04/30/18: China: End of the Reform Era – A Book Launch with Professor Carl Minzner
Tag: Book Launch and Discussion Events
04/11/18: Book Launch: Mediating Islam: Cosmopolitan Journalisms in Muslim Southeast Asia A Discussion with Dr. Janet Steele
Audio Recording Part 1
Audio Recording Part 2
Wednesday, April 11, 2018
12:00 PM – 2:00 PM
The Elliott School of International Affairs
1957 E Street, NW, Lindner Family Commons, Room 602
Washington, DC 20052
Broadening an overly narrow definition of Islamic journalism, Janet Steele examines day-to-day reporting practices of Muslim professionals, from conservative scripturalists to pluralist cosmopolitans, at five exemplary news organizations in Malaysia and Indonesia. At Sabili, established as an underground publication, journalists are ed for their ability at dakwah, or Islamic propagation. At Tempo, a news magazine banned during the Soeharto regime and considered progressive, many see their work as a manifestation of worship, but the publication itself is not considered Islamic. At Harakah, reporters support an Islamic political party, while at Republika they practice a “journalism of the Prophet” and see Islam as a market niche. Other news organizations, too, such as Malaysiakini, employ Muslim journalists. Steele, a longtime scholar of the region, explores how these publications observe universal principles of journalism through an Islamic idiom.
This event is on the record and open to the media.
About the speaker:
Dr. Janet Steele is an associate professor of journalism at the George Washington University and the director of the Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication. She received her Ph.D. in History from the Johns Hopkins University and focus on how culture is communicated through the mass media.
Dr. Steele is a frequent visitor to Southeast Asia where she lectures on topics ranging from the role of the press in a democratic society to specialized courses on narrative journalism. Her book, “Wars Within: The Story of Tempo, an Independent Magazine in Soeharto’s Indonesia,” focuses on “Tempo” magazine and its relationship to the politics and culture of New Order Indonesia. Awarded two Fulbright teaching and research grants, she has served as a State Department speaker-specialist in Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Brunei, the Philippines, East Timor, Taiwan, Burma, Sudan, Egypt, India and Bangladesh. The author of numerous articles on journalism theory and practice, her most recent book, “Email Dari Amerika,” (Email from America), is a collection of newspaper columns written in Indonesian and originally published in the newspaper Surya. Her most recent book is Mediating Islam, Cosmopolitan Journalisms in Muslim Southeast Asia.
Co-sponsored by the Sigur Center for Asian Studies and the Elliott School of International Affairs
03/20/18: China in the 21st Century: Why History Still Matters: A Discussion with Dr. Jeffrey Wasserstrom and Dr. Maura Cunningham
Audio Recording Part 1
Audio Recording Part 2
Audio Recording Part 3
Tuesday, March 20, 2018
2:00 PM – 4:00 PM
The Elliott School of International Affairs
1957 E Street, NW, Lindner Family Commons, Room 602
Washington, DC 20052
In this two-person illustrate talks, based on the fully revised and updated third edition of their coauthored book, China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know, Jeffrey Wasserstrom and Maura Cunningham will explore issues associated with China’s meteoric rise, the distinctive and in many ways worrisome stamp Xi Jinping is putting on the country, and the local and global implications of recent events on the mainland and in Hong Kong. One theme they will stress is that even as China alters the current geopolitical order and has cities that often seem futuristic, paying attention to the past and how stories about history are used and misused inside and outside of the PRC has in some ways never been more important.
This event is on the record and open to the media.
About the speakers:
Jeffrey Wasserstrom is Chancellor’s Professor of History at the University of California, Irvine; Editor of the Journal of Asian Studies; a member of Dissent Magazine‘s editorial board; and an academic editor of the China Channel of the Los Angeles Review of Books. He has contributed commentaries and reviews to the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, and various other newspapers and to magazines. His other books include, as editor, The Oxford Illustrated History of Modern China (2016). He received his PhD from UC Berkeley.
Maura Cunningham is an Associate at the University of Michigan’s Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies and edits the #Asianow blog of the Association for Asian Studies. She has written on modern Chinese history for the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Ms., World Policy Journal, and Time. A past editor of China Beat, she is an advising editor to the China Channel of the Los Angeles Review of Books. She received her PhD from UC Irvine.
04/24/18: How India Became Democratic: Citizenship and the Masking of the Universal Franchise–A Discussion with Dr. Ornit Shani
Tuesday, April 24, 2018
3:00 PM – 4:15 PM
The Elliott School of International Affairs
Lindner Family Commons, Room 602
1957 E St. NW, Washington, DC 20052
How India Became Democratic explores the greatest experiment in democratic human history. It tells the untold story of the preparation of the electoral roll on the basis of universal adult franchise in the world’s largest democracy. The book offers a new view of the institutionalization of democracy in India, and of the way democracy captured the political imagination of its diverse peoples. Turning all adult Indians into voters against the backdrop of the partition of India and Pakistan, and in anticipation of the drawing up of a constitution, was a staggering task. Indians became voters before they were citizens; by the time the constitution came into force in 1950, the abstract notion of universal franchise and electoral democracy were already grounded. Drawing on rich archival materials, the book shows how the Indian people were a driving force in the making of democratic citizenship as they struggled for their voting rights.
The talk explores how the principle and institution of universal franchise attained meaning and entered the political imagination of Indians. It argues that it was the way in which the preparation of the first electoral roll on the basis of adult franchise became part of popular narratives that played an essential role in connecting people to a popular democratic political imagination. The bureaucrats who managed the operation communicated their directives for the preparation of electoral rolls as a story through press notes, which were widely discussed in the press. People could insert themselves into this narrative as its protagonists. This process, in turn, gave rise to a collective passion for democracy, contributing to the democratization of feelings and imagination.
This event is free and open to the public.
About the Speaker:
Ornit Shani is a scholar of politics and modern history of India. Her research focuses on the modern history of democracy and citizenship in India, as well as the rise of Hindu Nationalism, identity and caste politics, and communal and caste violence. Dr. Ornit was a Research Fellow at St. John’s College, Cambridge University and holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge. Her new book How India Became Democratic: Citizenship and the Making of the Universal Franchise explores the creation of the electoral roll and universal adult franchise in India. Dr. Shani’s other research interests include modern South Asia, democracy and democratization, India’s constitutionalism, India legal history, Indian elections, nationalism, and identity politics.
