Homestead Osceola, WI
Anuhea will travel cross-country this summer, gathering audio interviews from a wide array of perspectives as she creates a podcast on the ethics of meat production and consumption. Her work will include an internship with Community Homestead, a lifesharing community meat & vegetable farm run collectively as a space for members of all ages, abilities, and disabilities to share meaningful work.
Bar Kolodny | Division II
Research Assistant USA, Switzerland, Greece, Turkey, Israel-Palestine
As research assistant to Dr. George Fourlas, SHIFT Foundation Professor of Applied Ethics, Bar will approach grassroots peacework and conflict transformation from a global perspective, starting by working locally in Worcester, MA with Stone Soup Community Center and EPOCA. Bar will join Dr. Fourlas at the Levan Institute’s Global Ethics & Refugee Policy seminar in Geneva, Switzerland, in collaboration with the Oxford Institute for Ethics, Law, and Armed Conflict. After meeting with refugee communities in Greece and Turkey through Elpída Home for Refugees, Bar will head to Old City, Nazareth, to work with Palestinian cultural cafe Liwan and Simsim Guesthouse.
Brianna Deane | Division II
LGBT Center of Central Pennsylvania Harrisburg, PA
Brianna will return to her work with The LGBT Center of Central PA, a volunteer-led effort to create a regionally representative community center that is a unifying point for central Pennsylvania’s LGBTQ+ population. While at The Center, Brianna will facilitate support spaces and community programming for LGBTQ+ youth and young adults.
Dylan Eli Welch | Division III
Detroit Kite Festival Detroit, MI
Dylan Eli will be working with the Detroit Kite Festival, a Hampshire alum led non-profit, to help lift off their inaugural free community kite festival at Belle Isle, a public park on an island in the Detroit River. Dylan will focus on making the festival more accessible, including designing and implementing an interactive installation sourced from public archives and festival participants, illuminating cultures of community kite flying as they relate to Detroit’s history.
Eduardo Samaniego | Division II
Pioneer Valley Workers Center Northampton, MA
Eduardo will collaborate with The Pioneer Valley Workers Center, building power with low-wage and immigrant workers in Western Massachusetts through innovative and creative worker-driven organizing strategies. Eduardo will be supporting the organization’s work around immigrant rights, including their Sanctuary in the Streets initiative of regional rapid response networks.
Forel Kourouma | Division II
Action for Local Development Kankan, Guinea
Forel will continue his studies of social entrepreneurship and technology in the African diaspora with a self-designed field study in Kankan, Guinea. Forel will work closely with local leaders in Kankan to explore community assets and resources connected to growing entrepreneurship from a grassroots perspective, and gain further experience in applying Asset-Based Community Development principles. He will also connect with workers at a diamond mining operation, learning about their current needs and implementing design-based solutions for collective economic empowerment.
Grant Holub-Moorman | Division II
CESMACH Cooperative Chiapas, Mexico
Grant’s summer field work in a cohort of participant-researchers will bring him into conversation with coffee farmer cooperatives, highlighting diverse agroecology initiatives and the current social needs of farmer communities. Grant’s work is made possible by a partnership with ECOSUR, University of Vermont, the Community Agroecology Network, and Nicaragua’s National Agrarian University.
Jhazalyn Prince | Division II
New York Writers Coalition Brooklyn, NY
Jhazalyn will bring her training in the Amherst Writers & Artists writing workshop method to the New York Writers Coalition, one of the largest community-based writing programs in the world. Jhazalyn will assist with outreach initiatives throughout the city, supporting empowering and enriching creative writing spaces for New Yorkers of all ages and backgrounds, especially voices from historically silenced communities.
Luis Guevara | Division I
Atlas:DIY Brooklyn, NY
Luis will continue his partnership with Atlas:DIY as their summer Arts & Culture Coordinator. Through arts integration and mentorship, Luis will support immigrant youth accessing legal services, learning opportunities, college counseling, and leadership development in a space owned, run, and governed by the youth themselves.
Mei Seva | Division III
Family Diversity Projects Amherst, MA and NYC
With guidance from local non-profit Family Diversity Projects, Mei will create a video documentary centering stories of refugee and asylum-seeking individuals and families. Family Diversity’s traveling photo-text exhibits, books, and curriculums aim to end prejudice, stereotyping, bullying, and harassment of people who are discriminated against due to sexual orientation, gender identity, race, national origin, religion, and disabilities of all kinds.
