Lecture

The Proof is in the Pudding: Putin’s Pivot to Asia with Dr. David Abramson ’87 — Today, 4:30 p.m.

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The Proof is in the Pudding: Putin’s Pivot to Asia

Monday March 26, 4.30 pm, PAC 001

Dr. David Abramson, Senior Analyst in the Office of Analysis for Russia and Eurasia at the U.S. Department of State. will discuss the drivers of Russia’s outreach in Asia and its prospects for success.

Putin initiated his pivot to Asia policy even before the West began imposing sanctions on Russia in response to its annexation of Crimea and invasion of eastern Ukraine in 2014.  Putin’s reaction to the U.S. and European-led condemnation was to double down and demonstrate that Russia had partners other than the West and would not remain isolated.  Consequently, Moscow has been reaching out actively to both familiar and nontraditional partners in Asia, but has a long way to go in building trust and following through on its commitments beyond the optics of trying to reestablish itself as a global power.

Dr. David Abramson (Wesleyan Class of 1987, Russian Language and Literature) is senior analyst covering Russia’s relations with Asia for the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Office of Analysis for Russia and Eurasia.  He previously worked for many years as a Central Asia analyst, focusing primarily on Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Islamic trends in Eurasia.

During 2001-2005, Dr. Abramson spent four years in the Department’s Office of International Religious Freedom, monitoring and promoting religious freedom in the Middle East as an element of U.S. foreign policy, advising on outreach to the Muslim world, and engaging with Muslim-American communities.

Dr. Abramson also teaches courses on Central Asia at Georgetown University and has published on Islam, national identity, and foreign assistance in Central Asia, and on anthropologists working on national security.  He received his doctorate in Cultural Anthropology from Indiana University where he specialized in community and conflict in post-Soviet Uzbekistan.

 

Lecture: “The Science of Unconscious Bias” with Dr. Keith Maddox March 9, Noon

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Dr. Keith B. Maddox, Tufts University

Friday, March 9      12:00 – 1:10 pm    open discussion to follow

Tishler Lecture Hall, Exley 150

Implicit or unconscious bias is a fascinating, and sometimes confusing topic that is highly relevant given the increasingly polarized political climate of today. The near constant drumbeat of events and statements that may be perceived to be motivated by bias can be overwhelming, and, paradoxically, can make it difficult for well-intentioned people to address the role their own biases may play in perpetuating unfair systems and practices. As scientists and scholars, we strive to act with impartiality, but it is important for us to be aware that even the most rational among us is subject to unconscious bias that can impact our decisions. In this lecture, Dr. Keith B. Maddox, Associate Professor of Psychology at Tufts University, will provide a thought provoking discussion looking at the science surrounding these issues and offer advice on confronting and overcoming bias.

Dr. Maddox founded the Applied Diversity Science Initiative at Tufts, and he is an expert in social cognition who carries out research into racial phenotypicality bias, the interplay of racial and spatial categories in memory, stereotype threat, and confronting bias.

This lecture is presented with the support of the Allbritton Center for the Study of Public Life, the Office of Equity and Inclusion, and the Dean of the Division of Natural Sciences and Mathematics.

CHUM Monday Night Lecture Series–“Neither Grand nor Modest: Critique as a form of historical analysis” with Joan Scott, Institute of Advanced Studies, 2/5/18, 6 p.m.

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MONDAY NIGHT LECTURE SERIES | GRAND NARRATIVES / MODEST PROPOSALS
Neither Grand nor Modest: Critique as a form of historical analysis
Joan W. Scott • Institute for Advanced Studies
FEBRUARY 5 @ 6 P.M. | Daniel Family Commons, Usdan University Center

This talk will argue that critical approaches to history need neither endorse grand narratives nor restrict themselves to small case studies. Using material from my new book, Sex and Secularism, I will try to formulate what I take to be a vision of theoretically informed critical histo.
Center for the Humanities · 95 Pearl Street , Middletown, CT 06459 www.wesleyan.edu/humanities

PAC Speaker Series–“Freedom of Expression: A View from the Bench” with Hon. Katherine B. Forrest ’86 — Today, 2/1 at 4:30 p.m.

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ACA18_PACSpeakerSeriesPoster_0125_ls    TODAY, FEBRUARY 1     PAC001     4:30 p.m.

