Stanford University

An Evening with Claude Lanzmann

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Co-sponsored by the Europe Center, France-Stanford Center for Interdisciplinary Studies, the Department of History, and the Department of French and Italian

CEMEX Auditorium
Knight Management Center

Charles Lanzmann Film director Speaker
Conferences

What is the Contemporary?

As a critical category and an object of study, “the contemporary” is often taken for granted or entirely omitted from academic discussion. We often assume it is the purview of journalistic criticism, and wait for consensus to arise before considering it a viable subject of analysis. Higher learning favors the study of the past over the present, which adds institutional blindness to the inherent difficulty of considering a changing object “in real time.” This is all the more pervasive in the case of Latin American culture, which does not circulate in mainstream American humanistic discourse, and is thus relegated to an always-already past condition in our academic milieu.

The premise of the colloquium is simple and enormously thought-provoking: we seek answers –from world-class Latin American, U.S. and European intellectuals, writers, and scholars– to the question of what is the contemporary. Participants follow three main lines of inquiry, addressing questions of comparative modernities, emerging canonicity, and conceptual elucidation of contemporaneity.

Sponsored by the Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages; the Cultural Synchronization and Disjuncture Working Group; the Tangible Thoughts for Luso-Brazilian Culture Research Unit;  the Center for Latin American Studies, the Department of French and Italian, the Europe Center, and the Humanities Center at Stanford University

Levinthal Hall

Julio Premat Professor of Hispanic Literature Speaker Université Paris VIII
Lionel Ruffel Associate Professor of French and Comparative Literature Speaker Université Paris VIII
Diego Vecchio Argentine author based in Paris Speaker
Alejandro Zambra Chilean poet, fiction writer and literary critic Speaker
David William Foster Professor of Spanish Speaker Arizona State University
Idelber Avelar Professor of Spanish and Portugese Speaker Tulane University
Odile Cisneros Professor of Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies Speaker University of Alberta
Paola Cortes-Rocca Professor Speaker San Francisco State University
Valeria de los Rios Assistant Professor Speaker Universidad Santiago de Chile
Conferences

2012 Payne Distinguished Lecture: The Future of the American Military

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Karl Eikenberry is the Payne Distinguished Lecturer at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. Within FSI he is an affiliated faculty member with the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) and the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), and an affiliated researcher with the Europe Center. Before coming to Stanford, he served as U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan from May 2009 to July 2011, where he led the civilian side of the surge directed by President Obama to reverse Taliban momentum and help set the conditions for transition to full Afghan sovereignty.

Prior to his appointment as Chief of Mission in Kabul, Ambassador Eikenberry had a 35-year career with the U.S. Army, retiring with the rank of Lieutenant General in 2009.  His operational posts include service in the continental U.S., Hawaii, Korea, Italy, and Afghanistan, where he served as Commander of the American-led Coalition Forces from 2005-2007.

Ambassador Eikenberry also served in various political-military positions, including service as Deputy Chairman of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Military Committee in Brussels.

His military awards include the Defense Distinguished and Superior Service Medals, Legion of Merit, Bronze Star, Ranger Tab, Combat and Expert Infantryman badges, and master parachutist wings. He has received numerous civilian awards as well.

Amb. Eikenberry is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy, holds master's degrees from Harvard University in East Asian Studies and Stanford University in Political Science, and was a National Security Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.

He is a trustee of the International Institute for Strategic Studies and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Council of American Ambassadors. He recently received the George F. Kennan Award for Distinguished Public Service from the National Committee on American Foreign Policy. He has published numerous articles on U.S. military training, tactics, and strategy and on Chinese military history and Asia-Pacific security issues.

Koret Taube Conference Center
Gunn SIEPR Building
366 Galvez Street

Karl Eikenberry Payne Distinguished Lecturer; Retired United States Army Lieutenant General; Former United States Ambassador to Afghanistan Speaker
Lectures
Frank E. and Arthur W. Payne Lecture Series

Shorenstein Postdoctoral Fellowship program grows

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“A postdoctoral program is crucial to the intellectual development of any strong academic institution. I am proud the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center will serve as a home next year for these four talented emerging Asia scholars. Not only will they benefit from taking part in our vibrant research and publishing activities, but they will also bring new expertise and perspectives to our Center.”

-Gi-Wook Shin, Director, Shorenstein APARC

 
In the coming academic year, the Shorenstein Postdoctoral Fellowship program will double in size.