Veronica Israel | Division I
Grace Church of Amherst, Embodied Leadership Project Amherst, MA
Nica and fellow Hampshire student Fynta Sidime have been invited by Grace Church of Amherst to travel to Bayonnais, Haiti to design and facilitate a dance and performing arts camp for young women. With support and mentorship from the Embodied Leadership Project, Nica and Fynta will connect dance education with mentoring and counseling to support youth empowerment and leadership.
Nisaa Jackson | Division II
Cheerful Hearts Foundation Kasoa, Ghana
Nisaa’s summer internship will bring her to rural schools and communities in the Awutu Senya District of Ghana, supporting the Cheerful Hearts Foundation with their intersecting public health, education, and human rights initiatives. Nisaa’s work will contribute to their mission of combating child labor and child trafficking while responding to community development needs.
Sabina Paneva | Division III
Research Assistant, Mali Lošinj, Croatia and Novi Sad, Serbia
Sabina’s research focuses on synthesizing approaches from philosophy and education to create effective, historically-engaged learning opportunities about, against, and to prevent genocide. She has been invited to present at the Integrative Bioethics and New Epoch Conference in Mali Lošinj, Croatia, and will travel to Serbia to assist Dr. Zeljko Kaludjerovic at the University of Novi Sad with his bioethics and philosophy research.
Samara Rosen | Division II
Coastal Watershed Council Santa Cruz, CA
Samara’s internship with the Coastal Watershed Council in Santa Cruz will expand on her studies of hydrology, water policy, and education by immersing her in the world of citizen science. Samara will lead community members through data collection and river monitoring, and interpret their findings on the web to increase community engagement in water restoration and environmental advocacy.
Samuel Edwards | Division II
Sexual Minorities Archive, Holyoke, MA
Samuel will assist with archival preservation, community outreach, and local research endeavours at the Sexual Minorities Archive, a grassroots, multimedia LGBTQ+ community archive with one of the oldest and largest collections in the country; a uniquely accessible commons of rare primary materials from queer history.
Emily Rose Brown, Division III Internship with LA Commons, a community-based arts project working in neighborhoods throughout Los Angeles to give voice to unique local stories, cultures, and histories.
Lorren Grabarek, Division III internship with RainbowYOUTH, an Auckland, NZ based organization supporting LGBTQ youth across New Zealand. Lorren interviewed critically undersupported LGBTQ youth in rural and isolated areas of New Zealand and will compile their stories into a web-based support resource.
Alice Grendon, Division II Internship collaboratively designed with fellow Div II student Dunan Herman-Parks to honor the legacies of long-time activists Juanita and Wally Nelson by reviving their former cabin at Woolman Hill Quaker Retreat as a site to learn and practice tools for sustainable living, environmental justice, and dance composition.
Forel Kourouma, Division I internship in Rwanda with ThinkImpact, an international program partnering college students with community members in developing countries for collaborative social entrepreneurship and design innovation projects.
Natalia Moyano, Division II internship with Sprouts Cooking Club, a Bay Area non-profit teaching children from all socio-economic and mental health backgrounds the importance of healthy, nutritional foods through hands-on cooking with real chefs in their restaurants.
David Pearl, Division III Internship with TechSpring, a Springfield MA based healthcare information technology innovation hub. David won a trial and development phase with TechSpring to bring his design for an accessible first aid education app to the real-life test environment of the Baystate Healthcare system of hospitals.
Allonzo Perez, Division I Internship with Dignity and Power Now, a grassroots organization in Los Angeles that fights for the dignity and power of incarcerated people, their families and communities, as well as participation in Hampshire College’s summer Institute for Transforming Social Justice.
Eduardo Samaniego, Division III Internship documenting the stories and working conditions of farmers across the Southwest with the National Latino Farmers and Ranchers Trade Association, an organization working to include the voices and needs of Latino farm and ranching advocacy groups in policy making.
Fynta Sidime Sherif, Division I Internship with Double Edge Theater, an ensemble theater company based at a former dairy farm in Ashfield, MA that makes original contemporary theater performance deeply rooted in the community in which they’re based and the communities that ensemble members are from.
