CHIASMOS: The University of Chicago International and Area Studies Multimedia Outreach Source [audio]

Displacement Week: "Chicago and the 2016 Olympics"

A talk by Larry Bennett, Political Science Department, DePaul University. Chicago is one of seven finalists seeking the designation as host city for the 2016 summer Olympic Games. Eight years in advance of the Games, several major components of the Chicago proposal have been worked out and have drawn the attention of local residents and the media. Many other parts of the Chicago Olympic plan remain unspecified at this time. Among the uncertainties associated with the Chicago Olympic bid, and ...

"Immigrant Organizations in the U.S.: Opportunities and Challenges"

A talk by Oscar Chacón, Executive Director of the National Alliance of Latin American & Caribbean Communities (NALACC). From the Katz Center for Mexican Studies.

"Imagining Inscriptions: Epigraphy and the Construction of Indian History"

A talk by Leslie Orr, University of Concordia.

"Military Inc.: Inside Pakistan's Military Economy"

A talk by Ayesha Siddiqa, Islamabad-based independent political and defence analyst and author. Pakistan has emerged as a strategic ally of the US in the 'war on terror'. It is the third largest receiver of US aid in the world, but it also serves as a breeding ground for fundamentalist groups. How long can the relationship between the US and Pakistan continue? This book shows how Pakistan is an unusual ally for the US in that it is a military state, controlled by its army. The Pakistan milita...

"Poverty and Income Inequality in Brazil"

A presentation by Ricardo Paes de Barros, University of Chicago Tinker Visiting Professor, and Researcher at the Instituto de Pesquisa Econômica Aplicada (IPEA), a public foundation linked to the Brazilian Ministry of Planning, Budget and Management. This lecture stems from a 2006 IPEA report on the "Recent Fall in Income Inequality in Brazil". This report sought to consolidate the recent and dramatic decline in income inequality in Brazil, evaluate its impact and relevance, identify its main...

"New Partnership Paradoxes in U.S.-China Relations"

Keynote Address at the 2008 China Symposium by Sun Zhe, professor of the Institute for International Studies and Director of the Center for U.S.-China Relations at Tsinghua University in Beijing. Professor Sun identifies three new "partnership paradoxes" in U.S.-China relations: Trade, Taiwan and Democracy. (1) China and the U.S. today are traversing an economic glacier of mutual interdependence and they have to depend on each other much more than either would probably choose; (2) Taiwan has ...

"Cows, Cars and Cycle-Rickshaws: The Politics of Nature on the Streets of Delhi"

A talk by Amita Baviskar, Associate Professor at the Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi University. As an embodied public sphere, city streets are sites for multiple exchanges between differently located people and things. This talk focuses on cows, cars and cycle-rickshaws as they navigate Delhi's roads, and on the people who own, use and seek to control them. All three have been the subject of strenuous efforts at regulation by courts, citizens' groups and traders' associations. Professor ...

"Till Class Do Us Part: Youth and the Politics of Waiting in India"

A talk by Craig Jeffrey from the Department of Geography at the University of Washington. From the South Asia Seminar.

"Human Rights in Mexico: Inside the Labyrinth of Drugs, Elections and Billionaires"

A talk by Sergio Aguayo, professor of political science at the Colegio de Mexico. Aguayo has been one of Mexico's leading public intellectuals and human rights advocates for the past three decades. He has been a professor of political science at the Colegio de Mexico since 1977 and was a founder of the Mexican Academy for Human Rights, the electoral reform organization Alianza Civica, and other civil society initiatives. His weekly newspaper column appears in 17 papers across Mexico and the U...

"Empire, Ethics, and the Calling of History"

A talk by Dipesh Chakrabarty, Lawrence A. Kimpton Distinguished Service Professor of History, South Asian Languages and Civilizations and the College. Part of the Nicholson Center for British Studies 2007-2008 Lecture Series, "Making the Secular: Lectures in the Formation of Knowledge".

"The Mind of the Market"

Author and psychologist Michael Shermer explains how evolution shaped the modern economy-and why people are so irrational about money. How did we make the leap from ancient hunter-gatherers to modern consumers and traders? Why do people get so emotional and irrational about bottom-line financial and business decisions? Is the capitalist marketplace a sort of Darwinian organism, evolved through natural selection as the fittest way to satisfy our needs?

