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Conquered in 1492 and colonized by invading Castilians, the city and kingdom of Granada faced radical changes imposed by its occupiers throughout the first half of the sixteenth century—including the forced conversion of its native Muslim population. Written by Francisco Núñez Muley, one of many coerced Christian converts, this extraordinary letter lodges a clear-sighted, impassioned protest against the unreasonable and strongly assimilationist laws that required all converted Muslims in Granada to dress, speak, eat, marry, celebrate festivals, and be buried exactly as the Castilian settler population did.

Now available in its first English translation, Núñez Muley’s account is an invaluable example of how Spain’s former Muslims made active use of the written word to challenge and openly resist the progressively intolerant policies of the Spanish Crown. Timely and resonant—given current debates concerning Islam, minorities, and cultural and linguistic assimilation—this edition provides scholars in a range of fields with a vivid and early example of resistance in the face of oppression.

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Francisco Núñez Muley
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Though Alexander the Great lived more than seventeen centuries before the onset of Iberian expansion into Muslim Africa and Asia, he loomed large in the literature of late medieval and early modern Portugal and Spain. Exploring little-studied chronicles, chivalric romances, novels, travelogues, and crypto-Muslim texts, Vincent Barletta shows that the story of Alexander not only sowed the seeds of Iberian empire but foreshadowed the decline of Portuguese and Spanish influence in the centuries to come.

Death in Babylon depicts Alexander as a complex symbol of Western domination, immortality, dissolution, heroism, villainy, and death. But Barletta also shows that texts ostensibly celebrating the conqueror were haunted by failure. Examining literary and historical works in Aljamiado, Castilian, Catalan, Greek, Latin, and Portuguese, Death in Babylon develops a view of empire and modernity informed by the ethical metaphysics of French phenomenologist Emmanuel Levinas. A novel contribution to the literature of empire building, Death in Babylon provides a frame for the deep mortal anxiety that has infused and given shape to the spread of imperial Europe from its very beginning.

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To RSVP, please send email to luisrr@stanford.edu.  You may request a copy of the workshop paper at the same time.

On March 27, 1492, a few days before the Edict that expelled the Jews from Spain, the royal chronicler Alfonso de Palencia (1423-1492) published his Castilian translations of two works by the famous Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, The Jewish War and Against Apion.  Palencia’s volume, Guerra judaica con los libros contra Appion, thus exemplifies the tension between two facets of Josephus’s writing:  his fierce critique of Jewish sectarianism and stubborn resistance to Imperial order and his eloquent defence of their religious and cultural traditions. This paper explores the cultural and political significance of these Spanish translations in the light of the events leading up to 1492 and it considers whether Palencia appropriated this Romanized Jewish historian in order to open up a space for religious minorities in the new imperial order ushered in by the Catholic Monarchs. To do this, I read Palencia’s translations against other contemporary texts by and about Jews and conversos, and consider the marginalia of sixteenth-century readers found in extant copies of the 1492 edition.

The broader issues raised include: the ambivalent alignment between the ‘intellectual’ and the ‘State’ (both terms need to be historicised); anti-judaism as a ‘way of thinking’ (to borrow David Nirenberg’s term); the meaning and limits of early modern tolerance.

This talk is part of the Theoretical Perspectives of the Middle Ages workshop.

Co-sponsored by The Europe Center, Stanford Humanities Center, Iberian and Latin American Cultures and the Department of Religious Studies.

Building 260, Room 215

Julian Weiss Professor of Medieval and Early Modern Spanish Studies Speaker King's College, London
Workshops

616 Serra Street
Encina Hall, 2nd floor, C206-10
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Shelby Speer brings nine years of experience in student services and program administration to CISAC. She was recently promoted to Assistant Director of the English Language and Gateway Scholars Programs at Brandeis University. Also at Brandeis, she was Senior Program Associate in the Office of Global Affairs, which is a clearinghouse for all “global Brandeis” initiatives.
 
In addition to her professional experience at Brandeis, she has relevant work experience at Boston College, Tufts University, the Cambridge School of Weston and the Berkshire Institute of Music and the Arts.
 
