/
/
Events: 2018 – 2019

Events: 2018 – 2019

Film Screening of City of Ghosts

Sep 05, 2018
04:30 PM to 06:00 PM
Katz Auditorium

Movie PosterThe Center for Global Studies presents a screening of the award-winning film City of Ghosts followed by a discussion with Abdalaziz Alhamza, journalist and co-founder of Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently. Reception to follow.

Abdalaziz Alhamza is an award-winning Syrian journalist, human rights defender, and activist. He is the co-founder and spokesperson of Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently (RBSS), a non-partisan, independent organization that banded together following the ISIS takeover of Raqqa in 2014. RBSS exposes the atrocities committed by the Bashar Al-Assad regime and ISIS in Syria.

City of Ghosts follows the journey of Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently. With astonishing, deeply personal access, this is the story of a brave group of citizen journalists as they face the realities of life under cover, on the run, and in exile, risking their lives to stand up against one of the greatest evils in the world today.

Co-sponsored by the Department of Comparative Literature, Department of History, Department of Political Science, Department of Sociology and Criminology, McCourtney Institute for Democracy, Paterno Fellows Program, School of International Affairs, Rock Ethics Institute, and Schreyer Honors College


From Bibliotherapy to Bibliotrauma: Making Fiction Matter

Comparative Literature Lecture Series
Sep 10, 2018
12:15 PM to 01:15 PM
102 Kern
 

Thomas Beebee, Penn State


2018 Marathon Read: Pages from 1968

Sep 13, 2018
10:00 AMto 10:00 PM
Pattee Mall

This year the Marathon Read joins in the commemoration of 50 years since the watershed year of 1968. The Marathon Read will feature texts written or published in 1968, including Philip K. Dick’s novel Do Andriods Dream of Electric Sheep? and works from Joan Didion, Gwendolyn Brooks, Alice Munro, Jorge Luis Borges, Susan Sontag, Galway Kinnell, and others.

Stop by for special guest readers, food, and to hear great writing from 1968. All are welcome to read and listen. If you are interested in reading or learning more, please visit http://marathonread.psu.edu/.

Co-sponsored by the Center for Global Studies.

 

Microgenres: Modeling Multi-Disciplinarily in the Novel

Comparative Literature Lecture Series
Sep 17, 2018
12:15 PM to 01:15 PM
102 Kern
 

Mark Algee-Hewitt, Stanford University


The Political Ecology of Drip Irrigation Infrastructure: Efficiency and Gendered Labor Dynamics in India

Lecture
Sep 21, 2018
04:00 PM to 05:00 PM
112 Walker
 

Dr. Trevor Birkenholtz, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Abstract: In this paper, I draw on a case from northern India to examine the material politics of drip irrigation infrastructure. Drip irrigation delivers water directly to plant stems or roots and has been shown to double water-use efficiency, while raising productivity, compared to conventional irrigation. It is being promoted globally by scientists, state planners and development donor agencies as a way to reduce agricultural demand for groundwater. However, while drip irrigation may enhance irrigation efficiency, it may not lead to water savings. Relying on ethnographic research conducted in India from 2015-2018, I argue that the complex interaction of subsidy policies, farmer motivations for adopting drip irrigation, and gendered labor dynamics determine whether efficiency gains in drip irrigation result in water savings. Further, I posit that feminine labor provides a subsidy to drip irrigation that underwrites both water-use efficiency and productivity, while maintaining drip irrigations’ heterogeneous material and institutional infrastructure. I conclude with a discussion of the implications of these findings for water conservation in agriculture and for gendering drip irrigation policy.

Speaker Biography: Trevor Birkenholtz is Associate Professor of Geography and Geographic Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Professor Birkenholtz is a political ecologist and development geographer. In his research, he examines the political economy of water resources development in urban and rural settings, with particular interests in India. He is currently working on two projects. In the first, he examines the socioecology of drip irrigation infrastructure as a water conservation technology. In doing so, he attempts to understand the political ecological conditions under which these systems may or may not lead to water savings in agriculture, as well as the gendered dynamics of their labor demands. In the second, he examines large-scale water infrastructure (i.e. the Indian River-Linking Project) that is transferring water from agrarian to urban spaces. In this book project, tentatively titled Infrastructures of Dispossession, he focuses on the international dimensions of financing these projects, the consequences of rural to urban transfers of water for irrigated agriculture and agrarian change, and the implications of these transformations for struggles over urban water supplies.

Co-sponsored by the Center for Global Studies.


A Modernist Queer Shakespeare: Wyndham Lewis’s The Lion and the Fox (1927)

Comparative Literature Lecture Series
Sep 24, 2018
12:15 PM to 01:15 PM
102 Kern
 

Robert Caserio, Penn State


Voskhozhdenie / The Ascent (1977)

Russian Film Series
Sep 26, 2018
06:15 PMto 08:00 PM
Foster Auditorium, Paterno Library
 

Movie Poster

Two Soviet partisans depart their starving band on a short march to a nearby farm to get supplies. The Germans have reached the farm first, so the pair must go on a journey deep into occupied territory, a voyage that will also take them deep into their souls.


A Creator God? Spontaneous Arising and an Ethics of Creativity in Early Daoism

Comparative Literature Lecture Series
Oct 01, 2018
12:15 PM to 01:15 PM
102 Kern
 

Erica Brindley, Penn State


Holding on to Democratic Leadership in a Time of Changing Policy and Reform: Socially Distributed Leadership Practice Towards Professional Learning in Denmark and the U.S.

CGS Brown Bag Lecture Series
Oct 03, 2018
12:15 PM to 01:15 PM
25 Burrowes
 

Marsha Modeste, Penn State

In 2014, the Danish Ministry of Education launched a set of policy reforms with the overarching aim of improving the quality of its public schools. Through the reforms, the Ministry sought to augment external legitimacy from a range of communities; including, international organizations like the OECD, and Danish parents. While specific to the Danish context, these reforms are not unlike the education reforms other nations, particularly Western nations like the US, have implemented in recent years. Furthermore, the Ministry has coupled these reforms with changing expectations for the focus and nature of the work that school leaders, teachers, pædagogs, and other staff take up in Danish primary and lower secondary schools.

In this talk, Modeste will present some preliminary findings on the differences and similarities between Denmark and the US in the area of teacher and staff leadership using the Comprehensive Assessment of Leadership for Learning (CALL), an online formative assessment and multi-rater evaluation of leadership practices distributed in schools. This analysis takes a comparative approach and, through factor analysis, examines the relationship between teacher and staff leadership practice and the professional learning occurring within and across Danish and US schools.


2018 PACIE Annual Conference – Global Ready Graduates: It’s on Us!

Workshop
Oct 05, 2018 07:35 AM to
Oct 06, 2018 03:30 PM
DoubleTree by Hilton, Cranberry Township, PA
 

This year’s theme embodies a significant part of PACIE’s mission: To help Pennsylvania create graduates with the skills that they will need to be competitive in a global marketplace. From our current K-12 students to the international students that enrich our campuses and lives, global engagement reaches every corner of the state. Segments of the 2018 conference will formulate a summit on global education in preparation for the task force that we hope will have passed by the summer months. Other segments of the conference will include workshop-style training and development opportunities in education through technology utilization, curriculum integration and design, and best practices as they relate to student engagement and awareness to the global community that inevitably touches their lives.

Learn more at http://pacie.org/conference/ 

Co-sponsored by the Center for Global Studies.


Mehndi at the Downtown Fall Festival

Oct 06, 2018
10:00 AM to 03:00 PM
200 Block of Allen Street
 

Decorative Hand Graphic

The Center for Global Studies is bringing the art of mehndi to this year’s Downtown Fall Festival. Stop by our booth to learn more and get a design on your hand!

