Author Archives: Lee Smithey

Maria Castaneda ’18, Dreaming at Swarthmore

The Peace and Conflict Studies Program stands with our student, Maria Castaneda ’18, who was featured in a story this week in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Maria is pursuing a special major in Spanish and Peace and Conflict Studies, and we appreciate all she contributes to our intellectual and campus community.

“She was 3 years old when she left central Mexico in her mother’s arms, unknowingly embarked on a dangerous journey north. They were part of a group that crossed the border on foot in Arizona, then headed east by car to North Carolina, where her father had settled after a similar trek.

Today, at 22, Castaneda has achieved a true American dream: She’s a senior at Swarthmore College, succeeding at one of the nation’s elite schools and on track to a fulfilling career in education or law.

Now, she’s wondering if it will all be stripped” Read more…

There is a great deal of insecurity at the moment over the future of the DACA program, and we wish to express our support for all of our undocumented students.

Collection on Charlottesville

On Thursday, September 7th, 7-8 pm, the Collection Committee and Peace and Conflict Studies will co-host a Collection at the Friends Meetinghouse.

This Collection is an opportunity to reflect on recent and ongoing events. We will open with remarks from Michael Nafziger ’18 entitled: “Understanding Charlottesville: Reflections from Michael Nafziger ’18, a Peace and Conflict Studies Quaker Student from Charlottesville”

The second part of the Collection will follow the traditional collection format with silence and opportunities for people to speak if and when the Spirit moves them, reflecting on Charlottesville or other recent troubling events.

All are welcome.

Israel/Palestine Film Series – Fall 2017

Please join us next month for the annual Israel/Palestine Film Series at Swarthmore. There will be screenings for the first six Wednesdays of the semester, and all are free and open to the public (including pizza and refreshments).

All screenings at at 4:15PM in the Lang Performing Arts Center Cinema.

September 6: The Wanted 18

Palestinian stop-motion artist collaborates with filmmakers and activists to document one of the strangest chapters in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

https://youtu.be/hlKZ8daLtOo

September 13: Disturbing the Peace

This film reveals the transformational journeys from combatants (both Palestinian and Israeli) committed to armed battle to nonviolent peace activists.

September 20: The Settlers

Israeli filmmaker explores the controversial communities of Israeli settlers occupying the West Bank through a series of interviews.

September 27: Out In The Dark

Israeli filmmaker creates a gay love story between a Palestinian man and his Israeli partner.

October 4: Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem

Israeli filmmaker produces this emotional drama of an Israeli woman fighting for her independence from religious-based marriage laws.

October 11: Speed Sisters

Canadian director and producer illuminates the world of the Palestinian women who comprise the first all-women race car driving team in the Middle East.

NEW Climate Disruption course Fall 2017 PEAC/SOCI/ENVS

PEAC 055. Climate Disruption, Conflict, and Peacemaking
(Cross-listed as ENVS 066, SOAN 055C)

The course will examine several ways in which climate change is a driving force of violent and nonviolent conflict and creates opportunities for peacemaking and social justice. Already, climate change has been identified by the U.S. military as a threat to national security, offering a new rationale for expanding the military industrial complex. Demands on scarce resources generate and exacerbate regional conflicts and drive mass movements of refugees. Behind these dramatic manifestations of climate stress lie extensive corporate and national interests and hegemonic silences that emerging conflicts often reveal. Conflict also brings new opportunities for peacebuilding, cooperation, and conflict resolution. Climate crises have renewed and expanded local and global movements for environmental justice and protection, many of which have historical connections with the peace movement. In support of the college’s carbon charge initiative, we will dedicate part of the course to understanding what constitutes the social cost of carbon and how it is represented in carbon pricing, particularly with respect to increasing frequencies of armed conflict and extension of the military industrial complex.

People’s Climate March

Mercy and Mass Incarceration

Animating Resistance: Live Cinema Explorations of the Global Nonviolent Action Database

Animating Resistance: Live Cinema Explorations of the Global Nonviolent Action Database

Prof. Ali Momeni, Carnegie Mellon University

19 April: 5:00 p.m. Artist’s Lecture in Science Center Room 101
20 April: 12:30-6:30 pm and 8:00-10:00 pm Workshop in Kohlberg 326 Language Center
21 April: 8:00 pm Outdoor Performance (Pearson Hall Lawn. Rain Location: LPAC Lobby)

More details.