Shelby earned a master’s degree in higher education administration from Boston College, where her coursework focused on student affairs. She graduated cum laude from Brandeis University with a bachelor’s degree in sociology and history, and a minor in education studies. She studied abroad at the University of Salamanca in Spain.
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2014 Undergraduate Internship Program Winners Announced

 
A key priority of The Europe Center is to provide Stanford’s undergraduate student community with opportunities to develop a deep understanding of contemporary European society and affairs.  By promoting knowledge about the opportunities and challenges facing one of the world’s most economically and politically integrated regions, the Center strives to equip our future leaders with the tools necessary to tackle complex problems related to governance and economic interdependence both in Europe and in the world more broadly.
 
To this end, the Center recently spearheaded a new initiative, The Europe Center Undergraduate Internship Program in Europe.  The Center is sponsoring four undergraduate student internships with leading think tanks and international organizations in Europe in Summer 2014.  Laura Conigliaro (International Relations, 2015) will join the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), where she will work on a policy-related research project.  Additionally, Elsa Brown (Political Science, 2015), Noah Garcia (BA International Relations and MA Public Policy, 2015), and Jana Persky (Public Policy, 2016) will be joining Bruegel, a leading European think tank, where they will work on public policy briefs for the new European Union Commission that will take office in Fall 2014.  The Center is actively seeking to develop ties with business, governmental, and non-governmental organizations in Europe that can participate in The Europe Center Undergraduate Internship Program in future years.
 
 

Workshop Recap:  Comparative Approaches to the Study of Immigration, Ethnicity, and Religion

 
On May 9, 2014 and May 10, 2014, The Europe Center hosted the Fourth Annual Workshop on Comparative Approaches to the Study of Immigration, Ethnicity, and Religion.  Speakers drew from a range of national and international universities.  Some of the papers presented included:
 
“Does Naturalization Foster the Political Integration of Immigrants?  Evidence from a Regression Discontinuity Design in Switzerland,” Jens Hainmueller (Stanford) & Dominik Hangartner (LSE).
 
“The Rhetoric of Closed Borders:  Quotas, Lax Enforcement and Illegal Migration,” Giovanni Facchini (Nottingham) & Cecilia Testa (Royal Holloway).
 
“How State Support of Religion Shapes Religious Attitudes Toward Muslims,” Mark Helbling (WZB Berlin).
 
“Opposition to Race Targeted Policies -- Ideology or Racism?  Particular or Universal?  Experimental Evidence from Britain,” Robert Ford (Manchester).
 
“Nature over Nurture:  Explaining Muslim Integration Discrepancies in Britain, France, and the United States,” Justin Gest (Harvard).
 
Other speakers included:  Efrén Pérez (Vanderbilt), Lauren Prather (Stanford), Jorge Bravo (Rutgers), Harris Mylonas (George Washington), Harris Mylonas (George Washington), Rahsaan Maxwell (UNC-Chapel Hill), and Matthew Wright (American).
 
We welcome you to visit our website for additional details about this event.
 
 

Recordings of The Europe Center Special Events Available Online

 
On May 29, 2014, Josef Joffe, FSI Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution Research Fellow, and publisher/editor of the German weekly Die Zeit, talked about his latest book, The Myth of America’s Decline:  Politics, Economics, and a Half Century of False Prophesies.  Stephen Krasner and Kathyrn Stoner served as discussants.  We welcome you to visit our website for an audio recording of the event. 
 
On April 30, May 1, and May 2, 2014, Adam Tooze, Barton M. Briggs Professor of History at Yale University, delivered The Europe Center Lectureship on Europe and the World.  This series of three lectures focused successively on diplomatic, economic, and social aspects of the troubled interwar history of Europe and its relationship with the wider world.  Video recordings of the lectures are available for viewing on our website.
 
 

Student Scholar Profile:  Jessie Marino

 
The Europe Center regularly sponsors the research of undergraduate and graduate students through our research grant, internship, and scholarly exchange programs.  We would like to introduce you to some of the students that we support and the projects on which they are working.  Our featured student this month has been sponsored by the Center’s Program on Sweden, Scandinavia, and the Baltic Region.
 
