ICGC Blog

Post Doc position at Rice University

2012-01-13T17:52:14Z

CSWGS Postdoctoral Fellowships (2012-2014)

The Center for the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Rice University announces two postdoctoral fellowships in the humanities or social sciences for scholars pursuing research and publication projects that focus on gender and health; gender and urban studies; women in the global economy; sex, race, and nation; or sexuality studies. The Center is particularly interested in applicants who demonstrate a record of innovative teaching and the potential to make a contribution to the Center's program in engaged feminist research.

Ph.D. is required prior to appointment. Each fellowship has a term of two years beginning in August 2012. Recipients will teach two courses in women's/gender/sexuality studies per year and will play an active role in the intellectual life of the Center. Rice will provide an annual salary of $40,000 plus benefits. Rice University is an Equal Employment Opportunity/Affirmative Action employer.

Please send letter of interest, curriculum vita, dossier with a minimum of three references, and a writing sample (about 25 pages), plus a sample syllabus (including a detailed course outline and recommended reading list) for the course SWGS 101 "Introduction to the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality." This course surveys issues in the study of gender, such as women's social, political, and legal status in the US and globally; feminist perspectives on the body, sexuality, race, globalization, labor, and culture; and the implications of these perspectives for social and critical theory. In addition, the course introduces the concept of engaged research and the public service components of feminist activity.

Send materials to Postdoctoral Search Committee, Center for the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality MS-38, Rice University, P.O. Box 1892, Houston, TX 77251-1892.

Postmark deadline for applications is Tuesday, January 17, 2012.

Reconsidering Development Call for Submissions deadline: February 1, 2012

2012-01-13T17:45:26Z

We are pleased to announce the fourth call for submissions for Reconsidering Development, an interdisciplinary
E-journal based at the University of Minnesota. The journal is theme-based and contributors are encouraged to be creative in integrating themes of each issue into their submissions.

The first issue of Volume III, Reconsidering Development and Human Rights will be launched in the spring of 2012 and the deadline for submissions is February 1, 2012. We seek submissions that explore the relationship between human rights theory and practice and international development.

We seek submissions that push theoretical boundaries. We do not believe this requires the explicit language of theory but we encourage authors to address disciplinary and theoretical assumptions. We offer the following questions and encourage that submitters use the following core questions as guides to help our audience understand development from your theoretical, disciplinary, or practical perspective:

How does an interdisciplinary perspective (or a novel disciplinary approach) shift our conceptualization of human rights (legal framework, policy, practice) in development and how does this perspective on human rights shape the theory, practice, and/or experience of international development?
What trends and issues affect the pursuit of human rights in international development contexts?
What is the future of international development? In what ways, if at all, will the relationship between human rights and the international community shape the future of development projects?

We seek submissions from multiple theoretical and practical perspectives, disciplines, vantage points, and sectors expressed through innovative formats, including but not limited to video, audio, written, and artistic forms of media. For each submission, international development issues must be made central. Additionally, we seek submissions that engage a broad audience. Submissions will be accepted based on the following criteria:

- Fit with Call for Submissions- Submitters must be explicit in the abstract and arguments made in the submission about how their piece fits with the theme of the issue.
- Clarity of argument - Submitters must be clear about the argument they are making with the piece.
- Application to general audience- Our readership includes academics and practitioners from a wide variety of fields. We seek pieces that clearly elaborate how the argument being made affects multiple readers.
- Significance of contribution- The "So what?" question must be addressed in each piece. Who is your audience? Why does your piece matter to your audience? What does your contribution add to the theory and practice of development?

The deadline for submissions is February 1, 2012

Submissions can be uploaded at http://rdj.ipid-umn.org
*Note: if submissions include different media types, i.e. text, video, audio, photos, each file should be uploaded separately. Submissions may also be emailed to rdj-editor@ipid-umn.org.