Mehndi is the traditional art of applying henna to the skin, usually the hands and feet. It has a very long history with centuries of cultural intersection. Today, mehndi is still applied prior to religious and wedding ceremonies in India, but has also gained world-wide popularity as a beautiful, alternative form of temporary tattoos.


Ishikawa Tatsuzō’s São Paulo

Comparative Literature Lecture Series
Oct 08, 2018
12:15 PM to 01:15 PM
102 Kern
 

Seth Jacobowitz, Yale University

Jacobowitz is currently an Assistant Professor in the Depart-ment of East Asian Languages & Literatures and Affiliate Faculty in the Department of Spanish & Portuguese at Yale University. He is the author of the Edogawa Rampo Reader (Kurodahan Press, 2008) and Writing Technology in Meiji Japan: A Media History of Modern Japanese Literature and Visual Culture (Harvard Asia Center, 2015), which won the 2017 International Convention of Asia Scholars Book Prize in the Humanities. He has been Simon Visiting Professor at University of Manchester, Asakawa Fellow at Waseda University in Tokyo, an invited guest lecturer at Yonsei University in Seoul, and frequent Visiting Researcher to the Center of Japanese Studies at the University of São Paulo. His first field of specialization focused on the intersection of media and literature in late nineteenth cen-tury Japan. His current research is for a book on the prewar Japanese immigration to Brazil and the literature of Japanese overseas expansion. In addition, he is co-authoring a book on science and science fiction in prewar Japan with Professor Aaron W. Moore, Handa Chair of Japanese-Chinese Relations at the University of Edinburgh.


Koktebel / Roads to Koktebel

Russian Film Series
Oct 09, 2018
06:15 PM to 08:00 PM
Foster Auditorium, Paterno Library
 

Movie Poster

A father and son begin a wondrous journey across Russia. With no money or transport, they drift through the expansive and mesmeric landscapes at the mercy of chance. 


A Multidimensional Perspective on Word Order Variation in an Ecuadorian Hybrid Language in Contact with Its Input Languages

CGS Brown Bag Lecture Series
Oct 10, 2018
12:15 PM to 01:15 PM
25 Burrowes
 

Globe Graphic

Isabel Deibel, Penn State

Many languages allow for multiple word orders (that is, different orderings of elements in a sentence), either depending on discourse context or as a result of language contact with a language that displays a different word order. By assuming a multidimensional perspective, Isabel’s dissertation work traces the origin of word order variation in a hybrid language, created in a language contact scenario and still in contact with its input languages, which are fundamentally different in their structure. Underscoring the importance of studying marginalized communities (such as the current communities in Ecuador) to advance linguistic theories and promote language maintenance, her talk will highlight that stigmatized bilingual speech practices are not “corrupted speech” but follow common cross-linguistic patterns.


Mosul Eye: Documenting the History of Terrorism: The Destruction and the Revival of Mosul

Lecture
Oct 11, 2018
06:00 PM to 07:00 PM
112 Kern
 

Omar Mohammed, Maurice R. Greenberg World Fellow, Yale University

Omar Mohammed, a native of Mosul, Iraq, was present when the Islamic State (or “ISIS”) forces occupied the city in June 2014. He had been teaching history at the University of Mosul and decided that, for the sake of future historians, he would record the Islamic State’s activities, including the destruction of local monuments, persecution of religious minorities, execution of political dissidents, and other atrocities, at the risk of his own life. These reports were published in English and Arabic in an anonymous monthly blog called “the Mosul Eye.” When he heard numerous ISIS threats against the unknown author, Omar escaped with his hard drive to Turkey and later gained asylum in France, where he became a research associate for the Centre d’Etudes Turques, Ottomanes, Balkaniques, et Centrasiatiques and also a PhD candidate in the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales. Soon after revealing his identity as the Mosul Eye, he was admitted to Yale University’s Greenberg World Fellows Program for Fall 2018.

Co-sponsored by the Center for Global Studies in collaboration with the Department of History and the Middle East Studies Committee.


Among Ghost Dances: Sarah Winnemucca and the Production of Tribal Identity

Comparative Literature Lecture Series
Oct 15, 2018
12:15 PM to 01:15 PM
102 Kern
 

Mark Rifkin, University of North Carolina

Mark Rifkin is Director of the Women’s and Gender Studies Program and Professor of English at UNC Greensboro. He is the author of six books: Fictions of Land and Flesh: Blackness, Indigeneity, Speculation (forthcoming, Duke UP); Beyond Settler Time: Temporal Sovereignty and Indigenous Self-Determination (Duke UP, 2017); Settler Common Sense: Queerness and Everyday Colonialism in the American Renaissance (U of MN Press, 2014); The Erotics of Sovereignty: Queer Native Writing in the Era of Self-Determination (U of MN Press, 2012); When Did Indians Become Straight?: Kinship, the History of Sexuality, and Native Sovereignty (Oxford UP, 2011); and Manifesting America: The Imperial Construction of U.S. National Space (Oxford UP, 2009). He also co-edited the award-winning special issue “Sexuality, Nationality, Indigeneity” and he has served as president of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association.


U.S. Media Coverage of Global Conflict: How Our Windows on the World Get Tinted Red-White-and-Blue

Lecture
Oct 15, 2018
04:30 PM to 06:00 PM
Katz Auditorium, Penn State
 

Norman Solomon, American Journalist, Media Critic, Author, and Activist

Soloman headshotMedia outlets based in the United States are responsible for conveying to us the vast majority of what we know – or think we know – about world events. But how reliable are the news reports, images, and analysis that we get from U.S. news media? And how does the coverage of conflicts around the world affect our attitudes toward war and the use of American military might? Journalist and author Norman Solomon, whose books include War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death, will address the overt and subtle forms of media bias that pervade the U.S. media landscape.

There will be a book signing of Solomon’s book, War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death after the lecture. Copies will be available for purchase.


Clash (2016)

CGS Arabic Film Series
Oct 16, 2018
07:00 PM to 09:00 PM
Foster Auditorium, Paterno Library
 

Movie Poster

Set entirely in an 8m police truck, a number of detainees from different political and social backgrounds are brought together by fate, during the turmoil that followed the ousting of former president Morsi from power.


Raising Children to Have a Global Mindset

Lecture
Oct 17, 2018
06:30 PM to 07:30 PM
Schlow Library
 

Berdan Headshot

Stacie Berdan, International Careers Expert

From developing a global mindset in toddlers through encouraging study abroad in college students, Stacie Berdan will share what raising global children means, why global awareness is more important than ever today and how to develop a global mindset in any age.

Copies of Berdan’s book “Raising Global Children” will be available for purchase following the lecture.

Co-hosted by the Schlow Centre Region Library and the Liberal Arts Career Enrichment Network.


Global is Everywhere: Essentials for Career Success

Lecture
Oct 18, 2018
04:30 PM to 06:00 PM
Foster Auditorium, Paterno Library
 

Berdan Headshot

Stacie Berdan, International Careers Expert and Author

Learn from international career expert and award-winning author Stacie Nevadomski Berdan how you can develop a global mindset to advance your future career in the U.S. or abroad.

Berdan has served as strategist, coach and counselor to CEOs, politicians and senior executives around the world having worked in more than 50 countries. Her extensive global leadership experience in corporate communications and marketing, public affairs, organizational communication, and cross-cultural consulting extends across four continents. She currently serves as marketing consultant to globally-focused organizations in the U.S. and around the world and has authored six books on the intersection of globalization and careers.