 
Image of Serge Vuille and Mark Knoop performing Jessie Marino's original piece Jessie Marino, a DMA candidate in Composition at Stanford, recently returned from Copenhagen’s SPOR festival, where she was selected as one of five artists from a field of 140 (representing 34 nationalities) to perform her original work, titled “Heartfelt bird, vivid and great in style.”  “I was commissioned by the SPOR Festival to compose a new piece featuring percussionist Serge Vuille and pianist Mark Knoop (photo inset) which was featured in a concert of all world premiere works,” writes Marino.  “This event allowed me to meet new musicians, artists, curators, and composers who are working under similar guises and to exchange ideas about how our art can expand and develop in the 21st century.” 
 
Image of Stanford PhD student Jessie MarinoMarino (inset) is also a recipient of a summer travel grant from the Center’s Graduate Student Grant Program.  She will be traveling to Germany to attend the 2014 Darmstadt International Summer Course for New Music.  Marino writes that the opportunity will give her the chance to “practice and perform my own compositions,” to “work and develop new ideas with composers and academics,” and to “attend lectures on current research, developments and discoveries in sound production and music technology.”
 
 
 
 

Featured Faculty Research:  David Laitin

 
The Europe Center serves as a research hub bringing together Stanford faculty members, students, and researchers conducting cutting-edge research on topics related to Europe.  Our faculty affiliates draw from the humanities, social sciences, and business and legal traditions, and are at the forefront of scholarly debates on Europe-focused themes.  The Center regularly highlights new research by faculty affiliates that is of interest to the broader community.  
 
 
Image of David Laitin, Stanford UniversityDavid Laitin and his co-author Rafaela Dancygier’s article in the Annual Review of Political Science, “Immigration into Europe: Economic Discrimination, Violence, and Public Policy,” investigates and reviews recent research on changing Western European demographic patterns, and its implications for labor-market discrimination, immigrant-state relations, and immigrant-native violence.  The authors “discuss some of the methodological challenges that scholars have not fully confronted in trying to identify the causes and consequences of discrimination and violence,” and propose pathways to resolve contradictory results in existing studies regarding the economic consequences of immigration policymaking.  Laitin is the James T. Watkins IV and Elise V. Watkins Professor of Political Science at Stanford University.  
 
Additional information about The Europe Center’s research program on migration can be found here, and a copy of the research article can be found here.  
 
   

Events 

 
The regular seminar series sponsored by The Europe Center will be on break during the summer months.  We invite you to attend the following event of interest:
 
August 20, 2014
7:00 pm -- 9:00 pm
Film Screening 
Forasters (Outsiders), dir. Ventura Pona
Joan Ramon Resina, Director of The Europe Center’s Iberian Studies Program, will lead a Q&A session after the film.  The screening is part of the summer film series, “Beyond Boundaries:  Race, Gender and Culture Across the Globe,” organized by the Stanford Global Studies Division.
Braun Corner (Building 320), Room 105
 

We welcome you to visit our website for additional details.  Here is wishing you a pleasant and productive summer.

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Screening of the film Forasters (Outsiders) directed by Catalan film director Ventura Pona, and followed by a Q&A session led by Joan Ramon Resina.  Dr. Resina is a professor of Iberian and Latin American Cultures, and Comparative Literature, and the director of the Iberian Studies Program and research affiliate of The Europe Center.

Forasters portrays a family's experiences with two traumatic events, with a forty year gap between them, and how they affect family members as well as their ideal of social harmony. 

Forasters received eight nominations at the 2009 Gaudi Awards, including Best Film in Catalan Language, Best Director (Ventura Pons), and Best Screenplay (Ventura Pons).  Anna Lizaran received the Gaudi Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role for her portrayal of the family matriarch Emma.

This screening is part of the summer film series "Beyond Boundaries: Race, Gender and Culture Across the Globe" organized by the Stanford Global Studies Division (SGS).

Braun Corner (Building 320), Room 105
450 Serra Mall

Joan Ramon Resina Speaker
Film Screenings

Workshop Goals

On the first day, develop a set of research interventions (surveys, experiments, archival searches, participant observations, etc.) that will gain some leverage in measuring differential policies in Europe and their impact on integration, however specified; or in examining the various immigrant populations to measure their differential success in integration, however specified. Each of the participants (either singly or in collaboration) will write up one or two research proposals that lay out the outcomes of interest and the strategy for explaining variation on those outcomes.  Discuss problems and opportunities for each of the submitted proposals and fulfill this first goal.

