*Updated* Exciting Events March 3rd-9th
In order to facilitate active political participation and discussion here at Columbia, CPR is happy to provide a rundown of this week's on-campus events. If we missed anything, please let us know by emailing Web Editor Stewart Shoemaker at sms2318@columbia.edu
Tuesday, March 4th
CPU Talks: Political Participation
Time: 8:00-9:00pm
Location: Hamilton 503
Students from three groups on campus will share their take on the given topic. This week, we’re talking about political participation. What does active citizenship mean in 2014? We want to hear what you have to say!
Participants:
Delta GDP, Black Students’ Organization, Students Against Mass Incarceration
Book Discussion with Jessica Alexander, author of Chasing Chaos
Time: 1:10pm - 2:10pm
Location: Columbia University Morningside Campus International Affairs Building, Room 802
Join the HR/HP Concentration for a talk with author Jessica Alexander about her new book, Chasing Chaos, a memoir of her experiences as an aid worker. Over the past 12 years, Alexander has worked in humanitarian operations for the UN and various NGOs. She has been part of operations in Rwanda, Darfur, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Myanmar, South Sudan, Pakistan, Haiti and the Horn of Africa. Alexander is a Fulbright Scholar who received the award to research child soldiers in Sierra Leone in 2006. Her research there was used as expert evidence in the case against Charles Taylor, former President of Libera. The first 20 people to RSVP to Kathleen Ryou (kkr2116@columbia.edu) will receive a free, signed copy of her book. So hurry and send in your RSVP!
**Please note that you must be a current SIPA student and you must attend the event to receive the book**
Sponsored by the Human Rights and Humanitarian Policy concentration
A New Balkans? Challenges of Democratization in the Former Yugoslavia
Time: 5:00pm - 8:00pm
Location: Columbia University Morningside Campus International Affairs Building, Room 707
Please join the Harriman Institute and the East Central European Center for a panel discussion on the Balkans.
Participants:
Dario Čepo is a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at Columbia University's Harriman Institute and a senior research assistant at the University of Zagreb's Faculty of Law.
Moderator: Alan Timberlake, Director, ECEC, Co-sponsored by ECEC & HI
Editors Night at Writing About Global Science for the International Media
Time: 6:00pm - 8:00pm
Location: Columbia University Morningside Campus Kent Hall, 413
Its Editors Night at Claudia Dreifus SUMA course Writing About Global Science for the International Media. A panel of editors will attend an extended version of the regular course, speaking about what they do, how they do it, and how they got their own careers started. Featuring:
Mary Ann Giordano, Editor, Science Times/New York Times Jennifer Bogo, Editor, Popular Science Magazine TJ Kelleher, Science Editor, Basic Books Yaffa Frederick, Managing Editor, World Policy Journal Christopher Shay, producer/editor new media, Al Jazerra/America.
Please RSVP to cd2106@columbia.edu
Immigration Reform, Human Trafficking, and Climate Change: What Is The Connection And Why They Are Moral Issues For People Of Faith
Time: 6:00pm - 7:30pm
Location: Columbia University Morningside Campus Davis Auditorium, Schapiro CEPSR Building
The Center for the Study of Science and Religion Presents, "Immigration Reform, Human Trafficking, and Climate Change: What Is The Connection And Why They Are Moral Issues For People Of Faith" with Patrick Carolan.
Patrick Carolan is the executive director of the Franciscan Action Network (www.franciscanaction.org), an ecumenical organization that promotes social and organizational justice. Before coming to FAN, Carolan worked in church ministry at St. James Catholic Church in Stratford. Carolan has been involved for many years in organizing faith-based communities around social justice issues. He serves as an Ambassador and spokesperson for the Catholic Coalition on Climate Change. He helped start the National Partnership for Climate Solutions and is a frequent speaker on the faith perspective of caring for creation and ecological justice. He has also helped organize the Fast4families, a hunger fast for immigration reform in which he joined many others in a water-only hunger fast for 13 days on the Washington D.C. Mall.
