October 2018
Stacey Lee, ‘The In/flexibility of Race: Chinese Americans, Schooling and Race in the Jim Crow South’
A widely cited anthropologist of education, Stacey Lee is known nationally and internationally for her cutting-edge research on the educational experiences and academic achievement of two growing student populations: im/migrants and Asian Americans. Lee is the author/editor of six books and more than 30 journal articles, including the best known book Unraveling the Model Minority Stereotype: Listening to Asian American Youth. Lee has been working on two research projects over the last few years. One project focuses on the formal…
Find out more »November 2018
Sarah Horton and Natalie Lira, ‘Bodies Across the Border: A Discussion on Eugenics, Race, and Disability’
Sarah Horton, associate professor of anthropology at the University of Colorado, Denver, has conducted more than a decade of research on farmworkers’ health and labor conditions in California’s Central Valley, and is author of “They Leave their Kidneys in the Fields: Illness, Injury, and ‘Illegality’ Among U.S. Farmworkers.” Natalie Lira, assistant professor in the departments of Latina/Latino studies and gender and women’s studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, is currently writing a book that examines how race, disability,…
Find out more »January 2019
Marie-Celie Agnant, ‘Writing from the Silence’
Marie-Celie Agnant is a Haitian-Quebecois author who writes about the diasporic experience. From Agnant: “My presentation which includes readings of extracts of some of my prose and also poetry, is a testimony in which I expose what I consider as a very personal vision of my work as a writer, the underlying motives of this creative act, as well as the various legacies which intervene in my writing process. Among those: Silence. It is out of that silence, from the…
Find out more »Marie-Celie Agnant, ‘Writing from the Silence’
Marie-Celie Agnant is a Haitian-Quebecois author who writes about the diasporic experience. From Agnant: "My presentation which includes readings of extracts of some of my prose and also poetry, is a testimony in which I expose what I consider as a very personal vision of my work as a writer, the underlying motives of this creative act, as well as the various legacies which intervene in my writing process. Among those: Silence. It is out of that silence, from the…
Find out more »David Biale, ‘Hasidism: A New History’
This lecture will present the major findings by a team of scholars about the history of Hasidism, from its origins in the mid-eighteenth century to the present day. This pietistic movement started in a remote corner of the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth, but, by the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it became a central actor on the stage of modern Jewish history. Despite predictions of its demise after the Holocaust, Hasidism today has around three-quarters of a million followers and continues to fascinate…
Find out more »David Biale, ‘Hasidism: A New History’
This lecture will present the major findings by a team of scholars about the history of Hasidism, from its origins in the mid-eighteenth century to the present day. This pietistic movement started in a remote corner of the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth, but, by the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it became a central actor on the stage of modern Jewish history. Despite predictions of its demise after the Holocaust, Hasidism today has around three-quarters of a million followers and continues to fascinate…
Find out more »February 2019
Holly Collins, ‘World Literature in French Versus the Parisian Publishing Empire’
This lecture will focus on the politics of publishing as it relates to labels such as ‘French’ and ‘Francophone.’ Holly Collins’ discussion concentrates on how Québec’s publishing industry boomed at the turn of the 20th century, challenging the prestige and monopoly of the Parisian publishing industry. Collins shows how the rise of the Québec publishing industry demonstrates the real possibility of a world literature, where no one nation plays the role of the empire or sole possessor of language as…
Find out more »April 2019
Exhibit, ‘Unfolding the Sails of Art: An Exploration of the Theme of Migration Across the Mediterranean’
Laura Grimaldi, an Italian painter based in North Carolina, will open a dialogue with the audience on the topic of migration, human rights and the power of storytelling through art, centered around her artistic project on the contemporary Mediterranean migration crisis. Meet the artist and view the exhibit 10am-3pm. A presentation and Q and A will follow from 3:30-5pm. This event is sponsored by the UNC Department of Romance Studies.
Find out more »September 2019
Mai Nguyen, ‘Globalizing Inequality: Housing, Air and Water Quality in Industrial Zones in Hanoi, Vietnam’
In honor of their 95th anniversary, the Odum Institute is organizing a speaker series to highlight the interdisciplinary impacts of social science research. As part of this series, Mai Nguyen from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Department of City and Regional Planning will lead a talk on her research in affordable housing and environmental quality in Vietnam, followed by a Q&A session. Refreshments will be provided. Mai Nguyen is an associate professor of city and regional planning…
Find out more »October 2019
SEE Forum, ‘Sarajevo: Writing and Translating a City in Wartime’
Ellen Elias-Bursac translates fiction and non-fiction from Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian. Her translation of David Albahari’s novel Götz and Meyer received the 2006 ALTA National Translation Award. Her book Translating Evidence and Interpreting Testimony at a War Crimes Tribunal: Working in a Tug-of-War was awarded the Mary Zirin Prize in 2015. She is the vice president of the American Literary Translators Association. Paula Gordon is a translator and editor. Her translations of stories, essays and poems by Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin and Serbian authors have…
Find out more »Transient Bodies and Gender Politics in 21st Century Mexico
This interdisciplinary conference taking place at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill will feature keynote speakers Stephanie Elizondo Griest and Sara Uribe. This event is sponsored by by the Department of Romance Studies; Institute for the Study of the Americas; Department of Women’s and Gender Studies; College of Arts and Sciences; Carolina Seminars; Institute for the Humanities; Department of Latino/a Studies; Buchanan Excellence Fund; and UC Mexicanistas. For more information, please contact Oswaldo Estrada, oestrada@email.unc.edu.