The second goal of the workshop, and the subject for the second day, to think through three related issues. The first is how to frame the set of proposals in a way that they all fit into a well-defined framework, as if each proposal were a piece of a coherent puzzle. The second is to think through funding sources for this set of interventions that would allow us to conduct the research we proposed and to continue collaborating across these projects. The third is to explore whether there are scholars whose work we know who should be invited to join our group and become part of the grant proposing team.

Wednesday, May 7, 2014 Agenda

I.  Citizenship (discussant Thad) – [9-11AM]

  • Hainmueller/Hangartner – Return on getting citizenship; encouragement design in Switzerland
  • Gest/Hainmueller/Hiscox – Encouragement design on citizenship in US (Chicago)
  • Hainmueller/Laitin – Encouragement design on citizenship in France
  • Alter/Margalit – Immigration and political participation, where immigrants get immediate rights to citizenship (Israel)
  • Dancygier/Vernby – return on citizenship for labor market success (Sweden)

II. Local Context (Rafaela) [11:15-12:15]

  • Adida/Hangartner – RDD on Sudanese refugees in various US cities; experiment with IRC on Iraqi/Chaldian integration in El Cajon

III. Contracts of Integration (Yotam) [1:30-3PM]

  • Hainmueller/Hangartner – Integration Contracts and Naturalization
  • Hainmueller/Laitin – Integration Contracts in France

IV. Discrimination (Jens) [3:30-5PM]

  • Ortega/Polavieja – Immigrants and Job security in Spain and elsewhere in Europe
  • Margalit – Overcoming employer abuse of immigrant workers
  • Dancygier/Vernby – failure of immigrants to get nominated for political office

Thursday, May 8, 2014 Agenda

Discussion on what investments in collective goods might advance this research perspective productively. We might look at favorable granting institutions and how we might combine our memos into a macro proposal; or we might think about building a common research infrastructure (in the way J-PAL has done for experimental development studies). Working towards a jointly authored volume might be another way to aggregate our research projects. All of this discussion depends on the complementarities that emerge from our discussions on Wednesday. David will chair the Thursday discussion.

Reuben W. Hills Conference Room

Department of Political Science
Stanford University
Encina Hall, W423
Stanford, CA 94305-6044

(650) 725-9556 (650) 723-1808
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James T. Watkins IV and Elise V. Watkins Professor of Political Science
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David Laitin is the James T. Watkins IV and Elise V. Watkins Professor of Political Science and a co-director of the Immigration Policy Lab at Stanford. He has conducted field research in Somalia, Nigeria, Spain, Estonia and France. His principal research interest is on how culture – specifically, language and religion – guides political behavior. He is the author of “Why Muslim Integration Fails in Christian-heritage Societies” and a series of articles on immigrant integration, civil war and terrorism. Laitin received his BA from Swarthmore College and his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley.

Affiliated faculty at the Center for International Security and Cooperation
Affiliated faculty at The Europe Center
David Laitin (Workshop Faculty Organizer) Stanford University Speaker

616 Serra Street
Encina Hall West, Room 100
Stanford, CA 94305-6044

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Associate Professor of Political Science
Europe Center Affiliated Faculty
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Jens Hainmueller's research has appeared in journals such as the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Journal of the American Statistical Association, Review of Economics and Statistics, Political Analysis, International Organization, and the Journal of Statistical Software, and has received awards from the American Political Science Association, the Society of Political Methodology, the Midwest Political Science Association.

Hainmueller received his PhD from Harvard University and also studied at the London School of Economics, Brown University, and the University of Tübingen. Before joining Stanford, he served on the faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Jens Hainmueller Stanford University Speaker
Claire Adida UC San Diego Speaker
Dominik Hangartner London School of Economics and Political Science Speaker
Kare Vernby Uppsala University, Sweden Speaker
Yotam Margalit Columbia University Speaker
Francesc Ortega Queens College CUNY Speaker
Thad Dunning UC Berkeley Speaker
Rafaela Dancygier Princeton University Speaker
Simon Ejdemyr Stanford University Speaker
Simon Hix London School of Economics and Political Science Speaker
Workshops
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Annals of Emergency Medicine
Authors
Mucio Kit Delgado
Kristan L. Staudenmayer
Nancy Ewen Wang
David A. Spain
Sharada Weir
Douglas K. Owens
Douglas K. Owens
Jeremy Goldhaber-Fiebert
Jeremy Goldhaber-Fiebert