Co-sponsored by Global Programs, the Liberal Arts Career Enrichment Network, the Paterno Fellows Program, Penn State Career Services, the School of International Affairs, and the University Libraries.

Free and open to the public.


Special Courts and the Formation of Authoritarianism in Egypt

Lecture
Oct 18, 2018
05:30 PM to 07:30 PM
102 Weaver
 

Yoram Meital, University of Pennsylvania, Katz Center for Advanced Jewish Studies, Ben Gurion University 

This lecture analyzes the critical role that the state’s justice system filled following the July 1952 revolution. It discusses the military-backed government’s intensive use of decrees, laws, and constitutional declarations during the transition stage of that revolution, and analyzes the crucial role played by a pair of two special tribunals – The Revolu-tion’s Court and The People’s Court – in the formation of an authoritarian regime that would reign well into the next century. These special courts were dissolved at the end of the 1950’s. However, the long-standing Egyptian practice of adjudicating citizens before special courts (all were conferred with exceptional powers) would reach new heights in the decades to come. Thousands of the regime’s adversaries—the majority of whom were members of the Muslim Brothers, but also liberals and communists—were prosecuted within the framework of these special tribunals. The widespread use of these tribunals, including the military variety, turned this exception into the rule.

Co-sponsored by the Center for Global Studies.


Synagogues and Jewish Heritage in Cairo: Reconfiguring Past and Present

Lecture
Oct 19, 2018
10:30 AM to 12:30 PM
102 Weaver
 

Yoram Meital, University of Pennsylvania, Katz Center for Advanced Jewish Studies, Ben Gurion University

While only four Jews still live in the Cairo, a dozen synagogues are still standing. Against this backdrop, a significant attitudinal shift of the Egyptian authorities is developing toward the heritage of the Jewish community and its assets, first and foremost its synagogues. This lecture introduces the Jewish Synagogues Study Project, which was initiated by the Jewish Community of Cairo in 2017. The project includes drawings and historical documentations of Cairo’s synagogues; restoration of these synagogues and their artifacts, and reuse of several synagogues as interfaith centers for local residents. Through a multi-dimensional study of the synagogue’s physical design and activities, it provides a rereading of the ways in which different sectors of Cairene Jewry developed a modern Jewish-Egyptian identity, and it examines the ways in which Egypt engages and reengages with its Jewish past. This seemingly “minor” issue is indicative of much deeper and broader processes and transformations that the Egyptian society is undergoing.

Co-sponsored by the Center for Global Studies.


Un)earthing cartographies, racial necro-economics and politics of absence

Lecture
Oct 19, 2018
04:00 PM to 05:00 PM
319 Walker
 

Dr. Mariana Mora will be giving a talk as part of a combined Geography and WGSS Coffee Hour speaker series.

Learn more about the speaker here: https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/indigenous/people/mariana-mora.


Association for India’s Development Fall Gala

Oct 20, 2018
06:30 PM to 09:00 PM
HUB 302

Celebrate Indian culture at AID’s Fall Gala. Indian snacks and savories will be served. Activities include pumpkin carving, palmistry, and Indian games. Admission: $4.99 for students & children / $10 for adults. Tickets can be purchased at the event.

Fall Gala 2018 Poster


Charismatic Politics and the People in the Cultural Revolution: The Mao Cult According to Alain Badiou

Comparative Literature Lecture Series
Oct 22, 2018
12:15 PM to 01:15 PM
102 Kern
 

Ban Wang, Stanford University


In Conversation with Luiz Ruffato

Lecture
Oct 24, 2018
01:25 PM to 02:30 PM
110 Walker
 

Luiz Ruffato

Luiz Ruffato, Contemporary Brazilian Novelist 

Contemporary Brazilian writer Luiz Ruffato won the Prêmio Machado de Assis for his 2001 novel Eles eram muito cavalos, which has been translated into five languages, including English, Spanish, and Italian. His five-volume series Inferno Provisório (2005-2011) aims to fictionalize twentieth-century experiences of the Brazilian working class. His 2013 novel Domingos sem Deus received the Casa de las Américas prize. He has organized anthologies of women’s writing and contemporary fiction, been a visiting writer at UC Berkeley, and written opinion pieces for the Brazilian edition of El País. His most recent publication is the 2018 short story collection A Cidade Dorme.

Co-sponsored by the Center for Global Studies.


Kak ia provel etim letom / How I Ended This Summer

Russian Film Series
Oct 24, 2018
06:15 PM to 08:00 PM
Foster Auditorium, Paterno Library
 

Movie poster“Kak ia provel etim letom” or, “How I Ended This Summer” is a film by Aleksey Popogrebskiy.

“A polar station on a desolate island in the Arctic Ocean. Sergei, a seasoned meteorologist, and Pavel, a recent college graduate, are spending months in complete isolation on the once strategic research base. Pavel receives an important radio message and is still trying to find the right moment to tell Sergei, when fear, lies and suspicions start poisoning the atmosphere…” —summary by the Koktebel Film Company (source:  https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1588875/). The film won numerous international awards, including the Silver Bear for Best Actor (Berlin), Outstanding Artistic Achievement in Category “Camera” (Yerevan, Armenia) and Best Film at the 46th Chicago International Film Festival.

Co-sponsored by the Center for Global Studies.


The Islamic Empire in the Literature of Southeastern Europe

Comparative Literature Lecture Series
Oct 29, 2018
12:15 PM to 01:15 PM
102 Kern
 

Eralda Lameborshi, Stephen F. Austin State University

Eralda L. Lameborshi received her doctorate from the Department of English at Texas A&M University in 2017. She is a lecturer in the Department of English and Creative Writing at Stephen F. Austin State University where she teaches writing and literature. Her area of expertise is twentieth century Eastern European Literature, the historical novel on the Ottoman Empire, literatures migration, immigration, and exile, Eastern European Cinema, postcolonial theory, and film theory. She is the recipient of various fellowships and awards: the Hagler Institute for Advanced Study Fellowship, Elizabeth Greenwade Qualls ’89 Endowed Fellowship, the Summertime Advanced Research Award from the College of Liberal Arts (STAR Fellow) at Texas A&M, and the Professional Development Award from the College of Liberal Arts at Texas A&M. She is currently working on her book manuscript titled The Islamic Empire and World Literature.


PHUNC VI: A Timeline of Exploration

Nov 02, 2018 12:00 PM to
Nov 04, 2018 01:00 PM
State College, PA
 

PHUNC Emblem

PHUNC VI: A Timeline of Exploration will take place from November 2 through November 4, 2018 in State College, PA. With ten crisis-style committees staffed by over 60 Penn State students, we offer something for everyone. Whether you are interested in honing in on your debate skills, learning how to write effective crisis notes, or simply getting to try our famous Creamery ice cream, you will have a truly memorable weekend.

Learn more and register at www.phunc.psiada.org.

Co-sponsored by the Center for Global Studies.


Theory of the Fourteenth-Century Lyric

Comparative Literature Lecture Series
Nov 05, 2018
12:15 PMto 01:15 PM
102 Kern
 

Andy Galloway, Cornell University

Andrew Galloway is professor of English at Cornell University, where he has taught since receiving his PhD and where he teaches and writes mainly about late-medieval literature, with forays into ancient, Renaissance, and nineteenth-century American literature. His work often pursues late-medieval English literature within history in terms of issues of form as well as more traditional historical categories and subjects. Some recent or forthcoming projects focus on medieval economic history and literature, medieval legal history and literature, medieval historical narratives, and the possibilities for constructing a literary biography of the author of Piers Plowman. As well as numerous essays on Chaucer, Gower, and Piers Plowman especially, he has written two monographs, Medieval Literature and Culture, and volume one of the Penn Commentary on Piers Plowman, and has edited several volumes of essays and “companions” on late-medieval literature and translated Gower’s Latin for the TEAMS edition of the Confessio Amantis.

