Mission and Vision
The Center is committed to interdisciplinary and comparative approaches for understanding formations of race and ethnicity and their effects on human relations. It encourages scholarship that considers race and ethnicity as intersecting with topics such as class, gender, sexuality, religion, and migration and that situates these discussions in a transnational context. It is uniquely situated to study race/ethnicity as both situated and transnational because of the opportunities of Middlebury’s global educational mission.
The CCSRE is meant to meet the intellectual and community needs over time. In that sense, it is a dynamic institution and its mission will evolve according to the needs of the college, the faculty, and the community to be determined by the Director in collaboration with the steering committee.
Fall 2009 Events
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Open House at CCSRE
This event provides an opportunity for us to share the mission and vision of the Center with the Middlebury College community. Visitors will be invited to ask questions, offer feedback and suggestions, and get to know the place and people involved in this year’s programming.
Light refreshments and snacks will be served.
4:30 p.m. - 6:00 p.m.
Carr Hall Lounge
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Brown Bag Lunch and Discussion on Ethnicity, Gender, and Citizenship in Eastern Europe and Beyond
Professors Kevin Moss and Nikolina Dobreva will facilitate the discussion.
Co-sponsored with International Studies Program; Women’s and Gender Studies; Chellis House;
and Rohatyn Center for International Affairs
12:15 p.m. - 1:15 p.m.
Carr Hall Lounge
Feel free to bring your lunch.
Coffee, tea and seltzer will be available.
Saturday, October 3, 2009
Cafecito Hour: Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity (CCSRE) Open House and Discussion
The Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity is hosting an Open House and discussion at Carr hall. This is an opportunity for us to share the mission and vision of the Center with Middlebury community members and friends. Visitors will be invited to ask questions, offer feedback and suggestions, and get to know the place and people involved in this year's programming. Light refreshments and Cafe Alta Gracia, organic fair-trade coffee from Dominican Republic roasted locally by Vermont Coffee Company, will be served.
4:30 p.m. - 6:00 p.m.
Carr Hall Lounge
Friday, October 16, 2009
Free Speech or Hate Speech? The Danish Cartoon Controversy in the European Legal Context
An International Studies Colloquium presentation by Erik Bleich, associate professor of political science, Middlebury College. Lunch will be available throughout. RESERVATIONS ARE NECESSARY. RSVP by Monday, 10/12, to Martha Baldwin by e-mailing baldwin@middlebury.edu or by calling 802-443-5324. Co-sponsored by the Rohatyn Center for International Affairs.
12:15 p.m.
Robert A. Jones '59 House conference room
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Cafecito Hour: Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity (CCSRE) Open House and Discussion
The Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity is hosting an Open House and discussion at Carr hall. This is an opportunity for us to share the mission and vision of the Center with Middlebury community members and friends. Visitors will be invited to ask questions, offer feedback and suggestions, and get to know the place and people involved in this year's programming. Light refreshments and Cafe Alta Gracia, organic fair-trade coffee from Dominican Republic roasted locally by Vermont Coffee Company, will be served.
4:30 p.m. - 6:00 p.m.
Carr Hall Lounge
Monday, October 19, 2009
Nature, Race, Ethnicity, and Citizenship: Interdisciplinary Approaches / A Conversation with Anthropologist and Geographer Jake Kosek
In conjunction with American Studies and Environmental Studies
12:15 p.m. - 1:15 p.m.
Carr Hall Lounge
Feel free to bring your lunch.
Coffee, tea and seltzer will be available.
Monday, October 19, 2009
Guest Lecture: The Natures of the Beast: On Honeybees and the Biopolitics of Terror
Jake Kosek, Department of Geography, University of California, Berkeley
This talk explores the remaking of nature by tracing changes to the beehive and understandings of the bee in relation of the current fears and strategies of the war on terror. If further focuses on the rise of the honeybee as a tool and metaphor in the war on terror. At present the largest source of funding for apiary research comes not from the U.S. Department of Agriculture but from the Pentagon and the U.S. military as part of efforts to remake entomology in an age of empire. This funding is being used in three areas: first, to develop and train a new generation of bees to make them even more sensitive and to be targeted sensors of specific chemical traces, including everything from plastic explosives, to the tritium used in nuclear weapons development, to land mine detection; second, to enhance bees' detection abilities through transgenic process and even the synthesis of new traits that would better design the bee for the task of detection and monitoring of weapons development; and finally, in an explicit attempt to redesign modern battlefield technique the Pentagon has returned to the form and metaphor of the swarm to combat the unpredictability and de-centered approaches to battlefield tactics that define modern warfare. In these and other cases the bee is being enlisted in the war on terror as well as being remade in cultural and material form for military purposes.
