August 30, 2010
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This fall, Brown's seminar on “Science and Technology Policy in the Global South” (PPAI 1701G) will expand its use of videoconferencing, blogging, and other media connecting students at the University with peers in classrooms in Brazil, India, and South Africa.
August 30, 2010
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The films Avatar, The Hurt Locker, and Human Terrain are presented in a recent article by Institute Professor James Der Derian as critical intertexts for understanding how the cinematic aestheticisation of violence can glorify as well as vilify war, depending on how the spectator identifies with the protagonist and the filmmaker with the subject. Estrangement from and entanglement with the other become key variables for assessing the anti-war impact of a film.
August 24, 2010
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A new book co-authored by Brown anthropology professors Matthew Gutmann and Catherine Lutz brings a deeply personal perspective to the war in Iraq by looking into the lives of six veterans who turned against the war they helped to fight. Breaking Ranks: Iraq Veterans Speak Out against the War (University of California Press, August 2010) is based on extensive interviews with each of the six.
August 24, 2010
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Development studies concentrator Masumi Hayashi-Smith '10 will rejoin youth peace programs in Sri Lanka next year on a Fulbright scholarship. In Brown Alumni Magazine’s July/August issue, she described her previous work in this post-conflict nation and the development studies thesis she wrote about her experiences in Buddhist camps for teens from different sides of its civil war. “Because of these camps,” she said, “these kids all realized they have this common humanity and the capacity to love one another.”
August 17, 2010
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Theoretical models cannot fully account for the diversity of West African political identities and experiences, argued Lauren MacLean, assistant professor of political science at Indiana University, during a talk at the Institute last semester. In Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire, indigenous understandings of politics challenge the conventional opposition between “citizenship” and “clientelism,” MacLean said.
August 03, 2010
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A holdover from a past era, the United States’ conflict with Cuba remains an issue for policymakers and the public alike. Julia E. Sweig, director for Latin American studies at the Council of Foreign Relations, has recently penned a concise history of US-Cuban relations to clarify the origins of the continued struggle. In a talk at the Institute in the spring, Sweig said her motivation for writing Cuba: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University Press, 2009) lies in her belief that American foreign policy toward Cuba “might be on the cusp of change.” American policy makers, she said, must adapt to the 21st century and abandon the strategies of the Cold World era.
August 03, 2010
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The impact of globalization on workers in developing countries is analyzed in a new special issue of Studies in Comparative International Development (SCID), a journal edited at the Watson Institute.
August 02, 2010
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Sex, Drugs, and Body Counts: The Politics of Numbers in Global Crime and Conflict was featured on Saturday by NPR's On the Media program. The on-air interview with Institute Professor Peter Andreas, a co-editor of the book, described several instances – involving the global drug trade, Bosnia death toll, and human trafficking – in which numbers used were highly political and equally suspect. Andreas's interview followed a review of the volume by Slate columnist Jack Shafer, who called it “a terrific new book [that] encourages all to be skeptical about statistics.”
August 02, 2010
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Two major Institute events during the past academic year gauged the future of progressive politics. Now on video, they feature former Chilean President Ricardo Lagos and former Austrian Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer analyzing trends in the United States and Europe.
July 26, 2010
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July 20, 2010
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