T.O.P. Fall 2009 Program

Current Program

Announcements, Fall 2010 & Spring 2011

TOP is seeking a new Coordinator.
TOP needs an energetic, innovative and caring person to grow the organization’s reach and influence while ensuring the ongoing success of its lecture series.

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Announcements

Planning next Fall's series, "Change, Power and Resilience"
Check out the progress so far! Think about who would be good speakers? — We need several suggestions for each topic. Planning takes place on Thursdays from 10am to 3pm at Liz's and David's in Wellesley.

...more Announcements

TOP's Blog, written by Cheryl Suchors

TOP of My Mind

What World Are We Living In?
As I’m sure you've heard, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts just voted against Ted Kennedy’s health care reform and all of his lifelong values to elect a white Republican male nobody knows to sit in his seat for the next two years, longer if he’s re-elected.
Okay, I volunteered for Martha Coakley. I gave her money. She’s a great person and a strong, experienced public servant. To the extent that Massachusetts seems unable to elect a woman to our highest state and federal offices, this is about the Attorney General. She and her campaign made mistakes, as did Brown and every other candidate who’s ever run for office. We just don’t forgive any mistakes from a woman candidate in Massachusetts.
Mostly, though, this election is about the voters of the Commonwealth. With whom, frankly, I am disgusted. ...more

What Made Me a Feminist
For the next few weeks, while the TOP lecture series takes a vacation, I'll be running a series of stories from people of various parts of the country and of various ages telling us how and when they became feminists. Check out the latest installments by clicking on the TOP of My Mind link! —Cheryl Suchors

CLUB FEMINISM — Joining the Club My feminist journey began with a cliché.
When I was a freshman at Boston College, I took Intro to Feminism, learned about the myriad injustices facing women today (We only make 80 cents to the male dollar!? Are you serious, professor?) and was forever changed. I declared sociology as my major, became involved in feminist activities on campus, and began volunteering for progressive political campaigns. Since that first college course, my life has more or less revolved around fighting for feminist change.
The political climate at the time was extremely discouraging for women's rights activists. I began college two years after the attacks of September 11, a period in which George W. Bush held a lot of political capital. ...
— Katherine from the West ...more

THE YEAR I BECAME A FEMINIST — It Happened in '69 You were alive in the fifties? My son can’t merge this information with his view of me. I think he’s considering how long I’ve lived and how little time I must have left. To my kids, my birth date sounds impossibly distant. I am ancient. Yes, I say, I used to sing Whistle while you work, Stevenson’s a jerk in the “way back,” the cargo section of the station wagon, during the Adlai Stevenson/Eisenhower presidential campaign. My son is horrified. You were a Republican? My parents, I explain. ...more

A Gradual Turning to Feminism I I read Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex in college and started to realize the emptiness of women's lives, but I think my conversion to feminism has been gradual, reinforced by each brick wall I encounter in the male-dominated world. ...more

A Gradual Turning to Feminism II I was born in 1950, so my whole teenage experience—which included feminism—took place during the 1960s. I was 13 when the Beatles were on the Ed Sullivan show. Martin Luther King was shot the day before my 18th birthday. I was a sophomore at Oberlin College in Ohio when the student protestors were shot at Kent State. Kent State students whose friends had died cried into microphones at the mass meeting on the Oberlin campus as we voted to strike. ...more

The Moment I Became A Feminist For nineteen years I was obedient to my parents’ values and strictures, which were legion, and pretty well-behaved, except for a tendency to whisper in class. ...more

Misconstrued Once Again
Since my blog post of November 10, 2009, I’ve been pondering feminism. Even today some young women, when they hear the term “feminist” think: hairy, bra-burning, man-hating, fat, radical, and lesbian.
I know this because these words came up in a recent workshop held at Lesley University right here in liberal Cambridge, MA. The young women involved weren’t even born when such terms were first applied to the Second Wave of feminists, yet these misperceptions live on. ...more

Forget Remaining Centered
What was my favorite line of Anne Yeoman’s lecture? In response to our topic, “What Kind of Spiritual Core Do We Need to Remain Centered in This Time of Anxiety,” she blew away the notion that anyone could remain centered.
“Forget remaining centered,” she said. “It’s about centering—finding our core, losing it, and coming back.” She likened it to learning to walk. One takes a step or two, loses balance, perhaps falls down; then gets up and takes another step. With centering, the emphasis is on the process, the continuing effort, rather than on the goal of some static state of centeredness.
That was good to hear. ...more

The Illusion and Reality of Control
Theological Opportunities Program - Thursday Half-Day Conferences

March 11, 2010 - 10:00AM, at University Lutheran

LIVING IN THE ILLUSION THAT WE HAVE PLENTY OF TIME: MAKING THE MOST OF NOW

Setting the issue: Emily Robertson*
Lecture by Janet Cooper Nelson, chaplain, Brown University

March 18, 2010 - 10:00AM, at University Lutheran

OUR BODIES/OURSELVES: WHO CONTROLS OUR HEALING?

