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In Memory of STPEC Founder Robert Paul Wolff

The Social Thought and Political Economy program mourns the loss of our founding Director, Robert Paul Wolff, an emeritus UMass Professor. He passed away on January 6th, 2025. He was 91 years old.

Professor Wolff developed the STPEC program in 1972, modeling it off of a similar interdisciplinary undergraduate major at Harvard University for which he had been the first head tutor. As originally conceived, STPEC would task students with taking a combination of courses in the humanities and social sciences, capped by a series of junior and senior seminars. Professor Wolff co-taught the first of

January 9, 2025
Keywords for Decolonization
Melanie Yazzie

Keywords for Decolonization : A lecture with Dr. Melanie Yazzie

November 12, 2024 5-7pm

Integrative Learning Center, S131

 Melanie Yazzie (Diné) is Assistant Professor of American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities and coauthor of Red Nation Rising: From Bordertown Violence to Native Liberation and The Red Deal: Indigenous Action to Save the Earth, both of which came out in 2021. She co-hosts the podcast Red Power Hour, which is produced by Red Media, a Native-led media organization she co-founded. She also organizes with The Red Nation, a grassroots Native-run

November 12, 2024
Bread and Puppet Theater Presents The Hope Principle Show: Citizens' Shame and Hope in the Time of Genocide
Puppets dressed in dark clothing. Background includes white cloth panels with painted black trees on them.

Bread and Puppet is a world-renowned anti-capitalist theater company that has performed with their signature puppets for 61 years. It is one of the oldest street and protest theater companies in the world. The troupe will perform:  The Hope Principle Show: Citizens’ Shame and Hope in the Time of Genocide.

April 19, 2024
War on the Reproduction of Life: Palestine and Beyond. A Lecture with Silvia Federici
Black and white photo of Silvia Federici

Please join the Social Thought and Political Economy Program for a lecture with Silvia Federici. Professor Federici is a world-renowned Italian-American philosopher, teacher, and activist from the radical autonomist feminist Marxist tradition. She is the Co-Founder of the International Feminist Collective, the Committee for Academic Freedom in Africa, and the International Wages for Housework Campaign organizer. She has written several influential works, including Caliban and the Witch; Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction, and Feminist Struggle; Re-Enchanting the World

April 18, 2024
“History Doesn’t Repeat Itself But It Rhymes”: The Black Scare/Red Scare
Photo of Author and Professor Charisse Burden Stelly

Dr. Charisse Burden-Stelly is an Associate Professor of African American Studies at Wayne State University and a 2023-2024 Visiting Scholar at the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History at Harvard University. She is the author of Black Scare/Red Scare: Theorizing Capitalist Racism in the United States, the co-author of W.E.B. Du Bois: A Life in American History, and the co-editor of Organize, Fight, Win: Black Communist Women’s Political Writings and of Reproducing Domination: On the Caribbean Postcolonial State. Dr. Burden-Stelly has published in peer-reviewed journals

April 9, 2024
The Streets, Social Movements, Unions and Congress Fighting the Hard Right in Argentina
Person pushing police shield. Group of protesters with signs are standing behind them.

Join the Social Thought and Political Economy program for a panel discussion with “Chipi” Castillo: Province of Buenos Aires Representative, Myriam Bregman: City of Buenos Aires representative, Nicolas del Caño: Province of Mendoza Representative, and Alejandro Vilca: Province of Jujuy representative.  Kevin Young from the UMass Department of History and Graciela Monteagudo from the Social Thought and Political Economy Program will moderate. 

March 27, 2024
Pushed to the Brink of a Wider War: The Implications of the Current Middle East Crisis: A Teach-In with Omar Dahi
Aerial view of the aftermath of an explosion. People walk around the rubble.

Omar S. Dahi, is a professor of economics at Hampshire College as well as a research associate at the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is the founding director of Security in Context, a research network on peace, conflict, and international affairs. He has published in academic outlets such as the Journal of Development Economics and Applied Economics, Southern Economic Journal, Political Geography, Middle East Report, Forced Migration Review, and Critical Studies on Security. His last book was South-South Trade and Finance in the 21st

November 7, 2023
STPEC Welcomes Professor Toussaint Losier as New Program Director
Professor Toussaint Losier wearing a blue sweater, standing in front of a podium.

We are excited to announce that Professor Toussaint Losier will be the new Director of STPEC. Dr. Toussaint Losier is an Associate Professor in the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies. Dr. Losier holds a Ph.D. in History from the University of Chicago, with his research focusing on grassroots responses to the postwar emergence of mass incarceration in Chicago. At the UMass Amherst, he teaches courses on African American History, Black Politics, Criminal Justice policy, and transnational social movements. His writing has been published in Souls, Radical History Review, The

September 1, 2023
Strike Ready Educators: A Strike Panel
A graphic of a lightning bolt striking the top of a school building.

Join us for a panel on organizing for strikes. Hear from educators from Haverhill and Malden who organized successful strikes. Learn about the fight for the right to strike. Learn about organizing for power and solidarity, overcoming fear, and sustaining strength during a strike. 

May 11, 2023

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