 

FLAS Information Session

Nov 06, 2018
01:00 PMto 02:30 PM
463 Burrowes
 

Illicit Flows, Illicit Consumption: Hashish and the Transition from Mandatory Palestine to the State of Israel

Lecture
Nov 06, 2018
04:00 PMto 06:00 PM
124 Pasquerilla Center
 

Haggai Ram, Ben Gurion University of the Negev

This talk is concerned with the previously untold social history of hashish in Palestine-Israel from the 1920s, which coincided with the criminalization of cannabis (and other drugs), to the 1967 June War and its immediate aftermath, which dramatically transformed patterns of illicit hashish flows and illicit consumption in Israel and the Levant writ large. The book is a transregional study that follows the transition from mandatory Palestine to the State of Israel through the perspective of hashish as an illicit commodity that is smuggled across borders, traded, consumed, regulated and debated.

There is a vibrant body of scholarly writing about mandatory Palestine and the post-1948 Israeli polity. Some aspects of the transition from one entity to the other have been addressed, especially as regards the continuities and disruptions in the political and cultural horizons of the country’s Jewish inhabitants, and to a lesser extent of its Palestinian inhabitants as well. Yet, to date few were the scholarly interventions that examined this transition by avoiding the pitfalls of “methodological territorialism,” and still virtually none has considered it from the vantage point of the history, politics, and culture of psychoactive substances. The main significance and contribution of Illicit Flows, Illicit Consumption is that it does both.

This event is co-sponsored by The Center for Global Studies.


Does Linguistic Environment Matter? Exploring the Effects of Speech Community Diffuseness in Perceptual Learning

CGS Brown Bag Lecture Series
Nov 07, 2018
12:15 PMto 01:15 PM
25 Burrowes
 

Globe Graphic

Alexander McAllister, Penn State

In an increasingly interconnected world, contact with dialects other than our own is widespread. In recognizing these dialects, perceivers are highly sensitive to variation in sound categories. The process in which a perceiver adapts to a novel production of a sound category is typically described as perceptual learning (Norris et al., 2003), a process in which atypical sounds in the speech of an unfamiliar talker are “mapped” onto familiar ones. Generalizing this learning from one speaker to another has been found to be elusive. Perceivers are quite capable of adapting to idiosyncratic speech, but less so at learning to correlate such variation to groups of speakers.

In this talk, McAllister asks whether the dialectal makeup of a speech community affects the generalization process in perceptual learning. He hypothesizes that experience with greater dialect diversity will lead listeners to consider the possibility that unfamiliar sound features produced by speakers belong to a previously unencountered dialect variety. He will present preliminary findings from a perceptual learning paradigm task in which participants were exposed to two speakers producing a nonce Spanish dialect, being trained in one voice and tested in the other. Participants came from Spanish speaking populations from two US institutions (Penn State and UC Riverside) representing relatively heterogeneous and homogeneous dialectal speech communities respectively, and were hypothesized to differ in how they treat variation. 


FLAS Information Session

Nov 09, 2018
02:00 PMto 03:30 PM
463 Burrowes
 
 

Santos Luzardo and the Venezuelan Road to Capitalism: Landowners, Agricultural Modernization and the Latin American Regionalist Novel

Comparative Literature Lecture Series
Nov 12, 2018
12:15 PMto 01:15 PM
102 Kern
 

Erica Beckman, University of Pennsylvania


Film Screening of MATANGI / MAYA / M.I.A.

Film screening
Nov 13, 2018
06:00 PMto 08:30 PM
113 Carnegie Building
 

Movie PosterDirected by Stephen Loveridge, the film is drawn from a never-before-seen cache of personal footage spanning decades, painting an intimate portrait of the Sri Lankan artist and musician known as M.I.A. The documentary explores her negotiation of her role as an artist and celebrity through the lens of Tamil politics and migration to the West.

Following the screening, a brief facilitated discussion will be held with several panelists:

          • Dr. Suresh Canagarajah, a faculty member in the Department of Applied Linguistics and English and director of the Migration Studies Project
          • Dr. Jo Dumas, an associate teaching professor in the Department of Media Studies
          • Professor Pearl Gluck, a filmmaker and assistant professor in the Department of Media Studies.
 
Watch the official trailer.
 

This event is sponsored by Mohona, the Bangladesh Culture Club, and the Center for Global Studies.


Thinking through the Counter-Colony: Chief Sam and the Logistics of African American Migration to Ghana, 1912-1917

CGS Brown Bag Lecture Series
Nov 14, 2018
12:00 PMto 01:00 PM
25 Burrowes
 

Globe Graphic

Ebony Coletu, Penn State

In this talk, Coletu will share the arc of a little-known back-to-Africa movement launched in 1912 by Chief Alfred Sam, ending around 1917. Chief Alfred Sam was an Akyem merchant from the Gold Coast who advertised land for African Americans to cultivate and develop factories in today’s Ghana. The key question surrounding this movement, which quietly inspired Marcus Garvey, was what interest an African businessman and small village chief would have in African American return? The offer of repatriation managed through a corporate form (selling stocks in lieu of seats on the ship, or land), enabled a different mode of thinking about collective ownership, speculation, and the terms in which African American contributions would be valued in West Africa. This movement was subject to the scrutiny of the Gold Coast Indigenous Rights Protection Society, and later received approval and advocacy for a counter-colony against the aggressive efforts of colonial officials to dispossess the movement of their ship and cash resources on the eve of World War I. The talk will focus on Sam’s motivation and vision for an alternative approach to settlement and trade as British officials began to strengthen the rights of access to European merchants who would dominate West African commerce. Africans by turn, also transformed their approach to trade and developed a pan-African imagination that imagined African Americans as a different kind of human resource for reclaiming a foothold in the transnational economy. This project allows exploration of African American return both within and beyond the framework of trade and emphasizes the importance rather than the novelty of an African-led African American remigration movement.


A Shared Longing: Rewriting Nazim Hikmet in Turkish and Turkish-German Literature, 1963-2017

Comparative Literature Lecture Series
Nov 26, 2018
12:15 PMto 01:15 PM
102 Kern
 

Jill Stockwell, Princeton University

Jill Stockwell is the Director of the Prison Teaching Initiative at Princeton University, a division of the McGraw Center for Teaching and Learning. Jill was previously a postdoctoral research associate at Princeton affiliated with the University Center for Human Values. Jill holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from Princeton University and was a Fulbright and Social Science Research Council fellow. Her scholarship examines the intersection between Turkish and Turkish-German literary and cultural studies, and her current project focuses on the troubled relationship between incarceration and democracy in the Turkish and American contexts.


Book Launch: Guerrilla Marketing: Counterinsurgency and Capitalism in Colombia

Book Launch
Nov 30, 2018
04:00 PMto 06:00 PM
Webster’s Bookstore Cafe
 

Alexander Fattal, Dept. Film-Video and Media Studies, Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications, Penn State

Book CoverBrand warfare is real. Guerrilla Marketingdetails the Colombian government’s efforts to transform Marxist guerrilla fighters in the FARC into consumer citizens. Alexander L. Fattal shows how the market has become one of the principal grounds on which counterinsurgency warfare is waged and postconflict futures are imagined in Colombia. This layered case study illuminates a larger phenomenon: the convergence of marketing and militarism in the twenty-first century. Taking a global view of information warfare, Guerrilla Marketing combines archival research and extensive fieldwork not just with the Colombian Ministry of Defense and former rebel communities, but also with political exiles in Sweden and peace negotiators in Havana. Throughout, Fattal deftly intertwines insights into the modern surveillance state, peace and conflict studies, and humanitarian interventions, on one hand, with critical engagements with marketing, consumer culture, and late capitalism on the other. The result is a powerful analysis of the intersection of conflict and consumerism in a world where governance is increasingly structured by brand ideology and wars sold as humanitarian interventions.

