November 2, 2010
The 6th Annual Strait Talk Symposium held its opening panel, “After Empire: Road to Reconciliation,” on Saturday. The panel explored memories of colonial histories in China, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan and their influences on nationalism, antagonism, and future resolution.
November 1, 2010
The Institute-based Radio Open Source is recognized in The New York Review of Books as one of the ways public radio has “never been richer or, thanks to the Internet, easier to access.”
November 1, 2010
“I’m always looking for art that has particular stories to tell,” said Venetia Porter in a recent talk at the Institute. As Curator of Islamic and Middle Eastern Art at the British Museum, Porter’s job is to comb galleries and showcases for works that tell stories about the history, culture, and contemporary conflicts of the modern Middle East. Porter’s talk, "Narratives from the Middle East: The Contemporary Art Collection of the British Museum," charted a handful of continuities in the art of this vast region. Though incredibly diverse, contemporary Middle Eastern paintings share a common global character, Porter said. Artists from Iraq to Morocco explore the interactions between Middle Eastern and Western influences. The works attempt to define regional specificity in an increasingly interconnected world, she said.
October 30, 2010
Just in time for Halloween, Foreign Policy has uncovered the zombies of Project Z, a documentary film in development by the Institute's Global Media Project.
October 29, 2010
Students in Watson Fellow Geri Augusto’s Science and Technology Policy in the Global South seminar, and a small group comprised of Brazilian engineering students at the State University of Bahia (UNEB), public health professionals, and a leader of one of Brazil’s largest associations of trash collectors (CAMAPET), recently explored together, via a video-conference, some of the most pressing issues arising from lixo (trash) in urban Brazil.
October 27, 2010
Reporters and commentators on- and off-campus continue to take note of Peter Andreas’s recently co-edited Sex, Drugs, and Body Counts: The Politics of Numbers in Global Crime and Conflict, in the wake of a rave review in Slate and airing on NPR's On the Media.
October 26, 2010
A novel generation of Cubans has emerged, their eyes more fixated on the world and their hands less bound to the revolution, according to a Cuban writer, blogger, and multimedia artist. “The generation of the 2000s was born during the failure of the Cuban revolution – it’s the first one that is not lagging behind the rest of the world,” said Lizabel Mónica, speaking recently on “Cuba Siglo XXI: Literatura en Transición.”
October 26, 2010
“In India, the new movie icon is moving from the macho man to this suave computer guy,” said Joyojeet Pal, of the ATLAS Institute, the University of Colorado at Boulder, and NYU-Poly, who spoke at the Institute recently.
October 26, 2010
Today’s political decisions – both in Europe and the United States – are being unduly influenced by tomorrow’s elections, according to professor-at-large and former prime minister of Italy Romano Prodi. “This is a problem shared by all contemporary democratic systems in the short term,” said Prodi, speaking recently at the Institute.
October 25, 2010
Strait Talk, a youth-run project focused on the cross-Taiwan Strait conflict, invites the Brown community to join scholars and students from Mainland China, Taiwan, and the US for the sixth Strait Talk Symposium, to be hosted at Brown University from October 30 to November 4. Public events will include panels on historical memory, economics, international relations, and other subjects, featuring leading scholars in the field. Started by Brown undergraduates in 2005, Strait Talk promotes constructive dialogue and critical thinking about the cross-Strait issue by bringing students and young professionals from mainland China, Taiwan, and the United States to the University to engage in Interactive Conflict Resolution workshops and create a Consensus Document outlining policy recommendations, grassroots initiatives, and concrete steps toward mutual cooperation across the Taiwan Strait.
October 25, 2010
Britain's use of austerity is a dangerous idea that will ultimately lead to reducing the economy overall, according to Faculty Fellow Mark Blyth. And if the United States government tries it, the same people who paid for the bailouts are going to pay for austerity as well, he said in an interview on NPR’s All Things Considered program on Sunday.
October 22, 2010
A dual state exists in Iraq today – as it did some 100 years ago, during Mesopotamia’s occupation by the British, according to Charles Tripp, a professor at London University's School of Oriental and African Studies. In a talk at the Institute, Tripp pointed to striking parallels between the behavior of the British in the early 20th century and the Americans in the early 21st, and he described Iraqi power structures forged of this past that have persisted to the present.
October 20, 2010
The Danish Minister for the Interior and Health, Bertel Haarder, has never had health insurance. “It’s simply not necessary,” he told a full Joukowsky Forum this week. “Health care in Denmark is free and all citizens are covered.” During the talk titled “Health Care: Perspectives on Priorities in Denmark and the European Union,” Haarder compared various systems in terms of coverage, quality, and cost.
October 20, 2010
The Watson Institute announces AT&T New Media fellowships for the winter break and, separately, a Global Conversation Video Competition.
October 18, 2010
The work of Dietrich Rueschemeyer, a Brown Sociology Professor emeritus and Watson Institute adjunct, has recently attracted strong interest in China.
October 15, 2010
“Why do we need Latin American studies?” asked Abraham Lowenthal, the Robert F. Erburu Professor of Ethics, Globalization, and Development at the University of Southern California. This question opened a recent talk at the Institute co-delivered with Jane Jaquette, professor emerita of diplomacy and world affairs at Occidental College, titled "The Disappearance of Latin America: Implications for Latin American and Caribbean Studies." These two renowned scholars of Latin America, both adjunct professors at the Watson Institute, dedicated the rest of their presentation to conveying the significance of such a question for the discipline of Latin American studies as a whole, in these “earth-flattening times,” and presenting a tentative answer.
October 15, 2010
The Institute’s Religion and Internationalism Project is kicking off a new faculty colloquium in October in collaboration with Brown’s Religious Studies Department, with the ultimate goal of creating an interdisciplinary network at Brown that would engage in a series of joint projects over the next few years.
October 14, 2010
Fieldwork is the cure for misconception, according to Richard Snyder, director of Brown’s Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies. “When you do fieldwork you are forced to confront reality and you take your research problems from reality,” he said, in opening a recent workshop where graduate students shared findings from their summer field research. The workshop, “Back from the Field: Cross-Disciplinary Research on Latin America and the Caribbean,” gathered nine of 13 graduate student recipients of Tinker Field Research Grants, from the Departments of Hispanic Studies, Portuguese and Brazilian Studies, Economics, Sociology, and Anthropology. Each presented research for constructive feedback in an interdisciplinary setting.
October 8, 2010
The recent financial crisis has made public service more important than ever, former Chilean President Ricardo Lagos told 40 university students visiting Brown University from across Latin America on Monday. The Botín Scholars arrived over the weekend and attended a welcome event where Lagos spoke about public service and democracy as a Brown professor at large. They are part of a 10-week program, “Leadership, Liberal Arts and Public Service in Democracy’s Extension,” that seeks to generate a network of university students from the region who are committed to public service and reform of civic organizations. The program is led by Fundación Marcelino Botín, in association with the Watson Institute for International Studies and the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at Brown.
October 5, 2010
In the midst of a global financial crisis blamed largely on neoliberal policies, how is it that progressives have proved incapable of presenting an alternative? “We have not been performing very well,” former Chilean President Ricardo Lagos said in answer to his own question, as he opened a two-day workshop on “The Next Left: Globalized Social Democracy in the North and South.”