Katherine B. Forrest (class of 86) will be speaking this afternoon on freedom of expression. She was appointed as a federal judge by President Obama (Southern District of New York) and has been involved with a number of high profile cases, including a challenge to indefinite military detention under the National Defense Authorization Act.

CFH Lecture: “Waiting in Necropolitical Times” — Prof. Victoria Pitts-Taylor Today! Dec. 4 at 6 p.m.

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MONDAY NIGHT LECTURE SERIES | RETHINKING NECROPOLITICS

Waiting in Necropolitical Times

Victoria Pitts-Taylor • Wesleyan University

December 4 @ 6 P.M. | Daniel Family Commons

Waiting is a key mode of experiencing the effects of power; in some instances, it may express what Lauren Berlant calls ‘slow death’. Waiting is a common aspect of medicalized gender transition – trans people seeking hormones or surgery are often made to wait for years. This talk explores temporal dimensions of medicalized gender transition – in particular, the waiting lists, waiting periods, setbacks, refusals, and structural delays imposed on trans patients. Can the attachment constituted in long-term waiting be sustaining, or is it a threat to one’s well being? How is waiting managed, accepted, and contested by people who are subjected to it? These questions take on a necropolitical cast in the context of high rates of suicide and violence against trans people. This discussion is part of a broader study that uses critical social theories and an eclectic archive to address waiting as relation between time, power, and social being. It argues that through regimens of waiting, biopower can enfold people into life-making practices while also rendering them neglected and disposable.

Center for the Humanities · 95 Pearl Street , Middletown, CT 06459
www.wesleyan.edu/humanities

C. Riley Snorton–“Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity” — Dec. 5 at 4:30 p.m.

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C. Riley Snorton

“Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity”

Tuesday,December 5, 2017 4:30 PM in Russell House

In Black on Both Sides, C. Riley Snorton identifies multiple intersections between blackness and transness from the mid-nineteenth century to present-day anti-black and anti-trans legislation and violence. Snorton is associate professor of Africana studies and feminist, gender, and sexuality studies at Cornell University, and the author of Nobody Is Supposed to Know: Black Sexuality on the Down Low (Minnesota, 2014).

REES Lecture: “Derelict Futures: Soviet Industrial Space in Contemporary Russian Culture” by Daria Exerova — 12/5, 11:50 a.m.

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Please join us for a lecture by Daria Ezerova,

“Derelict Futures: Soviet Industrial Space in Contemporary Russian Culture.”

Tuesday Dec. 5, 11:50-1:00, 112 Boger Hall

Daria Ezerova is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Yale University. Her dissertation is titled “Derelict Futures: The Spaces of Socialism in Contemporary Russian Literature and Film.” Her research focuses on contemporary Russian culture and the extent to which it demonstrates the continuity of Soviet models of representation. She considers examples from literature, drama, and film from the early 1990s to the mid-2000s and compares them with the landmarks of Soviet culture. The primary focus of her dissertation is the representation of space. Through exploring the interrelationship between space and time in the periods of radical political transition, she argues that after the fall of the USSR capitalism substituted itself for Soviet Marxism as the tutelary spirit that invested space with a sense of the future, and Russian culture briefly renewed its belief in progress. But this optimism proved to be short-lived: in the Putin era, a new sense of space emerged in the literary and cinematic counter-culture that that was marked by the acute absence of any scenario suggesting temporal progress.

 

 

Africa Week Events — Nov. 28-Dec. 2

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African Students Association’s Africa Week!
Tomorrow, Tuesday, November 28th, 2017 will kick off our first event with a film screening of Stories of Our Lives, which is a Kenyan film that was released in 2014 and created by The Nest Collective, a Nairobi-based arts collective. The film is an anthology of five short films dramatizing true stories of LGBT lives in Kenya. The screening will take place tomorrow in the Ring Family Performing Arts Hall at 7 pm We look forward to seeing you!

International Education Week Activities November 13-17

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Dear Wesleyan students,

November 13-17 marks this year’s International Education Week, an initiative that is cosponsored by the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Department of Education in order to highlight the importance of global learning on our university campuses.

The Fries Center for Global Studies staff has put together a rich agenda of week-long activities in recognition of this initiative, activities that are intended to be informative, engaging and fun! Check out what’s available by clicking on the image below.  Most importantly, mark your calendars and come celebrate with us in Fisk 201 to meet the Wes in the World Photo Contestants!

We look forward to seeing you there!  Sincerely, The FCGS Staff