University Symposium Calendar of Events, 2011-12
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Past events - Fall 2011
Thursday through Sunday, September 8-11
Tushaanal: Fires of Dry Grass - Ananya Dance Theatre
This piece by Ananya Dance Theatre is the second in a four-part, anti-violence series exploring how women in global communities of color experience and resist violence. Tushaanal (“fires of dry grass” in Bengali) revolves around stories of gold, an element mined and harnessed as capital, and a symbol of desire, beauty and artistry. Tushaanal is co-directed by Ananya Chatterjea, professor of Theatre Arts and Dance at the University of Minnesota, and OBIE Award-winning theater artist Laurie Carlos.
Thursday, 7:30 p.m., Friday, 8:00 p.m., Saturday, 2:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m., and Sunday, 7:00 p.m., Southern Theatre, 1420 Washington Ave S, Minneapolis
Tickets are $22 general admission, $16 students
September 15
China Insights—Unsettling Consequences: A Conversation with Thomas Rose and Joseph Allen
Joseph Allen is a professor of Asian Languages and Literatures at the University of Minnesota. His research specialties include a focus on Chinese poetry and poetics, contemporary uses of the past, and colonialist photography. Thomas Rose is a sculptor and a professor of Art at the University of Minnesota. His work is particularly interested in the intersections of architecture and memory. In this discussion, Professor Allen and Professor Rose will reflect on "China: Insights. New Documentary Photography from the People's Republic," produced by the Foundation for the Exhibition of Photography in Minneapolis. Cosponsored by the Department of Art.
4:00 p.m., 125 Nolte Center
Friday, September 23
Seeding the Future: Imagining America Conference Keynote address by Rose Brewer and Seitu Jones
The 2011 Imagining America Conference keynote address, “Seeding the Future,” will be presented in the form of a conversation between visual artist and activist Seitu Jones and Rose Brewer, conveners of the Black Environmental Thought collaborative. Professor Brewer is University of Minnesota Professor of African American & African Studies, and co-author of The Color of Wealth (New Press, 2006). Jones is a Senior Fellow in Agricultural Systems in the College of Food, Agriculture and Natural Resource Sciences at the University of Minnesota. Both are core members of the community-based urban agriculture organization, AfroEco. Seating is limited to registered conference attendees and those who reserve a seat in advance. To reserve a seat, contact the IAS at ias@umn.edu or 612-626-5054.
10 a.m., Coffman Memorial Union Theater
Thursday, September 29
Known Unknowns: The Problem with GMO Research - A presentation by Glenn Davis Stone
Although debates over genetically modified (GM) crops involve a wide range of societal issues, in some cases simple agronomic questions like yield advantage of a specific crop can take on great significance. This is particularly true of Bt cotton in India, which is a singularly important GM crop for small farmers and which remains highly controversial. Attempts by most analysts to isolate the impact of the transgenic trait have been mired in problems, and contradictory narratives have been widely accepted. Long-term ethnographic research can help to illuminate the impacts of Bt cotton, but this pivotal case ultimately has much to teach us about what we simply do not know. Prof. Stone's talk is organized in conjunction with the Institute for Advanced Study's interdisciplinary faculty seminar, "Talking Over Food: Abundance and Scarcity in the 21st Century."
4:00 p.m., 125 Nolte Center
Tuesday, October 11
The Poem's Phenomenon – A presentation by Amir Hussain
Amir Hussain is a graduate student in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Minnesota and a graduate assistant at the Institute for Advanced Study. He maintains a public blog, abundanceandscarcity, that explores issues and events from the Institute's University Symposium on Abundance & Scarcity. His “Night Poem” and “Hour Poem” appear in Beloit Poetry Journal and Faultline: Journal of Arts and Letters.
4:00 p.m., 125 Nolte Center
Friday, October 14
China's Green Revolution and African Agricultural Development: Dis-Oriented Histories and Misapplied Lessons - A presentation by William Moseley
William Moseley is a professor in the Department of Geography at Macalester College where he teaches about and researches political ecology, tropical agriculture, environment and development policy, and livelihood security. Most of his fieldwork has been undertaken in West and Southern Africa and his research over the past several years has fallen into three general categories: 1) analysis of the interaction between broader scale political economy and local human-environment interactions (or political ecology); 2) livelihood security, famine early warning and hunger; and 3) the environmental dimensions of modern and traditional agriculture. Among other works, he is the author of Hanging by a Thread: Cotton, Globalization and Poverty in Africa (with Leslie Gray, 2008) and "Lessons from the 2008 Global Food Crisis: Agro-Food Dynamics in Mali" (2011).