Knight Management Center
Stanford University
655 Knight Way
Stanford, CA 94305-7298

(650) 725-1673
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Assistant Professor of Finance
Assistant Professor, by courtesy, of Economics
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Peter Koudijs is an Assistant Professor of Finance at the Stanford Graduate School of Business where he teaches History of Financial Crises in the MBA program. He joined the GSB in August 2011. Peter received a Bachelor’s degree, cum laude, in Economics from the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands. He earned a PhD degree, summa cum laude, in Economics at Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Spain in 2011. Peter has obtained various grants and fellowships from the European Union, the Economic History Association and different Dutch and Spanish scholarship programs.
 

Affiliated Faculty at The Europe Center
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SPEAKERS

Eze Vidra - Head of Campus London and Google for Entrepreneurs European Outreach, Google

Samantha Evans - Vice Consul, SoftwareUK Trade & Investment


ABOUT THE SEMINAR

Innovation Hub: London
Eze VidraHead of Campus London and Google for Entrepreneurs European Outreach, Google
Samantha Evans - Vice Consul, Software, UK Trade & Investment (UKTI)

Wednesday, October 30, 12:00-1:00 pm 
Venue: McClelland Building, Room M109 - Stanford Graduate School of Business. 

London's Tech City, or Silicon Roundabout, is the fastest growing tech cluster in Europe with over 1300 startups, and has managed to attract industry leaders such as Amazon, Facebook, Google, Intel, and more to establish a presence there. 

Learn more about what is going on in this hub of innovation in a one-hour seminar with Eze Vidra, the head of Campus London, Google's first physical startup hub worldwide providing entrepreneurs with work and event space, mentorship, and educational programs. Joining him will be Vice Consul Samantha Evans of UKTI, who will offer a government/policy perspective on Tech City.

This talk is part of a seminar series hosted by the Silicon Valley Project at Stanford Graduate School of Business.

 

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

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Eze Vidra is the Head of Campus London and Google for Entrepreneurs Europe. In March 2012, Eze launched Campus London, Google's first physical startup hub worldwide providing entrepreneurs with work and event space, mentorship and educational programs as well as access to a vibrant startup community.

Before Campus, Eze spearheaded Google's commerce strategic partnerships in EMEA, launching Google Shopping in Spain and Local Shopping in the UK among other projects. In the years before joining Google, Eze held product management leadership roles at Shopping.com in Israel, Gerson Lehrman Group in New York, Ask.com in Silicon Valley and AOL Europe in London, where was the Principal Product Manager for Search in EMEA. In 2003, Eze co-founded a startup in Israel, developing text-input technology for mobiles.

In 2005, Eze founded VC Cafe, a highly regarded venture capital blog shining a spotlight on Israeli startups. In 2012, he founded Techbikers, a non-for-profit cycling community responsible for starting a school and 20 libraries for children in the developing world. Eze serves as advisory board member of BBC Worldwide Labs and is a trustee of StartupWeekend Europe. He holds a BA in Business and Entrepreneurship from IDC in Israel (Cum Laude) and an MBA from London Business School. A native Argentinean raised in Israel, Eze is fluent in Spanish, Hebrew and English and lives in London with his family.

Eze Vidra's bio on the Campus London website: http://www.googleventures.com/team/eze-vidra
Eze Vidra on twitter: www.twitter.com/ediggs

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Samantha Evans is the Vice Consul for Software at UK Trade & Investment. Her role is to advise Enterprise software companies and fast growing start-ups on the opportunities in the UK and European Market as well as providing practical support to accelerate their success in the UK. UKTI is a UK Government organization based in 90 cities across the world – with a overall aim of economic development for the UK – both through import and export.

Sam moved to San Francisco for her current role in January 2013. She previously worked for MIDAS – Manchester’s Investment Agency and a Technology Accelerator in Manchester.

M109, First Floor, McClelland Building
Stanford Graduate School of Business
Knight Management Center

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