"'Bhadralok Detenus': Prisons and Detention Camps in Interwar Bengal"

A talk by Durba Ghosh, Assistant Professor of History, at Cornell University, and author of "Sex and the Family in Colonial India: The Making of Empire". From the South Asia Seminar.

"Photography as Prophecy: India 1839-1900"

A talk by Christopher Pinney, Professor of Anthropology & Visual Culture, University College London; Visiting Crowe Professor, Department of Art History, Northwestern University. From the South Asia Seminar.

"China's Brave New World and Other Tales for Global Times"

A talk by Jeffrey Wasserstrom, Professor of History at the University of California, Irvine. If Chairman Mao came back to life today, what would he think of Nanjing's bookstore, the "Librairie Avant-Garde", where it is easier to find primers on Michel Foucault's philosophy than copies of the Little Red Book? What does it really mean to order a latte at Starbucks in Beijing? Is it possible that Aldous Huxley wrote a novel even more useful than Orwell's 1984 for making sense of post-Tiananmen C...

"The Oil and Glory"

A talk by journalist and author Steven LeVine. Pipeline politics became a modern day version of the 19th Century's Great Game, in which Britain and Russia had employed cunning and bluff to gain supremacy over the lands of the Caucasus and Central Asia. “The Oil and Glory” is the story of how, at the dawn of the 21st century, the game was played once more across the harsh environs of the Caspian Sea. Co-sponsor: Center for East European and Russian/Eurasian Studies.

"The Talibanization of South Asia: Can it Be Stopped?"

A talk by Pervez Hoodbhoy, Department of Physics, Quaid-e-Azama University. Dr. Hoodbhoy received his bachelor's degrees in electrical engineering and mathematics, master's in solid state physics, and Ph.D in nuclear physics, all from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has been a faculty member at the Department of Physics, Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad since 1973. He is chairman of Mashal, a non-profit organization that publishes books in Urdu on women's rights, education, en...

"Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq"

A talk by Dahr Jamail, independent journalist and author. As the occupation of Iraq unravels, the demand for independent reporting is growing. Since 2003, unembedded journalist Dahr Jamail has filed indispensable reports from Iraq that have made him this generation's chronicler of the unfolding disaster there. In these collected dispatches, Jamail presents never-before-published details of the siege of Fallujah and examines the origins of the Iraqi insurgency. Dahr Jamail makes frequent visit...

"Japan as Client State"

A workshop with Gavan McCormack, Professor Emeritus, Australian National University and author of Client State (Verso, 2007). The world's No. 2 power is a paradox. McCormack argues, following his recent book, that understanding of Japan has to begin from grasping its fundamental contradiction, as a 'client state'. Since the end of the Cold War, US pressure has been steadily applied to bring Japan in line with neoliberal principles, including comprehensive institutional reform and a thorough r...

"National Interests, Regional Concerns: Historicizing Malayalam Cinema"

A talk by Muraleedharan Tharayil, Dept. of English St. Aloysius College, Elthuruth (University of Calicut, Kerala). Co-sponsors: the South Asia Seminar and the Center for Gender Studies.

"Less Safe, Less Free: Why America Is Losing the War on Terror"

A talk by David Cole, Professor of Law at Georgetown University. In "Less Safe, Less Free: Why America Is Losing the War on Terror," Professor Cole and Jules Lobel, two of the country's preeminent constitutional scholars, argue that the great irony is that the Bush administration's sacrifices in the rule of law, adopted in the name of prevention, have in fact made us more susceptible to future terrorist attacks. They debunk the administration's claim that it is winning the war on terror and ...

"In Defense of Academic Freedom"

A two session symposium on academic freedom chaired by Tariq Ali. The growing evidence of outside interference in the hiring process at universities and the recent tenure denials at DePaul University, has prompted leading scholars across the nation to begin to speak out in defense of academic freedom. The DePaul University Academic Freedom Committee, Verso Books, and Diskord Journal sponsored a public symposium chaired by Tariq Ali, editor of Verso Books and New Left Review, and featuring: Ak...

