Events 03/02-03/08

Monday, Mar 2nd

Book Talk: Conflict in Ukraine: The Unwinding of the Post-Cold War Order

Monday, March 2, 2015 - 12:00pm - 1:00pm

Columbia University Morningside Campus International Affairs Building, Room 1219

A book talk by Rajan Menon and Eugene B.Rumer on their latest publication, Conflict in Ukraine: The Unwinding of the Post-Cold War Order. Visit http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/conflict-ukraine for a book description and author biographies.

For further information regarding this event, please contact Ilke Denizli by sending email to zid2000@columbia.edu.

Mexican Mondays - The Right to the City, More than a Slogan: From the International Movement to the Mexico City Charter

Monday, March 2, 2015 - 5:00pm - 7:00pm

Columbia University Morningside Campus International Affairs Building, Room 802

Talk with Lorena Zarate. In collaboration with Columbia Universitys Latin American and Caribbean Laboratory (Latin Lab) and the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP). Part of the Mexican Mondays series, Center for Mexican Studies - Institute of Latin American Studies

For further information regarding this event, please contact ILAS by sending email toilasRSVP@gmail.com.

Tuesday, Mar 3rd

Violentology: A Photographic Exploration of Conflict, Political Change, and Human Rights in Colombia

Tuesday, March 3, 2015 - 4:00pm - 6:00pm

Columbia University Morningside Campus International Affairs Building, Room 802

Stephen Ferry is an award-winning photographer whose work has appeared in National Geographic, GEO, TIME and the New York Times, among other outlets.

For further information regarding this event, please contact ILAS by sending email toilasRSVP@gmail.com .

What is the Future for the Eurasian Economic Union?

Tuesday, March 3, 2015 - 5:00pm - 7:00pm

Columbia University Morningside Campus Faculty House, Ivy Lounge

Please join the Harriman Institute and the Central Asian Studies Institute of George Washington University for a panel discussion.

Panelists:

Rilka Dragneva is a Senior Lecturer in Law at the University of Birmingham. She has worked and published extensively in the area of legal reform, regional integration and EU's external policy with special reference to Eastern Europe and Eurasia. She has extensive experience in technical assistance and consultancy in the field of legal reform and rule of law post-communism. Her latest research focus is on the the institutional architecture of the Eurasian Economic Union and its internal and external implications.  Her recent publications include Eurasian Economic Integration: Law, Policy and Politics (Edward Elgar 2013). Rilka is also actively engaged in policy advice in relation to these matters.

Aitolkyn Kourmanova is the head of the private consultancy Central Asia Strategic Management Group, based in Almaty, Kazakhstan. She specializes in economic policies and regional cooperation in Central Asia. Her recent publications include Regional Cooperation in Central Asia: Nurturing from the Ground (George Washington University, 2013), Lessons from Zhanaozen. Bringing Business, Government and Society Together (George Washington University, 2012). She was a principal researcher for the two studies funded by the Asian Development Bank: Remittances of International Migrants and the Financial Sector (December 2008) and Study of Mechanisms and Potential for Agricultural Trade in Central Asia (June 2007). She was a coauthor of New Industrial Asia: Lessons for Kazakhstan (Almaty Institute, 2007). Ms Kourmanova has a considerable media experience being the head of the Central Asia Institute for Economic Strategies from 2007 to 2011, where she launched a popular economic magazine, Vox Populi, and edited a quarterly academic business magazine, Economic StrategiesCentral Asia. In 2011 she was Kzakhstan country director of the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR). She holds a bachelors degree in international relations and earned her executive master of business administration degree from cole des Hautes tudes Commerciales de Paris. She was a Central Asia Fellow at George Washington Universitys Elliott School of International Affairs from April to August 2013 and Hubert Humphrey Fellow in 2011-2012.

Marlene Laruelle is Director of the Central Asia Program and a Research Professor of International Affairs at The Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies (IERES), Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University. She has authored Russian Eurasianism: An Ideology of Empire (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), In the Name of the Nation: Nationalism and Politics in Contemporary Russia(Palgrave, 2009), and Russia's Strategies in the Arctic and the Future of the Far North (M.E. Sharpe, 2013). She has co-authored Globalizing Central Asia: Geopolitics and The Challenges of Economic Development(M.E. Sharpe, 2013) and The 'Chinese Question' in Centra Asia: Domestic Order, Social Changes, and the Chinese Factor (Hurst and Oxford University Press, 2013), and co-edited China and India in Central Asia: A New 'Great Game?' (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010) and Mapping Central Asia: Indian Perceptions and Strategies (Ashgae, 2011).

