(All lectures are free to the Penn State Community and the public.)

Please remember to register for each lecture separately using the links below. All in-person lectures will take place at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) located at: 100 Innovation Blvd., Outreach Building, Rooms 121 G&H, University Park, PA 16802.

The spring schedule for the series is as follows:

March

Bridewealth Payments in Ghana: Marriage Prestations and Women’s Marital Autonomy

March 27, 2026
2:30 – 4:00 p.m., In Person and via Zoom

This talk will provide the conceptual background for bridewealth payments, payments associated with marriage in many sub-Saharan African settings, and argue that it is precisely such payments that undercut women’s sexual and reproductive autonomy within marriage.

Instructor: Francis Dodoo, Academy Professor and Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Sociology, Demography & African Studies. Dr. Dodoo has worked in the areas of gender, power, and sexual decision making; demographic and health outcomes associated with urban poverty; and inequality among Africans in the diaspora. He continues to write on bridewealth payments and women’s sexual and reproductive autonomy in sub-Saharan Africa, as well as on urban poverty and health issues in the region.

Location: Penn State Outreach Building, Rooms 121 G&H, 100 Innovation Blvd., University Park, or Online via Zoom
View the Recording: https://psu.mediaspace.kaltura.com/media/1_h6gmd0w8

April

Recovering Lost Voices: Yiddish Women’s Literature in Translation

April 27, 2026
2:00 – 3:30 p.m., In Person and via Zoom

Just as feminists took upon themselves the goal to recover lost writing by earlier women authors, so Jewish women academics in the 1990s undertook to discover their own lost “treasures,” writing by their Jewish women forebearers that was unknown, untranslated, and unpublished in book form. A trove of translated novels, stories and poetry is the result of their efforts. This lecture will introduce the audience to the lives and literature of several of these recovered Yiddish writers. What can we gain from this literature? Insight into different worlds of commune, shtetl and ghetto; the pleasure of reading a newly discovered body of literature; and most of all, the satisfaction of viewing female characters (represented by women authors) as people with complex identities and resilient natures.

Instructor:  Dr. Lois Rubin, Emeritus Associate Professor of English at Penn State New Kensington, taught literature and composition there for thirty-one years. She also published articles on women writers and edited and contributed to the collection, Connections and Collisions: Identities in Contemporary Jewish-American Women’s Writing. Since retiring, she has taught literature courses for OLLI’s at the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie-Mellon University. In 2024, a grant from the Pitt Jewish Studies Department enabled her to study women writers at the YIVO Archives in New York.

Location: Penn State Outreach Building, Rooms 121 G&H, 100 Innovation Blvd., University Park, or Online via Zoom
View the Recording: https://psu.mediaspace.kaltura.com/media/1_gptnabk0

We invite the Penn State community and the public to join us for these thought-provoking discussions as part of our ongoing commitment to academic engagement and the exchange of ideas.