"Legal Defense and Human Rights in Russia"

A talk with Robert Amsterdam, founding partner, Amsterdam & Peroff, legal defense counsel for Mikhail Khodorkovsky. In practice since 1980, Mr. Amsterdam has extensive experience litigating and arbitrating corporate disputes in emerging markets, focusing on the areas of individual and corporate human rights. Mr. Amsterdam was retained by Mikhail Khodorkovsky in August, 2003 as part of the YUKOS-Group MENATEP defense team. Since then, he has worked with Russian human rights lawyers to prepare ...

"Time and the Sacred"

A discussion with Pance Velkov, Macedonian artist and preservationist. "Time and The Sacred" is a collection of photographs which redresses the general lack of knowledge about religious art of the Republic of Macedonia, and at the same time it provides a venue for acquainting viewers with a unique environment in which Christianity and Islam have coexisted for more than six centuries. Created by Pance Velkov with the support of the French Ministry for Foreign Affairs, in particular the French ...

"The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy"

A panel featuring John J. Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen M. Walt of Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. "The Israel Lobby" was originally published in the London Review of Books in March 2006. It provoked both howls of outrage and cheers of gratitude for challenging what had been a taboo issue in America: the impact of the Israel lobby on U.S. foreign policy. Now in a work of major importance, Mearsheimer and Walt deepen and expand their argument and confron...

"Demography of Ancient South Asian Populations"

A talk by S.R. Walimbe, Associate Professor, Department of Archaeology, Deccan College Post-Graduate Research Institute. From the South Asia Seminar.

Chicago Humanities Festival: Wangari Maathai

Wangari Maathai is a Kenyan politician and environmental activist who was awarded the 2004 Nobel Prize for Peace, the first black African woman to win a Nobel Prize. Maathai was elected to Kenya's National Assembly with 98 percent of the vote in 2002 and in 2003 was appointed assistant minister of environment, natural resources, and wildlife. She is the author of "The Green Belt Movement: Sharing the Approach and the Experience". Co-sponsors: The Division of the Humanities and Rockefeller Cha...

"Indigenous Rights: The Case of Chiapas"

A talk by Jorge Fernandez-Souza, Magistrate Judge, Professor of Law and former Dean of Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana, former Delegado of Delegacion Miguel Hidalgo, and lawyer for Bishop Samuel Ruiz in the Chiapas negotiations (1994 – 1997). From the Human Rights in Mexico Series. Sponsored by the Katz Center for Mexican Studies, Center for Latin American Studies, the Human Rights Program, and the Norman Wait Harris Fund of the Center for International Studies.

"Venezuelan Government Perspective on the Future of Petroleum"

A talk by His Excellency Bernardo Alvarez Herrera, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela to the U.S. Session 6 of the conference "Petroleum: Prospects and Politics." Sponsored by the Chicago Society. Co-sponsored by the Student Government of the University of Chicago, The Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago, The George J. Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State, The Global Voices Fund at International House...

“Democracy, Governance, and War in Oil Exporting Nations”

A panel featuring Terry Lynn Karl, William and Gretchen Kimball University Fellow and Gildred Professor of Political Science at Stanford University; Miriam R. Lowi, Visiting Research Scholar at Princeton’s Institute for the Transregional Study of the Contemporary Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia; Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science of The College of New Jersey; and Kevin K. Tsui, Assistant Professor of Economics at Clemson University. Session 5 of the confer...

"Petroleum Technology Presentation"

A talk by Brian C. Gahan, Energy Consultant; Chair of the Chicago Section of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers; former Senior Scientist and Manager of E&P Technology Development at the Gas Technology Institute. Session 4 of the conference "Petroleum: Prospects and Politics." Sponsored by the Chicago Society. Co-sponsored by the Student Government of the University of Chicago, The Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago, The George J. Stigler Center for the Study o...

“United States Energy Policy and Oil Alternatives”

A panel featuring James Bartis, Senior Policy Researcher at RAND Corporation; former Vice President, Science Applications International Corporation; Cofounder, Eos Technologies; Roger H. Bezdek, President of Management Information Services, Inc.; former Special Advisor on Energy in the Office of the Secretary of the Treasury; and Vito A. Stagliano, Director of Research at the National Commission on Energy Policy; former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Energy for Policy. Session 3 of the confer...

