Chiasmos: The University Of Chicago International And Area Studies Multimedia Outreach Source [audio]

A talk by New York Times journalist Neil MacFarquhar. His book, "The Media Relations Department of Hizbollah Wishes You a Happy Birthday" reveals a cross-section of unsung, dynamic men and women pioneering political and social change. There is the Kuwaiti sex therapist in a leather suit with matching red headscarf, and the Syrian engineer advocating a less political interpretation of the Koran. MacFarquhar interacts with Arabs and Iranians in their every day lives, removed from the violence we see constantly, yet wrestling with the region's future. Cosponsored by the Center for Middle Eastern Studies. From the World Beyond the Headlines lecture series.

A talk by Bhavani Raman, Associate Professor of History, Princeton University. From the South Asia Seminar.

Susanna Hecht, Professor of Urban Planning at the UCLA School of Public Affairs, delivers a lecture entitled, "Tropicality, Tropicalism: Forest Resurgence and the Politics of Latin American Conservation"

Carlos Fernando Chamorro is the son of Pedro Joaquin Chamorro, editor of the independent daily La Prensa who was assassinated during the Somoza dictatorship. Chamorro is among the nation's most respected TV journalists, and a leading voice for press freedom and the protection of independent journalism in Nicaragua.

A talk by professor and author David Bosco. From the Berlin Airlift to the Iraq War, the UN Security Council has stood at the heart of global politics. Part public theater, part smoke-filled backroom, the Council has enjoyed notable successes and suffered ignominious failures, but it has always provided a space for the five great powers to sit down together. Five to Rule Them All tells the inside story of this remarkable diplomatic creation. Drawing on extensive research, including dozens of interviews with serving and former ambassadors on the Council, the book chronicles political battles and personality clashes as it opens the closed doors of its meeting room. What emerges here is a revealing portrait of the most powerful diplomatic body in the world. From the World Beyond the Headlines lecture series.

A talk by David Shulman, Renee Lang Professor of Humanistic Studies, Department of Comparative Religion, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. From the South Asia Seminar.

Rafael Hernández is the editor of Temas, the leading Cuban magazine in the social sciences and the humanities, which is renowned for its contribution to intellectual controversy on the island. Hernández addresses Cuba's unique social diversity and the emergence of growing inequality that accompanied and has followed the crisis of the 1990s.

A talk by Richard Eaton, University of Arizona. From the South Asia Seminar.

A talk by C.S. Lakshmi, founder and Director of Sound & Picture Archive for Research on Women (SPARROW) in Mumbai.

A talk by South African author and journalist Mark Gevisser. Mark Gevisser is currently The Nation's Southern African correspondent. In South Africa, his work has appeared in the Mail & Guardian, the Sunday Independent, the Sunday Times and many magazines and periodicals. Internationally, he has written widely on South African politics, culture and society, in publications ranging from Vogue and the New York Times to Foreign Affairs and Art in America. Read Mark Gevisser's featured CIS article connecting Barack Obama's election and the legacy of liberation in South Africa... From the World Beyond the Headlines lecture series. Cosponsored by the Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory (3CT), the Political Science Department, the African Studies Workshop, and the Human Rights Program.

A talk by Ruby Lal, Associate Professor Department of South Asian Studies at Emory University.

A talk by Ronojoy Sen, Visiting Fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy.

A talk by Ramachandran Nagaswamy, Director of Archaeology (retired) at the University of Kanchipuram.

A presentation and discussion with University of Chicago Professors Roger Myerson, Department of Economics & Marshall Sahlins, Department of Anthropology. Roger Myerson: "A Field Manual for the Cradle of Civilization" Marshall Sahlins: "On the Anthropology of the Counterinsurgency Field Manual" Part of the April 2009 conference on "Reconsidering American Power". In the STSS Workshop's 2008 conference on "Anthropology and Global Counterinsurgency", participants analyzed and interrogated new relations among American power, geopolitics, military interventions and anthropological practice. This year, the issues were broadened to include the future of American power and the social sciences generally. "Reconsidering American Power" asks a difficult, timely question: In the face of two ongoing hot wars and after a potentially transformative election, what now? Organized by The Workshop on Science, Technology, Society, and the State, and the Center for International Studies.

A keynote address by Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Navin and Pratima Doshi Chair of Indian History, UCLA, at the Sixth South Asia Graduate Student Conference: Foundations for the Study of South Asia.

A round-table panel discussion at the Sixth South Asia Graduate Student Conference with Steven Collins (Chester D. Tripp Professor in the Humanities, University of Chicago), Wendy Doniger (Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Religions in the Divinity School, University of Chicago), and Sanjay Subrahmanyam (Navin and Pratima Doshi Chair of Indian History, UCLA).

A performance by the Alash Ensemble at International House. Tuvan throat-singing and traditional Tuvan instruments and music. Sponsored by the Center for East European and Russian/Eurasian Studies.

A Program on the Global Environment Distinguished Lecture by Lesley Potter, Associate Professor, Department of Human Geography, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University. Despite the global paradigm shift from centralized to decentralized forest management, this process has been slow to develop in "forest rich" Indonesia. Although both deforestation and forest degradation have continued at a high level, the Ministry of Forestry has been reluctant to provide communities with a legal role in managing their forests, especially those falling within the permanent forest estate. Forest tenure remains a huge problem, with the rights of traditional or "adat" communities subordinated to those of the state. This lecture examines the continuing role of the Ministry, especially in relation to domestic forests.

A talk by Rashid Khalidi. Rashid Khalidi is Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies and Director of the Middle East Institute at Columbia University, and is among the foremost U.S. historians of the modern Middle East. He is the author of numerous books on the region--several written during his many years on the faculty at the University of Chicago--including Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness; Resurrecting Empire: Western Footprints and America's Perilous Path in the Middle East; and The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood. From the World Beyond the Headlines Series.

A presentation by Adrián Lajous, Former Pemex CEO. Adrián Lajous is Chairman of the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, President of Petrométrica, SC and non-Executive Director of Schlumberger, Ternium, Trinity Industries and Grupo Petroquímico Beta. He is senior energy advisor to McKinsey & Company. In 2003-04 he was a Senior Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government of Harvard University and a Visiting Fellow in the Kellogg Institute at the University of Notre Dame during the first quarter of 2005. In 1994 Adrián Lajous was appointed Director General of Pemex (CEO) and Chairman of the boards of the Pemex group of operating companies. He stepped down from this position in December 1999 after 29 years in public service. Adrián Lajous taught at El Colegio de México (1971-76), joined the Ministry of Energy in 1977, where he was appointed Director General for Energy. In 1983 he moved on to Pemex where he held a succession of key executive positions: Executive Coordinator for International Trade, Corpora