Full of rich, unforgettable ethnographic stories, Guerrilla Marketing is a stunning and troubling analysis of the mediation of global conflict.

Reading: Alex Fattal, Assistant Prof. Dept. Film-Video and Media Studies, Penn State University
Commentary: Alex Dent, Associate Prof. Dept. of Anthropology, George Washington University
Music: Adianez Martínez

Free wine and snacks will be provided.

“Guerrilla Marketing is a fascinating examination of how commercial-style branding has been deployed by both
rebels and the state in Colombia’s civil war. Fattal deserves high praise for his extraordinary research, carried out over
many years in the edgy and borderless terrain of the war’s periphery. His insights are lucid and the stories he tells are
haunting. This book is a must-read for scholars of modern conflict, journalists, and diplomats.”
— Jon Lee Anderson, New Yorker staff writer

Co-sponsored by the Center for Global Studies.


PBS Kids: Let’s Go Luna! Advance Screening Event

Film screening
Dec 01, 2018
02:00 PMto 04:00 PM
WPSU Studios, Outreach Building, 100 Innovation Blvd., University Park
 

Let's Go Luna Poster

This event has been postponed to December 1st.

Join WPSU Studios for a screening of Let’s Go Luna! Learn about the different cultures in the world through fun activities available for the whole family. Make a “passport”, and explore our world map!

Activities

  • Fill your PBS KIDS Passport by learning about the countries featured in season 1.
  • Learn about people around the world and how they dress, what they eat, and where they live.
  • Bring your child’s favorite blanket and watch the first 1-hour episode in the WPSU studio together. (Chairs for grownups will be provided.)

Activities begin at 2:00 p.m., screening at 3:00 p.m.
This free event requires advance registration.

Co-sponsored by the Center for Global Studies and Penn State Global Programs.

Broadcast Premiere

Wednesday, November 21

Let’s Go Luna! is about exploring people and countries of the world countries through local language, music, and dance. The program will run two times every weekday and be part of PBS KIDS 24/7.


New World Chorographies: Virgil’s Aeneid and the Walls of Colonial Lima

Comparative Literature Lecture Series
Dec 03, 2018
12:15 PMto 01:15 PM
102 Kern
 

German Campos-Munoz, Appalachian State University


Representing the Poor and Disabled in Literature and Art: The Contradictions of Class and Transclass

Lecture
Dec 03, 2018
02:30 PMto 03:30 PM
111 Wartik Lab
 

Lennard Davis, University of Illinois

Co-sponsored by the Center for Global Studies


Pip’s Jumps: Black Politics and White Authorities in Melville’s Moby Dick

Comparative Literature Lecture Series
Jan 14, 2019
12:15 PMto 01:15 PM
102 Kern
 

Sam Tenorio, Penn State

Sam C. Tenorio is currently a Post Doctoral Fellow with the Africana Research Center at Penn State, holding a dual affiliation with the departments of Comparative Literature and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. They earned a Ph.D. in African American Studies with a subfield in Political Theory from Northwestern University (2018). Dr. Tenorio’s research interests revolve primarily around black political thought, anarchism, carcerality, as well as the history of chattel slavery and its afterlives. They are currently working on a book manuscript that provides a socio-spatial account of black anarchism that emerges from a central concern with enslaved Africans’ jumps from the slave ship. The project aims to demonstrate how a substantive theoretical attention to these jumps generates possibilities for thinking about black radical politics differently.


Between Realism and Anti-Imperialism: The Geopolitics of Malcolm X

Lecture
Jan 23, 2019
05:00 PMto 06:30 PM
102 Weaver
 

Moshik Temkin Headshot

TIME CHANGE: This lecture has been rescheduled to 5 – 6:30 p.m.

Moshik Temkin, Associate Professor of History and Public Policy at Harvard University

Light refreshments will be served.


Revisiting the Rising of 1381: Allegory and Politics in the Late 14th Century

Comparative Literature Lecture Series
Jan 28, 2019
12:15 PMto 01:15 PM
102 Kern
 

Ethan Knapp, Ohio State University

Ethan Knapp is the author of the Bureaucratic Muse: Thomas Hoccleve and the Literature of Late Medieval England, as well as essays appearing in SpeculumMedium AevumExemplariaChaucer ReviewStudies in the Ages of Chaucer, and numerous edited collections. He serves on the editorial boards of Exemplaria and the Spenser Review, and also edits book series Interventions: New Studies in Medieval Culture, for the Ohio State University Press. He is currently working on a book entitled: Entropic Gower.


Centre County Reads 2019

Jan 29, 2019 06:00 PM to
Apr 04, 2019 09:00 PM
 

The 2019 selection for Centre County Reads is Katie Fallon’s Vulture.

Film Screening of Winged Migration

Tuesday, January 29th, 2019 | 6 p.m. – 8 p.m.
Downsbrough Community Room, Schlow Library
AND
Friday, February 1st, 2019 | 1 p.m. – 4 p.m.
Centre County Library, Bellefonte

Join us to watch and discuss Winged Migration (G, 90min). This family-friendly documentary (2003) focuses on the migratory patterns of birds, shot over the course of three years on all seven continents. Snacks will be provided. 


An Evening with Katie Fallon

Thursday, April 4th, 2019 | 7:30 p.m. – 9 p.m.
Nittany Lion Inn, Assembly Room, The Pennsylvania State University

Katie Fallon Headshot

ABOUT THE BOOK
In Vulture, Katie Fallon discusses the turkey vulture, an overlooked and under-appreciated species that plays an extremely important role in our ecosystem. Written as a travelogue, scientific exploration, ecological memoir and love story, Vulture will appeal to a wide variety of readers. Book signing to follow. FREE and open to the public; no registration necessary.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Katie Fallon is the author of Vulture: The Private Life of an Unloved Bird (UPNE, 2017) and Cerulean Blues: A Personal Search for a Vanishing Songbird (Ruka Press, 2011), as well as two books for children. Her essays and articles have appeared in a variety of literary journals and magazines, and she has taught writing at Virginia Tech, West Virginia University, and in the Low-Residency MFA programs of West Virginia Wesleyan College and Chatham University. She is also a founder of the Avian Conservation Center of Appalachia and a Penn State graduate. Find out more about Katie at ww.katiefallon.com.

..And More!

There are several exciting events leading up to Katie Fallon’s visit, including a film night, winter bird walk, writing contests, book discussions, and more. Click here for a full list of events.


Muslim “Racialization” and the Conceptual Limits of the Arabophone: Translational Disjunctures and Comparative Horizons across the Global South

Comparative Literature Lecture Series
Feb 04, 2019
12:15 PMto 01:15 PM
102 Kern
 

Annette Damayanti Lienau, Harvard University

Professor Lienau’s core research uses the legacy of the Arabic language as a lens for comparative studies of post-colonial literature, offering an alternative approach to the often binary (colonial/post-colonial) constructions used in more isolated studies of national literatures. Drawing on an extensive background in comparative Arabic, Indonesian, African, and Francophone writing, her research explores cultural and historical dynamics not fully explained by a single colonial legacy. Her work has been generously supported by national fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies and the Social Science Research Council, a Mellon postdoctoral fellowship at UCLA, and several competitive grants from Yale University. She was most recently the co-recipient of a Mellon Sawyer Seminar Grant with colleagues at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.