Tasheena Stewart, Division I Internship with First Generation, a Springfield, MA based theater project bringing together youth in an artistic ensemble to create multilingual performances around critical social and cultural issues through multilingual performance.
Emma Weed, Division III Internship with Prison Birth Project, a Hadley based reproductive and carceral justice organization that supports currently and formerly incarcerated mothers and trans* parents to become community leaders and advocates for health and dignity around pregnancy and labor in prison.
Dylan-Eli Welch, Div II Internship with Mobile Design Lab, a Holyoke, MA based permaculture education and design studio engaging and empowering people to build justice through social and ecological interconnectedness, design events, and community projects.
Gabrielle Garcia, Division II Internship with Dignity and Power Now, a grassroots organization in Los Angeles that fights for the dignity and power of incarcerated people, their families and communities.
Lauren Garretson, Division II Internship with Project South, a Southern-based leadership development organization that creates spaces for movement building.
Omnia Hamdan, Division III Internship with Colorado Anti-Violence Program, a community based organization dedicated to eliminating all forms of violence within and against LGBTQ people.
Abigail Hanus, Division II Internship with In-Sight Photography Project, a community arts organization that provides young people with an accessible space to foster a creative voice and outlet outside of school.
Emily Keppler, Division III Internship with The Relational Center, a culture change organization focused on fostering values of empathy, diversity, social health, mutual aid, equity, and sustainability.
Gustavo Madrigal-Pina, Division II Internship with Make The Road, a membership organization that builds power among working class Latino communities in New York, NY.
Emmanuel Morales, Division II Internship with the Software Freedom Conservancy, a non-profit that develops, promotes and defends free software projects.
Rikkia Pereira, Division II Internship with Hampshire Youth Connect, co-facilitating (So)ul Connected, a summer youth program that uses a body-center approach to leadership development.
Adisa Stewart, Division III Internship with Generative Somatics, a social justice organization that supports individual and collective healing and transformation through Somatic Leadership Training.
Toni Stone, Division II Internship with Global Youth Connect, a human rights organization that engages youth in developing the tools they need to create change in the world.
Justin Taft-Morales, Division II Internship with the non-profit Global Connections, to pursue research on cross-cultural, youth and therapeutic work in El Rodeo, El Salvador.
Course Development and Augmentation Awards
Alexis Salas | HACU
Race, Power, and Art in the Contemporary Americas
This new Spring 2019 course will explore the art practices of people of color from across the Americas to critically scrutinize the boundaries of “American” art by examining them in relation to critical race studies in order to reconsider the canon of art history.
Anne Hendrixson | CSI
Dimensions of Populationism
This new Spring 2019 course will examine three dimensions of populationism: demo-, geo- and bio in order to facilitate students’ in-depth consideration of contemporary ideologies, policies and politics that relate to the surveillance, management and (de)valuing of bodies and land.
Ashley Smith | CSI
Indigenous Environmental Activism
This new Fall 2018 course will consider how the histories of dispossession and settler colonialism inform indigenous approaches to environmental justice as students learn about indigenous philosophies and stories of the environment.
Ashley Smith | CSI
Service Learning on the Sandy River, Maine
This new Spring 2018 service learning project will be a collaboration between indigenous and non-indigenous people to build more equitable and sustainable relationships and land-use practices. Students will assist Wabanaki women in the preparation of their three-sisters planting fields while learning about Wabanaki history in the area, traditional Wabanaki-land relations and planting practices, indigenous approaches to sustainability, and the importance of collaborations and alliance-building to combating the social inequalities created by colonialism.
Dasha Chapman | HACU
Haitian Dance Technique and Theory
This new Fall 2018 course will engage in the practice of Haitian dance, and support this embodied learning with study of Haitian artists, history and culture, including related topics in Haitian studies (the Haitian Revolution, Vodou religion, migration) and getting to know the landscape of iconic and contemporary Haitian dancers.
Megan Dobro | NS
HIV/AIDS: 35 Years Later
This augmented Spring 2019 course will study the life cycle of the HIV virus, methods of transmission, current tools for research, and social and political issues associated with the epidemic. This course will assess what is still unknown about its biology and why finding a cure or vaccine has proven so difficult after all this time.