Please forward this call to any colleagues, students, or practitioners who may be interested in publishing with Reconsidering Development.

"Neo-liberal Higher Education Reform Processes and their Implications to Learning and Teaching at Makerere University"

2012-01-13T17:38:57Z

ICGC Brown Bag Friday, January 20, 2012, 12:00 noon, 537 Heller Hall

Andrew Ellias State,
ICGC Alumni and Sociologist at Makerere University in Uganda

Learning and teaching in higher institutions of learning (universities) in Africa continue to face daunting challenges today. Teaching and learning, a central activity of every university the world over has not been emphasized in a neo-liberal reform program agenda, as advocated by the World Bank, but instead administrative and financial reforms seriously affecting the quality of teaching and learning. Most reform emphasis have been on the financial and administrative reforms without necessarily considering the central core activities of universities, i.e. being a center of excellence in teaching, learning, and research. Makerere University, arguably the oldest institution of higher education in East Africa - established in 1922 as a small technical institution and evolved over time to a reputable institution of higher learning - has not escaped the neo-liberal reforms and the attendant challenges. The most significant reforms at Makerere University were the neo-liberal inspired reforms in the 1990s and early 2000s implemented at the orders of the World Bank (WB) reform of higher education in Africa. I argue that higher education reform should emphasize the importance of learning and teaching activities in order to achieve quality of education outcomes rather than focusing only on quantity of education products in the reform process.

Co-sponsored by the Department of Sociology

Upcoming Events at the IHRC.

2012-01-13T17:32:20Z

. . . Salvadoran Perspectives, Siberian Estonians and Volunteer Appreciation Event!

Please join us for these events! Feel free to bring a lunch to the noon events; beverages will be served!

January 24--12-1:30 p.m., 308 Andersen Library. Jose Santos, Metropolitan State University, "'The Spider Will Follow You': Evangelical Salvadoran Perspectives on US Immigration."

January 27--3:30-4:30 p.m., 2nd/3rd Floor Gallery Andersen Library. Exhibit Opening of "Siberian Estonians."

March 7, 4:30-7 p.m., 120 Andersen Library, IHRC Volunteer Appreciation Event.

For a complete list of events click here.

SSRC Postdoctoral Fellowship Opportunity

2012-01-12T18:36:43Z

Social Science Research Council and Mellon Foundation Create New Postdoctoral Fellowship for Transregional Research: Inter-Asian Contexts and Connections

The Social Science Research Council has announced a pilot postdoctoral fellowship program that will support transregional research under the rubric Inter-Asian Contexts and Connections.

Funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the new program is designed to strengthen the understanding of issues and geographies that do not fit neatly into existing divisions of academia or the world and to develop new approaches, practices, and opportunities in international, regional, and area studies in the United States.

The fellowships will help junior scholars (those at the postdoctoral stage, one to seven years out of the Ph.D.) complete first books and/or undertake second projects. In addition to funding research, the program will create networks and shared resources to support fellows well beyond the grant period.

The intellectual thrust of the pilot project will be the re-conceptualization of Asia as an interlinked historical and geographic formation stretching from the Middle East through Eurasia, Central Asia, and South Asia to Southeast Asia and East Asia. Proposals submitted for the fellowship competition should bear upon processes that connect places and peoples (such as migration, media, and resource flows) as well as those that reconfigure local and trans-local contexts (such as shifting borders, urbanization, and social movements). The broad focus of the program is intended to advance transregional research as well as to establish structures for linking scholars across disciplines in the arts, the humanities, and the social sciences.

The fellowship program is open to all disciplines across the arts, humanities and social sciences. Fellows must be affiliated with a U.S.-based institution for the duration of the fellowship term. There are no citizenship requirements.

Fifteen fellowships will be awarded over the two-year course of the pilot program. Fellowships will be awarded for up to $45,000 for a twelve-month period.

Visit the SSRC Web site for complete program information, an FAQ, and application procedures.

