Colloquium 2011–2012
“Hinterlands, Frontiers, Cities, and States: Transactions and Identities”
Fall 2011
September 9
Frederick Opie, History and Society Division, Babson College
“Juke Joints, Rum Shops, and Honky-Tonks: The Politics of Leisure in Agrarian Societies”
September 16
Michael McGovern, Anthropology, Yale University
“Life During Wartime: Aspirational Kinship and the Management of Insecurity”
September 23
Robert Marks, History, Whittier College
“Ecological Degradation and Environmental Crisis in China, 1800–1950”
September 30
Jocelyn Alexander, International Development, University of Oxford
“Nationalism and Self-Government in Rhodesian Detention: Gonakudzingwa, 1964–1974”
October 7
Martha Lampland, Sociology and Science Studies, UC/San Diego
“The Problem with Money”
October 14
Jeremy Campbell, Anthropology and Sociology, Roger Williams University
“The Secret of Speculative Accumulation: Capital, Land Fraud, and Environmental Governance in Amazonia”
October 21
Eben Kirksey, CUNY Graduate Center
“Interspecies Love in an Age of Excess: Being and Becoming With a Common Ant, Ectatomma ruidum (Roger)” (This week’s paper is 22MB. Also available: a smaller version, which may not be compatible with all readers, plus 3 separate illustrations.)
October 24
René Redzepi, Chef, NOMA (2010, 2011 Best Restaurant in the World by Restaurant Magazine)
“Love Stories”
— press release about this special presentation —
November 4
Shane Hamilton, History, University of Georgia
“From Bodega to Supermercado: Nelson A. Rockefeller’s Agro-Industrial Counterrevolution in Venezuela, 1947–1969”
November 11
Elisabeth Wood, Political Science, Yale University
“Rape during War Is Not Inevitable: Variation in Wartime Sexual Violence”
November 18
Jane Smith, History, Northwestern University
“Potatoes, Plums, and Prickly Pears: Luther Burbank and the Search for Game-Changing Plants”
December 2
Ian Scoones, Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex
“Zimbabwe’s Land Reform: Challenging the Myths”
December 9
Morten Pedersen, Anthropology, University of Copenhagen
“Spirits in Transition: Shamanic Souls and Political Bodies in Northern Mongolia after State Socialism”
Spring 2012
January 13
Carolyn de la Peña, American Studies, UC/Davis
“Tomato Thinking: Innovation, Affiliation, and White Masculinity in the Mechanization of California’s Tomato Harvest”
January 20
Neeladri Bhattacharya, Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University
“Promise of Modernity, Antinomies of Development”
January 27
Brian Peterson, History, Union College
“Conversion to Islam Reconsidered: Multigenerational Religious Drift in Rural French Sudan”
February 3
Pamela McElwee, Human Ecology, Rutgers University
“From Red Peasants to REDD Presence: Forest Politics in Vietnam in an Age of Global Carbon Markets”
February 10
Kathryn Edgerton-Tarpley, History, San Diego State University
“From ’Nourish the People’ to ‘Sacrifice for the Nation’: Changing Responses to Disaster in Late Imperial and Modern China”
February 17
Sara Shneiderman, Anthropology, Yale University
“Transcendent Territory and Portable Deities: Mobility and the Problem of Indigeneity between Nepal and India”
February 24
Mark Rowlands, Philosophy, University of Miami
“Can Animals be Moral?”
March 2
Dario Gaggio, Agrarian Studies Fellow
“Vineyards, Sheep, and Bandits: Debating the Sardinian Shepherds’ Migration to Rural Tuscany (1960-1990)”
March 23
Ling Zhang, Agrarian Studies Fellow
“Why Did this Happen? The Yellow River’s Course Shift in 1048”
March 30
Alpa Shah, Anthropology, Goldsmiths College, University of London
“The Intimacy of Insurgency: Encounters with India’s Maoist Revolution”
April 13
Arupjyoti Saikia, Agrarian Studies Fellow
“Nataraj’s Dance: Earthquakes and Environmental History of the Brahmaputra River Valley”
April 20
Roseann Cohen, Agrarian Studies Fellow
“An Orchard Grows at the City’s Edge: A Colombian Farmer and His Fruit Trees in the Wake of Displacement”