“Securing the International Oil Supply”

A panel featuring David Goldwyn, President of Goldwyn International Strategies LLC; Senior Fellow in the Energy Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies; former Assistant Secretary of Energy for International Affairs; Scott Nauman, Manager of Economics and Energy in Corporate Planning for ExxonMobil Corporation; and Michael Klare, Five College Professor of Peace and World Security Studies. Moderated by Roger Myerson, The William C. Norby Professor in Economics at the Univ...

"United States Government Perspective Global Energy Security"

Introduction by Robert Zimmer, President, University of Chicago; Keynote Address by The Honorable Alan S. Hegburg, U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Energy for International Energy Policy. Session 1 of the conference "Petroleum: Prospects and Politics." Sponsored by the Chicago Society. Co-sponsored by the Student Government of the University of Chicago, The Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago, The George J. Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State, The...

"Japanese Education and Society in Crisis"

A talk by Yoshifumi Tawara, Secretary General of the Children and Textbooks Japan Network 21. Part of the Japan at Chicago Lecture Series: Celebrating Protest. Sponsored by the Japan Committee of the Center for East Asian Studies, the Human Rights Program, and the Center for International Studies.

"The Modern Human Rights Movement in Mexico"

A talk by Mariclaire Acosta. Acosta is affiliated with the Organization of American States, co-founder of the Academia Mexicana de Derechos Humanos; founder, Comision Mexicana para la Promocion y Defensa de los Derechos Humanos, and former director of Human Rights in the Secretaria de Relaciones Exteriores. From the Human Rights in Mexico Series. Sponsored by the Katz Center for Mexican Studies, Center for Latin American Studies, the Human Rights Program, and the Norman Wait Harris Fund of th...

"The Atomic Bazaar: The Rise of the Nuclear Poor"

Lecture by journalist William Langewiesche. In his book The Atomic Bazaar, Langewiesche investigates the burgeoning global threat of nuclear weapons production. As more unstable and undeveloped nations find ways of acquiring the ultimate arms, the stakes of state-sponsored nuclear activity have soared to frightening heights. Even more disturbing is the likelihood of such weapons being manufactured and deployed by guerrilla non-state terrorists. Langewiesche also recounts the recent history o...

"Intersex at the Intersection of Queer Theory & Disability Theory"

A talk by Emi Koyama, Director, Intersex Initiative. Part of the Japan at Chicago Lecture Series: Celebrating Protest. Sponsored by the Japan Committee of the Center for East Asian Studies, the Human Rights Program, the Center for International Studies, and the Center for Gender Studies.

"The Clash Within: Democracy, Religious Violence, and India's Future"

Lecture by Martha Nussbaum, the Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago. While America is focused on religious militancy and terrorism in the Middle East, democracy has been under siege from religious extremism in another critical part of the world. As Martha Nussbaum reveals in The Clash Within, the forces of the Hindu right pose a disturbing threat to India's democratic traditions and secular state. From the World Beyond the Headlines Ser...

"Colonialism, Militarism, and the Political Economy of Transracial Adoption"

A talk by Emi Koyama. Part of the Japan at Chicago Lecture Series: Celebrating Protest. Sponsored by the Japan Committee of the Center for East Asian Studies, the Human Rights Program, and the Center for International Studies.

2007 COSAL: Prose Reading: Salma (audio)

2007 COSAL: Roundtable (audio)

The Norman Cutler Conference on South Asian Literature (COSAL) honors the life and work of the late Norman Cutler, former Professor of Tamil in the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations. Roundtable featuring all participants. Co-sponsored by the University of Chicago Committee on Southern Asian Studies, Division of the Humanities, Franke Institute for the Humanities, South Asia Language and Area Center, Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations, and Center for Ge...

2007 COSAL: Keynote Address (audio)

The Norman Cutler Conference on South Asian Literature (COSAL) honors the life and work of the late Norman Cutler, former Professor of Tamil in the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations. Keynote Address by A.R. Venkatachalapathy, History and Literary Historiography, Madras Institute of Development Studies. Co-sponsored by the University of Chicago Committee on Southern Asian Studies, Division of the Humanities, Franke Institute for the Humanities, South Asia Language and Are...

