,1,Please join us as we welcome the following 6 writers to discuss their work.
Angie Cruz
Fred D'Aguiar
Francisco Goldman
Shara McCallum
Tiphanie Yanique
Javier Zamora
There will be a book signing and reception following the event.
Sawyer Seminar Series
,1,Join the Watson Institute and Derek Penslar for an informal discussion on the current events in Israel-Gaza.
Derek Penslar, is the William Lee Frost Professor of Jewish History, Harvard University.
Moderated by, Omer Bartov, Samuel Pisar Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies
,1,As Watson celebrates Hispanic Heritage Month, join the Master of Public Affairs students Jessica Saenz Gomez, and Lizbeth Lucero for a fireside chat with Dr. Laura Lopez-Sanders. Dr. Lopez Sanders is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Brown University, whose work and research interests include public policy, immigration, race and ethnic relations, social inequality and more. Join us to hear about Dr. Laura Lopez-Sanders’ important policy work and research, and get to learn more about her journey and story as a Latina scholar in academia.
,1,Andrea Gutierrez, Sarah Khan, Sylvia Houghteling and Yael Rice — Crafting Cuisine: A Celebration of Food and Art in South Asia
Friday, December 1, 2023
2:00 PM to 4:00 PM EST
McKinney, 111 Thayer Street
Join us for Crafting Cuisine: A Celebration of Food and Art in South Asia with subject matter experts Andrea Gutierrez, Sarah Khan, Sylvia Houghteling and Yael Rice.
Andrea Gutierrez is an Assistant Professor of Instruction at The University of Texas at Austin. In her work, she researches Pre-modern South Asia, South Asian Food History, and Animal Studies in South Asia. She has delved into the historical intersections of food and spirituality in early India, and has not only explored diverse topics such as animal language in ancient texts and temple rituals but has also been recognized for their exceptional research through prestigious awards such as the ICAS Book Prize and the Getty Library Research Grant
Sarah Khan is the EPE Director of Undergraduate Studies/Assistant Professor at Yale University. She researches gender and comparative politics, with a regional specialization in South Asia. In her work, she studies gender gaps in political preferences, and the barriers to women’s political participation and representation. She also researches strategies to prevent and address violence against women in the developing world.
Sylvia Houghteling is an Associate Professor of History of Art at Bryn Mawr. She specializes in early modern visual and material culture with a focus on the history of textiles, South Asian art and architecture, and the material legacies and ruptures of European colonialism. Houghteling’s first book, The Art of Cloth in Mughal India (Princeton University Press, 2022), a recipient of a College Art Association Millard Meiss Publication Fund Grant, examined the textiles crafted and collected across the Mughal Empire in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, showing how woven objects helped to shape the social, political, religious, and aesthetic life of early modern South Asia. Her ongoing research is concerned with questions of temporality and the unique material histories of the Indian Ocean trade.
Yael Rice is the Chair of Architectural Studies/Associate Professor of Art & the History of Art and of Asian Languages and Civilizations at Amherst College. She specializes in the art and architecture of South Asia and Greater Iran, with a particular focus on manuscripts and other portable arts of the fifteenth through eighteenth centuries. Between 2009-12, she held the position of Assistant Curator of Indian and Himalayan Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and in that capacity curated exhibitions of court portraits from South Asia, ragamala paintings, and works by Rabindranath Tagore and other seminal Bengali artists of the early twentieth century.
,1,Rohini Somonathan is Professor of Economics at the Delhi School of Economics. She received her Ph.D in 1996 from Boston University and held faculty positions at Emory University, the University of Michigan and the Indian Statistical Institute before joining the Delhi School of Economics in 2005. Her research focuses on how social institutions interact with public policies to shape patterns of economic and social inequality. She is particularly interested in exploring the intellectual and ideological environment within which state policy is created and justified. Within the broad area of development economics, she has worked on group identity and public goods, gender equality, child nutrition and environmental quality.
,1,Backlash is hardly a new political force — since America’s founding, change has often been driven by citizens mobilizing in opposition to policies, programs, or social movements.