Find out more »November 2019
Painful Hope: An Israeli Settler and Palestinian Activist in Dialogue
Join Rabbi Hanan Schlesinger, an Israeli, and Shadi Abu Awwad, a Palestinian, as they share the successes and challenges of their groundbreaking grassroots organization, Roots: A Local Palestinian Israeli Initiative for Understanding, Nonviolence and Transformation. This event is part of the "Countering Hate: Overcoming Fear of Differences" initiative. Learn more at the initiative website.
Find out more »Fallen Walls and Human Chains: 1989 to Today
Thirty years ago, the Berlin Wall fell. This one event was linked to so many others: an election in Poland, a dismantled electrified fence in Hungary, candlelit marches and a human chain of people joining hands up and down the Baltic states. Today, the events of 1989 are too often recalled as standalone climaxes. To reconnect the threads of this shared yet scattered experience, please join us for a conversation with guests Urszula Horoszko and Niels von Redecker from the Polish and…
Find out more »Fallen Walls and Human Chains: 1989 to Today
Thirty years ago, the Berlin Wall fell. This one event was linked to so many others: an election in Poland, a dismantled electrified fence in Hungary, candlelit marches and a human chain of people joining hands up and down the Baltic states. Today, the events of 1989 are too often recalled as standalone climaxes. To reconnect the threads of this shared yet scattered experience, please join us for a conversation with guests Urszula Horoszko and Niels von Redecker from the Polish and…
Find out more »March 2020
CANCELED: Mab Segrest, ‘Memoir of a Race Traitor: Fighting Racism in the American South’
As part of the Countering Hate Initiative and ENGLISH 265, Mab Segrest will present “Memoir of a Race Traitor: Fighting Racism in the American South.” In 1994, Mab Segrest first explained how she “had become a woman haunted by the dead.” Against a backdrop of nine generations of her family’s history, Segrest explored her experiences in the 1980s as a white lesbian organizing against a virulent far-right movement in North Carolina. Memoir of a Race Traitor became a classic text of white…
Find out more »CANCELED: What Does it Mean to Be From the Páramo? Ethnicity, Politics & Development in the Ecuadorian Andes
The UNC-Duke Abiayala group presents, 'What Does it Mean to Be From the Páramo? Ethnicity, Politics & Development in the Ecuadorian Andes,' with Luis Alberto Tuaza Castro, who is an Indigenous Kichwa scholar, and a professor and researcher at the National University of Chimborazo in Ecuador. During October 2019 upheavals were led by the Indigenous popular movement in Ecuador. Government officials constantly indicated in public interviews: "The Indian must stay in the páramo" (The Andean High Plains), and not in…
Find out more »CANCELED: Oliver Tappe, ‘Mimetic Entanglements: Towards a Historical Anthropology of Lao-Vietnamese Borderlands’
The rugged Lao-Vietnamese borderlands have long been a zone of refuge and encounter, of conflict and exchange. This is particularly true for the early years of French colonial expansion, when local powerbrokers from diverse ethnic groups assessed, negotiated or resisted this new power. Scrutinizing the multiethnic upland polity of Houaphan, today a province of Laos sharing a long border with Vietnam, this presentation investigates local encounters and interactions across cultural difference, as well as corresponding mimetic entanglements. The concept of…
Find out more »November 2021
Book Talk: ‘The Nun in the Synagogue: Judeocentric Catholicism in Israel’ with Emma Polyakov (Merrimack College)
In the wake of the Holocaust, a religious phenomenon arose in Israel fueled by survivors who had converted to Catholicism as well as by Catholics determined to address the anti-Judaism inherent in their religious tradition. This talk examines this “Judeocentric Catholicism” as a case study in Catholic perceptions of Jews, Judaism, and the state of Israel. Emma Polyakov is Assistant Professor, Religious and Theological Studies at Merrimack College. MASKS are required when inside a campus building. Night parking policy in effect. Details: https://jewishstudies.unc.edu/event/the-nun-in-the-synagogue-judeocentric-catholicism-in-israel/ Sponsored…
Find out more »February 2022
Slavic Poetry Night
Nothing says love like poetry! Join the Russian Flagship Program in Toy Lounge on February 15 for an evening of love poems and chocolate. Sign up to read a poem in a Slavic language of your choosing and stick around to enjoy light refreshments and hear poems in other Slavic languages. If you are interested in reading a poem at the Slavic Poetry Night, please fill out the form here.
Find out more »September 2022
Pathways to Federal Service with Roy Savoy
Interested in working in National Security? Join Roy Savoy, an Executive Liaison Support Officer for the Defense Language and National Security Education Office, for a discussion on career opportunities in the government and non-government sectors. Mr. Savoy will discuss how to get a head start in the national security job market through internships, networking, and more. This event is sponsored by the UNC Russian Flagship Program; the Curriculum in Peace, War and Defense; Curriculum in Global Studies; and the Office…
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