2007 COSAL: Presentations (audio)

The Norman Cutler Conference on South Asian Literature (COSAL) honors the life and work of the late Norman Cutler, former Professor of Tamil in the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations. Presentations in this recording include: Bernard Bate, "Naaladiyar in the Bajaar: Protestant Textuality and the Tamil Public Sphere"; Lakshmi Holmström, "The Tiger in the Picture: A Reading of Salma's Novel Irandaam Jaamangalin Kadai"; and David Shulman, "Beyond the Margin: On G. Nagarajan an...

2007 COSAL: Remembrance of Norman Cutler & Poetry Reading: Salma (audio)

The Norman Cutler Conference on South Asian Literature (COSAL) honors the life and work of the late Norman Cutler, former Professor of Tamil in the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations. The 2007 conference featured the work of the Tamil author “Salma” [R.A. Rokkiah, b. 1968], a Muslim woman who has recently catapulted into public controversy over her frank poetry on the female body. Co-sponsored by the University of Chicago Committee on Southern Asian Studies, Division of ...

"(Questions) History Textbooks and the Profession: Comparing National Controversies in a Globalizing Age"

This one-day symposium was convened to compare the controversies surrounding historical texts that emerged during the last fifteen to twenty years with the onset of the post-Cold War era and the acceleration of globalization, multi-culturalism and the neo-liberal order. Sponsored by the Department of History, Center for East Asian Studies, Center for International Studies, South Asia Language and Area Center, Morris Fishbein Center for the Study of History and Medicine, and the Franke Institu...

"Session 3 (Futures) - History Textbooks and the Profession: Comparing National Controversies in a Globalizing Age"

A symposium panel featuring the following papers: "School Textbooks as Collective Memory and Social Design: Some Thoughts on Developing a World Consciousness" — Hanna Schissler (Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research, Braunschweig, Germany); "Historical Reconciliation: A Tool for Conflict Resolution" — Elazar Barkan (Columbia University); Discussant: Dipesh Chakrabarty, University of Chicago. This one-day symposium was convened to compare the controversies surrounding his...

"Session 2 (Boundaries) - History Textbooks and the Profession: Comparing National Controversies in a Globalizing Age"

A symposium panel featuring the following papers: "Textbook Controversies and the Limits of American History" — Thomas Bender (New York University); "Testing the limits of historical imagination: Mexico’s history-textbook controversies and the U.S. question (circa 1957-2000)" — Mauricio Tenorio Trillo (University of Chicago); Discussant: Simone Laessig, Georg-Eckert-Institut für Internationale Schulbuchforschung (Braunschweig, Germany). This one-day symposium was convened to compare the cont...

"Session 1 (Politics) - History Textbooks and the Profession: Comparing National Controversies in a Globalizing Age"

A symposium panel featuring the following papers: "Historical Memory, International Conflict and Japanese Textbook Controversies in Three Epochs" — Yoshiko Nozaki (SUNY Buffalo) and Mark Selden (SUNY Binghamton); "The Politics of History Textbooks in India" — Neeladri Bhattacharya, (Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi); "Weapons of Mass Instruction: How Schoolbooks & Democratization Destroyed Multiethnic Central Europe" — Charles Ingrao, (Purdue University); Discussant: Prasenjit Duara, U...

"U.S.-Cuban Academic Relations Part II: Roundtable Discussion on U.S.-Cuban Academic Exchange"

Introduction: Alan Kolata, University of Chicago. Discussants: Stephan Palmie, University of Chicago; Agnes Lugo-Ortiz, University of Chicago; Shannon Dawdy, University of Chicago; Laurie Frederik, University of Chicago; Paul Ryer, University of Chicago. U.S. and Cuban scholars involved in academic, scientific, and cultural research face significant difficulties in maintaining open and thorough dialogue with each other due to restrictions governing travel between the two countries. Such exc...

"U.S.-Cuban Academic Relations Part I: The Politics of U.S.-Cuban Exchanges"

Wayne Smith, Center for International Policy and Louis Pérez, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. U.S. and Cuban scholars involved in academic, scientific, and cultural research face significant difficulties in maintaining open and thorough dialogue with each other due to restrictions governing travel between the two countries. Such exchanges, however, hold the potential for improved interpretations of our economic, cultural, and historical ties, and ultimately for improved political r...