Perspective Online

Psychology Department Hosts Annual Jim Klee Forum

by Shay Carr

The annual Jim Klee Forum was hosted by UWG’s Psychology Department on March 27 at 7:30 p.m. following the 7 p.m. reception. The topic was “Liberation Psychology and Feminist Participatory Action Research: Emancipatory Resources for Responding to Human Rights Violations.” Dr. Brinton Lykes, the lecturer, is a professor of community cultural psychology, associate director of the Center for Human Rights and International Justice and chair of the Department of Counseling and Applied Development and Educational Psychology at Boston College.

Psychology Department Hosts Annual Jim Klee Forum Dr. Lykes gave an eye-opening account of women’s rights around the world. She has assisted in the research, writing and publication of “Voices and Images: Mayan Ixil Women of Chajul.” To gather the information necessary for this book, she lived with 20 women who had all survived a nearly 36-year-long civil war in Chajul, Guatemala. The Ignacio Martín-Baró Fund for Mental Health and Human Rights, an organization that Dr. Lykes co-founded, sponsored the trip. The women were encouraged to not only write about their experiences, but they were given a camera to take pictures of the city, other refugees and themselves for a project they called Photovoice. This activity helped improve the women’s self-esteem and also showcased their creativity and how they handled their individual situations.

During the event, Dr. Lykes referenced many of the people who helped make the project successful, including U.S. psychologist and activist Dr. Joan Williams and Spanish psychologist Luisa Cabrera. She ended her presentation by explaining a theme she routinely emphasized to the women in Guatemala. “We in the United States have an ever present focus on the present and the future, but we often act as if the past is over and don’t recognize the critical importance for it.”

The forum is named for Jim Klee, a former UWG faculty member who helped to develop the now extensive humanistic psychology program. He was a professor at UWG from 1971 until his retirement in 1987. He died nine years later.


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