Monique Roelefs | HACU
Blackness and the Aesthetic: Aliveness, Play, Satire, and the Ordinary
This new Spring 2019 course will examine conceptual frames and artistic strategies shaping the burgeoning field of Black Aesthetics, as influenced by everyday art and life. Students will explore the evolving notions of the aesthetic, the political, and blackness in current work, coming together into an international, two-day symposium on black aesthetics in late Spring.
kara lynch | HACU
Abundance: Making Art and Politics With and From a Land-base
This augmented Fall 2018 course will focus on installation and community-engaged art practices in conversation with diverse media and the local ecosystem. A hands-on, project-based course, it will explore the relationships built between artists, activists, agriculturalists, and communities building a sustainable past, present, and future.
Billie Mandle (HACU) will be teaching “Community, Photography, Storytelling”, a course that connects photography students with Applewood Retirement Community residents to forge intergenerational connections and teach a practice of relational portraiture. This is an augmented course that will be offered in the Fall semester of 2017.
Chris Tinson (CSI) and Mei Ann Teo (IA) will be collaborating to create the Spring 2018 course “For Whom It Stands: Symbolism in American Culture”, this class dives into theater and history in an investigation of the US flag, performance, and symbolism.
Djola Branner (IA) will be teaching “Performing Gender in American Theater”, a course that aims to expand the canon and the conversation by creating space to celebrate gender non-conforming characters in original drama. This course will be offered in the Spring semester of 2018.
Jana Silver (IA), Natalie Sowell (IA), and Deb Goffe (HACU) will be co-teaching “Innovations for Change: Creative Interventions”, an art education, visual arts, dance, and theater collaboration course that will investigate interdisciplinary arts as vehicle for social change. This course will be offered in the Spring semester of 2018.
Laura Greenfield (CSI) will be teaching “Radical Listening”, a communication studies course that asks what it means to listen radically and to use listening to activate and transform the social field. This course will be offered in the Fall semester of 2018.
Megan Dobro (NS) will be teaching “Plasmodium Symposium/Modeling & Microscopes” a course that uses local slime mold to model global economic and political challenges, connected to philosophy and in partnership with the Library Gallery. This is an augmented course that will be offered in the Fall semester of 2017.
Rachel Conrad (CSI) will be teaching “Children’s Rights”, a tutorial investigating the rights of children through the lens of childhood studies, culminating in a collaborative book making project with children at the Early Learning Center. This is an augmented course for entering first-year students that will be offered in the Fall semester of 2017.
Jana Silver (IA), Sarah Partan (CS), and Seeta Sistla (NS) will be co-teaching the course “Innovations for Change: Innovating for the Future”. This course connects students with thinkers and scholars exploring the challenge of climate change, and invites them to bring sustainable practices into their own lives. This is an augmented course that will be offered in the Fall semester of 2017.
Sarah Rafferty (HACU) will be teaching “Ethics in Art Making”, a course that examines the ethical responsibility of the artist beyond “self-expression” and “craftsmanship”. Students will explore ethical considerations involved in making art, living life as an artist, and displaying and viewing art.
Tim Zimmerman (CS) will be teaching “Environmental Education: Foundation and Inquiries”, this course is a critical inquiry into the field and practices of environmental education, and will be expanded to include materials examining nature as a commons. This is an augmented course that will be offered in the Fall semester of 2017.
Lexx Cespedes 16F shares their community-engaged research methods and reflections on creating an original children’s literature series focused on union families, children’s nuanced understandings of labor, and recent histories of organizing in the Northeast.
by Samuel Edwards, 15S For my summer internship funded through the Ethics and the Common Good Internship Grant, I worked at the Sexual Minorities Archives. The Sexual Minorities Archives is an archive based in Holyoke, Massachusetts that works on preserving LGBTQI+ history, as well as making this knowledge available to the public. A large part […]
By Sabina Paneva, 14F In the summer of 2017, I was awarded a Summer Internship Grant from Ethics and the Common Good to develop my Division III research on holocaust education and present my work at the Mali Losinj Days of Bioethics Conference in Croatia. The annual international conference has become one of the most […]