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

A talk by South African author and journalist Mark Gevisser.

Mark Gevisser is currently The Nation's Southern African correspondent. In South Africa, his work has appeared in the Mail & Guardian, the Sunday Independent, the Sunday Times and many magazines and periodicals. Internationally, he has written widely on South African politics, culture and society, in publications ranging from Vogue and the New York Times to Foreign Affairs and Art in America.

Read Mark Gevisser's featured CIS article connecting Barack Obama's election and the legacy of liberation in South Africa...

From the World Beyond the Headlines lecture series. Cosponsored by the Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory (3CT), the Political Science Department, the African Studies Workshop, and the Human Rights Program.

A presentation and discussion with University of Chicago Professors Roger Myerson, Department of Economics & Marshall Sahlins, Department of Anthropology.

Roger Myerson: "A Field Manual for the Cradle of Civilization"

Marshall Sahlins: "On the Anthropology of the Counterinsurgency Field Manual"

Part of the April 2009 conference on "Reconsidering American Power". In the STSS Workshop's 2008 conference on "Anthropology and Global Counterinsurgency", participants analyzed and interrogated new relations among American power, geopolitics, military interventions and anthropological practice. This year, the issues were broadened to include the future of American power and the social sciences generally. "Reconsidering American Power" asks a difficult, timely question: In the face of two ongoing hot wars and after a potentially transformative election, what now?

Organized by The Workshop on Science, Technology, Society, and the State, and the Center for International Studies.

A performance by the Alash Ensemble at International House.

Tuvan throat-singing and traditional Tuvan instruments and music.

Sponsored by the Center for East European and Russian/Eurasian Studies.

A Program on the Global Environment Distinguished Lecture by Lesley Potter, Associate Professor, Department of Human Geography, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University.

Despite the global paradigm shift from centralized to decentralized forest management, this process has been slow to develop in "forest rich" Indonesia. Although both deforestation and forest degradation have continued at a high level, the Ministry of Forestry has been reluctant to provide communities with a legal role in managing their forests, especially those falling within the permanent forest estate. Forest tenure remains a huge problem, with the rights of traditional or "adat" communities subordinated to those of the state. This lecture examines the continuing role of the Ministry, especially in relation to domestic forests.

A talk by Rashid Khalidi.

Rashid Khalidi is Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies and Director of the Middle East Institute at Columbia University, and is among the foremost U.S. historians of the modern Middle East. He is the author of numerous books on the region--several written during his many years on the faculty at the University of Chicago--including Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness; Resurrecting Empire: Western Footprints and America's Perilous Path in the Middle East; and The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood.

From the World Beyond the Headlines Series.

A presentation by Adrián Lajous, Former Pemex CEO.

Adrián Lajous is Chairman of the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, President of Petrométrica, SC and non-Executive Director of Schlumberger, Ternium, Trinity Industries and Grupo Petroquímico Beta. He is senior energy advisor to McKinsey & Company. In 2003-04 he was a Senior Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government of Harvard University and a Visiting Fellow in the Kellogg Institute at the University of Notre Dame during the first quarter of 2005. In 1994 Adrián Lajous was appointed Director General of Pemex (CEO) and Chairman of the boards of the Pemex group of operating companies. He stepped down from this position in December 1999 after 29 years in public service.

Adrián Lajous taught at El Colegio de México (1971-76), joined the Ministry of Energy in 1977, where he was appointed Director General for Energy. In 1983 he moved on to Pemex where he held a succession of key executive positions: Executive Coordinator for International Trade, Corporate Director of Planning, Corporate Director for Operations (COO) and Director for Refining and Marketing. He also served on the Board of Repsol-YPF. Mr. Lajous holds degrees in Economics from the National University of Mexico and Cambridge University.

Event organized by the Katz Center for Mexican Studies and co-sponsored by the Center for Latin American Studies.

A talk by authors Jim Shultz & Melissa Crane Draper. (Moderated by Jerome McDonnell, host of Chicago Public Radio's Worldview.)

Author Jim Shultz is founder and Executive Director of the San Francisco based Democracy Center and has lived and worked in Bolivia for much of the past decade, chronicling grassroots movements to control exploitation of Bolivia's natural resources, from water resources to oil and natural gas. With Melissa Crane Draper and other Democracy Center affiliates, Shultz places Bolivians' struggles in a broader context of Latin America's experiences with forces of globalization.

From the World Beyond the Headlines Series.

A demonstration by John Kuo, Director of the Chicago ensemble Balkanske Igre.

Presented in Angelina Ilieva's class on Balkan Folklore.

Co-sponsored by the Center for East European and Russian/Eurasian Studies, and the University of Chicago Arts Planning Council.

A talk by Ambassador Charles S. Shapiro, Senior Coordinator for the Western Hemisphere Free Trade Agreements Task Force, Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs.

Ambassador Charles Shapiro was Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Department of State's Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs (2005-2007) and U.S. Ambassador to Venezuela (February 2002 until August 2004). In addition to his posting as Ambassador to Venezuela, he has served as the Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. embassies in Santiago, Chile and Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago. Other overseas postings include El Salvador and Denmark. His Washington assignments include Director of the Office of Cuban Affairs as well as various assignments in Public Affairs, International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs and Western Hemisphere Affairs. Ambassador Shapiro was the recipient of a Presidential Meritorious Service Award in 2005.

Event Organized by the Center for Latin American Studies, co-sponsored by the Norman Wait Harris Fund of the Center for International Studies at the University of Chicago

A talk by Yuki Tanaka, Professor at the Hiroshima Peace Institute.

Dr. Tanaka examines the question of the criminality of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the responsibility of American political and military leaders who were closely involved in the decision-making and execution of the order to drop the bombs. Criminality is examined in accordance with international law effective at the time that the bombs were dropped and in the light of the Charter of the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal. The lecture also examines the history and present situation of indiscriminate aerial bombing of civilian populations. It examines how the use of this tactic started, what kind of military logic was used to justify it, and why it is still being widely sanctioned despite the fact that large numbers of civilians are repeatedly victimized in various war-torn regions of the world. It further explores how we should utilize the result of the International Peoples' Tribunal of Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to increase understanding of the fact that killing civilians is a crime against humanity, regardless of the asserted military justification.

The Center for East Asian Studies 2009 Najita Distinguished Lecture.