A talk by Hal Whitesman, Financial Times' Chicago and Midwest bureau chief. Thanks to demand from big emerging economies, most South American governments have become increasingly "resource nationalistic" and have ramped up social spending to meet the needs of the poor and the indigenous, causing poverty levels to drop - at the same time as poverty has been on the increase in the United States. Will the U.S. continue losing influence in Latin America? Will China soon dominate the area both commercially and strategically? Can the U.S. do business with countries from Mexico to Argentina without interfering in their internal affairs?

CHIASMOS: The University of Chicago International and Area Studies Multimedia Outreach Source [audio]

“Latin Lessons: How South America Stopped Listening to the U.S. and Started Prospering”

A talk by David Scheffer, Director of the Center for International Human Rights at Northwestern University. As senior adviser to Madeleine Albright and then as President Clinton’s ambassador-at-large for war crimes issues, David Scheffer was at the forefront of the efforts that led to criminal tribunals for the Balkans, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, and Cambodia, and that resulted in the creation of the permanent International Criminal Court. All the Missing Souls: A Personal History of the War Crimes Tribunals is Scheffer’s gripping insider’s account of the international gamble to prosecute those responsible for genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, and to redress some of the bloodiest human rights atrocities in our time. Introduction by Susan Gzesh, Executive Director of the University of Chicago Human Rights Program and Senior Lecturer in the College.

“All the Missing Souls: A Personal History of the War Crimes Tribunals”

 Since the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change was established in 1994, efforts to secure international agreement on climate policy have gained increasing attention, but compromise on the issues has not been easy to achieve.

"Climate Change & the International Negotiations" (audio)

For the last decade, Venezuela’s “Bolivarian Revolution” has captured international attention. Poverty, inequality, and unemployment have all dropped, while health, education, and living standards have seen a commensurate rise. Venezuela Speaks! is the real, bottom-up account of the country's bloodless uprising and reorganization. Co-editor Carlos Martinez will explain how the stories in Venezuela Speaks! offer a different perspective than that of the international mainstream media, which has focused predominantly on Venezuela’s controversial president, Hugo Chavez.

"Venezuela Speaks!" (audio)

In this talk, Robert Pape presents findings from the Chicago Project on Security and Terrorism demonstrating that, contrary to popular belief, religion alone motivates only a tiny minority of suicide attacks. Instead, the root cause is foreign military occupation, which triggers secular and religious people to carry out suicide attacks. From The World Beyond the Headlines series.

"Cutting the Fuse: The Explosion of Global Suicide Terrorism and How to Stop It"

A talk by Whitney Cox, Lecturer in Sanskrit, School of Oriental and African Studies.

"Moonset on Sunrise Mountain: Narrative, Politics, and the Accession of Kulottunga I Cola"

Imtiaz Gul is the Executive Director of the Centre for Research and Security Studies in Islamabad. He is the author of three books on the ongoing security concerns in South Asia: The Unholy Nexus, The Al-Qaeda Connection, and The Most Dangerous Place. Gul addresses the longer term political and social consequences of the floods in Pakistan of July of this year.

"The Flood Disaster in Pakistan: Socio-economic Consequences and Potential Geopolitical Ramifications"

 Dipesh Chakrabarty is the Lawrence A. Klimpton Distinguished Service Professor of History at the University of Chicago.

"The Empire and the Birth of Historical Research in India"

Raman Sukumar is the author of three books on the ecology and conservation of elephants, and the recipient of the International Cosmos Prize in 2006. He is presently completing a cultural history of the Asian elephant that will be published in late 2010. Using literary sources and artistic representation of elephants in painting and sculpture, Sukumar's talk traces the changing paradigms in the elephant-human relationship through history, and provides possible ecological explanations for the same.

"Elephants, Gods and People: The Cultural History of the Asian Elephants"

Robert Glennon is a nationally-renowned water expert, and the author of Unquenchable: America's Water Crisis and What To Do About It (2009). His previous books include the highly-acclaimed Water Follies: Groundwater Pumping and the Fate of America's Fresh Waters (2002). Glennon is the Morris K. Udall Professor of Law and Public Policy in the Rogers College of Law at the University of Arizona. Glennon explores potential water futures for the U.S. — one driven by passivity, the other by foresight.

"America's Water Crisis"

A talk by Dipesh Chakrabarty, Lawrence A. Kimpton Distinguished Service Professor of History, South Asian Languages and Civilizations and the College, University of Chicago and David Archer, Professor in the Department of Geophysical Science at the University of Chicago on the global climate crisis. As part of the quarterly Workshop on the Global Environment, historian Dipesh Chakrabarty and geophysicist David Archer meet to discuss human-environmental relationships. Archer served as discussant of Chakrabaty's presentation titled "Between Globalization and Global Warming: The Long and the Short of Human History".

"Between Globalization and Global Warming"

A talk by Kapil Raj, Directeur d'études at École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris.

"Non-Eurocentric Historical Geographies of Modern Science: Perspectives from South Asia"

Santiago Levy is Vice President for Sector and Knowledge at the Inter-American Development Bank and author of the book Good Intentions, Bad Outcomes: Social Policy, Informality and Economic Growth in Mexico. Mr. Levy speaks on the growth of Mexico’s informal economy.

"The Informal Economy in Mexico"

A keynote address by David Hardiman, History, University of Warwick at the Seventh South Asia Graduate Student Conference. With the support of the Committee on Southern Asian Studies (COSAS), The Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture (CSRPC) and The Center for Gender Studies (CGS).

“Situating the Subaltern in South Asian Medical History”

Srimati Basu, Associate Professor of Gender and Women's Studies University of Kentucky on "Impossible Translation: Beyond the Legal Body in Two South Asian Family Courts"

“Impossible Translation: Beyond the Legal Body in Two South Asian Family Courts”

The University of Chicago International and Area Studies Multimedia Outreach Source is intended as a resource for students, teachers, and the general public. It makes available recordings of conferences, lectures, and performances sponsored and organized by: the Center for International Studies; the Human Rights Program; the Center for East Asian Studies; the Center for East European and Russian/Eurasian Studies; the Center for Latin American Studies; the Center for Middle Eastern Studies; and the South Asian Language and Area Center. It is funded in part by grants from the U.S. Department of Education.

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