Transnational Studies Working Group

Past Events

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Friday, December 3, 2010
Matthew Hart, Department of English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University
"On Immigration, Detention, and Removal"
Sophia Gordon Multipurpose Room
2:00pm-3:00pm

The years of the "New Labour" government (1997-2010) saw a marked increase in the detention and physical removal of people seeking political asylum in the United Kingdom. Although this subject has been widely analyzed by journalists, human rights activists, and social scientists, it has been largely neglected by scholars of transnational art and culture. This paper begins that critical labor by analyzing the representation of immigration detention and removal in two recent artworks from Great Britain. Beginning with a The Other Hand (2008), a novel by Chris Cleave, the paper sketches the history of recent changes to British immigration law and policy before going on to a longer analysis of Border Country (2007), a multimedia artwork by Melanie Friend. Focusing on Friend’s strategic exclusion of human figures from her institutional landscapes, the paper analyzes this "poetics of removal" as an aesthetic response to what Étienne Balibar has called the splintering and internalization of the border in the new political economy of the European Union.

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Monday, October 18, 2010
Yusef Komunyakaa
Sophia Gordon Multipurpose Room
6:00pm - 7:30pm

Yusef Komunyakaa, Pulitzer Prize winning poet and New York University Global Distinguished Professor of English, will be reading from his latest collection War Horses.

 

Thursday - Friday: April 15-16, 2010
Transnational Social Mobilization & Modern Realpolitik :
Two-Day Research Workshop with Jeremi Suri
Cabot 7th Floor, Tufts University
4:00 - 6:30 pm

On the first day, Professor Suri reflects on methodological, pedagogical, and practical issues facing researchers who employ transnational approaches. On the second day, Professor Suri presents his latest research that exemplifies transnational approaches. On both days, Jeremi Suri will facilitate discussion among participants drawn from the Tufts faculty and graduate students. As we aim to create a workshop atmosphere conducive to a free and vigorous exchange of ideas and insights, space for this event will be limited. Please RSVP to ichiro.takayoshi@tufts.edu if you plan to attend.

April 15, Session 1:
Transnational Social Mobilization and State Politics
This session will examine the multidimensional qualities of transnational contestation and change. We will interrogate how a transnational mode of analysis opens new perspectives on intersections across geographies and within societies. In this context, we will analyze the dialectal relationship between social movements and state politics, with a particular focus on the post-1945 world. Suggested reading: Suri, "The Rise and Fall of International Counterculture," available at: http://jeremisuri.net/writing/articles

April 16, Session 2:
The Transnational Controversies Surrounding Modern Realpolitik and Nation-Building: Case Studies
This session will focus on two broad transnational case studies: the emergence of a Realpolitik discourse in the twentieth century and its diverse applications under the rubric of nation-building. We will analyze how transnational modes of contestation and change contributed to these discourses, policies, and the enduring controversies surrounding them. We will also discuss the creative tensions between individual agency, state power, and global culture. Suggested reading: Suri, "Henry Kissinger, the American Dream, and the Jewish Immigrant Experience in the Cold War," available at: http://jeremisuri.net/writing/articles

Jeremi Suri is the E. Gordon Fox Professor of History, the Director of the European Union Center of Excellence, and the Director of the Grand Strategy Program at University of Wisconsin, Madison. He is the author of three books (Henry Kissinger and the American Century, 2007; The Global Revolutions of 1968, 2006; Power and Protest, 2003) and numerous articles on the Cold War, America's role in the world, and international history. In 2007, Smithsonian Magazine named Professor Suri one of America's "Top Young Innovators" in Arts and Sciences.

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Wednesday, March 31, 2010
The Practices of Transnational Studies: The State of the Field 
Disciplines, Theory, Application
9:00am-4:00pm

This roundtable, organized by the Tufts Transnational Studies Working Group, brings together a group of leading practitioners of transnational studies across disciplines to discuss the state of the field. The aim of this roundtable is to probe, in detail, the articulation of transnational approaches in current research, and to pose a set of productive questions to assist work in the future. Instead of discussing the potentials of transnational approaches in theory or in the abstract, the aim of this roundtable is to reflect upon the problems and challenges of transnational approaches in the current practices of the panelists.

