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PIIRS Exploratory Seminars | PIIRS Research Clusters |Project on Democracy and Development | The Global Network on Inequality |
Recent and Upcoming Exploratory Seminars
2009–2010
Spring 2010
Exploratory Seminars
February 4-6, 2010
From Mongolia to Maasailand: A Comparative Assessment of Linkages between Pastoralist Land Rights and Social-Ecological Sustainability
Director: Daniel I. Rubenstein, Class of 1877 Professor of Zoology; chair, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology; and director, Program in African Studies
This seminar proposes to break new ground in both theoretical and applied understanding of pastoralism-policy linkages by looking at the Maasai warriors of East Africa and the Mongolian horsemen of the Central Asian steppes. It brings together a team of leading social and natural scientists who have experience collaborating across disciplines and effecting policy changes. The scholars will investigate the linkages between three domains—national land policy, local social institutions, and environmental conditions—seeking to identify critical feedbacks and exploring if and how dysfunctional linkages can be reformed to catalyze greater system-wide sustainability.
March 5, 2010
Too Cute: Style, Utopia, and American Asia-Mania
Director: Anne A. Chang, professor of English and African American Studies
Current scholarship on Asian Pacific American issues is expanding beyond traditional disciplinary and regional boundaries, signaling the need for new paradigms of understanding aspects of Asian Pacific experiences as well as their roles in American national and cultural identities. This conference invites scholars and artists from the U.S. and Asia in the fields of cultural and literary studies, art history, and gender studies to converse on these issues. The larger, conceptual goals of this seminar/colloquium are to jump start Asian American Studies at Princeton while reframing the field in transnational and global contexts; forge an opportunity for dialogue between artists and critics and also between U.S. and East Asian scholars; explore the roles of style and pleasure in the project of a liberal utopia; and investigate the concepts of race and nation through the relationship between aesthetic and social modalities of form.
March 11-13, 2010
Anthropology and Social Innovation in the Field of Global Health
Director: Joao Biehl, professor of anthropology, codirector, Program in Global Health and Health Policy
The seminar will bring together twelve social scientists from the U.S. and overseas to discuss debates over the recent history of magic-bullet approaches to international health and the epistemology and politics of global health. Attention will be given to issues of advocacy, humanitarianism, and philanthropy in light of the “pharmaceuticalization” of health care delivery (with a focus on HIV/AIDS and the control of tuberculosis and malaria). Panel discussions will also include the current challenges of global mental-health programs, the entry of chronic disease into the global health framework, emerging forms of patient mobilization and personhood in the wake of large-scale drug treatment programs, and the role of the judiciary in execution of the right to health. The seminar will enable participating scholars to identify common and divergent themes and discuss the methodological, ethical and policy implications of a critical anthropology of global health.
March 15-17, 2010
Meeting a Grand Challenge to Hydrology: The Global Monitoring of Earth’s Terrestrial Water
Director: Eric Wood, professor of civil and environmental engineering
The hydrology community believes that developing an ability to monitor and predict the movement of water on the landscape globally, at scales of 1 to 5 km, is a grand challenge that is vital to scientific advancement of the field. Currently, the ability to monitor global terrestrial water is severely lacking due to poor model resolution and related physics, inconsistencies among data sets, and computational challenges. This exploratory seminar brings together scholars from around the world to brainstorm about and strategies for approaches to overcome these challenges, including identifying needed data sets, potential modeling advancements, and computational needs and solutions.
March 19-21, 2010
Northeast African Literature
Director: Wendy Belcher, assistant professor of comparative literature and African American Studies
This exploratory seminar will investigate the possibilities for jointly studying Northeastern African literatures (those of almost 100 million people in Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti, and Somalia) with colleagues from the United States, Europe, and Africa. Since many of these colleagues have never met, the seminar will provide a chance to bridge the immense distances between scholars working on this understudied and significant body of literatures. Most of the seminar will be dedicated to discussing the parameters and key questions of Northeastern African literatures (since the field has yet to be conceptualized as a field) and imagining the most useful ways for scholars dedicated to these literatures to move forward together.
April 30-May 1, 2010
Political Parties in Developing Democracies
Director: Rachel Riedl, postdoctoral research associate, PIIRS
The transition to democracy across the developing world has led to the construction of new constitutional orders, new institutions of representation, and new forms of linkages between citizens and their government. While scholars across the disciplines have generated an array of theories about the causes of democratic transitions and the design of constitutional institutions, little is known about extra-constitutional or informal structures of representation and their influence on democratic institutions. Although parties appear to be endogenous to democracy, their organization and the overall structure of the party system is never designed a priori, but rather emerges from and evolves with social, economic, and political factors. This seminar will focus on four key themes in order to advance this discussion: frameworks for studying political parties in developing democracies; voter-party linkages; party and party-system development; and party-system change.
