Plenary Lecture 2026: Radical Organizing and Performance in Envisioning Change

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Thursday October 8, 2026
5:00 - 6:00 p.m.
Student Union Ballroom

Commonwealth Honors College's Plenary Lecture on Justice and Community is an annual event that features thought leaders from across the spectrum of UMass Amherst faculty. The lecture is also connected to the Honors course “Ideas That Change the World.”

The Fall 2026 Plenary Lecture will be held on Thursday, October 8, at 5 p.m. at the Student Union Ballroom. Irene Mata, Ph.D., professor of American studies at Wellesley College., will deliver the lecture.

Mata's work blends literature and popular culture to investigate how women of color, particularly immigrant women and their labor, are represented in contemporary cultural productions. Her book, Domestic Disturbances: Re-Imagining Narratives of Gender, Labor, and Immigration, examines the treatment of the traditional immigrant narrative in popular culture by reading Chicana/Latina-produced texts through a new interpretation of the immigrant paradigm. The work proposes a new framework for understanding immigrant and migrant stories as a specific Latina genealogy rather than a continuation of existing literary traditions, one that more closely engages with contemporary conditions of immigration.

Cosponsored by Phi Kappa Phi.