Division of Social Sciences

September

Event Title: “Beyond ISIS: What Should the Next U.S. President Know About the Middle East?”
Date & Location: Wednesday, Sept. 14, 4 p.m. @ Rapaporte Treasure Hall
Description: This panel discussion of Crown Center researchers will examine current and developing key issues in the Middle East that do not always make the news headlines. The event offers attendees expert insight into the challenges facing our next president in this region.

Event Title: “Where Does Responsibility Lie? Reframing the Israel-Palestine Conflict”
Date & Location: Tuesday, Sept. 20, 4 p.m. @ Mandel Center for the Humanities
Room Reading Room, 3rd Floor
Description: A talk by Dr. David Myers. Refreshments will be served.

Event Title: “Where Does Responsibility Lie? Reframing the Israel-Palestine Conflict”
Date & Location: Tuesday, Sept. 20, 4 p.m. @ Mandel Center for the Humanities
Room Reading Room, 3rd Floor
Description: A talk by Dr. David Myers. Refreshments will be served. Myers is the Sady and Ludwig Kahn Professor of Jewish History at UCLA. He has written widely in the fields of Jewish intellectual and cultural history.

Event Title: “Hamilton, the Panel: The Politics of Default, Bailouts, and the Power of the Purse in the Aftermath of the American Revolution”
Date & Location: Thursday, Sept. 29, 2 p.m. @ Olin Sang 207
Room Reading Room, 3rd Floor
Description: Panelists include George J. Hall (presenting), David Hackett Fischer, Steven L. Burg, and Paul Jankowski.

October

Event Title: “Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right”
Date & Location: Thursday, Oct. 6, 3:30 p.m. @ Rapaporte Treasure Hall
Description: A colloquium by Arlie Hochschild, Emerita Professor of Sociology at UC Berekely.

Event Title: “Waiting in the Courthouse: Hope, Doubt, and Endurance in the Anti-Terrorism Trials of Northern Kurdistan.”
Date & Location: Friday, Oct. 7, 2:30 p.m. @ Schwartz 103
Description: Serra Hakyemez holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology from The Johns Hopkins University. Her dissertation is titled “Threat to the State: An Ethnography of Kurdish Political Trials.” As a Junior Research Fellow at the Crown Center for Middle East Studies, Hakyemez will work on a book project, “Terrorism Trials in Turkey,” that will build upon her dissertation. She will incorporate new archival materials on the previous political trials of the members of the Kurdish movement to examine the imbrications of law and violence in the history of political trials in Turkey.

Event Title: Alison Pugh, Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Virginia
Date & Location: Thursday, Oct. 20, 2:00 p.m. @ Pearlman Lounge
Description: A colloquium by Alison Pugh, Associate Professor of Sociology from the University of Virginia. Her research and teaching focus on how people adapt — emotionally and culturally — to economic trends such as increasing inequality, insecurity, rationalization, commercialization, overwork, and risk.

Event Title: “From Antiracist Education to Electoral Campaigning: The Complex Calculus of Race and Politics in Brazil”
Date & Location: Friday, Oct. 28, 2:30 p.m. @ Schwartz 103
Description: Dr. Antonio José Bacelar da Silva (University of Arizona), will discuss the recent reemergence of black organizations, Black NGOs, in Salvador (Bahia, Brazil) and their uses of race as a political strategy. At the core of Brazilian identity is the idea that there are no clear racial divisions in Brazil. Bacelar Da Silva’s work specifically explores the boundaries, the limits, and possibilities of black activists’ stated goals of embracing racial differences in antiracist education and electoral campaigning. This presentation is a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion program sponsored by the Dean of Arts and Sciences and Provost and is co-sponsored with the Latin American and Latino Studies program.

November/December

Event Title: “Biometric Bodies, or, how to make fingerprinting technology work in India” – Ursula Rao, Director of the Institute of Anthropology, University of Leipzig
Date & Location: Friday, Nov. 4, 2:30 p.m. @ Schwartz 103
Description: Ursula Rao is an urban anthropologist focusing on India. Biometric technology is proliferating around the globe and has a growing presence in India. Although scholars frequently discuss surveillance, data security and safety, we know close to nothing about the social impacts of biometric devices. How are people repositioned when identification is assigned to an electronic inspection of the body? Routine users of digital fingerprinting devices learn to render a specific social and physical body. They must frequently cope with a “false reject” that causes a disjunction between the body-as-person and the body-as-data. The biometric body is the body of the perfect match. It is created through new hygienic regimes and the manipulation of relations of distance and closeness, such as assertion of class difference and kin solidarity.