Film Screening of Andrei Rublev – АНДРЕЙ РУБЛЁВ

Russian Film Series
Feb 05, 2019
06:15 PMto 08:00 PM
Foster Auditorium (Paterno Library)
 

Movie Poster

Tracing the life of a renowned icon painter, the second feature by Andrei Tarkovsky vividly conjures the murky world of medieval Russia. This dreamlike and remarkably tactile film follows Andrei Rublev as he passes through a series of poetically linked scenes—snow falls inside an unfinished church, naked pagans stream through a thicket during a torchlit ritual, a boy oversees the clearing away of muddy earth for the forging of a gigantic bell—gradually emerging as a man struggling mightily to preserve his creative and religious integrity. Appearing here in the director’s preferred 183-minute cut as well as the version that was originally suppressed by Soviet authorities, the masterwork Andrei Rublev is one of Tarkovsky’s most revered films, an arresting meditation on art, faith, and endurance.” Credit: https://www.criterion.com/films/300-andrei-rublev

The daughter of one of the two costume designers will be in attendance.


Rural Youth at the Crossroad: Contemporary Challenges Within Transition Societies in Central Europe

CGS Brown Bag Lecture Series
Feb 06, 2019
12:15 PMto 01:15 PM
Globe Graphic
 

Kai Schafft & Renata Horvatek, Penn State

How have rural youth in Central Europe and other transitional regions of the world responded to recent socioeconomic, demographic, and political shifts? What are young peoples’ attitudes toward their rural roots, family, and tradition? What are the spatial, social, family, educational and institutional factors that shape rural youth aspirations for future residence, career, and occupation? How do schools and communities support young people as they develop plans for adult lives, and what are the implications for educational and community-level practice? How do these processes differ regionally, and how might regional economies affect youth decision-making? How do these identities shape rural youth aspirations for the future, their attachment to their home communities, and the ways in which social and political exclusions and inclusions are reinforced, challenged, and/or reconfigured? This talk will discuss an ongoing collaboration to address these questions with researchers from the University of Split in Croatia, as well as with other scholars and researchers in surrounding countries who have joined together in the effort to compile an edited volume.


Between a Stone and a Hard Place: Stanlake Samkange’s Turn to Philosophy

Comparative Literature Lecture Series
Feb 11, 2019
12:15 PMto 01:15 PM
102 Kern
 

Jeanne-Marie Jackson, Johns Hopkins University

Jeanne-Marie Jackson is Assistant Professor of world Anglophone literature at Johns Hopkins, and received her PhD in Comparative Literature from Yale in 2012. Her first book is South African Literature’s Russian Soul: Narrative Forms of Global Isolation (Bloomsbury, 2015), and she is currently completing The African Novel of Ideas for Princeton University Press. In addition to her academic publications in a wide range of journals, she writes for more broadly accessible venues including n+1, Public Books, The Conversation, Popula, 3:AM Magazine, and The Literary Review.


Film screening of In Her Footsteps

Film Screening
Feb 13, 2019
06:00 PMto 08:00 PM
Carnegie Cinema
 

Rana Abu-Fraiha Headshot

With special guest, Rana Abu-Fraiha, Bedouin Israeli Director

Co-sponsored by the Center for Global Studies

Faculty, students, and community are invited.


Film Screening of Honor Diaries

Arabic Film Series
Feb 13, 2019
07:00 PMto 09:00 PM
Foster Auditorium (Paterno Library)
 

Movie Poster

Honor Diaries is a documentary which follows nine female activists in the Muslim and non-Muslim world, working to better the health and well-being of women. Issues addressed include female genital mutilation, violence against women, honor killings, forced marriage, and lack of access to education. The film originally premiered at the 2013 Chicago International Film Festival and won the Interfaith Award for Best Documentary at the St. Louis International Film Festival.

A discussion will follow the film.

Watch the trailer here.

Co-sponsored by the Arabic Program and Penn State University Libraries.


Remixing History

Comparative Literature Lecture Series
Feb 18, 2019
12:15 PMto 01:15 PM
102 Kern
 

Carla Nappi is Mellon Chair in History at the University of Pittsburgh. Her research focuses on the history of bodies and their translations and transformations in the early modern world, largely based in work with Chinese and Manchu texts. She works in short fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and podcasting, and you can find more about her work at www.carlanappi.com.


Radical Artifice and the Feminisms of the Future: How Gender Matters in the French Enlightenment

Lecture
Feb 20, 2019
02:30 PMto 03:20 PM

Natania Meeker, University of Southern California

This lecture is part of the the Department of French and Francophone Studies Table Ronde Speaker Series.


Old Order Amish and Jewish Ultra-Orthodox Women’s Responses to the Internet

Lecture
Feb 20, 2019
04:00 PMto 05:30 PM
102 Weaver
 

Rivka Neriya Ben Shahar, senior lecturer (associate professor) at the Department of Mass Communications, Sapir Academic College

Light refreshments will be provided.

Co-sponsored by the Jewish Studies Program and The Center for Global Studies.


Postsocialist Locales and Global Dreams: The Minimalist Approach in Romanian and Chinese Cinema

CGS Brown Bag Lecture Series
Feb 22, 2019
12:30 PMto 01:30 PM
157 Burrowes
 

Globe Graphic

Please note that this lecture has been rescheduled to Fri., Feb. 22nd from 12:30 – 1:30 p.m.

Victoria Lupascu, Penn State

Lupascu’s talk with analyze the transnational imaginaries of migrant workers and students as represented in Constantin Popescu’s The Laughing Yellow Face andLi Hong’s Out of Phoenix Bridge and will position the cultural creation of such figures in the context described by postsocialism in Romania and China. Drawing on the history of cinematic aesthetics during transitional times by Jason McGrath and Andrei Gorzo, Lupascu theorizes minimalism as a genre with heuristic capacity in portraying postsocialist contexts. A reaction to the miserabilist genre, minimalism constructs these figures as points of intersection between multiple means of communication and modes of existence conditioned by flows of capital. The epistemological and ontological ruptures of transitioning from socialism to postsocialism are embedded in the visual delineation of infrastructure and communication lines that condition human connections as seen in Popescu’s and Li’s films. Identity and subjectivity formation practices are central to these films and, she argues, bear the brunt of the transitional operations. Lupascu juxtaposes Romanian and Chinese films not for common traits generated by common historical experiences, but for the contribution their analysis brings to our understanding of the figure of migrant workers and students in relation to minimalism as an aesthetic practice closely imbricated with postsocialist and global cultural experiences.


The Art of Persistence: Akamatsu Toshiko and the Visual Cultures of Transwar Japan

Comparative Literature Lecture Series
Feb 25, 2019
12:15 PMto 01:15 PM
102 Kern
 

Charlotte Eubanks, Penn State

Charlotte Eubanks is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature, Japanese, and Asian Studies at Penn State where she teaches courses in world literature, literary Buddhism, Japanese culture, book history and visual studies. She is the author of numerous articles, and the monograph Miracles of Book and Body: Buddhist Textual Culture and Medieval Japan (University of California Press, 2011). Her second book The Art of Persistence: Akamatsu Toshiko and the Visual Cultures of Transwar Japan is forthcoming in 2019 from the University of Hawai’i Press. A previous member of the East Asia to 1900 Executive Committee at the MLA, and the founding chair of the LLC Japan to 1900 forum, she also serves as Associate Editor at the journal Verge: Studies in Global Asias (University of Minnesota Press).