SAI: Teaching Pakistani History/Teaching Pakistanis History
Time: 6:00pm - 8:00pm
Location: Columbia University Morningside Campus Knox Hall, Room 208
Pakistani history has been a contentious topic, especially in Pakistan, where different sets of narratives give differing accounts of what Pakistani history is, and hence, how one imagines Pakistan. Given the eventual partition of British India into two states, some historians have claimed that Pakistan was `created in 712 AD when an Arab invader came to an area which is now part of Pakistan. This event is incorrectly seen as the first Muslim contact with what is now called South Asia, yet it supports one of the many official narratives of when Muslim "consciousness" and identity were created in this region. Other competing narratives still in the official domain, look to the Delhi Sultanate, or the Mughal Empire, or events in the nineteenth century and 1857, crystallising into a separate Muslim identity, which inevitably led to the creation of Pakistan. The question, when was Pakistan "created," is one which simply works around a Muslims-are-different-from-Hindus discourse, culminating in a separate homeland. As a consequence, "Pakistani" history then ignores the history of the people who live in what was Pakistan prior to 1971 and what it is today. Mohenjo-Daro, Harappa, and the history of the people of Pakistan is dominated by a north Indian (largely Hindustani) Muslim history, and that too only of kings and their courts. Once politics began to dominate undivided India in the twentieth century, the Pakistan "freedom movement" of course - and not the movement for independence from British colonialism for all Indian peoples - shaped this discourse more teleologically. The problems of teaching history to Pakistanis by trained historians in Pakistan has given rise to a different set of issues. While some academics claim that the state of social sciences in Pakistan has been dismal, the state of History in Pakistan has been particularly so. Interestingly, some decades ago, some Pakistani historians were highly respected scholars doing archival research, but today, the absence of professional historians, with little research being done, and hence few conferences or seminars or academic journals, exacerbates the problem, with non-historians now teaching History. Moreover, since the propaganda of the Pakistan "ideology" and the "freedom movement" constitute what pass for History in/of Pakistan, teaching history is not considered a priority.
Manan Ahmed is Assistant Professor in the History Deparment.
Sana Haroon is Assistant Professor in History and Asian Studies, University of Massachusetts, Boston.She received her BA at Yale and PhD at SOAS, London. She is the author of Frontier of Faith: Islam in the Indo-Afghan Borderland (2007).
Vazira Fazila-Yacoobali Zamindar is Associate Professor of History at Brown University.She is the author of The Long Partition and the Making of Modern South Asia: Refugees, Boundaries, Histories, (2007).
Tahir Kamran is the Allama Iqbal Fellow at the Centre of South Asian Studies at theUniversity of Cambridge. He is the former head of the department of history at Government College University in Lahore. He is the author of Democracy and Governance in Pakistan (2008).
S. Akbar Zaidi is Professor in the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies and the School of Public and International Affairs.
Wednesday, March 5th
Purchasing Credibility? Image-Crafting and PR Strategies in Eurasia
Time: 5:00pm - 7:00pm
Location: Columbia University Morningside Campus International Affairs Building, Room 1219
This roundtable will explore the increasing attention paid by Eurasian states to their image-crafting and public relations as a diplomatic strategy. In particular, it will explore how countries are hiring global PR firms, such as Kazakhstan's retention of former UK President Tony Blair's firm, to vouch for their credibility as reformers, while purchasing stories in global media outlets to showcase these public images. Does image-crafting serve as a substitute for implementing domestic reforms? Where is the line between political advising and the purchase of political credibility? What standards should global media outlets adopt when accepting paid content from governments? And what implications does contemporary Eurasian image-crafting have for both foreign relations and transnational advocacy campaigns? Please join Hugh Williamson, Director of the Europe and Central Asia Division at Human Rights Watch, and Myles Smith, a Eurasian affairs analyst and Senior Program Officer at IREX, to discuss these issues. The panel will be moderated by Professor Alexander Cooley.