Event Title: Dr. Ya-Wen Lei, Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Harvard University.
Date & Location: Thursday, Nov. 17, 1:00 p.m. @ Pearlman Lounge
Description: Colloquium and research topics at the intersection of political sociology, law and society, economic sociology, and urban sociology.

Event Title: Applied Anthropology/Activism Panel
Date & Location: Friday, Dec. 2, 2:30 p.m. @ Schwartz 103
Description: The panel will include several speakers addressing the topic of applied anthropology and activism. What can anthropology look like outside of an anthropology department? How do people use anthropology? This panel will discuss and examine anthropology’s uses and application in contexts as different as in public health and international law.

Nina Kammerer is an anthropologist and researcher in the Heller School for Social Policy and Management. Dr. Kammerer has done extensive field work in Northern Thailand and Catalonia as well as in public health. She teaches courses on methods and helps students make use of the ethnographic tradition in all manner of setting and for all manner of use.

Adonia Lugio is an urban anthropologist who studies bicicultures in Los Angeles. Her portion of the discussion will center on how as a mobility practice, bicycling reveals the flexibility of urban space and the different embodied experiences contained therein on the basis of class and race in particular.

Leigh Swigart is Director of Programs in International Justice and Society at the International Center for Ethics, Justice, and Public Life of Brandeis University. Trained as a linguistic anthropologist, and having done extensive field work in Senegal, Dr. Swigart uses her anthropological sensibilities to understand issues of language diversity in international law.

Date: Tuesday, November 17, 2015
Time: 12:00 pm -1:30 pm
Location: Sherman Function Hall

The Division of Humanities and the Foreign Language Oversight Committee, with support from the Provost’s office and the office of the Dean of Arts and Sciences, invite all members of the Brandeis Community (students, faculty and staff) to experience and celebrate the linguistic diversity of Brandeis during our annual Language Lunch event.

Individual language tables will host speakers of Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Hebrew, Hindi, Italian, Latin, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Yiddish. Stay for a few minutes or for the entire hour. Do you speak several languages? Visit multiple tables during lunch. No matter ​your level of proficiency, you are welcome! The only rule is NO ENGLISH! Please speak only the language of a specific table (tables) during your visit.

Participants are asked to sign in at their chosen language table to receive a voucher for the buffet lunch. While the amount of food is limited to the first 10-12 people who sign up, we encourage people who were not among the first to fill out the form, to bring their own lunch fare to the table of your choice.

Please use this link below to sign up for the Mega Language Lunch!

Photo by Megan Bailey

Known as the Emmy Awards of francophone Canada, “Le Rêve de Champlain” won a Gémeaux prize in the category of Best digital production (website and/or mobile application) for a program or series: docudrama. Professor David Hackett Fischer’s bestselling book, Champlain’s Dream (2008), inspired and informed the French-language docufiction series. The prize was announced on September 20^th during the 30^th Gala des Prix Gémeaux in Montréal.

The innovative format of the “Le Rêve de Champlain” series combines dramatic scenes—starring popular Canadian actor Maxime Le Flaguais as Champlain—with interviews and reports hosted by renowned journalist and host Marie-Louise Arsenault.  The Champlain series was developed by Groupe Media TFO under the direction of Martin Cadotte and produced by Slalom and the Fair-Play Group. The series is accompanied by a suite of digital products, including a website, which includes interviews with Professor Fischer, as well as interactive games and educational applications that allow users of all ages to follow in the footsteps of Samuel de Champlain and to relive an era that shaped Canadian history.  An English Language version of this series is currently in production as well.

Professor Fischer is a University Professor and the Earl Warren Professor of History at Brandeis University

In August, the Princeton Review released its annual list of the top ten colleges where students are most active in community service. Brandeis was ranked first with Loyola University, Maryland, Boston College and Creighton University rounding out the top 5.

There are examples after examples of Brandeis’ dedication to community service.  During a sociology course taught by Gordon Fellman, Noah Litwer ’15 became inspired to combine his desire for social change with his passion for gardening and community organizing.  He was recently recognized for developing sustainable community gardens at a local low-income housing development. His work will continue to have positive effects on the residence and other community organizations for years to come.

Placing an importance on community service, the Brandeis student body is supported by the Division of Student Life and Success. This department seeks to establish sustainable and reciprocal partnerships with local social services, governmental, educational, and cultural agencies supporting community service initiatives. Its slogan “Within Community Comes Unity” the Division of Student Life and Success embraces core values such as citizenship, integrity, respect, civility, lifelong learning, and diversity.

The Princeton Review rankings are based on student surveys collected from 380 colleges and universities. The Department of Community Service is located on the second and third floors of the Shapiro Campus Center.