Description:

Keyman Visiting Scholar Senem Aslan examines amnesties of political prisoners in the Turkish Republic, looking at the tangible and symbolic functions they serve in managing relations between the state and the opposition. It argues that amnesties can be tools of state coercion, rather than attempts at reconciliation or political cooptation.

The Buffett Institute Faculty & Fellows Colloquium brings together an interdisciplinary audience to build awareness of global research on campus. This series promotes dialogue on scholarship and develops a deeper sense of community among Buffett Institute affiliates. Each meeting lasts one hour; lunch is provided. Due to space constraints, we will not admit attendees once the space reaches capacity.

Description:

Drawing from a decade of fieldwork on Black residents in Hawai’i, Nitasha Tamar Sharma (African American Studies) unsettles the native/settler divide. What emerges from the paradox of ethical Black settlers who draw connections with native Hawaiians while also engaging in the military occupation of Hawai’i? The overall project animates the Black Pacific and brings Black and Native Studies into conversation through an ethnographic approach.

The Buffett Institute Faculty & Fellows Colloquium brings together an interdisciplinary audience to build awareness of global research on campus. This series promotes dialogue on scholarship and develops a deeper sense of community among Buffett Institute affiliates. Each meeting lasts one hour; lunch is provided. Due to space constraints, we will not admit attendees once the space reaches capacity.

Description:

The European technology of alphabetic writing was introduced in Spanish America as part of the process of Catholic evangelization and Spanish colonization. Framed in European sources as a marker of civilization, writing, however, had some serious competition in the complex mediascape that characterized the viceroyalty of Peru. Prof. Laura Leon Llerena (Colonial Latin American Studies) offers a reframing and re-telling of the history of writing in colonial Peru that discusses the social role that the European mode of communication acquired for indigenous peoples who ‘failed to marvel’ (Seed 1991) at alphabetic writing.

The Buffett Institute Faculty & Fellows Colloquium brings together an interdisciplinary audience to build awareness of global research on campus. This series promotes dialogue on scholarship and develops a deeper sense of community among Buffett Institute affiliates. Each meeting lasts one hour; lunch is provided. Due to space constraints, we will not admit attendees once the space reaches capacity.

Description:

In January 2019 Northwestern University’s Block Museum will open the exhibition Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time: Art, Culture, and Exchange across Medieval Saharan Africa. In development for over five years, the exhibition combines exquisite works of art from Africa, Europe, and the Middle East with rare material remains from sites around the Sahara Desert to take a fresh look at the medieval period. This presentation, by Kathleen Bickford Berzock, the Block Museum's associate director of curatorial affairs, will provide a preview of the exhibition’s themes, its innovative mixing of artworks and archaeological fragments, and the extensive international partnerships that have made it possible.

The Buffett Institute Faculty & Fellows Colloquium brings together an interdisciplinary audience to build awareness of global research on campus. This series promotes dialogue on scholarship and develops a deeper sense of community among Buffett Institute affiliates. Each meeting lasts one hour; lunch is provided. Due to space constraints, we will not admit attendees once the space reaches capacity.

Description:

This presentation by Sarah Dees, Luce Postdoctoral Fellow and visiting assistant professor in the Department of Religious Studies, addresses American anthropologists’ research on Indigenous religions from 1870 to 1905, during the assimilation era in federal Indian policy. It focuses on the Bureau of American Ethnology (BAE), a Smithsonian Institution office that produced a number of reports on Native communities throughout the United States. The BAE played a significant role in expanding the definition of “religion” to include Native traditions; at the same time, BAE scholars promoted racialized hierarchies and advocated for assimilation policies that targeted the traditions they studied.

Sarah Dees is a scholar of American and Indigenous religious history and culture. She received her PhD from Indiana University in 2015. She is currently working on a book manuscript entitled, The Materialization of Native American Religions: Cultural Science in an Era of Assimilation. Dr. Dees is a part of the Politics of Religion at Home and Abroad project.

The Buffett Institute Faculty & Fellows Colloquium brings together an interdisciplinary audience to build awareness of global research on campus. This series promotes dialogue on scholarship and develops a deeper sense of community among Buffett Institute affiliates. Each meeting lasts one hour; lunch is provided. Due to space constraints, we will not admit attendees once the space reaches capacity.