Sponsored by American Studies and Environmental Studies
4:30 p.m. - 6:00 p.m.
Axinn Center 219
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Citizenship and National Identity--the Case of (East and West) Germany and Beyond
A roundtable discussion with Middlebury College faculty participants. This event is part of a week-long event called Freedom Without Walls cosponsored by the German Embassy to the US in Washington, DC. Also sponsored by the Department of German.
Co-sponsored by the Rohatyn Center for International Affairs, and the Department of German.
4:30 p.m.
Robert A. Jones '59 Conference Room
Friday, October 23,2009
“No Blacks Around?” Cadernos Negros and the Construction of Black Identity In Contemporary Afro-Brazilian Literature
A lecture by Emanuelle Oliveira, associate professor of Luso-Brazilian Literature, Vanderbilt University. Prof. Oliveira has done a superb work on one of the most important Afro-Brazilian literary groups in Brazil, the Quilombhoje, who are active participants of the black movement and use their writings to promode a consciousness-raising process on the questions of race relations and racism in Brazil. She is the author of Writing Identity: The Politics of Contemporary Afro-Brazilian Literature (2007).
Co-sponsored by the Rohatyn Center for International Affairs, Department of Spanish and Portuguese, International Studies, and Latin American Studies.
4:30 p.m.
Robert A. Jones '59 House conference room
Sunday, October 25, 2009 A Screening of the New Documentary "King in Chicago; a story told by people who were there. Dr. Martin Luther King and the Chicago Freedom Movement"
Followed by a discussion with Herman Jenkins, an organizer in the Chicago Freedom Movement.
7:30 p.m.
Axinn Center 232
Monday, October 26, 2009
A luncheon discussion with Herman Jenkins, an organizer in the Chicago Freedom Movement, Dr. Martin Luther King's campaign to end slums and housing discrimination, and in the Poor People's Campaign, Dr. King's last campaign. Lunch will be served, but space is limited so please RSVP by October 23rd to Janine Podraza at jpodraza@middlebury.edu or 802 443-3198
12:15 p.m. - 1:15 p.m.
Carr Hall Lounge
Monday, October 26, 2009
Charles P. Scott Lecture in the Religion Department,
The Enduring Significance of the U.N. Declaration on Human Rights, with Special Attention to the Problem of the "Defamation of Religion"
David Little (Harvard University) will speak on the enduring legacy of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, with particular attention to questions of freedom of religion. In response to skepticism regarding the very existence of norms human beings can all agree to protect, Little will sketch a philosophical justification of the human rights language codified in the U.N. Declaration. He also will defend the Declaration's ideal of religious freedom, in particular against critics in predominantly religious societies who argue that it is an imposition of western culture that insufficiently protects against the "defamation of religion." Finally, Little will argue for the continued importance of the concept of "human rights," in the face of pragmatist and relativist challenges to rights language as a basis for universally recognized moral and political boundaries.
The Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity is
proudly co-supporting this event
4:30 p.m.
Dana Auditorium
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Sri Lankan Muslims: Between Ethno-Nationalism and the Global Ummah
A lecture by Dennis McGilvray, Professor and Chair, Department of Anthropology, University of Colorado at Boulder. He is author of Crucible of Conflict: Tamil and Muslim Society on the East Coast of Sri Lanka (Duke 2008).
Co-sponsored with South Asian Studies, the Rohatyn Center for International Affairs
4:30 p.m - 6:00 p.m.
Robert A. Jones '59 House Conference Room
Friday, 30 October, 2009
Reflections on 1989: Twenty Years of Czech-American and Transatlantic Relations His Excellency Petr Kolar, Ambassador of the Czech Republic to the United States
Sponsored by the Rohatyn Center for International Affairs, the Department of Political Science, Russian and East European Studies, the Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity, and European Studies
4:30 p.m.
Robert A. Jones ’59 House conference room
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Professor Merle Hodge visiting professor of English at Dartmouth and senior lecturer at University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, will join us for a brown bag/discussion on race, ethnicity, and citizenship in Caribbean literature.