The theme for this workshop and performance will be Swarthmore College’s Peace and Conflict Studies’ inimitable and inspiring Global Nonviolent Action Database. Momeni and the workshop participants will collaborative create and perform a live cinema/projection performance that consists of animations depicting and annotating the contents of this database in playful and performative ways. Momeni will be assisted by artist and MFA Candidate Davey Steinman for this performance.

Ali Momeni’s performance project at Swarthmore College will combine cinema, outdoor projection, improvisation, animation, “depicting the characters, setting and methods of specific actions from the Global Nonviolent Action Database like an animated graphic novel.”

Momeni was born in Isfahan, Iran and emigrated to the United States at the age of twelve. He studied physics and music at Swarthmore College and completed his doctoral degree in music composition, improvisation and performance with computers from the Center for New Music and Audio Technologies at UC Berkeley. He spent three years in Paris where he collaborated with performers and researchers from La Kitchen, IRCAM, Sony CSL and CIRM.

Photo credit: iMAL.org under Creative Commons license 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/ http://bit.ly/2oRJgje

Between 2007 and 2011, Momeni was an assistant professor in the Department of Art at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, where he directed the Spark Festival of Electronic Music and Art, and founded the urban projection collective called the MAW. Momeni is currently an associate professor in the School of Art at Carnegie Mellon University and directs CMU ArtFab, teaches in CMU’s IDEATE, Music Technology and Masters in Tangible Interaction Design degrees.

Momeni’s current research interests include performative applications of robotics, playful urban interventions, interactive projection performance, machine learning for artists and designers, interactive tools for storytelling and experiential learning, mobile and hybrid musical instruments, and the intersection of sound, music and health.

Davey T Steinman is an artist and explorer working at the crossroads of performance and technology. Davey is currently pursuing an M.F.A. in Video and Media Design in the School of Drama at Carnegie Mellon University.

This event is free and open to the public.

Sponsors: The Cooper Serendipity Fund, Kohlberg Language Center, Dept. of Theater, and Dept. of Music and Dance

Border Walls and the Politics of Becoming Non-Human

“Border Walls and the Politics of Becoming Non-Human”

Miriam Ticktin, Associate Professor of Anthropology and Co-Director of the Zolberg Institute for Migration and Mobility at the New School.

Friday, April 21st
2:30 – 4:00 pm
Science Center Room 199
Swarthmore College (directions)

Abstract: “In this talk I am concerned by the ways in which border walls and zones come not simply to *defend* (i.e. certain territories), but to *define* — that is, to shape or alter categories of natural and human kinds. I will suggest that borders walls, and all the surrounding and auxiliary technologies they harness, work by shifting how we understand different kinds of beings, ultimately rendering certain kinds killable.”

Sponsored by the Departments of Sociology and anthropology, Political Science, The Environmental Studies and Peace and Conflict Studies Programs, The Global Affairs Program at the Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility, and the Center for Humanities at Temple University

Doctors of the Revolution: Medicine and Violence in Egypt’s Tahrir Square

Doctors of the Revolution: Medicine and Violence in Egypt’s Tahrir Square

Dr. Soha Bayoumi (Harvard University)
Dr. Sherine Hamdy (Brown University)

Friday, April 14, 2017
4:30pm
Science Center 199
Swarthmore College

Organized by Peace and Conflict Studies and Co-Sponsored by Arabic, Biology, Health and Societies Program, Islamic Studies, Political Science, Pre-Med Office, Sociology and Anthropology, Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility.

Nancy Lindborg: Lessons from the Ebola Crisis

This event has now been rescheduled. Details below.

From our friends in the Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility and the Economics Department

Lessons from the Ebola Crisis

A Lecture by Nancy Lindborg
President of the United States Institute of Peace

Discussant: Professor Steve O’Connell
Gil and Frank Mustin Professor of Economics

TUESDAY, MARCH 14, 2017
7:30 P.M.
SCHEUER ROOM

Nancy Lindborg headed the Ebola High-Level Task Force at USAID, where she was director of the Democracy, Conflict and Humanitarian Assistance (DCHA) Bureau. She currently serves as President of the United States Institute of Peace, an independent
institution founded by Congress to provide practical solutions for preventing and resolving violent conflict around the world.

Sponsored by the Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility’s Global Affairs Program with support from the Economics Department.