The four incoming fellows represent the best of the next generation of contemporary Asia scholars. Their research ranges from civil society and authoritarian governance in China to ethnic conflict in South Asia, and Korean migration and identity to election politics in Japan.

During their time at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC), the fellows will conduct their own research and writing, present their work at public seminars, and take part in the research and publishing activities of the Center. Postdoctoral fellows will also have the chance to exchange ideas with Shorenstein APARC experts and interact with the many distinguished visitors who visit each year from throughout the Asia-Pacific region.

In addition, the Asia Health Policy Program at Shorenstein APARC will welcome two postdoctoral fellows in the 2012–13 academic year: an Asia Health Policy Fellow and a Developing Asia Fellow.

Postdoctoral fellows are a vital part of the academic life of the Center, and their relationships with Shorenstein APARC will continue throughout their entire careers.

The Shorenstein Postdoctoral Fellowship Program is made possible through the generosity of Walter H. Shorenstein.

“This fellowship has changed the trajectory of my academic career. It has given me the intellectual space to be highly productive and the freedom to expand my understanding of world events in order to enhance my future teaching and research. Thanks in large part to the fellowship, I was able to obtain an appointment as an assistant professor in the Department of International Relations at Boston University.”

-Jeremy Menchik, 2011–12 Shorenstein Postdoctoral Fellow


2012–13 Shorenstein PostDoctoral Fellows

Diana Fu

Diana Fu will be joining Shorenstein APARC from Oxford University’s Department of Politics and International Relations, and from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where she recently served as a political science research fellow. Her research interests encompass state-society relations in authoritarian regimes, civil society, governance, and labor contention. She will be completing a series of journal articles about civil society and authoritarian governance in China. Fu holds an MPhil in international development from Oxford University where she studied as a Rhodes Scholar, and a BA in global studies and political science from the University of Minnesota.

Jaeeun Kim
Jaeeun Kim is a postdoctoral research associate at the Center for the Study of Religion at Princeton University. She is interested in issues of identity within the context of international migration, which she explores in her dissertation Colonial Migration and Transborder Membership Politics in Twentieth-Century Korea. She is also developing a project focusing on ethnic Korean migrants from northeast China to the United States, including issues such as legalization strategies and conversion patterns. Kim holds an MA and a PhD in sociology from the University of California, Los Angeles, and a BA in law from Seoul National University.

Daniel M. Smith
Daniel M. Smith, a PhD candidate with the Department of Political Science at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), is completing his dissertation on the causes and consequences of political dynasties in developed democracies, with particular focus on Japan. He has conducted research in Japan as a Japanese Ministry of Education research scholar (2006–2007), and as a Fulbright dissertation research fellow (2010–2011). Smith holds an MA in political science from UCSD, and a BA in political science and Italian from the University of California, Los Angeles. After completing his fellowship at Shorenstein APARC, he will join the Department of Government at Harvard University as an assistant professor.

Ajay Verghese
Ajay Verghese is a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at The George Washington University. His work focuses on comparative politics and international relations, and his research interests include South Asia, ethnicity, ethnic conflict, historical analysis, and qualitative methods. Verghese has conducted language training and fieldwork in India, with support from organizations such as the American Institute of Indian Studies and the U.S. State Department Critical Language Scholarship Program. He will be turning his dissertation into a book entitled The Colonial Origins of Ethnic Violence: India and the Indian Ocean Region. Verghese holds a BA in political science and French from Temple University.

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Mario Monti's Italy and the European Debt Crisis

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Italy is currently the democratic world’s most underestimated European ally.  Many commentators seem to have forgotten that despite its notorious institutional and debt problems the country remains one of the richest and most technologically innovative Western nations. While its politics are often theatric and superficial, its labour market inflexible and its bureaucracy opaque, Italy’s real economic basis remains one of the strongest in the world. The continuing paradoxy of systemic failure and coeval structural productivity characteristic for modern Italy originates in the very foundation process of the nation in the 1860s. It is thus deeply rooted in the socio-political culture and is not likely to change anytime soon. However, these challenges might be viewed as good news in times of crisis: Unlike other Western democracies, Italy’s economy and civil society are accustomed to functioning amid enduring institutional and political obstacles and crises. Disregarding alarmist voices, the country’s outlook remains positive after all: Its systemic weakness is balanced by structural strength. In order to assess the situation of countries more properly in the future, we need a more sophisticated system of indicators that takes into account a greater, more complex picture; and this presupposes a more diverse and multi-polar system of rating agencies.

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The Korean Review of International Studies
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