Panelists will speak for 15 to 20 minutes on the main features of their
current research, the disciplinary trends that they are critically engaging
with, and the challenges posed by their adoption of transnational
approaches. These might include, for example, the need for new methods or
theoretical frameworks, more travel time and the ability to conduct
multi-site research, or the need to navigate within changing scholarly and
political climates. We will address the contributions that disciplinary
approaches (Literature, History, Geography, Sociology, etc.) bring to an
interdisciplinary dialogue on transnational studies. And we will discuss the
new research approaches that lie at the intersection between transnational
studies and the digital humanities.

Welcome:  Jamshed Bharucha, Provost and Senior Vice President, Tufts University

Participants include:

• Ryan Centner, Tufts University, Sociology
• Radiclani Clytus, Tufts University, English
• Gregory Crane, Tufts University, Classics
• David Ekbladh, Tufts University, History
• Stephen Legg, University of Nottingham, Geography
• Peggy Levitt, Wellesley College, Sociology
• Kris Manjapra, Tufts University, History
• Werner Sollors, Harvard University, English Department
• Nico Slate, Carnegie Mellon University, History
• Quinn Slobodian, Wellesley College, History
• Ichiro Takayoshi, Tufts University, English
• Andrew Zimmerman, George Washington University, History

October 15, 2009
Shirley Ye, History Department, Harvard University
"Shipping Soybeans: Competition and Consumption in Germany and East Asia 1900-1914"
Humanities Center
5:00-6:30pm

This paper presents a case study of how the family business Rickmers established the Sibirien Linie for the transport of soy beans and other commodities between China and Germany. My paper has three parts: first, I examine the family dynamics and struggles within Rickmers concerning its East Asian shipping and competition with other shipping lines, in particular Norddeutscher Lloyd. The second part examines the route taken by Rickmers, asking why the Russian port Vladivostock was favored over other regional ports. Finally, my paper delves into the fate of soybean shipments upon their arrival in Hamburg: the processing and eventual consumption of soy products in Germany.

Upon its founding in Bremerhaven in 1834, Rickmers was primarily a ship-building firm, later expanding to shipping and transport. Unlike its larger competitors, Rickmers was actively run by a single family and primarily interested in transport between Asia and Germany. Focusing upon Rickmers offers a unique opportunity to explore the struggles of a Hanseatic family business both internally between the generations, and externally in its competition with other shipping companies, against the backdrop of Japanese and Russian imperial ambitions in northeastern China and Siberia, where the soy was cultivated. By following the soybean trail and probing into its various uses, my paper connects contemporary nutritional developments and practices in Germany together with the transnational trade in Asia.

December 11, 2009
Kathleen Coleman, Department of Classics, Harvard University
"Born of Adamastor: The Classical Heritage in the Works of the South African Poet, Douglas Livingstone (1932-1996)"
Humanities Center
11am-12:30pm

Douglas Livingstone was a microbiologist who started reading translations of Classical authors in his twenties. Like Roy Butler and other contemporary South African poets, he shows a keen awareness of the complexity of incorporating the European literary heritage within a body of work that is strongly rooted in an African context, both rural and urban. Drawing on his collected works and some unpublished material from the archives of the National English Literary Museum in Grahamstown, this paper demonstrates how Livingstone uses the mythological and historical heritage from Antiquity to highlight themes of human weakness and ecological fragility.

Thursday, February 11, 2009
Professor Charles Shiro Inouye, Tufts University
Global Gothic: Pale Skin and Long Black Hair
Humanities Center
12pm-1:30pm

The present explosion of postmodern figurality has made Japan a principle source of the global gothic. This is problematic, though, because Japan's post-War return to animism, which contributes to this transnational richness, does not necessarily consider spirits and monsters horrifying. Can there be gothic without horror?

I will try to illuminate the logic of horror by comparing the Evening Faces chapter of The Tale of Genji with Takashi Shimizu's J-horror film Ju-on The Grudge (2003). I will ask the question: Who needs horror?