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

Keynote Address at the 2008 China Symposium by Sun Zhe, professor of the Institute for International Studies and Director of the Center for U.S.-China Relations at Tsinghua University in Beijing. Professor Sun identifies three new "partnership paradoxes" in U.S.-China relations: Trade, Taiwan and Democracy. (1) China and the U.S. today are traversing an economic glacier of mutual interdependence and they have to depend on each other much more than either would probably choose; (2) Taiwan has become the most critical issue that constitutes an interlocking web of misperceptions which may lead to a potentially explosive relationship between the U.S. and China; and (3) The Chinese model of development has attracted the world's attention and has led to questions such as whether democracy "made in China" is also possible. In dealing with these new partnership paradoxes, the U.S. and China should seek consensus and to define principles and work out proper policies. From the World Beyond the Headlines Series. Part of a day-long symposium presented by the US-China Peoples Friendship Association (USCPFA) Chicago chapter. Co-Sponsored by the Center for East Asian Studies.

A talk by Amita Baviskar, Associate Professor at the Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi University. As an embodied public sphere, city streets are sites for multiple exchanges between differently located people and things. This talk focuses on cows, cars and cycle-rickshaws as they navigate Delhi's roads, and on the people who own, use and seek to control them. All three have been the subject of strenuous efforts at regulation by courts, citizens' groups and traders' associations. Professor Bavkiskar interprets these conflicts as instances of bourgeois environmentalism, the (mainly) middle-class pursuit of urban order, hygiene and safety, and ecological conservation. She argues that collective action in the "public interest" by "citizens" concerned about congestion and the collapse of civic infrastructure constitutes a public that excludes the city's poorer sections. The talk examines state attempts to regulate the traffic between cars, cows and rickshaws, and concludes by arguing that complex interdependencies avert imminent collision and enable "the republic of the street" to survive. From the Program on the Global Environment.

A talk by Craig Jeffrey from the Department of Geography at the University of Washington. From the South Asia Seminar.

A talk by Sergio Aguayo, professor of political science at the Colegio de Mexico. Aguayo has been one of Mexico's leading public intellectuals and human rights advocates for the past three decades. He has been a professor of political science at the Colegio de Mexico since 1977 and was a founder of the Mexican Academy for Human Rights, the electoral reform organization Alianza Civica, and other civil society initiatives. His weekly newspaper column appears in 17 papers across Mexico and the U.S. and he makes regular appearances as a commentator on Mexican television. A past Tinker Visiting Professor at the University, Aguayo most recently visited Chicago in 2006, when an NGO he founded to monitor transparency issues (Fundar) received a major award from the MacArthur Foundation. Co-Sponsored by The Katz Center for Mexican Studies.

A talk by Dipesh Chakrabarty, Lawrence A. Kimpton Distinguished Service Professor of History, South Asian Languages and Civilizations and the College. Part of the Nicholson Center for British Studies 2007-2008 Lecture Series, "Making the Secular: Lectures in the Formation of Knowledge".

Author and psychologist Michael Shermer explains how evolution shaped the modern economy-and why people are so irrational about money. How did we make the leap from ancient hunter-gatherers to modern consumers and traders? Why do people get so emotional and irrational about bottom-line financial and business decisions? Is the capitalist marketplace a sort of Darwinian organism, evolved through natural selection as the fittest way to satisfy our needs?

A talk by Durba Ghosh, Assistant Professor of History, at Cornell University, and author of "Sex and the Family in Colonial India: The Making of Empire". From the South Asia Seminar.

A talk by Jeffrey Wasserstrom, Professor of History at the University of California, Irvine. If Chairman Mao came back to life today, what would he think of Nanjing's bookstore, the "Librairie Avant-Garde", where it is easier to find primers on Michel Foucault's philosophy than copies of the Little Red Book? What does it really mean to order a latte at Starbucks in Beijing? Is it possible that Aldous Huxley wrote a novel even more useful than Orwell's 1984 for making sense of post-Tiananmen China...or post-9/11 America? In these often playful, always enlightening "tales", Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom poses these and other questions as he journeys from 19th-century China into the future, and from Shanghai to Chicago, St. Louis, and Budapest. He argues that simplistic views of China and Americanization found in most soundbite-driven media reports serve us poorly as we try to understand China's place in the current world order...or our own.

A talk by Christopher Pinney, Professor of Anthropology & Visual Culture, University College London; Visiting Crowe Professor, Department of Art History, Northwestern University. From the South Asia Seminar.

A talk by journalist and author Steven LeVine. Pipeline politics became a modern day version of the 19th Century's Great Game, in which Britain and Russia had employed cunning and bluff to gain supremacy over the lands of the Caucasus and Central Asia. “The Oil and Glory” is the story of how, at the dawn of the 21st century, the game was played once more across the harsh environs of the Caspian Sea. Co-sponsor: Center for East European and Russian/Eurasian Studies.

A talk by Pervez Hoodbhoy, Department of Physics, Quaid-e-Azama University. Dr. Hoodbhoy received his bachelor's degrees in electrical engineering and mathematics, master's in solid state physics, and Ph.D in nuclear physics, all from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has been a faculty member at the Department of Physics, Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad since 1973. He is chairman of Mashal, a non-profit organization that publishes books in Urdu on women's rights, education, environmental issues, philosophy, and modern thought. Dr. Hoodbhoy has written and spoken extensively on topics ranging from science in Islam to education issues in Pakistan and nuclear disarmament. He produced a 13-part documentary series in Urdu for Pakistan Television on critical issues in education, and two other major television series aimed at popularizing science. He is author of Islam and Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality, now in 5 languages. Co-sponsors: Committee on Southern Asian Studies, South Asia Language and Area Center.

A talk by Dahr Jamail, independent journalist and author. As the occupation of Iraq unravels, the demand for independent reporting is growing. Since 2003, unembedded journalist Dahr Jamail has filed indispensable reports from Iraq that have made him this generation's chronicler of the unfolding disaster there. In these collected dispatches, Jamail presents never-before-published details of the siege of Fallujah and examines the origins of the Iraqi insurgency. Dahr Jamail makes frequent visits to Iraq and has published his accounts in newspapers and magazines worldwide. He has regularly appeared on Democracy Now!, as well as the BBC, Pacifica Radio, and numerous other networks. Co-sponsors: Center for Middle Eastern Studies.

A workshop with Gavan McCormack, Professor Emeritus, Australian National University and author of Client State (Verso, 2007). The world's No. 2 power is a paradox. McCormack argues, following his recent book, that understanding of Japan has to begin from grasping its fundamental contradiction, as a 'client state'. Since the end of the Cold War, US pressure has been steadily applied to bring Japan in line with neoliberal principles, including comprehensive institutional reform and a thorough revamp of the security and defense relationship between the two countries. The politics of national assertiveness. Co-sponsor: Center for East Asian Studies.

A talk by Muraleedharan Tharayil, Dept. of English St. Aloysius College, Elthuruth (University of Calicut, Kerala). Co-sponsors: the South Asia Seminar and the Center for Gender Studies.

A talk by David Cole, Professor of Law at Georgetown University. In "Less Safe, Less Free: Why America Is Losing the War on Terror," Professor Cole and Jules Lobel, two of the country's preeminent constitutional scholars, argue that the great irony is that the Bush administration's sacrifices in the rule of law, adopted in the name of prevention, have in fact made us more susceptible to future terrorist attacks. They debunk the administration's claim that it is winning the war on terror and offer an alternative strategy in which the rule of law is an asset, not an obstacle, in the struggle to keep us both safe and free.