Fall 2009
Advanced Seminar
September 18-19, 2009
Paper Leviathans: State-Building in Latin America and Spain 1810-1930
Director: Miguel Centeno, professor of sociology and international affairs
This seminar brought together a group of researchers to discuss the state-building process in Latin America and Spain from 1810-1930. The project had two goals. First, they sought to better understand the role played by classic liberal doctrine in the political and economic development of the Iberian world during its “long 19th Century” from 1810 to 1930. Second, by comparing a broad range of countries sharing many cultural and historical legacies, they sought to identify the institutional patterns that help explain differing outcomes, particularly in the cases of post-1950 fates of Spain and Latin America. The project seeks to combine an analysis of the historical legacy with the reactions to the global interweaving of the nineteenth century, and the respective national adjustments.
Exploratory Seminar
October 2–3, 2009
The Contemporary Study of Saint-John Perse
Directors: Carol Rigolot, Council of the Humanities, and Susan Stewart, Annan Professor of English
The goal of this exploratory seminar is to bring together ten to twelve scholars from France, Ireland, Tunisia, Cyprus, Guadeloupe, and the United States for two days of discussion on future directions in scholarship about the French modernist poet/diplomat, Saint-John Perse/Alexis Leger (1887–1975), recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1960. His poetry is a cross between Whitman, in breadth and voice, and Mallarmé, in allusion and enigma. The complete poems consist of more than 400 pages in the Pléiade edition.
Summer 2009
Exploratory Seminar
August 27–28, 2009
Migrant Youth and Children of Migrants in a Globalized World
Directors: Marta Tienda, Maurice P. During Professor in Demographic Studies; professor of sociology and public affairs; and director, Program in Latino Studies; and Sara McLanahan, William S. Tod Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs; and director, Center for Research on Child Well-Being.
This seminar brought together international experts working on child development and migration to begin building a systematic research foundation about the impact of migration on child wellbeing across the globe. This network formalizes ties among research centers and researchers conducting innovative studies on child migration to develop a comparative picture of migrant children and youth in different countries. A major goal was to generate new theoretical insights and to identify high-quality data and methodologies for studying successful adaptation across diverse settings.
2008–2009
Spring 2009
Advanced Seminar
May 9-10, 2009
The Control and Disposition of Fissile Material in a Transition to a Nuclear-Weapon Free World
Director: Frank von Hippel, professor of public and international affairs
This seminar brought together a group of 15-20 scientists and other experts to examine the issues relating to a serious international effort to move toward nuclear disarmament, a possibility which has now entered the security dialogue. The seminar began to chart a possible transition to a nuclear-weapon free world, paying special attention to fissile material stockpiles which will loom increasingly significant as nuclear weapons are progressively drawn down. Other topics of discussion included the verified dismantlement of nuclear warheads; the conversion of all naval-propulsion reactors to the use of low-enriched uranium; the role and safeguarding of nuclear energy in a nuclear-weapon free world; nuclear forensics; and nuclear archaeology.
Exploratory Seminars
January 6-7, 2009
Internationalizing Machado de Assis
Director: Pedro Monteiro, associate professor of Spanish and Portugese
Literary critics and historians from Europe, the U.S., and Brazil, who are specialists on Machado de Assis, gathered at Princeton to address such questions as: How and when does a “national” literature merit being analyzed at the international level? Are categories such as “local” and “universal,” dear to the cultural critiques of Latin American intellectuals in the 1960s and 1970s, valid at all? Is “world literature” a heuristically relevant category? If so, what does it mean to integrate a local author into the realm of a “world literature”? What are the aesthetic and political consequences of this integration?
March 20–21, 2009
Turkish Modernity and the Social Sciences
Directors: Cemil Aydin, postdoctoral research associate, Department of Near Eastern Studies; and Michael Reynolds, assistant professor of Near Eastern Studies
The seminar explored the state of theory and research on Turkey in the fields of anthropology, political science, history, and sociology to find new ways of interdisciplinary thinking on controversial issues such as center-periphery relations, Alevi and Kurdish identities, the role of religion in public life, and competing visions of internationalisms. A focus on Turkey and the social sciences is significant because Turkish modernization experience has always been a key case study for European social sciences.
March 27–28, 2009
Emergent Communication
Directors: Asif Ghazanfar, assistant professor of psychology, and Adele Goldberg, professor of linquistics
Investigators in fields as diverse as robotics, computer science, cognitive development, neuroscience, anthropology, and linguistics have begun converging on a pluralistic explanation for the complex behavior of communication—an explanation that includes important roles for simple, domain-general rules operating in development and evolution, as well as in the structure of the social environment. This seminar provided an opportunity for junior and senior researchers from seemingly disparate fields to get together for focused discussion on this unifying theme of emergent communication.