Contact:
Link to Complete RFP

http://www.ssrc.org/fellowships/transregional-research-fellowship/

"Travel in Spirals" - Wednesday, November 30, 4pm

2011-11-29T21:53:03Z

The Institute for Advanced Study will screen "Travel in Spirals" on Wednesday, November 30 at 4pm in 125 Nolte Center for Continuing Education. This film is co-directed by Justin Schell and Tou SaiKo Lee.

Travel in Spirals tells the story of Hmong hip-hop MC, spoken word poet, and community organizer Tou SaiKo Lee as he journeys back to his birthplace of Thailand. Born on the Nongkhai refugee camp, his parents fled Laos after the Vietnam War and came to America when Tou was two months old. Taking its title from the spirals in Hmong paj ntaub, the story cloths that for many years were a way for the Hmong people to tell their history before a written language, Travel in Spirals documents Tou's journey to the source of himself and his heritage almost 30 years after he left. It screened at both the Qhia Dab Neeg Hmong Film Festival and the Twin Cities Film Fest in 2011.

The screening will be followed by a discussion with the directors, who leave for Thailand next week on a follow up project to "Travel in Spirals."

For more information, please visit: https://events.umn.edu/016926

We hope to see you there!

Justin Schell
Co-Director, Travel in Spirals

MIRC presents Prof. J. Ann Tickner (USC) next Monday, Dec. 5

2011-11-29T21:44:54Z

The Minnesota International Relations Colloquium and
The Department of Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies
present

Professor J. Ann Tickner (USC)

"Retelling IR's foundational stories:
some feminist and postcolonial perspectives"

Next Monday, December 5, 12:30-2pm
1314 Social Sciences
All are welcome, lunch provided

**Please RSVP for lunch to mirc@umn.edu by Thursday, December 1**

Prof. J. Ann Tickner is Professor of International Relations at the University of Southern California. She researches feminist perspectives on IR theory, with a particular focus on ways of reconceptualizing security. Among others, her publications include Gendering World Politics: Issues and Approaches in the Post-Cold War Era (Columbia University, 2001), and Gender in International Relations: Feminist Perspectives on Achieving International Security (Columbia University, 1992).

This event was made possible in part by a grant from the Graduate and Professional Student Assembly.

Professor Tickner's paper can be found here: Tickner.MIRC.pdf

IPID Talk 12/1: Magical Microfinance - Mighty or Maligned?

2011-11-29T21:40:57Z

Thursday, December 1, 1:00 pm, Minnesota Population Center Room 70 (50 Willey Hall)

Share on Facebook.

Aryn Baxter, Tam Weiss, Yui Bi (Comparative & International Development Education program) and Brooke Krause (Applied Economics) are currently working together on a longitudinal evaluation of an entrepreneurship education program that includes increasing youth access to financial services. They will facilitate a discussion on the current debates surrounding microfinance. It promises to be a thought provoking time. Come and bring friends!

http://blog.lib.umn.edu/ipid/ipid/2011/11/ipid-talk-121-magical-microfinance---mighty-or-maligned.html

Human Rights and Development: Student Speaker Conference

2011-11-29T21:34:04Z

Friday, December 2, 3:30 pm, Room 101 Walter Library

Interdisciplinary Perspectives on International Development is hosting our biannual student speaker series on December 2nd 2011! The title is: "Righting Human Wrongs: the Value of Rights in International Development."

The conference will feature a cross-disciplinary panel of graduate and post-graduate students engaged in discussion with each other and the audience on an array of thought-provoking topics. A light meal will be served for conference attendees. There is no charge to attend and we would appreciate RSVPs via Facebook, but it is not necessary.

