Past Events

Now is an exciting time in U.S.-Cuban relations, and as we look to a new future, we must also reflect on our shared past. Our “Cuba and the United States in Historical Perspective” speaker series welcomes six distinguished scholars to campus for conversations about their recent books on Cuban history, and the historical relationship between the United States and Cuba. This is a Global Humanities Faculty Seminar sponsored by Georgetown College and Georgetown University’s Global Engagement Initiative . Additional information is available on the official blog  for this series.

2015-2016

September 18, 4:00 PM, ICC 662
Ada Ferrer, New York University
A conversation with Professor Ferrer, author of Freedom’s Mirror: Cuba and Haiti in the Age of Revolution

October 15, 7:00 PM, Film Screening Classroom (Second Floor of the Healy Family Student Center)
Marcus Rediker, University of Pittsburgh
Film Screening of Ghosts of Amistad

November 6, 12:00, ICC 450
Reinaldo Funes Monzote, University of Havana
A conversation with Professor Funes Monzote, author of From Rainforest to Cane Field in Cuba: An Environmental History Since 1492

February 1, 12:30 PM, ICC 662
Lillian Guerra, University of Florida
A conversation with Professor Guerra, author of Visions of Power in Cuba Revolution, Redemption, and Resistance, 1959-1971

February 22, 12:30 PM, ICC 662
Anita Casavantes Bradford, University of California-Irvine
A conversation with Professor Casavantes Bradford, author of The Revolution is for the Children: The Politics of Childhood in Havana and Miami, 1959-1962

April 4, 4:30 PM, ICC 462
Louis Perez, Jr, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
A conversation with Professor Perez, author of The Structure of Cuban History: Meanings and Purpose of the Past

This series explores the place of humanistic theory in practice in our current global context, and how practice may inform research in the theoretically inflected humanities and vice versa. The goals of the seminar series are twofold. Firstly, it hopes to put local practitioners, particularly in fields not generally seen as humanistic, into conversation with academics, to foster humanistic research that is both informed by practice and available to and useful to practitioners. Secondly, it will bring together academies in and academic concerns of the global north and south, without privileging the first, in order to advance conversations in the theoretical humanities.

2015-2016

February 22, 5:00 PM, CCAS Boardroom (enter through ICC 241)
“On the Creative Wealth of Nations”
Patrick Kabanda, the World Bank
Ananya Chatterjea, Department of Theater Arts and Dance & Ananya Dance Theater
 

March 15, 3:00 PM, ICC 662
“The Fight for the Past”
Dr. Thomas Wide, managing director of Turquoise Mountain, est. 2006 with the aim of reviving Afghanistan’s traditional crafts
Sughra Hussainy, Afghan artist and graduate of Turquoise Mountain
Dr. Erin Thompson, assistant professor of art crime at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York

April 8, 6:00 PM, ICC 107
“Academic Freedom in Global Context”
José Angel Hernández, The University of Houston
Angana Chatterji, University of California, Berkeley

April 11, 2014, 1:00 PM
“Redes: An Exploration of the Film and Music of Mexico, 1910-1940”
Co-sponsored with Americas Initiative, Film Studies

March 21, 2014, 9:00 AM, Copley Formal Lounge
“Catholicism in the Americas: Historical Participations and Contemporary Challenges”
Co-sponsored with the Americas Initiative, Georgetown College, Office of the President

2014 – 2015
The Critical Silk Road Studies Series

April 25-27, 2013, Georgetown University
“The Soviet Gulag: New Research and New Interpretations”
Co-sponsored with Office of the Dean of Georgetown College, Department of French, School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University

The conference highlights the growing wave of empirical contributions to the history of the Gulag and attempts to interpret its meaning for the Soviet system, Soviet society, Stalinism, and broader conceptual problems in the field.  It also attempts to place the Gulag in the broader arc of forced labor and penal policy both in Russia and in other countries.  It includes a plenary panel on the state of the field, several keynote lectures, and workshop sections with pre-circulated papers on “big pictures” and “new research.”  There will be a screening of the documentary film “Confronting Amnesia: Frozen Memories of the Russian Gulag” and a discussion with filmmaker John J. Michalczyk.

December 7-8, 2012, The Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia
“World War II, Nazi Crimes, and the Holocaust in the USSR”
Co-sponsored with: Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington DC; Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Georgetown University; Georgetown University; Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History; Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto; National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow; Centre d’études des mondes russe, caucasien, et centre-européen, École des hautes études en sciences sociales

In the past decade, three related fields, each interdisciplinary in its own right, have developed exponentially but sometimes in isolation: the study of wartime Stalinism, the study of the Nazi occupation of Soviet territories, and the study of the Holocaust in the East. This conference will bring together the latest research conducted in all humanities and social science disciplines in order to foster new analytical perspectives and cross-fertilization in these and other key areas.

February 21-23, Copley Formal Lounge and McGhee Library
“Cultures of Violence”
Co-sponsored with: Georgetown University Office of the Provost; Georgetown Department of History, Asian Studies, Center for German and European Studies, Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs; King’s College London Department of History; Jawaharlal Nehru University Center for Historical Studies

This is the first of three annual conferences which will gather scholars from different disciplines, regional specializations, and institutions to reflect on the history and politics of violence within societies and to explore ways in which violence mediates processes of modernization and development.