The Harkin Institute is excited to announce this Spring’s Sussman Lecture, “Pain and Politics in the Heart of America” with Dr. Jennifer Silva. Dr. Silva will discuss the economic, social, and cultural challenges currently facing America’s working class and how those challenges have impacted the ability of the working class to achieve the American Dream. Dr. Silva has written two books surrounding these topics, Coming Up Short: Working-Class Adulthood in an Age of Uncertainty and We’re Still Here: Pain and Politics in the Heart of America. In Coming Up Short, Dr. Silva conducted one hundred interviews with working class residents in two towns-Lowell, Massachusetts, and Richmond, Virginia, and shed light on their experience of heightened economic insecurity, deepening inequality, and uncertainty about marriage and family. In We’re Still Here, Dr. Silva conducted more than a hundred interviews of Black, white, and Latino working-class residents of a declining coal town in Pennsylvania to examine the civic and political disengagement of working-class people.
Date: March 6, 2024
Time: 7:00-8:00 p.m. CT
Location: Tom and Ruth Harkin Center (2800 University Ave., Des Moines, IA 50311)
YouTube Live Stream on The Harkin Institute’s YouTube Channel
Registration: This event is free and open to the public but registration via Eventbrite is required.
Accomodations: American Sign Language (ASL) and Live Captioning (CART) will be provided for both in person and virtual attendees. Additional accomodation requests can be made by emailing harkininstitute@drake.edu.
— Kathryn Kuckelman, Harkin Institute