Participants:
Hugh Williamson, director of the Europe & Central Asia division, oversees the organisations work in western and Eastern Europe, the Balkans, Turkey, Central Asia, the south Caucasus, Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. He oversees issues including migration and discrimination in Europe, torture and other abuses under authoritarian rule in Central Asia, and impunity and the rule of law in Russia.Prior to joining Human Rights Watch, Williamson worked for 11 years as a correspondent from the Manila and Berlin bureaus of the Financial Times. He served as the Europe news editor during the 2008-2009 financial crisis and most recently as the papers deputy foreign editor. He has written and commented in the international media, including on the BBC and CNN, on European politics, development issues and the international political economy, business ethics and corporate responsibility, and the politics of the human rights movement.Williamson has worked for other non-governmental organisations, including a labour rights group in Hong Kong. He has degrees from Manchester University and the London School of Economics. He speaks German.
Myles G. Smith is an analyst, writer, and project manager in Eurasian affairs. He contributes to news outlets, risk management firms, and development organizations on Eurasian affairs and engagement strategies. He has worked in trade development and technology programs in 12 former Soviet republics, Burma and Africa. From 2007-2012, he was based in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan and Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. He is currently Senior Program Officer for technology and media programs at IREX.
Thursday, March 6th
Columbia Link Presents Human Rights and Regime Stability in North Korea
Time: 7:30pm
Location: Lerner 555
Join Columbia Link Professor Andrew Nathan for a discussion on politics and human rights violations in one of the world's most oppressive regimes.
Is there Life after Astana? The Human Dimension" of the Organization for Security and Co-Operation in Europe in Historical Perspective
Time: 12:00pm - 1:00pm
Location: Columbia University Morningside Campus International Affairs Building, Room 1219
Douglas Wake, former Deputy Director of the OSCE's Office of Democratic Institutions and Human Rights will discuss the historical perspective of the OSCE's "human dimension."
Indigenous Ethnicities as a Cultural Commodity in the Context of the 2014 World Cup
Time: 1:00pm - 2:00pm
Location: Columbia University Morningside Campus International Affairs Building, Room 802
Many indigenous communities located near the city of Manaus perform to tourists on a regular basis. The local government sees the World Cup as a good opportunity to improve tourist activities related to the indigenous culture, since Manaus will host four matches of the competition. My final project at Columbia Journalism School will investigate the impact of tourism in these communities
BRICS: The Road Ahead
Time: 2:00pm - 4:30pm
Location: Columbia University Morningside Heights Italian Academy, Theater
Social Memory and Public Production of History: The Taebaek Mountains (Taebaek Sanmaek) and the Politics of Remembering the Korean War"
Time: 5:30pm - 7:00pm
Location: Columbia University Morningside Campus International Affairs Building, Room 918
A talk with Professor Namhee Lee, Associate Professor of Modern Korean History, University of California, Los Angeles.
No registration required
Narratives of the Dirty War in Argentina, 1976-1983
Time: 7:00pm - 8:00pm
Location: Columbia University Morningside Campus International Affairs Building, Room 802
This seminar focuses on a corpus of narratives written during, or after the Dirty War in Argentina (l976-l983), in which the authors fictionalize the horror of a state under dictatorship with its cycles of repression, censorship, desaparecidos, torture and death.
Harlem Nocturne: Women Artists and Progressive Politics During World War II
Time: 8:00pm - 10:00pm
Location: Columbia University Morningside Campus Dodge Hall, Room 622
"As World War II raged overseas, Harlem witnessed a battle of its own. Brimming with creative and political energy, the neighborhoods diverse array of artists and activists took advantage of a brief period of progressivism during the war years to launch a bold cultural offensive aimed at winning democracy for all Americans, regardless of race or gender. Ardent believers in Americas promise, these men and women helped to lay the groundwork for the Civil Rights Movement before Cold War politics and anti-Communist fervor temporarily froze their dreams at the dawn of the postwar era."
