April 28, 2008
In this issue
- Coming up at the Mershon Center
- Other events
- Chinese Olympics photos on display in Oxley Hall
- Featured organization: Center on Public Diplomacy
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Thursday, May 1, 2008
Fred Lawson
"Syria's Muslim Brothers: Shifting Fortunes, Changing Platforms"
Noon, Mershon Center for International Security Studies, 1501 Neil Ave.
Fred Lawson is Frederick A. Rice Professor of Government at Mills College, where he has taught international relations and Middle East politics since 1985. His interests include international relations, international political economy, politics of the Middle East and North Africa, and comparative foreign policy. Lawson is author of Constructing International Relations in the Arab World (Stanford University Press, 2006), Why Syria Goes to War (Cornell University Press, 1996), Bahrain: The Modernization of Autocracy (Westview Press, 1989) and other studies of political economy and foreign policy in the contemporary Middle East. Read more and RSVP
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
M.J. Peterson
"The Flows of Authority in Intergovernmental Organizations"
Noon, Mershon Center for International Security Studies, 1501 Neil Ave.
M.J. Peterson is Professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. Her interests include world politics, international institutions, international political economy, and technology and technological change. Peterson is author of International Regimes for the Final Frontier (2005), The UN General Assembly (2005), Recognition of Governments: Legal Doctrine and State Practice 1815-1995 (1997), Managing the Frozen South: The Origin and Evolution of the Antarctic Treaty System (1988), The General Assembly in World Politics (1986), and other articles and chapters. Read more and RSVP
Friday, May 9, 2008
Maud Mandel
"'Each Algerian Must Feel Palestinian': 1967, 1968, and Muslim/Jewish Relations in France"
Noon, Mershon Center for International Security Studies, 1501 Neil Ave.
Maud Mandel is Associate Professor of History and Judaic Studies at Brown University. She specializes in modern Jewish history and has focused particularly on the 20th-century French Jewish experience. Mandel is author of In the Aftermath of Genocide: Armenians and Jews in Twentieth Century France (Duke University Press, 2003). Her current book project, Beyond Antisemitism: Muslims and Jews in Contemporary France, has been awarded an advance contract by Princeton University Press. Her most recent article, "Transnationalism and its Discontents during the 1948 Arab/Israeli War," appeared in Diaspora. Read more and RSVP
Monday, May 12, 2008
Layna Mosley
"Risk, Uncertainty and Autonomy: Financial Market Constraints in Developing Nations"
3:30 p.m., Mershon Center for International Security Studies, 1501 Neil Ave.
Layna Mosley is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her research examines the influence of global capital markets on government policymaking; the politics of international financial regulation; and the relationship between multinational production and labor rights in developing nations. Mosley is author of Global Capital and National Governments (Cambridge, 2003). Her articles have appeared in International Organization, International Studies Quarterly, and Comparative Political Studies, among others. This talks is part of the Mershon Center's Globalization, Institutions and Economic Security (GIES) Workshop. Read more and RSVP
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Anthony Cordesman
"The Changing Nature of the Afghan-Pakistan War"
Noon, Mershon Center for International Security Studies, 1501 Neil Ave.
Anthony Cordesman holds the Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He is also a national security analyst for ABC News. His analysis has been featured prominently during the Gulf War, Desert Fox, the conflict in Kosovo, the fighting in Afghanistan, and the Iraq War. During his time at CSIS, Cordesman has been director of the Gulf Net Assessment Project and the Gulf in Transition Study, and principal investigator of the Homeland Defense Project. He also directed the Middle East Net Assessment Project and was co-director of the Strategic Energy Initiative. Cordesman formerly served as national security assistant to Sen. John McCain, as director of intelligence assessment in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and as civilian assistant to the deputy secretary of defense. Cordesman is author of more than 50 books, including a four-volume series on the lessons of modern war. Read more and RSVP
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Amaney Jamal
"Barriers to Democracy: The Other Side of Social Capital in Palestine and the Arab World"
Noon, Mershon Center for International Security Studies, 1501 Neil Ave.
Amaney Jamal is Assistant Professor of Politics at Princeton University. Her current research focuses on democratization and the politics of civic engagement in the Arab World, as well as the study of Muslim and Arab Americans in the United States. Jamal has two books: Barriers to Democracy: The Other Side of Social Capital in Palestine and the Arab World (Princeton, 2007), which explores the role of civic associations in promoting democratic effects in the Arab World; and Race and Arab Americans after 9-11: From Invisible Citizens to Visible Subjects (Syracuse, 2007), which looks at the patterns and influences of Arab American racialization processes. Jamal is currently writing a third book on patterns of citizenship in the Arab world. Read more and RSVP
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Lynn Schofield Clark
"Religion and the Mysterious in Prime Time: Lost, Heroes and Other Myths of the Post-9/11 Era"
4:30 p.m., Wexner Center Film/Video Theater, 1871 N. High St.