11:30-1:00 p.m., 125 Nolte Center
Friday, October 14
From the Frying-Pan to the Floodplain: Negotiating Land and Water in Chennai's Development - A talk by Karen Coelho
Karen Coelho is a professor at the Madras Institute of Development Studies in Chennai, India, where she focuses her research on urban governance and reforms. Prof. Coelho received her Ph.D. in Sociocultural Anthropology from the University of Arizona, Tucson in 2004 and has since been the recipient of the Richard Carley Hunt Fellowship, awarded by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, and an Independent Fellowship with SARAI, The New Media Initiative, a programme of the Center for Study of Developing Societies, Delhi. Organized by the Global Cultures Group of Quadrant and offered in conjunction with the Geography Coffee Hour.
3:30 p.m., 445 Blegen Hall
Thursday, October 20
Crossing ‘La Terre Noire': Refurbishing Roads and Encountering Sacred Space in Post-Colonial Dahomey and Benin - A talk by Marcus Filippello
Marcus Filippello is a visiting assistant professor in history at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He received his doctorate in African history from the University of California-Davis in 2010. His project, “Crossing the ‘Black Earth’: Environmental Change, Eco-Nationalism, and Post-Independence Autonomy in a Beninese Forest Community,” is based on his dissertation. The manuscript analyzes the textual nature of a road traversing a valley of seasonal wetlands to emphasize social and environmental change in southeastern Benin, West Africa. Professor Filippello will be in residence in fall 2011 with the Environment, Culture, and Sustainability group of Quadrant.
4:00 p.m., 125 Nolte Center
Monday, October 24
University of Minnesota Food Day Expo
Food Day has been nationally organized to bring together Americans from all walks of life—parents, teachers, and students; health professionals, community organizers, and local officials; chefs, school lunch providers, and eaters of all stripes—to push for healthy, affordable food produced in a sustainable, humane way. We will work with people around the country to create thousands of events in homes, schools, churches, farmers markets, city halls, and state capitals. Food Day is backed by an impressive advisory board that includes anti-hunger advocates, physicians, authors, politicians, and leaders of groups focused on everything from farmers markets to animal welfare to public health. The IAS has organized the capstone panel discussion on Interdisciplinary Approaches to Food Studies featuring Margaret Adamek, Terra Soma Consulting Services; Nicholas Jordan, Department of Agronomy & Plant Genetics; Jeffrey Pilcher, Department of History; and Valentine Cadieux, Department of Geography,which will take place at 3:30 p.m. in Campus Club rooms ABC.
Cosponsored by the Healthy Foods, Healthy Lives Institute, Campus Club, School of Public Health, University Dining Services, Cooking Matters, Extension, Cornercopia Student Organic Farm, Wellness Collaborative, Rec Sports, Department of Food Science and Nutrition, Sustainability Studies, the Regional Sustainable Development Partnership, and the Food Industry Center
8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., Coffman Student Union
Thursday, November 10
Social Networking and Disaster Recovery - A talk by Peter Kerre
Peter Kerre moved from North Minneapolis to Manhattan in 2010 to pursue his career as a nationally recognized DJ and as an information security specialist, but he knew that he needed to help out after the May 22, 2011 tornado that devastated his old neighborhood. Using a combination of Facebook and word of mouth, he created the North Minneapolis Post Tornado Watch, which organized some of the most successful donation drives and cleanup efforts to help all those who had been affected by the disaster.
4:00 p.m., 125 Nolte Center
Thursday, November 17
Financialization, Food Pricing, and Speculation - A presentation by Steve Suppan
This talk is a great chance to learn more about crucially important aspects of the political economy of the food system such as factors in commodity price volatility, the deregulation of derivatives markets, and the battle by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to implement the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act opposed by a $330 million Wall Street lobbying campaign and Wall Street's congressional allies.
4:00 p.m., 125 Nolte Center
Thursday, December 1
The Big Spill - A presentation by Leigh Fondakowski
What is the true environmental and human cost of our relentless pursuit of oil? Playwright Leigh Fondakowski reports on her current project with visual artist Reeva Wortel, a play based on interviews with the people of the south coast of Louisiana with an accompanying visual installation of life-sized portraits of the interviewees, which explores both the human and scientific impact of the BP oil drilling disaster of 2010. Fondakowski was an Imagine Fund Distinguished Visiting Chair at the University of Minnesota during the spring of 2010 when she spoke about her most recent work, Casa Cushman.