Friday, March 7th
Retranslating Literary Classics: A Panel on Cervantes, Montaigne, and Dostoevsky
Time: 11:00am - 1:00pm
Location: Columbia University Morningside Campus Miller Theatre
This panel brings together four esteemed translators to discuss the process of retranslating a work of literature that has already been translated into multiple languages, often multiple times. Some opine that every generation needs a new translation of Homer, and this panel will discuss the literary and linguistic dynamics underlying that understanding as well as the endeavor of working with or against pre-existing translations.
Edith Grossman is one of the most well respected translators from Spanish to English. She spent most of her career translating Latin American authors such as Mario Vargas Llosa and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and more recently has undertaken works from Spain's Golden Age such as Gongora'sSoledades and Cervantes's Don Quixote. Her translation of the Quixote is read in the Literature Humanities course at Columbia.
Wyatt Mason is a critic, journalist, and translator. Modern Library published his two-volume translation of the complete works of Arthur Rimbaud, a new edition of which he is preparing. He has translated contemporary French writers Eric Chevillard for Archipelago and Pierre Michon for Yale, and his translations of Montaigne's essays have appeared in Threepenny Review. His criticism, which has won a National Magazine Award and a citation from the National Book Critics Circle, appears in the New York Review of Books , The London Review of Books and The New Yorker . He is a contributing editor of Harper?s, a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine , and is Senior Fellow of the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and the Humanities at Bard College.
Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky have translated many works together, beginning with Dostoevesky's The Brothers Karamazov. They have since re-translated the major works of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, as well as works by Gogol, Leskov, Chekhov, and Bulgakov.Their translation of Crime and Punishment is taught in the Lit Hum course at Columbia.
Susan Bernofsky is a writer, translator from German, and Director of Literary Translation at Columbia (LTAC). Her new translation of Kafka's Metamorphosis comes out with Norton in January 2014. She is working on a biography of the Swiss writer Robert Walser, many of whose works she has translated.
Co-sponsored by the Friends of the Columbia University Libraries, the Center for the Core Curriculum, the Rare Book and Manuscript Library, the Harriman Institute, the Columbia Maison Franaise.
The State of Myanmars Democratic Transition: A Field Report by Prof Alfred Stepan
Time: 12:00pm - 2:00pm
Location: Columbia University Morningside Campus International Affairs Building, Room 1302
Join us this March, when Professor Alfred Stepan speaks to the Columbia community to report on his three trips to Myanmar in the past year, focusing on the state of negotiation between rebel leaders and Myanmar military, and the democratic progress and setbacks in the country. Featuring Professor Jack Snyder as interlocutor.
Sunday, March 9th
Fukushima Three Years Later: Staying Behind and Moving Forward
Time: 2:00pm - 5:00pm
Location: Columbia University Teacher's College Milbank Chapel (Zankel 125)
Consortium for Japan Relief welcomes you to our March 2014 symposium, Fukushima Three Years Later: Staying Behind and Moving Forward, marking three years after the unfortunate disaster that struck Japan. This year, the theme for CJRs symposium is two-fold: 1) the current state of Fukushima and the ordinary, everyday lives of those who live there, and 2) why people, whether from Fukushima, from Japan, or from the United States, choose to live in Fukushima amidst concerns about the economy, infrastructure, and radiation contamination. We will have 6 speakers touch upon this theme, two of which will be screening films. For everyone who has stayed in or returned to Fukushima, there is something very personal that motivates him or her to do so, and these reasons can have both uplifting and somber undertones. At this symposium we not only want to highlight this complexity, but also showcase the exciting initiatives our speakers are a part of in Fukushima. As it is the third year after 3/11, it is important to show why Fukushima is still relevant; those who have remained in Fukushima have not given up hope on the city and therefore nor should we.
Cosponsors: Friends of Japan, Columbia Japan Society, Center on Japanese Economy and Business at Columbia Business School, Japanese American Association, Japanese Medical Support Network, Japanese Medical Society of America, and EN Japanese Brasserie. For more information, please visit: http://nyjapan311.org/2014symposium/ Registration has opened: http://nyjapan311.org/2014registration/