4:28 p.m., Oct. 9, 2015--The University of Delaware’s Center for Global and Area Studies is sponsoring two special lectures this month, one focused on the Middle East and one on Latin America, as part of its mission to increase global awareness and understanding of global issues.
Both are free and open to the public.
In the first lecture, Akram Khater of North Carolina State University will speak from 5:30-6:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 14, in Room 127 Memorial Hall on UD’s Newark campus.
His talk, “Globalizing the Middle East: Migration, Diaspora and Transnational Communities,” will address questions about Middle Eastern migration and diasporic communities through an examination of the first wave of Middle Eastern migrants to the United States.
"Akram Khater's lecture on migration in the Middle East is particularly timely and relevant," said Rudi Matthee, the John and Dorothy Munroe Professor of History at UD. "International migration is one of the burning issues of our time. The current chaos in the Middle East, caused by foreign intervention, drought, dictatorship and war, has created the most urgent refugee crisis Europe has known since World War II. No one can remain indifferent to a drama that is threatening the stability of countries like Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey, and that may cause a radical swing to the right in European politics in the next few years."
Khater is University Faculty Scholar, professor of history, and holds the Khayrallah Chair in Diaspora Studies at North Carolina State University, where he also serves as director of the Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies. A native of Lebanon, he earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from California Polytechnic State University and master’s and doctoral degrees in history from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and University of California, Berkeley, respectively.
His books include Inventing Home: Emigration, Gender and the Making of a Lebanese Middle Class, 1861-1921; A History of the Middle East: A Sourcebook for the History of the Middle East and North Africa; and Embracing the Divine: Passion and Politics in the Christian Middle East.
Khater has completed a PBS documentary on the history of the Lebanese community in North Carolina and is the senior curator for a museum exhibit on the same topic that opened in February 2014.
His talk is part of the Center for Global and Area Studies’ series “Diaspora and Transnationalisms: Leaving the Homeland: Violence, Human Rights and Cultural Shocks.”
The presentation is co-sponsored by the departments of History, Anthropology and Languages, Literatures and Cultures.
Oct. 26: Left turns in Latin America
In the second lecture, Kent Eaton of the University of California, Santa Cruz will speak from 5-6 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 26, in Multipurpose Room C of Trabant University Center.
His talk, “Left Turns, Right Reactions in Latin America,” will examine how, beginning around the year 2000, most countries in the region elected and re-elected presidents and parties on the left of the political spectrum. Eaton will discuss why this happened, what these governments have achieved during their years in power and how they differ from one another.
He also will explore how the political right in these countries has reacted and what that reaction means for the region.
Eaton is a professor in the Politics Department at UC Santa Cruz and a visiting fellow at the prestigious Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C.
“I particularly like Prof. Eaton’s studies on political decentralization, where he shows how governments of a leftist orientation have tried, with diverging success, to centralize rather than decentralize power,” said Julio Carrión, associate professor of political science and international relations and of Latin American and Iberian studies at UD.
“His visit will provide our students the opportunity to be exposed to someone who is doing cutting-edge research on Latin American politics.”
The lecture is co-sponsored by the departments of History, Anthropology, Political Science and International Relations, and Languages, Literatures and Cultures.
Article by Ann Manser