Setting the issue: Claudette Lecomte*
Lecture by Julie Silver, assistant professor Harvard Medical School, author of Super Healing

March 25 , 2010 - 10:00AM, at University Lutheran

VISIBLE OR INVISIBLE — THE POWER OF PATERFAMILIAS: THE ORIGINS OF PATRIARCHY

Setting the issue: Nancy Hurlbut*
Lecture by Richard Wrangham, department of Human Evolutionary Biology, Ruth Moore Professor of Biological Anthropology, Harvard University, author of Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human

April 1, 2010 - NO TOP—Church unavailable because of a noon service for Maundy Thursday

April 8, 2010 - 10:00AM, at University Lutheran

DISPOSABLE WOMEN AND CHILDREN: WHY CAN'T WE CONTROL SEXUAL TRAFFICKING? WHO BENEFITS?

Setting the issue: Lisa Goldblatt Grace, director, My Life My Choice Project of the Justice Resource Institute
Lecture by Donna Hughes, professor, Women's Studies Program, University of Rhode Island, co-author of the report Sex Trafficking of Women in the United States

April 15, 2010 - 10:00AM, at University Lutheran

CONTROL IN INTIMATE RELATIONSHIPS: A NOVEL OF DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

Setting the issue: Judith Cohen*
Lecture by Allan Johnson, sociologist and author of Privilege, Power, and Difference and The Gender Knot: Unraveling Our Patriarchal Legacy plus his new novel, The First Thing and the Last

April 22, 2010 - 10:00AM, at University Lutheran

HOW HAS MASCULINIZED THINKING IN SCIENCE AFFECTED ALL OF US AS WOMEN

Setting the issue: Cynthia Gilles*
Lecture by Cassandra Extavour, assistant professor in Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University

April 29, 2010 - 10:00AM, at University Lutheran

MARKETING GIRLHOOD: SELLING OUT OUR DAUGHTERS AND GRANDDAUGHTERS

Setting the issue: Lindsa Vallee*
Lecture by Lyn Mikel Brown, professor of Education and Human Development at Colby College, Maine, author of Raising their Voices—The Politics of Girls' Anger, Girlfighting—Betrayal and Rejection among Girls, and Packaging Girlhood—Rescuing Our Daughters

May 6, 2010 -10:00AM, at University Lutheran

WHOSE COUNTRY IS IT?: WHAT ARE THE ALTERNATIVES TO CORPORATE CONTROL?

Setting the issue: Patricia Morris*
Lecture by Mary Zepernick , Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy

May 13, 2010 - 10:00AM, at University Lutheran

WHO CONTROLS THE RESOURCES?: POPULATION, ENVIRONMENT and CONFLICT

Setting the issue: Sandra Schonbrun Wayne*
Lecture by Nazli Choucri, professor of Political Science, MIT, author with Robert C. North of Nations in Conflict: National Growth and International Violence and editor of Global Accord: Environmental Challenges and International Responses

May 20, 2010 - 10:00AM, at University Lutheran

LETTING GO AND FINDING A NEW IDENTITY: A SURVIVAL SKILL AS WE AGE

Setting the issue: Anna Donovan*
Lecture by Anne Fabiny, assistant professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, chief of Geriatric Medicine, Cambridge Health Alliance

*- Advisory Committee member

Thursdays 10AM-12:30PM at University Lutheran Church, 66 Winthrop St, Cambridge MA - just east of JFK St near the Kennedy School of Government.
To register for the series or for more info: TOP, 4 Linden Sq, Wellesley MA 02482 • 781-235-5320

Click here for printable version (pdf) of the Spring 2010 series

9th December 2009 • TOP, 4 Linden Sq, Wellesley MA 02482 • 781-235-5320