Laughtivism – the Power of Humor in Nonviolent Struggle

Lecture
Feb 26, 2019
04:30 PMto 05:45 PM
Katz Auditorium, University Park
 

What do jokes have to do with revolutions? It’s commonly assumed that revolutionaries should be solemn, but research shows that when humor is employed as a tactic in social movements the success rate doubles.

Humor is a powerful weapon, especially in response authoritarianism and dictators. Not only does humor melt fear, but movements that use humor and satire gain popularity quickly, allowing them to grow exponentially, which is a crucial component for success.

Popovic will discuss the different strategies of using humor in nonviolent movements. He promotes the idea that nonviolent revolutions work and make the world a more peaceful and democratic place.

Srdja Popovi HeadshotSrdja Popovic is the Founder and Executive director of the Center for Applied Nonviolent Actions and Strategies (CANVAS), a non-profit organization based in Belgrade, Serbia that aims to teach the use of nonviolence to make change.

He was born and raised in Belgrade, Serbia (then part of Yugoslavia) in 1973. Popovic played the guitar in a rock band and graduated from the Faculty of Biology in Belgrade, holding a Master’s degree (MA) in animal ecology. Since his early twenties, he has focused on activism, democracy, and human rights issues.

In 1998, Popovic founded the student movement “Otpor!” (“Resistance!”), which played a crucial role in ousting former Serbian dictator, Slobodan Milosevic. After Milosevic was defeated in 2000, Popovic was elected to the Serbian Parliament where he served from 2000-2004.

Following his career in parliament, Popovic went on to found CANVAS, which was created with the intent of teaching people all over the world about how to be successful in nonviolent conflict. The organization has worked with activists from 46 different countries, spreading the knowledge of the nonviolent strategies and tactics used by Otpor! worldwide.

Popovic is currently the 53rd Rector of the University of St Andrews. He commenced the role November 2017.

Apart from being nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2012, Popovic was listed as one of the “Top 100 Global Thinkers” of 2011 by the Foreign Policy Magazine. And in 2014 he was listed as a “Young Global Leader” by the World Economic Forum in Davos. Popovic is also the author of Blueprint for Revolution.

Learn more at http://canvasopedia.org/

This lecture is co-sponsored by the Department of Comparative Literature, the Department of History, the McCourtney Institute for Democracy, the Paterno Fellows Program, the Department of Political Science, the School of International Affairs, Schreyer Honors College, the Department of Sociology and Criminology.


Writing by Ear: The Aural Novel in Brazil

Comparative Literature Lecture Series
Mar 11, 2019
12:15 PMto 01:15 PM
102 Kern
 

Marilia Librandi-Rocha, Princeton University

Marília Librandi is Visiting Assistant Professor of Brazilian Studies at Princeton University. A native of São Paulo, she had taught at Universidade Estadual do Sudoeste da Bahia before moving to Stanford University, where she taught at the Department of Iberian and Latin American Cultures for a decade. Her research focus on the study of the novel and modern poetry, Indigenous thought and Literary theory. She is the author of Writing by Ear: Clarice Lispector and the Aural Novel (University of Toronto Press, Romance Studies Series, 2018), and of Maranhão-ManhattanEnsaios de Literatura Brasileira (7Letras, 2009). She is the co-editor of Transpoetic Exchange: Haroldo de Campos, Octavio Paz and other Multiversal Dialogues (Buckell University Press, forthcoming.) Dr. Librandi is co-director of thesenseandsound.org digital project, and the research group Estudos da Escuta / Listening Studies (Cnpq/Brazil). Affiliated faculty of Diversitas (Núcleo de Estudos das Diversidades, Intolerâncias e Conflitos), at Universidade de São Paulo.


Assal Eswed (Black Honey)

Arabic Film Screening
Mar 13, 2019
07:00 PMto 09:00 PM
362 Willard
 

Red Laughter in Central Asia: Mullo Mushfiqi and Political Satirein the Tajik Socialist Soviet Republic

Lecture
Mar 14, 2019
05:00 PMto 06:00 PM
102 Weaver
 

*Please note that the time for this lecture is now 5 p.m.

Rustin Zarkar, New York University


Book Talk: Outsider Theory

Comparative Literature Lecture Series
Mar 18, 2019
12:15 PMto 01:15 PM
102 Kern
 

Jonathan Eburne

Jonathan P. Eburne teaches in the departments of Comparative Literature, English, and French and Francophone Studies at Penn State. He is Editor-in-Chief of ASAP/Journal, the scholarly journal of ASAP: The Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present; he is also editor of the “Refiguring Modernism” book series at the Pennsylvania State University Press. He is the author of Outsider Theory: Intellectual Histories of Unorthodox Ideas (University of Minnesota Press, 2018) and Surrealism and the Art of Crime (Cornell University Press, 2008) and the co-editor of four additional books: Leonora Carrington and the International Avant-Garde (2017), The Year’s Work in Nerds, Wonks, and Neocons (2017), The Year’s Work in the Oddball Archive (2016), and Paris, Capital of the Black Atlantic (2013). He has also edited or co-edited special issues of Modern Fiction Studies, New Literary History, African American Review, Comparative Literature Studies, Criticism, and ASAP/Journal. Eburne is founder and acting President of ISSS: The International Society for the Study of Surrealism; President of the Association for the Study of Dada and Surrealism; and in 2015 was President of ASAP: The Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present.


“The Second Mother” film screening

Mar 19, 2019
07:00 PMto 09:00 PM
HUB 132

 

Join us for a screening of Anna Muylaert’s 2015 Brazilian film, “The Second Mother” (“Que Horas Ela Volta?”) in 132 HUB-Robeson Center at 7 pm. The film has been called a “savvy, socially conscious crowdpleaser “that offers an entertaining yet profound look into the construction of class, gender, family, and employment relations as they are lived out inside of the home. It has a score of 96% on Rotten Tomatoes, and received awards at the Sundance Film Festival, the Berlin International Film Festival, and the Lima Latin American Film Festival. 

Co-sponsored by the Center for Global Workers’ Rights and the Sustainability Institute. 

Movie Poster


“Behind the Decorations at Vincennes:” Indochinese Activists against the 1931 French Colonial Exposition

CGS Brown Bag Lecture Series
Mar 20, 2019
12:15 PMto 01:15 PM
157 Burrowes
 

Globe Graphic

Elizabeth Tuttle, Penn State

In 1931, France held an elaborate colonial fair where patrons could visit a condensed version of the French empire in Paris’ park Vincennes. Organizers recreated indigenous dwellings and religious structures from across the empire in order to celebrate the state’s vision of a “greater France.” In its six-month run, the colonial exposition attracted millions of visitors from Paris, France’s provinces, and beyond. Even with such popular and financial success, there were still groups who spoke out against this celebration of the French imperial project. In particular, Indochinese militants, often working with French Communist Party members, protested inhumane conditions for colonial workers both in the colonies and at the fair in Vincennes. How did these activists spread their message? Who was their audience and to what extent were they successful in countering governmental propaganda? To answer these questions, Tuttle will analyze official surveillance documents as well as the tracts and pamphlets written and distributed by Indochinese militants during the run-up to the fair’s opening. Ultimately, Tuttle argues that the 1931 colonial exposition became an ideological battleground between colonial administrators and a small number of activists determined to change public opinion by exposing the violence at the heart of French colonialism.


Krazy About Korea Culture Night

Cultural Event
Mar 20, 2019
07:00 PMto 09:00 PM
Alumni Hall, HUB-Robeson Center
 

The Korean Student Association, the Korean International Club, the Korean International Student Organization, and the Department of Asian Studies present the 6th annual Korean Culture Night. 