April 10–11, 2009
The Interface between Information Theory and Estimation Theory
Director: Sergio Verdu, Eugene Higgins Professor of Electrical Engineering
The discovery by Guo, Shamai, and Verdu of an unexpected connection between information measures and the estimation measure known as minimum mean-square error, resulted in a surge of interest in the interface between the disciplines of information theory and estimation theory. This exploratory seminar brought together leading researchers from around the world who are currently exploring the boundaries, connections, and applications of the interface between information theory and estimation theory to fields as varied as digital communications, data compression, physics, control, and financial mathematics.
Fall 2008
Advanced Seminar
August 31-September 2, 2008
Institutions and Development in Latin America: A Comparative Analysis
Directors: Alejandro Portes, Howard Harrison and Gabrielle Snyder Beck Professor of Sociology, and Lori Smith, graduate student, Department of Sociology
This seminar brought together a group of scholars to review the theoretical literature on the concept of institutions and its relationship to national development, propose a definition of the concept, and advance six hypotheses about institutional adequacy and contributions to national development. The seminar then presented results of a comparative empirical study of existing institutions in three Latin American countries and examined their organizational similarities and differences. Employing the qualitative comparative method (QCA) proposed by Ragin, the six hypotheses were tested. Results converge in showing the importance of meritocracy, immunity to corruption, absence of “islands of power,” and proactivity in producing effective institutions. Findings strongly support Evans’ theory of developmental apparatuses.
Exploratory Seminars
November 13–15, 2008
New Directions in Gender Studies and Medieval German Studies
Director: Sara Poor, associate professor of German
The seminar brought together scholars of medieval German literature and gender studies from North America and Germany to facilitate an exchange of ideas about current work and to explore potential new directions that work might take. Topics covered included the relationship between religious reform and women’s literacy, obscenity and gender in late medieval German culture, discourses of victimhood and masculinity around 1500, late medieval “fake” mystics, gender and law in medieval literature, emotions and gender, and modern theory and gender.
2007–2008
Spring 2008
Exploratory Seminars
March 28–29, 2008
Reception of Netherlandish Art in Asia in the Early Modern Period
Director: Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, Frederick Marquand Professor of Art and Archaeology
Kaufmann and a group of nine European and Asian scholars in the fields of economic and art history explored the Asian reception of European art in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Emphasis was placed on artistic exchange between the Netherlands through the Dutch East India and parts of Asia, including China, Japan, India, and Sri Lanka. The group established the groundwork for further collaboration and plan to apply to the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study for further support.
April 25–26, 2008
Sustaining the Global Commons: An Experimental Approach
Directors: Deborah Prentice, professor of psychology; Daniel I. Rubenstein, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology; and Simon Levin, the George M. Moffett Professor of Biology
The seminar explored human behavior and cooperation and its effects on the global commons in which we live. Prentice, Rubenstein, and Moffet led a group of twenty-one scholars in economics, education, political science, sociology, game theory, psychology, evolutionary biology, and environmental economy in an endeavor to expand the extant literature through experimental games to provide insight into the issues associated with sustaining the commons.
May 2–3, 2008
Sigmund Freud and Art
Director: Ruben Gallo, associate professor of Spanish and Portuguese
The seminar gathered scholars from the U.S., U.K., Europe, and Australia for a discussion of Freud’s extensive collection of archaeological antiquities—a collection of over 1,000 works from around the world. It examined the possibility of conducting a detailed analysis of significant parts of the collection and of exploring the relation between his writings and those objects.
May 3–4, 2008
Genre and Tradition in Early Medieval China
Directors: Martin Kern, professor of East Asian Studies; and Ping Wang, assistant professor of East Asian Studies
Kern, Wang, and a group of language, literature, culture, and civilization scholars from the U.S., China, and Taiwan prepared the ground for an international conference on the formation of the Chinese literary tradition in the early medieval period. Most importantly, they addressed the concept of specific textual continuities and differences in which texts might refer to earlier writings and give evidence of specific aesthetic and ideological expectations. The group’s ultimate goal is to produce a volume of original research to be published in both English and Chinese.
May 21-22, 2101
Quantam Engineering with Electrons on Helium
Directors: Stephen Lyon, Electrical Engineering; and Andrew Houck, Electrical Engineering
Lyon, Houck and a gathering of experts, senior graduate students, and postdocs from around the globe gathered to discuss the science and engineering of electrons floating on the surface of liquid helium. Discussions centered on outstanding issues in the field, particularly those related to the hurdles and possible solutions to engineering a quantum computer. The emphasis was on designing proof-of-principle experiments and identifying holes in the current understanding.
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