4:00 p.m., 125 Nolte Center
Tuesday, December 6
The Long Shadow of American Slavery: Human Capital, 1850-1910 - a presentation by Richard Steckel
Richard Steckel, a pioneer in the field of anthropometric history, which uses stature and other anthropometric measures to assess health and nutrition in the past, discusses six linked phenomena observed in Southern black history: a sudden rise in wealth in the late 1800s; extremely short slave children and relatively tall adults; child mortality rates that were double those of the free population; a jump in literacy rates for those born after 1865; a substantial reduction in hours worked by black women following emancipation; and convergence of Southern black and white mortality rates after the Civil War. He argues that the unifying thread in these phenomena is a significant change in cognitive ability. Poor early childhood nutrition for blacks compromised cognitive function, but this constraint was alleviated following emancipation. The research results might have important implications for the rise of lynching and Jim Crow laws.
Cosponsored by the Minnesota Population Center
4:00 p.m., 125 Nolte Center
Thursday, January 26
Climate Change, Crisis, and Resilience: Perspectives from History - Presentation by Sam White
Climate change forecasts for the coming century have added to alarms over scarcity, mass migration, and instability in the developing world. This presentation will discuss current concerns in light of past climate fluctuations and crises, particularly during the early modern “Little Ice Age.” It will examine previous patterns in impacts and vulnerabilities and consider why some regions and populations proved more resilient than others, and what lessons we can (or cannot) draw from history. Sam White is an assistant professor of History at Oberlin College. He is the author of The Climate of Rebellion in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire (Cambridge University Press, 2011), “Rethinking Disease in Ottoman History” (International Journal of Middle East Studies, 2010), “From Globalized Pig Breeds to Capitalist Pigs: A Study in Animal Cultures and Evolutionary History” (Environmental History, 2011), and “Middle East Environmental History: Ideas from an Emerging Field” (World History Connected, 2011). Thursdays at Four presentation; cosponsored with the Center for Early Modern History.
4:00 p.m., 125 Nolte Center
Thursday, February 23
Reframing the Access to Medicines Debate: Health as a Global Public Good - Presentation by Jeffrey Sturchio
In recent decades, the benefits of new medicines and vaccines from pharmaceutical research and development have transformed the health of populations living in developed economies. Yet billions of people living in poverty have not yet benefited from these innovations. Dr. Sturchio will explore the reasons why so many have limited access to such abundant resources; how growing awareness of this disparity has led to a global movement to improve the availability of and access to medicines and vaccines; and what still needs to be done to secure the supply of health as a global public good. Jeffrey Sturchio is a Senior Partner at Rabin Martin. From 2009-2011, he served as President and CEO of Global Health Council. Part of the University Symposium on Abundance & Scarcity. Thursdays at Four presentation, cosponsored by the Program in the History of Medicine.
4:00 p.m., 125 Nolte Center
Thursday, March 22
Mapping the Mississippi
The Mississippi River above St. Anthony Falls is perhaps the least "legible" part of the river in Minneapolis. Join River Life coordinator Pat Nunnally and Mary deLaittre, President of the Minneapolis Parks Foundation, for a highly visual "tour" of this poorly understood section of the city. Over time, the region has seen an abundance of industrial sites and a scarcity of the amenity values that have made the Mississippi River Gorge and St. Anthony Falls so well known. All of that is likely to change in the coming decade, as the public agencies and advocacy groups responsible for implementing the "River First" vision undertake their mission of transforming the urban river corridor. Panel organized by the River Life Program at the April 26, 2012 Four presentation.
4:00 p.m., 125 Nolte Center
Thursday, March 29
Biocultural Diversity, Language, and Environmental Endangerment - Panel discussion with Winona LaDuke, Luisa Maffi, and K. David Harrison
Winona LaDuke is a Native American activist, environmentalist, and writer. K. David Harrison is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Linguistics at Swarthmore University and author of The Last Speakers: The Quest to Save the World's Most Endangered Languages. Linguist, anthropologist, and ethnobiologist Luisa Maffi is cofounder and director of Terralingua. Thursdays at Four presentation.
