Department of Political Science

J. Toscano, of Backstory Strategies, has been devising strategy and cutting TV and digital ads for candidates, party committees, and public interest groups for more than 20 years. He’s helped elect members of Congress like progressive firebrand Pramila Jayapal, Dr. Kim Schrier, House impeachment manager Sylvia Garcia and Steven Horsford, the first Black member of Congress in Nevada history. He’s worked with VoteVets, the League of Conservation Voters, and other groups to elect patriots and environmental champions to Congress. Prior to becoming a political consultant, Toscano, a Connecticut native, served as the Communications Director for the House Democratic Caucus and as the Director of Public Affairs for Americorps during the Clinton Administration.

About This Event

Around the world children born to migrant parents with precarious status face difficulties obtaining birth certificates, and may become stateless as a result. This has important implications for migrant families’ economic and social rights. Conversely, points of access to social and economic rights are often the very sites where migrant families’ exclusion from birth registration becomes apparent. Nevertheless, global campaigns to achieve “legal identity for all” in pursuit of the SDG target 16.9 promote the linkage of birth registration with social welfare entitlements or health service delivery. How might such ‘good practices’ have negative outcomes for migrant families? And what would inclusive and non-discriminatory birth registration look like?

Dr. Allison Petrozziello will join us virtually from Toronto Metropolitan University to discuss selected findings from her dissertation (and forthcoming book) Birth Registration as Bordering Practice, which garnered the International Studies Association-Human Rights section’s 2024 Best Dissertation Award.

While our guest speaker will join us virtually, we welcome you to join us on UConn’s campus in Dodd 162, or online via Zoom. 

About Our Guest

Allison Petrozziello

Assistant Professor, Toronto Metropolitan University

Allison Petrozziello is Assistant Professor of Global Migration & Inequality at Toronto Metropolitan University. Dr. Petrozziello is a global governance scholar specialized in gender and human-rights based approaches to the governance of migration and citizenship. Her academic work builds on over 15 years of experience in international research, teaching, and policy advocacy work, mostly in Latin America and the Caribbean, with stakeholders ranging from grassroots organizations to policymakers to the United Nations. She has consulted for UN Women, the International Labour Organization (ILO), Inter-American Development Bank, and the Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID), among others. At TMU, she teaches courses in comparative and global politics for undergraduate programs in the Department of Politics and Public Administration as well as the PhD program in Policy Studies.

Join Saxaphonist and historian Ben Barson as he talks with Center for Popular Music director Jeffrey Ogbar about his new book, “Brassroots Democracy,” which recasts the birth of jazz, unearthing vibrant narratives of New Orleans musicians to reveal how early jazz was inextricably tied to the mass mobilization of freedpeople during Reconstruction and the decades that followed.

https://www.benbarsonmusic.com 

UConn Political Science faculty debrief on the 2024 Election Results to discuss implications for policy and politics in the next administration. After a brief roundtable discussion, students and members of the broader University community are invited to ask questions and participate in discussion.

Joseph Brown (UMass-Boston). Social movements mobilize to fight climate change, water pollution, and biodiversity loss with a variety of direct action tactics. What is the best way to understand these campaigns? This book argues that the “environmental” framework fails to capture the importance of race and Indigenous sovereignty in intersectional “environmental justice” movements. The importance of intersectionality emerges in months of participant observation fieldwork inside Atlanta’s Stop Cop City movement and the Wet’suwet’en Nation’s resistance to the Coastal GasLink pipeline. Dozens of interviews illuminate the political and social pathways to direct action, as well as the controversies that arise over strategy and tactics. Given its “insider” research approach, the book sheds light on the subjective experience of direct action, including the highs and lows, triumphs and traumas, hopes and fears of those engaged in frontline environmental justice struggle.