Presentations and Speakers

"Stability through Services: Army Tactical PSYOP Perspectives on Operation Iraqi Freedom"
Eric Peffley, 1L student, Law School

"The Challenges of Human Rights Reporting in Transitional Countries"
Hindolo Pokawa, M.A. Candidate, Comparative International Development Education, Director of Sierra Leone Foundation for New Democracy

"Viewing Human Rights Functionalities in a Historical and Geopolitical Setting: Thick or Thin Vernacular?"
Emily Springer, Ph.D. Candidate, Sociology

"Promises to Keep and Miles to Go: The Situation of Child Rights in India"
Parul Sheth, Humphrey International Fellow

"Human Rights and Development in Conflict: The Case of Urabá, Colombia"
Brandon Wu, Master of Public Policy Candidate, Humphrey School

Moderator: Allison Zomer, Master of Development Practice, Humphrey School

Gender, Sexuality Power and Politics Fall 2011 Colloquium Series

2011-11-29T21:30:44Z

THIS FRIDAY
December 2nd
12:15 pm
Social Science Tower
Room 614

JOAN TRONTO

Professor, UMN Political Science Department

"Relational Responsibilities, Partiality, and an Ethics of Care: Thinking About Global Ethics"

Most philosophers in high-income countries who write about global issues presume that they must use cosmopolitan or other universalistic forms of arguments to convince their audiences in high-income countries to take global poverty seriously. Whether deontologists or consequentialists, theorists of virtue or theorists of care, they appeal to our common humanity as the motive to action. This paper argues that a partialist approach, one grounded in relational responsibilities, yields more morally robust claims upon people in high-income countries not to abandon or ignore their responsibilities to global others. In fact, once we put on our gender and sexu-ality lenses, we will see numerous relationships with such global others that require our attention and care.

GSPP Colloquium Committee:
Bud Duvall, Chair, Political Science Department
Regina Kunzel, Chair, Department of GWSS
Libby Sharrow, PhD Candidate, Political Science Department
Katie Bashore, PhD Student, Department of GWSS

Freeman Workshop Dec 6: Ruth Okediji on "Innovating Around Intellectual Property: Culture, Traditional Knowledge & Trade in the Goods that Embody Them"

2011-11-29T21:26:12Z

Freeman Center for International Economic Policy, Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs, presents a Workshop on Global Policy

Professor Ruth Okediji

Law School

will speak on:

Innovating Around Intellectual Property: Culture, Traditional Knowledge and

Trade in the Goods that Embody Them

12:45 - 2:00 pm, Tuesday, December 6

170 HHH - Stassen Room Humphrey School, West Bank UMN Campus

The process and substance of efforts to protect the traditional knowledge (TK) of indigenous communities--both at the national and multilateral levels--reflect the resilience of the entrenched assumptions that sustain the global intellectual property (IP) system. For some observers, TK protection is simply another regime of proprietary rights that lacks appropriate mechanisms to support the production of public goods needed for economic development. Importantly, there remains a persistent notion that the two regimes can and will remain in distinct (if related) spheres and will realize independently verifiable objectives. Professor Okediji will argue that this is highly unlikely. Indeed, while negotiations over a TK treaty are advancing, there also has been an acceleration of efforts to strengthen the global network of IP regimes in ways that explicitly undermine innovation and heighten barriers to access to those very goods aimed at improving public welfare. The multilateral space for trade regulation is increasingly designed around strong legal protection for knowledge goods; in light of this TK protection as currently constructed may undermine the public welfare values of IP policy and simultaneously devalue the public interest norms around which TK is ideally organized.

All are welcome! Refreshments will be served

Policy Seminar/Workshop series

2011-11-18T22:10:18Z

The Freeman Center for International Economic Policy sponsors the Global Policy Seminar/Workshop series every other Tuesday. Sessions are held from 12:45 to 2:00 pm in the Stassen Room (Room 170) of the Humphrey Center.

