March 31, 2008
In this issue
- Coming up at the Mershon Center
- Other events
- Gee encourages students to study abroad
- Featured organization: Council on Foreign Relations
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Thursday, April 3, 2008
Fawaz Gerges
"The Future of Islamist Militancy: A Theoretical and Historical Footnote"
Noon, Mershon Center for International Security Studies, 1501 Neil Ave.
Fawaz Gerges is Christian A. Johnson Chair in International Affairs and Arab and Muslim Politics at Sarah Lawrence College in New York. His interests include Islam and the political process, jihadist movements, Arab and Muslim politics, American foreign policy toward the Muslim world, the modern history of the Middle East, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and history of conflict, diplomacy and foreign policy. Educated at Oxford University and the London School of Economics, Gerges has taught at Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, and Oxford. He is author of Journey of the Jihadist: Inside Muslim Militancy (Harcourt, 2007) and The Far Enemy: Why Jihad Went Global (Cambridge, 2005). Gerges has given hundreds of interviews for media outlets throughout the world, including ABC, CNN, BBC, PBS, CBS, NPR, CBC, and Al Jazeera.
Read more and
RSVP
Friday, April 4, 2008
Richard Bauman
"'It’s Not a Telescope, It’s a Telephone': Encounters with the Telephone on Early Commercial Sound Recordings"
3:30 p.m., Mershon Center for International Security Studies, 1501 Neil Ave.
Richard Bauman is Distinguished Professor of Folklore and Ethnomusicology, Communication & Culture, and Anthropology at Indiana University in Bloomington. He is an eclectic scholar, with degrees in English (B.A., Michigan, 1961), Folklore (M.A., Indiana, 1962), Anthropology (M.S., Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania), and American Civilization (Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania, 1968), and his scholarly contributions have transcended conventional academic boundaries. Best known for his theoretical and methodological contributions to the ethnographic study of language and performance, Bauman's scholarship has had an impact on the development of a number of intersecting fields of study, including, folklore, anthropology, history, linguistics, semiotics, and speech communication. His writings have been widely reprinted and translated, and he has lectured at scholarly institutions in South America, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia.
Read more and
RSVP
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Shireen Hunter
"Islam and Democracy: Are They Compatible?"
Noon, Mershon Center for International Security Studies, 1501 Neil Ave.
Shireen Hunter is a Visiting Professor at Georgetown University and Distinguished Scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, with which she has been associated since 1983. Her areas of expertise include the Middle East (especially the Persian Gulf region), the Mediterranean, Russia, Central Asia, and the Caucasus (North and South), and she has done extensive work on North-South relations, energy (Persian Gulf, Caucasus, Central Asia), developing-country issues (political, social, economic, security), and Islam (Russia, Europe, the United States). Hunter is author or editor of 19 books and monographs, including Reformist Voices of Islam: Mediating Religion and Modernity (M.E. Sharpe, June 2008); Islam and Human Rights: Advancing a U.S.-Muslim Dialogue (CSIS, 2005); Modernization, Democracy and Islam (Praeger, 2005); Islam in Russia: the Politics of Identity and Security (M. E. Sharpe, 2004); and Strategic Development in Eurasia After September 11 (Frank Cass, 2003). Read more and
RSVP
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Ussama Makdisi
"Anti-Americanism in the Arab World: A Brief History"
Noon, Mershon Center for International Security Studies, 1501 Neil Ave.
Ussama Makdisi is an Associate Professor of History and the first holder of the Arab-American Educational Foundation Chair of Arab Studies at Rice University. He is author of The Culture of Sectarianism: Community, History, and Violence in Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Lebanon (California, 2000), as well as "Anti-Americanism in the Arab World: An Interpretation of Brief History" which appeared in the Journal of American History and "Ottoman Orientalism" and "Reclaiming the Land of the Bible: Missionaries, Secularism, and Evangelical Modernity" both of which appeared in the American Historical Review. His current research focuses on American missionaries in the Middle East.
Read more and
RSVP
Friday-Saturday, April 18-19, 2008
Conference
Cold War as the Periphery
Mershon Center for International Security Studies, 1501 Neil Ave.
Cold War as the Periphery will explore how the "diffusion of power" from Washington and Moscow toward the developing world transformed global politics in the 1960s and beyond. Bringing together graduate students and junior faculty, it will examine the connections between three broad conceptual questions: How did the political and material terrain of the pan-European world change during this period? How did actors inside and outside government bureaucracies interpret and value these changes? How did geopolitical "flashpoints" in the global South rally, reflect, and reconstitute understandings of global power after 1960? Read more and RSVP
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Silence Broken: Korean Comfort Women
Film screening and discussion with the filmmaker Dai Sil Kim-Gibson
6:30 p.m., 180 Hagerty Hall, 1775 College Road
Sponsored by the East Asian Studies Center
Dai Sil Kim-Gibson combines historical footage, interviews, and dramatic reenactments to tell the true story of Korean women forced to work as prostitutes for the Japanese Army during World War II in the film Silence Broken: Korean Comfort Women. The Imperial Army lured more than 200,000 Korean women into forced sexual labor, often by claiming they were hiring teenage girls for high-paying factory jobs; the women who responded were taken without consent and put to work against their will as "comfort women." Little evidence of this scandal existed until recently, as the Japanese government destroyed nearly all documentation pertaining to it. But, in 1991, several aging "comfort women" came forward to tell their side of the story and present whatever documentation they possessed. The first part of this film features interviews with several survivors of this tragedy, while the second half is a dramatic reenactment of the stories of three of these women being forced into prostitution.
The Ohio State University offers more than 100 study abroad programs in 40 different countries, and close to 20 percent of undergraduates have a study abroad experience before they graduate. In a recent issue of Currents, published by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education, an article by Ohio State President E. Gordon Gee takes a look at why an international experience should be "an essential element of every student's education." Read his column "A New International Identity: Why every student should go abroad" (pdf).
The Council on Foreign Relations is an independent think tank, working for more than 80 years to provide resources for public officials and other leading citizens, in an effort to create a better understanding of the world and its relationship with U.S. foreign policies.
To support its mission, the council issues special reports to evaluate developing conflicts, engages the U.S. government and news media in conflict prevention efforts, holds discussions between civic leaders, and sponsors independent task forces assigned to work on the most pressing international security issues. Its president is Richard N. Haas, a former advisor to Secretary of State Colin Powell, and author or editor of 10 books on U.S. foreign policy.
Part of the council includes the Center for Preventative Action (CPA) which helps to prevent, defuse, or resolve conflicts around the world and expand the body of knowledge on conflict prevention. The CPA is directed by Paul Stares, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Stares' experience has focused on northeast Asian security issues and U.S. counter-terrorism policy.
For educators, the council offers conference calls addressing foreign policy issues. For example, on April 10, at noon a conference call will discuss an "Update on the Global Economy." The speaker will be Sebastian Mallaby, director of the council's Maurice R. Greenberg Center for Geoeconomic Studies, which works to promote a better understanding of how economic and political forces interact to influence world affairs.
As part of its role as a think tank, the Council on Foreign Relations is a leading publisher on U.S. foreign policies and international affairs, producing the internationally distributed magazine Foreign Affairs.
For more information, visit http://www.cfr.org.
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