But recently, as our guest on this episode explains, backlash movements have come to dominate our politics in unprecedented ways. He argues that to build a more stable and healthy politics, we need to better understand how these forces work.
Why do certain policies, movements, or individual politicians incite powerful backlash movements while others don't? And why — whether we’re talking about immigration, healthcare, reproductive rights, or countless other issues — has backlash come to dominate so many different policy realms?
On this episode, Dan Richards explores these questions with Eric Patashnik, a political scientist at the Watson Institute, and author of the book “Countermobilization: Policy Feedback and Backlash in a Polarized Age.” In the book, Patashnik provides a theory of political backlash — what causes it, why it’s diffused through our politics over the last few decades, and how policymakers and politicians can learn to remain effective in a political moment dominated by backlash and countermobilization.
,1,Borrowing heavily from the unwritten Constitution of the United Kingdom, and after 2-years of debates in the Constituent Assembly, India adopted its Constitution, the basis for its Republic. Join us for a talk with Dr. Palanivel Thiaga Rajan, former Finance Minister of Tamil Nadu, that will touch upon core constructs such as administration and governance, representation of citizens, and the separation and execution of powers to consider whether the outcomes over the last roughly 75 years have delivered on the vision of the Constituent Assembly.
Dr. Palanivel Thiaga Rajan serves as the Minister for Information Technology & Digital Services, Earlier he served as the Minister for Finance & Human Resources Management in the Government of Tamil Nadu, India. During his stint as Finance Minister, Hon’ble Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu Thiru M.K.Stalin nominated Dr Palanivel Thiaga Rajan to the Goods & Service Tax Council (GST Council) as a GST Council Member to represent the Government of Tamil Nadu. Dr Palanivel Thiaga Rajan was also a member of the Group ofMinisters (GoM) on (1) System Reforms (standing committee) & (2) Casinos, Race Courses and Online Gaming as nominated by the Chairperson of the GST Council i.e., Hon’ble Union Minister for Finance,Government of India.
,1,Mark Blyth, political economist at Brown University's Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, and Carrie Nordlund, political scientist and Assistant Dean for Undergraduate Programs at Brown University, share their take on the news.
On this episode:
Trump potentially gets removed from the GOP primary ballot in Colorado, and the risks of involving the courts in a presidential election
How the politics of immigration will affect the 2024 race in the US
Elise Stefanik grills University presidents on Capitol Hill, highlighting the thorny politics of Israel, Gaza, and free speech on college campuses
The political economy of Argentina’s new president Javier Milei
The Fed decides to hold interest rates steady, and the market reacts with…enthusiasm
China’s economic slowdown, and the limits of growth in authoritarian societies
Where the Israeli-Gaza conflict goes from here, and how it might affect US politics going forward
Google’s loss in court to Epic Games, and American’s very mixed record regulating monopolies.
,1,Join us for a Graduate Student Seminar - Misinformation and its Moderation on WhatsApp with subject matter expert Kiran Garimella.
Kiran Garimella is an Assistant Professor in the School of Communication and Information at Rutgers University. Kiran’s research is focused on building innovative, opt-in, privacy preserving data-collection tools for platforms like WhatsApp, with the goal of developing interventions to stop/slow the spread of misinformation.
,1,Chandra Bhan Prasad is an Indian scholar, political commentator, and author of the Bhopal Document, impacted the policies of the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh and has been widely cited in discourses on Dalits. Prasad is the co-author author of Defying the Odds: The Rise of Dalit Entrepreneurs (with D Shyam Babu and Devesh Kapur), Dalit Phobia: Why Do They Hate Us?, What is Ambedkarism?, and Dalit Diary, 1999-2003: Reflections on Apartheid in India. He is also the founder of the ByDalits.com platform and the editor of Dalit Enterprise Magazine and has been widely quoted by the world press on issues of caste and the treatment of Dalits in India. Prasad’s main areas of research and writing are Dalit capitalism, India’s march to modernity, and Westernization in India.