Nate Schenkkan is a Program Officer in Eurasia Programs at Freedom House, covering Central Asia and Turkey. He works closely with Freedom House's Central Asia offices in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan implementing democracy and governance programs in partnership with local human rights organizations. Most recently, he has been spending considerable time in Turkey preparing for a special Freedom House report on the Turkish media. Prior to joining Freedom House, he worked as a journalist in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, covering social and political issues including Islamic revivalist movements, Kyrgyzstan's hip-hop scene, and the aftermath of the Zhanaozen events. His writing has appeared in Eurasianet, Atlantic Online, World Politics Review, and Registan.net, and he has appeared as a commentator on Al Jazeera's The Listening Post. He has a Master's degree in Russian and Eurasian studies from the Harriman Institute at Columbia University, where he was the 2010-2011 Pepsico Junior Fellow and a 2010 Critical Languages Fellow in Ankara, Turkey.

Moderated by Alexander Cooley, Professor of Political Science, Barnard College; Deputy Director for Social Sciences Programming, Harriman Institute.

For further information regarding this event, please contact Ilke Denizli by sending email tozid2000@columbia.edu.

Wednesday Mar 4th

Could We Critically Redeem Turbo-folk and Should We Even Try?

Wednesday, March 4, 2015 - 4:00pm - 6:00pm

Columbia University Morningside Campus International Affairs Building, Room 1219

Please join us for a lecture on a frankensteinian music genre combining rural folk ballads with electro-beat, turbo-folk became extremely popular in 1990s Serbia and is on its way to becoming a global Balkan brand.

In his lecture, Vlad Beronja focuses on the highly stylized performance of class, gender, and locality in select trubo-folk music videos that had gone viral immediately upon their release on the web. At the risk of overt didacticism the lecture will be guided by the following question: is turbo-folk a critically redeemable genre or is it destined to remain an ideological monstrosity that it was in the 1990s Serbia? Is it possible to decouple turbo-folk from ethnic nationalism, the new mafia elite, and the patriarchal norms that propped the genre up in the first place? Can the genre accommodate alternative communities and empower marginalized subjectssuch as women, queers, and ethnic minoritiesthrough various forms of (dis)identifications?

Vlad Beronja is a Visiting Lecturer in Slavic Languages & Literatures from the University of Michigan.

The event is sponsored by the Harriman Institute and East Central European Center.

For further information regarding this event, please contact Filip Tucek by sending email toft2439@columbia.edu or by calling 2128544618.

Global Mayors Forum with Michael Nutter, Mayor of Philadelphia

Wednesday, March 4, 2015 - 4:00pm - 5:30pm

Columbia University Morningside Campus International Affairs Building, Room 1501

The Global Mayors Forum, sponsored by SIPA's Urban and Social Policy concentration, will hostMichael Nutter, Mayor of Philadelphia. Mayor Nutter will speak about his innovative approach to educational attainment support programs, his cutting-edge community policing partnership, his longstanding commitment to making Philadelphia the greenest city in America through the nationally recognized GreenWorks initiative, and the citys plans for the 2016 Democratic National Convention.SIPA's Global Mayors Forum showcases the leaders of the worlds most dynamic cities and the Schools conviction that cities are the worlds most important laboratories for creative policymaking.If you cant attend, watch this event live at www.sipa.columbia.edu/live

For further information regarding this event, please contact Kevin Gully by sending email tokg2515@columbia.edu or by calling 212-851-0264.

Petroleum Industry in Brazil: Governance, Performance, and Politics

Wednesday, March 4, 2015 - 6:10pm - 8:00pm

Columbia University Morningside Campus International Affairs Building, Room 802

In the midst of the steep fall oil prices, Petrobras is going through a major corruption scandal that not only has impacted Brazil's largest company, but that has also shaken Dilma's administration just as she starts her second term. Where will it end? This event is part of the course of Political, Social, and Economic Development in Brazil (Instructor Sidney Nakahodo).

For further information regarding this event, please contact ILAS by sending email toilasRSVP@gmail.com .