12:00 pm
Carr Hall Lounge
Feel free to bring your lunch.
Coffee, tea and seltzer will be available
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
"Your mother house: A View of Family in the Caribbean"
Merle Hodge, visiting professor of English at Dartmouth and senior lecturer at University of the West Indies, St. Augustine. At Dartmouth, Ms. Hodge teaches a course on women writers from the Anglophone Caribbean, relating the texts to the historical, social, and cultural realities of the region, including each writer's treatment of issues such as gender, class, ethnicity, family and identity.
4:30 p.m.
Robert A. Jones ’59 House conference room
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
"Como agua para chcolate" Screening and discussion
The film is in Spanish with English subtitles. The discussion which will follow will be in English.
7:00 p.m. - 10:00 p.m.
Axinn Center 109
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Pane Discussion on the Intersection of Language, Race, Ethnicity, and Citizenship
Miguel Fernandez (Spanish and Portuguese Dept.), Tatiana Smorodinskaya (Russian Dept.) Shawna Shapiro (CTLR) will discuss the intersections of language, race, ethnicity, and citizenship.
Facilitated by Linda White (Women's and Gender Studies/Japanese Studies)
4:30 p.m. - 6:30 p.m.
Robert A. Jones '59 House Conference Room
Thursday, November 19, 2009
"Women, Alterity, and Mexican Identity in "Como agua para chocolate?" by Tina Escaja, professor of Spanish, University of Vermont.
She has published extensively on gender and contemporary literature from Latin America and Spain. She is the author of awarded poetry and fiction as well as experimental and multimedia works, including hypertext. This lecture will examine female Mexican archetypes questioned by Laura Esquivel in her popular Latin American Novel.
Sponsored by the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Latin American Studies, Women and Gender Studies, the Rohatyn Center for International Affairs, and the Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity.
4:30 p.m.
Robert A. Jones '59 Conference Room
Friday, November 20, 2009
Transnational American Studies, or, Why We Should Care about Korean Cinema
Christina Klein, English Department, Boston College
4:30 p.m.
Axinn Center at Starr Library 219
Co-sponsored by the American Studies Spiegel Family Fund, the Carr Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity and the Axinn Center Lecture Fund
Winter 2010
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Symposium on race, ethnicity, and citizenship in an Obama America
4:30 pm
Robert A. Jones '59 House conference room
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Keynote Address for Symposium on race, ethnicity, and citizenship in an Obama America
8:00 pm
Dana Auditorium
spring 2010
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Screening "The Garden"
4:30 pm
Axinn 223
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Jennifer French. Associate Professor of Spanish & Comparative Literature and Director of the Center for Environmental Studies at Williams College
Lecture will focus on the work of Juan Natalicio González, the most influential ideologue of the Colorado party
4:30 pm
Location TBD
Friday, March 5 , 2010
Policy-ing Citizenship
This day and a half symposium will begin with an introduction at 12:15 on Friday followed a workshop “Developing works on citizenship and immigration” from 1:30 – 3:00 pm.
Then from 3:30-5:00pm, the first panel on Policy-ing Citizenship will present.
On Saturday, panels will run from 9:30am -4:30pm.
Please watch the CCSRE web site of Facebook page for details or send us an email at CCSRE@middlebury.edu
This event is generously co-sponsored by the Rohatyn Center for Internatinal Affairs.
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Policy-ing Citizenship
This day and a half symposium will begin with an introduction at 12:15 on Friday followed a workshop “Developing works on citizenship and immigration” from 1:30 – 3:00 pm.
Then from 3:30-5:00pm, the first panel on Policy-ing Citizenship will present.
On Saturday, panels will run from 9:30am -4:30pm.
Please watch the CCSRE web site of Facebook page for details or send us an email at CCSRE@middlebury.edu
This event is generously co-sponsored by the Rohatyn Center for Internatinal Affairs.
Thursday April 8, 2010
The War on Terror in TV Dramas: Scripting Muslim Terrorists and a Post-Race United States
Evelyn Azeeza Alsultany, Program in American Culture, University of Michigan.
Co-sponsored by the American Studies Spiegel Family Fund and the Carr Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity
Time and Location to be announced.
Contact us:
Email: CCSRE@middlebury.edu
Phone: 802.443.3198
Fax: 802.443.3296
Postal address:
452 College St
Carr Hall
Middlebury College
Middlebury VT 05753