4:00 p.m., 125 Nolte Center
Monday, April 2
Pharmaceutical Crises and Questions of Value: Terrains and Logics of Global Therapeutic Politics - Presentation by Kaushik Sunder Rajan
Kaushik Sunder Rajan explores the contemporary global terrain of drug development and access, in order to analyze how it is constituted by different logics of crisis. He examines the crisis faced by the multinational, research and development driven pharmaceutical industry as it confronts what industry analysts refer to as a “patent cliff”; the crisis faced by many people in the developing world due to the lack of access to essential medicines, at the same time that Western consumers are facing constantly growing prescription rates and consequent therapeutic saturation; and the crisis faced by the Indian generic drug industry. Kaushik Sunder Rajan is an Associate Professor of Anthropology and of Social Sciences at the University of Chicago. He is author of Biocapital: The Constitution of Post-Genomic Life, a multi-sited ethnography of emergent genomic research and drug development marketplaces in the United States and India that traces the historical emergence of what he calls biocapital in the late twentieth century, which asks questions of the nature and manner of the co-production of economic and epistemic value in the life sciences today. Cosponsored by the Program in the History of Medicine and the Department of Anthropology. This presentation will not be video-recorded.
4:00 p.m., 125 Nolte Center
Monday, April 16
The Abundance of the Copy: Generic Medicines and the Politics of Equivalence - A Presentation by Cori Hayden
Can rich people’s medicines and poor people’s medicines “really” be the same? This is the question that consumers in Mexico started asking with the arrival of generic medicines on the commercial landscape in the early 2000s. The same but (similar), the same but (cheaper), the same but (different): consumers of generics there and elsewhere have repeatedly been asked to confront --and have articulated-- the rich heterogeneity of sameness to itself. Through the lens of ongoing ethnographic work in Mexico, the project on which this talk draws explores the implications of this strange kind of abundance (that is, not just of 'copied drugs,' but of kinds of equivalence itself), for how we think about markets, politics, and access to health. Cori Hayden is a professor of Anthropology and the Director of the Center for Science, Technology, Medicine & Society at the University of California, Berkeley. Cosponsored by the Program in the History of Medicine and the Department of Anthropology.
4:00 p.m., 125 Nolte Center
Eating Bitterness: Stories from the Front Lines of China's Great Urban Migration - A book talk with award-winning journalist Michelle Dammon Loyalka
Every year over 200 million peasants flock to China's urban centers, providing a profusion of cheap labor that helps fuel the country's staggering economic growth. Award-winning journalist Michelle Dammon Loyalka discusses her new book, in which she follows the trials and triumphs of eight such migrants--including a vegetable vendor, an itinerant knife sharpener, a free-spirited recycler, and a cash-strapped mother--offering an inside look at the pain, self-sacrifice, and uncertainty underlying China's dramatic national transformation.
7:00 p.m., 125 Nolte Center
Friday, April 20
Globalization and the Mismeasurement of Poverty - Presentation by Jim Glassman
Perspectives developed by economic geographers on the complex heterogeneity of global economic space have largely been missing from broader debates about globalization, poverty, and inequality. Glassman argues that taking the heterogeneity of global economic space seriously poses insuperable barriers to the employment of a meaningful and non-redundant concept of income poverty. Recognition of this result encourages more appropriate and relevant ways of examining poverty that pay adequate attention to the heterogeneous contexts in which people’s sense of the adequacy or inadequacy of their standards of living are formed.
JIm Glassman is an Associate Professor of Geography at the University of British Columbia. Organized by the Global Cultures group of Quadrant and offered in conjunction with the Geography Coffee Hour.
445 Blegen Hall, 3:30 p.m.
Wednesday, April 25
Embodying Abundance and Scarcity in Minnesota, 1830-1930
Evan Roberts (History) reports on his recent project with John Himes (Epidemiology), Christopher Isett (History), and J. Michael Oakes (Epidemiology) using historical sources and socio-biological methods to investigate how economic, environmental, and social conditions shaped people's life chances by shaping their bodies. The team used height, weight, and social and medical information from approximately 8,000 Minnesotans born after 1830 to pinpoint periods of nutritional abundance and scarcity, and compare changes in Minnesota to regional and national trends. Was Minnesota distinctive? How was Minnesota different, and why? Their analysis reveals how social differences in the population and the environment resulted in readable differences in physical well-being.
Cosponsored by the Minnesota Population Center
4:00 p.m., 125 Nolte Center
Thursday, April 26
Occupy Wall Street
Anthropologists Karen Ho and Hannah Chadeayne Appel examine the Occupy Wall Street movement. Karen Ho is Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of Minnesota, and author of Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street. Hannah Appel is an anthropologist, currently a postdoctoral fellow with the Committee on Global Thought at Columbia University. She has been participating in the Occupy Wall Street movement since late September. Thursdays at Four presentation.
4:00 p.m., 125 Nolte Center
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Abundance and Scarcity events in 2010-11
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Previous University Symposia
Symposium 2008-2010: Body & Knowing
Symposium 2006-2008: Time
Symposium 2005-06: The Politics of Populations
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