UNH Today

For the past eight years, the Souhegan High School Ethics Forum has taken the lead on organizing the statewide conference HYPE (Hosting Young Philosophy Enthusiasts), founded by SHS Ethics Forum students in 2009. More than 700 high school students attended the 2015 conference held at UNH Durham and as many as 1,000 students from New Hampshire and northern New England are anticipated for HYPE 2016.

The day of student-led Socratic discussion will be held at UNH Durham on Thursday March 17, 2016. HYPE 2016 will center on the issue of freedom of expression and will feature three Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonists and two scholars who will offer their insights on "Can't Take a Joke? The Transformative and Incendiary Power of the Editorial Cartoon." (Read more about the Hype Panelists.)

HYPE 2016 is being offered in partnership with New Hampshire Humanities as part of the Pulitzer Prizes Centennial Campfires Initiative, a joint venture of the Pulitzer Prizes Board and the Federation of State Humanities Council in celebration of the 2016 centennial of the Prizes. The initiative seeks to illuminate the impact of journalism and the humanities on American life today, to imagine their future and to inspire new generations to consider the values represented by the body of Pulitzer Prize-winning work.

HYPE has inspired high school students all over New England, allowing them to participate in Socratic seminars that promote leadership and ethics-based conversations within the framework of philosophical inquiry. Two years ago, the Forum was awarded a renewable prestigious RGSCP (Responsible Governance and Sustainability Citizenship Project) Grant from UNH Durham to fund HYPE. This grant has led to the UNH philosophy department's support of the Ethics Forum and the use of UNH Durham's campus each year. It has also led to the affiliation of HYPE with UNH's emerging summer philosophy program called FLI or The Future Leaders Institute.

Associate professor of communication Jennifer Borda has co-edited a collection of essays about the motherhood industry.

"The Motherhood Business: Consumption, Communication & Privilege" follows the harried mother’s path into the anxious maelstrom of intelligent toys, healthy foods and meals, and educational choices. It also traces how some enterprising mothers leverage cultural capital and rhetorical vision to create thriving baby- and child-based businesses of their own, as evidenced by the rise of mommy bloggers and “mompreneurs”over the last decade. Starting with the rapidly expanding global fertility market, "The Motherhood Business" explores the intersection of motherhood, consumption and privilege in the context of fertility tourism, international adoption and transnational surrogacy. The synergy between motherhood and the marketplace demonstrated across the essays affirms the stronghold of “intensive mothering ideology” in decisions over what mothers buy and how they brand their businesses even as that ideology evolves. Across diverse contexts, the volume also identifies how different forms or privilege shape how mothers construct their identities through their consumption and entrepreneurship.

Borda specializes in rhetoric, feminist studies and democratic deliberation. She is author of "Women Labor Activists in the Movies: Nine Depictions of Workplace Organizers, 1954-2005" (McFarland Publishers, 2010).

More information about the book can be found at the publisher's website.