Framingham State University is pleased to announce its 2016-17 Arts & Ideas Program, which kicks off in September.

Highlights this year include a standup performance by popular actor and comedian Jimmy Tingle and a lecture by journalist Jeanne Maria Laskas, who wrote the GQ article that served as the inspiration for the movie Concussion.

Both are part of this year’s “Change the Conversation, Change the World” series, which examines different ways that groups and individuals can inaugurate change. Other speakers include award-winning poet and former prisoner Reginald Dwayne Betts, who will give a lecture entitled “The Circumference of a Prison: Youth, Race, and the Failures of the American Justice System.”

The series will kick-off on September 28^th with a lecture from Dr. Tressie McMillan Cottom, professor of Sociology at Virginia Commonwealth University, and the author of Lower Ed: How For-Profit Colleges Deepen Inequality in America.

This year’s President’s Distinguished Lecture Series features four events around the theme of “Communities and Change.” Speakers include award-winning author N.D.B. Connolly, who will give a lecture entitled “The Caribbean History of an American City: Greater Miami and the History of the Rest of Us.” Author Frances Moore Lappe will also give a lecture entitled “Food, Demoncracy and Justice – Why What We Eat Matters,” which will detail the vast waste and injustice in our food system. 

Other series in the program include the Midday Performance Series; Mazmanian Gallery exhibits; the Lifelong Learning Series; and the Authors and Artists Series.

Nearly every event in the Arts & Ideas program is free and open to the public. For more information, visit www.framingham.edu/artsandideas.