The last two talks of the semester are:

November 22 - Joel Waldfogel on World Music Trade and Local Culture

December 6 - Ruth Okedije on Intellectual Property

Gender, Sexuality, Power, and Politics Colloquium Series 2011-2012

2011-11-18T21:54:50Z

Fall 2012

December 2, 2011
Joan Tronto
Department of Political Science
University of Minnesota
12:15pm Social Sciences 614

December 5, 2011
Gundula Ludwig
Visiting Fulbright Scholar
Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies
University of Minnesota
4:00pm Ford 400

Spring 2012

January 19-20, 2012
Cathy J. Cohen
Department of Political Science
University of Chicago

February 10, 2012
Annie Hill
Postdoctoral Fellow
Department of Communication Studies
University of Minnesota

March 2, 2012
Elaine Tyler May and Katie Bashore
Departments of American Studies &
Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies
University of Minnesota

April 6, 2012
Margot Canaday
Department of History
Princeton University

Co-Organizers
Bud Duvall, Chair, Political Science Department
Regina Kunzel, Chair, Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies Department
Libby Sharrow, PhD Candidate, Political Science Department
Katie Bashore, PhD Student, Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies Department

*For more information, please check the Political Science and GWSS websites.
http://gwss.umn.edu
http://www.polisci.umn.edu

Pop Internationalism: Has a Half Century of World Music Trade Displaced Local Culture?

2011-11-18T21:49:59Z

Professor Joel Waldfogel

Carlson School of Management

12:45 - 2:00 pm Tuesday, November 22

170 HHH - Stassen Room, Humphrey School, West Bank Campus

Advances in communication technologies over the past half century have made the cultural goods of one country more readily available to consumers in another, raising concerns that cultural products from large economies - in particular the US - will displace the indigenous cultural products of smaller economies. In this talk Professor Waldfogel will present research conducted with his Wharton colleague, Fernando Ferreira, that presents stylized facts about global music consumption and trade since 1960, using unique data on popular music charts from 22 countries, corresponding to over 98% of the global music market. Contrary to growing fears about large country dominance, trade shares are roughly proportional to country GDP shares; and relative to GDP, the US music share is substantially below the shares of smaller countries. They find a substantial bias toward domestic music which has, perhaps surprisingly, increased sharply in the past decade. National policies, such as radio airplay quotas, may explain part of the increasing consumption of local music.

All are welcome! Refreshments will be served

Why it Takes the Heart and the Fist: A conversation with Eric Greitens, humanitarian and Navy SEAL

2011-11-18T21:44:58Z

Eric Greitens graduated from Duke University where he studied ethics, philosophy, and public policy. Selected as a Rhodes and Truman Scholar, he attended the University of Oxford from 1996 through 2000. There he earned a master's degree in 1998 and a Ph.D. in 2000.

Eric's award-winning book of photographs and essays, Strength and Compassion, grew from his humanitarian work. He has worked as a humanitarian volunteer, documentary photographer, and researcher in Rwanda, Cambodia, Albania, Mexico, India, Croatia, and Bolivia.

Eric's second book, New York Times Bestseller The Heart & the Fist: The Education of a Humanitarian, the Making of a Navy SEAL, relates Eric's story of leadership and service as both a humanitarian and a warrior. The principal lesson Greitens learned through unique background in military service and humanitarian work was that in order to create meaningful change, one must be both good and strong.

Eric is also a United States Navy SEAL officer, and has deployed four times during the Global War on Terrorism, including Afghanistan and Iraq. His personal military awards include the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star.
After returning from Iraq, Eric donated his combat pay to found The Mission Continues, an innovative non-profit organization that empowers wounded and disabled veterans to begin new lives as citizen leaders here at home.

Why it Takes the Heart and the Fist:
A conversation with Eric Greitens, humanitarian and Navy SEAL
Friday, December 2, 2011
4:00 p.m.
Book sales and signing to follow the talk

Humphrey School of Public Affairs - Cowles Auditorium
301 19th Ave S
Minneapolis, MN 55455
More information at http://www.hhh.umn.edu/centers/cspg/events/2011/1202.html