Thursday Mar 5th

Intimate Rivals: Japanese Domestic Politics and a Rising China

Thursday, March 5, 2015 - 12:00pm - 1:30pm

Columbia University Morningside Campus International Affairs Building, Room 918

Brown Bag Lecture with Sheila A Smith, Senior Fellow for Japan Studies, Council on Foreign Relations. Moderated by Gerald L. Curtis, Burgess Professor of Political Science, Columbia University. No registration required. Co-sponsored by the Weatherhead East Asian Institute.

For further information regarding this event, please contact Katherine Forshay by sending email tokdf2116@columbia.edu

Governmental Elites and the Politics of Policymaking: Continuity and Change at the Top of the Brazilian Federal Government (1985-2014)

Thursday, March 5, 2015 - 1:00pm - 2:00pm

Columbia University Morningside Campus International Affairs Building, Room 802

Our study aims to contribute to a better understanding of the processes that lead to variation on the social, political and professional background of the individuals appointed to senior public positions in Brazil since redemocratization in 1985. In order to do that, we propose a typology of logics of recruitment to senior positions: party political, bureaucratic and professional. We then proceed to test how political change at the presidential and ministerial levels helps to explain patterns of change and continuity in these logics, using a sample of Brazilian federal ministries and agencies across different administrations and policy areas. The impacts of these patterns on policymaking are also analyzed.

For further information regarding this event, please contact ILAS by sending email toilasRSVP@gmail.com .

French Cinema, A State Affair: History of Cinema and Public Policies from WWII to the Digital Age

Thursday, March 5, 2015 - 6:00pm - 7:30pm

Columbia University Morningside Campus East Gallery, Buell Hall

Discussion with Frdrique Bredin, Pierre-Emmanuel Lecerf, Laurent Creton and Jonathan Buchsbaum. 

In French and English, with simultaneous French-English translation

Frdrique Bredin is President and Pierre-Emmanuel Lecerf is Director of International Affairs at the  Centre National du Cinma et de limage anime (CNC). Laurent Creton is a historian, President of the Conseil Acadmique and Vice-President of the Commission de la Recherche at Paris III. Jonathan Buchsbaum is Professor of Media Studies, CUNY Graduate Center.

Support provided by the Cultural Services of the French Embassy

For further information regarding this event, please contact Maison Events by sending email toll2787@columbia.edu.

Friday Mar 6th

Tesla: A Portrait with Masks

Friday, March 6, 2015 - 6:00pm - 8:00pm

Columbia University Morningside Campus International Affairs Building, Room 1219

Please join us for a conversation with Vladimir Pistalo, the author of Tesla: A Portrait with Masks.

Vladimir Pitalos biographical novel wonderfully evokes the drama of that era as it covers the full arc of Teslas life. Pitalo captures high-profile events such the War of the Currents with Thomas Edison, which culminated in Teslas triumph at the 1893 Chicago Worlds Fair, to his later years, when he lived in poverty at the New Yorker Hotel. But he also turns to lesser-known aspects of Telsas life, such as his boyhood in Serbia, for insight into what drove him: a fraught relationship with his father, an Orthodox Priest, and the early death of his brother, which haunted Tesla throughout his life. In Pitalos capable hands, Teslas emotional life is vividly brought to the page in a way that humanizes a mysterious, seemingly unknowable man.

A compelling fictionalized account of inventor Nikola Teslas inscrutable and solitary lifePistalos thorough account of a great man's personality and habits is done to fine effect.Publishers Weekly

Vladimir Pistalo was born in Sarajevo in 1960. He studied law in Belgrade and Sarajevo and received a PhD in American history from the University of New Hampshire. Pitalos first story came out in a literary magazine when he was eighteen, and his first book was published when he was twenty-one. Since that time, he has published eleven books of fiction. Tesla: A Portrait with Masks, his first book to be translated into English, won the 2008 NIN Literary Award, the most prestigious award in Serbia, and has appeared in ten languages. He teaches US and world history at Becker College in Massachusetts.

This event is by sponsored by the Njego Endowment for Serbian Language & Culture at Columbia University.

For further information regarding this event, please contact Filip Tucek by sending email toft2439@columbia.edu or by calling 212-854-4618.

Political Concepts Conference

Friday, March 6, 2015 - Saturday, March 7, 2015

Jerome Greene Hall (Law School), Jerome Greene Annex

The Political Concepts conference returns to the Columbia University. The project is guided by one formal principle--the posing of a Socratic question "what is x?"--and by one theatrical principle--the concepts defined should be relevant to political thought and, more broadly, to thinking about the political.