Sponsored by the Center for the Study of Religion
An island of mystery and Shangri-La. Humans who can work together to save the world -- or only themselves. Men and women given second chances at life through science and time travel. These are some of the stories we enjoyed in 2007-08. What do they tell us about the popular beliefs of those in the United States today? How have these beliefs, in turn, contributed to –- or challenged -- our self-understandings as a society? Bringing together media cultural studies work on television, fan communities, and media myths with the work on popular and lived religion in religious studies and the sociology of religion, this multimedia discussion explores how people make sense of the religious, vaguely religious, sci-fi, and folkloric references in contemporary television, looking for clues as to the role television plays in our politically troubled world today. Lynn Schofield Clark is Director of the Estlow International Center for Journalism at University of Denver. For more information, contact van-kley.2@osu.edu.
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Joseph Slaughter
"Human Rights, Inc.: The World Novel, Narrative Form, and International Law"
4 p.m., 311 Denney Hall, 164 W. 17th Ave.
Sponsored by the Department of English
Joseph Slaughter, Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, will speak from his new book Human Rights, Inc.: The World Novel, Narrative Form, and International Law. Slaughter argues that the 20th century rise of the "world novel" and international human rights law are related. They share a vocabulary and a deep narrative grammar for imagining what sociologists, early theorists of the novel, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights have called "the free and full development of the human personality." International law projects an image of the human being whose life story corresponds to the classic European Bildungsroman, which gives literary form to the moral and ideological claims of human rights. Human Rights, Inc. is the recipient of this year's Rene Wellek Prize from the American Comparative Literature Association for an outstanding work in the field of literary and cultural theory. To attend, contact Wendy Hesford at hesford.1.
Monday, May 12, 2008
Kathryn D. Sullivan
"Generative Leadership: Shaping New Futures for Today's Schools"
5:30 p.m., Saxbe Auditorium, Drinko Hall, 55 W. 12th Ave.
Sponsored by the John Glenn School of Public Affairs
Kathryn D. Sullivan, Director of the Battelle Center for Mathematics & Science Education Policy at the John Glenn School of Public Affairs, will discuss the book Generative Leadership: Shaping New Futures for Today’s Schools at the 2008 Deborah Jones Merritt BookMarks Lecture. The book, by Sullivan with Karl J. Klimek and Elsie Ritzenhein, highlights a new concept of leadership that taps into an organization’s collective intelligence to produce effective solutions for today's educational needs. In addition to a 13-year career as an astronaut with NASA, Sullivan served as an oceanography officer in the U.S. Naval Reserve and was chief scientist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. After leaving NASA, Sullivan served as President and CEO of the COSI Columbus. This lecture is free and open to the public, but reservations are required. Please register online or call (614) 688-3206, ext. 3, by May 5, 2008.
Thursday, May 15, 2008
International Studies: Springing into its 65th Year
3 p.m., Reception, West Lawn of University Hall, 17th and Neil Ave.
3:30 p.m., Keynote Address, 100 Independence Hall, 1923 Neil Ave.
John Mueller, Woody Hayes Chair of National Security Studies, and author of Overblown: How Politicians and the Terrorism Industry Inflate National Security Threats, and Why We Believe Them (Free Press, 2006), will speak on "Trends in International Relations." Mueller will recount and evaluate changes in international politics and foreign policy since 1943, including the aftermath of World War II, the demise of colonialism and the idea of conquest, the Cold War's rise and eventual evaporation, the decline in international and civil war, the rise of democracy and capitalism, and the growth in wealth and life expectancy. Welcoming remarks by Richard Sisson, former provost and interim president of Ohio State.
More than 100 photos highlighting China and the upcoming Olympics will be on display in the first floor hallway and Rooms 100 and 122 of Oxley Hall, 1712 Neil Ave., from Monday, April 28, through Friday, May 2, 2008. All the photos were taken after 2000 in China by amateur and professional photographers, including some by Ohio State's own Chinese students and scholars.
The photo exhibit is sponsored by the Photography and Cinema Club and the Chinese Student and Scholar Society. For more information about the exhibit and other "Celebrate The Beijing 2008 Olympics in Ohio" activities, visit www.csssosu.org/2008.
Founded in 2003, the University of Southern California Center on Public Diplomacy supports training and research in the field of international diplomacy.
The center studies the ways American public policies affect the worldwide perception of the United States. Applying a broad definition of public diplomacy, it examines the impact of our country’s cultural trends (popular culture, sports, fashion, etc.) on U.S. foreign policy and national security. The center provides analysis on how our country's actions, in both the private and public sectors, affect the views foreigners hold about the United States.
Some of the center's current research projects include the American military and public diplomacy in Africa, the feasibility of Al-Jazeera English as a peace-provoking instrument, the development of better integration between "hard power" and "soft power" in diplomacy, and the way the media in Arab nations cover the United States.
To complement past and current research projects, the Center on Public Diplomacy hosts various events. This spring, the center will hold a roundtable discussion about the next decade of political diplomacy, and a conference on Islam and its relationship with the media and public diplomacy.
Events over the past year have focused on the public diplomacy issues involving the United States and East Asia; the current presidential candidates and their diplomatic positions; and public diplomacy in Africa, Canada, Russia, and European countries.
The Center on Public Diplomacy has opportunities for students and faculty to work as interns and researchers. It is currently seeking a new director to help facilitate its continued growth.
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