Come and experience the exciting cultures of traditional & modern Korea! 

Booth activities are from 7-8 p.m. and performances are from 8-9 p.m. 

FREE ADMISSION 

Co-sponsored by the Center for Global Studies


Mythologies of Realism and Modernism: African Literature and the Cold War

Comparative Literature Lecture Series
Mar 25, 2019
12:15 PMto 01:15 PM
102 Kern
 

Monica Popescu, McGill University

Monica Popescu is Associate Professor and William Dawson Scholar of African Literatures at McGill University. She is the author of South African Literature Beyond the Cold War (which won the 2012 Gustave O. Arlt Award in the Humanities) and The Politics of Violence in Post-Communist Films, and co-editor of a special issue of the Journal of Postcolonial Writing on Alternative Solidarities: Black Diasporas and Cultural Alliances during the Cold War. Together with Katie Zien and Sandeep Banerjee, she is the co-editor of the Routledge Series in Cultures of the Global Cold War. She has published articles on African culture and the Cold War, postcommunist cultures, post-apartheid literature and nationalism, which have appeared in journals like Studies in the Novel, Research in African Literatures, Current Writing, and The Yale Journal of Criticism. She is currently finishing a book manuscript entitled “African Literatures, Postcolonial Cultures and the Cold War” (under contract with Duke University Press).


Film screening of Human Flow

Film Screening
Mar 26, 2019
04:00 PMto 06:15 PM
Katz Auditorium, University Park
 

Movie poster

Over 65 million people around the world have been forced from their homes since World War II. Human Flow, an epic film journey led by the internationally renowned artist Ai Weiwei, gives a powerful visual expression to this massive human migration. The documentary elucidates both the staggering scale of the refugee crisis and its profoundly personal human impact. 

Captured over the course of an eventful year in 23 countries, the film follows a chain of urgent human stories that stretches across the globe. Human Flow is a witness to its subjects and their desperate search for safety, shelter and justice: from teeming refugee camps to perilous ocean crossings to barbed-wire borders; from dislocation and disillusionment to courage, endurance and adaptation; from the haunting lure of lives left behind to the unknown potential of the future. Human Flow comes at a crucial time when tolerance, compassion, and trust are needed more than ever. This visceral work of cinema poses one of the questions that will define this century: Will our global society emerge from fear, isolation, and self-interest and choose a path of openness, freedom, and respect for humanity?

Reception to follow with special guests Professor Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia, Director of the Center for Immigrants’ Rights Clinic and Dr. Suresh Canagarajah, Director of the Migration Studies Project.


Dreyfus in Algeria

Comparative Literature Lecture Series
Apr 01, 2019
12:15 PMto 01:15 PM
102 Kern

David Fieni, State University of New York, Oneonta

David Fieni is Assistant Professor of French at the State University of New York, Oneonta. He is the author of Decadent Orientalisms: Configuring the Decay of Colonial Modernity in French and Arabic (forthcoming 2019) and translator of Laurent Dubreuil’s Empire of Language (2013). Fieni has co-edited special journal issues on “The Global Checkpoint” and on the Moroccan writer Abdelkebir Khatibi. His work has appeared in diacritics, boundary 2, PMLA, and Expressions Maghrébines.


Insurgents of Academe: Historicizing Public Humanities in the African Diaspora

Comparative Literature Lecture Series
Apr 08, 2019
12:15 PMto 01:15 PM
102 Kern
 

Roopika Risam, Salem State University

Roopika Risam is Assistant Professor of English and English Education and coordinator of the Graduate Certificate in Digital Studies at Salem State University. Her monograph New Digital Worlds: Postcolonial Digital Humanities in Theory, Praxis, and Pedagogy was published by Northwestern University Press in 2018. She is also co-editor of The Digital Black Atlantic for the Debates in the Digital Humanities Series (University of Minnesota Press).


Assessing the Euromaidan of 2014 Five Years Later: The State of the Ukrainian State

Symposium
Apr 11, 2019
09:00 AMto 04:30 PM
102 Weaver Building
 

Open to the general public

SESSION I (10 a.m.-noon)

Dominique Arel, Chair of Ukrainian Studies, University of Ottawa: “Maidan 5 Years Later: Revisiting the Use and Impact of Violence” 

Marta Dyczok, Associate Professor, University of Western Ontario: “Media in a Post-Euromaidan Ukraine”           

Mykola Riabchuk, Research Scholar, The Kuras Institute for Political and Ethno-National Research of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine: “Dills’ versus ‘Potato Beetles’: Ethnic Othering and Stereotyping During the Russo-Ukrainian War”

SESSION II (1-3 p.m.)

Tamara Martsenyuk, Assistant Professor, University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy (Ukraine): “Gender (In)Equality Issues in Ukraine: Five Years after the Euromaidan Protests”

Nicholas Denysenko,  Associate Professor Valparaiso University: “The Euromaidan and the Aftermath of the Granting of Tomos to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Ukraine”

SESSION III (3:30–4:30 p.m.)

A Bilingual Reading and Book Presentation of Maria Matios’ novel (translated by Michael Naydan and Olha Tytarenko) Sweet Darusya: A Tale of Two Villages (Spuyten Duyvil Publishers). Featuring Ukrainian readings and comments by Maria Matios and English readings by Charity Ketz.

Sponsored by the Woskob Endowment in Ukrainian Studies, the Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages, and the College of Agricultural Sciences


Leaks, Hacks, and Scandals: Arab Culture in the Digital Age

Apr 15, 2019
12:15 PMto 01:30 PM
102 Kern

 

Tarek El-Ariss, Dartmouth College

Tarek El-Ariss is Associate Professor and Chair of Middle Eastern Studies at Dartmouth College. His research interests include contemporary Arabic literature, culture, and media; comparative literature and critical theory; and digital and visual culture.

He is the author of Trials of Arab Modernity: Literary Affects and the New Political (2013) and Leaks, Hacks, and Scandals: Arab Culture in the Digital Age (2018), and editor of The Arab Renaissance: A Bilingual Anthology of the Nahda (2018).


The Garden as a Site of Pleasure in China and Byzantium: What We Can Learn from Comparing Medieval Traditions

Comparative Literature Lecture Series
Apr 22, 2019
12:30 PMto 01:15 PM
102 Kern
 

Cruie Virág, University of Edinburgh

Curie Virág works at the intersection of philosophy and intellectual history, and focuses on emotions, cognition, self cultivation, and aesthetics in premodern China. She is currently Senior Research Fellow- and Co-Project Director in the School of History, Classics and Archaeology at the University of Edinburgh, where she co-directs (with Prof. Niels Gaul) the research project, “Classicising Learning in Medieval Imperial Systems: Cross-cultural Approaches to Byzantine Paideia and Tang/Song Xue,” funded by the European Research Council (ERC)  http://paixue.shca.ed.ac.uk/. She is also Visiting Faculty in the Departments of Philosophy and Medieval Studies at Central European University (Budapest). In addition to her Sino-Byzantine research, she is also at work on a sequel to her book, The Emotions in Early Chinese Philosophy (Oxford, 2017), which continues her investigation of emotions into the early imperial and medieval periods.


Global International Human Resource Management Conference

May 10, 2019 08:30 AM to
May 11, 2019 02:00 PM
 

With keynote speakers:

Riki Takeuchi Headshot

Professor Riki Takeuchi, University of Texas at Dallas

Jaime Bonache Headshot

Professor Jaime Bonache, Carlos III University of Madrid (Spain)

More information about this event…