Rohatyn Center for Global Affairs

Lecture by Ambassador Richard LeBaron, Atlantic Council. Ambassador LeBaron is a career diplomat with over thirty years experience abroad and in Washington. His most recent overseas posting was as deputy chief of mission at the US embassy in London from August 2007 to August 2010. Ambassador LeBaron served as ahargé d’affaires in London from February to August 2009. Previous to his assignment to London, Ambassador LeBaron served as the US ambassador to Kuwait (2004 to 2007).

Lecture “Muslims and Globalization: The Struggle for the Future” by Ahmed Samatar, James Wallace Professor & Chair of International Studies, Macalester College, and founding Dean of Macalester’s Institute for Global Citizenship.

“Kiswahili: A language of diversity and empowerment” by Waithera Roki, who is teaching the Winter Term course INTD 1152 - Introduction to Swahili and East African Culture. Her focus is African languages and second language acquisition with special reference to the Kiswahili language. She is interested in how East and West African languages intersect.

Lecture by Tarek Masoud, professor of public policy and Sultan of Oman Professor of International Relations at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. His research focuses on the role of religion in the Muslim world’s political development. He is the author of Counting Islam: Religion, Class, and Elections in Egypt (Cambridge University Press, 2014), the co-author of The Arab Spring: Pathways of Repression and Reform (Oxford University Press, 2015), as well as of several articles and book chapters.

International and Global Studies Colloquium presentation by Damascus Kafumbe, Assistant Professor of Music. Lunch is free for current Middlebury College students/faculty/staff; suggested $5 donation for others; RSVP by 5/1 to rcga@middlebury.edu.

International and Global Studies Colloquium presentation by Peter Nelson, Professor of Geography. Lunch is free for current Middlebury College students/faculty/staff; suggested $5 donation for others; RSVP by 4/10 to rcga@middlebury.edu. Over the last decade or so, the field of rural studies has become increasingly concerned with illuminating the myriad webs of connectivity continuously producing and reproducing rural space.

International and Global Studies Colloquium presentation by Jacob Tropp, John Spencer Professor of African Studies. Lunch is free for current Middlebury College students/faculty/staff; suggested $5 donation for others; RSVP by 4/4 to rcga@middlebury.edu. Most accounts of how the United States became a major force in international development in the mid-twentieth century, particularly in the Global South, neglect an important dimension of the story: the impact of America’s enduring colonial relationship with its own indigenous peoples.

International and Global Studies Colloquium presentation “Consensus, Uncertainty, and Catastrophe: Geoengineering and the Governance of the Oceans” by Kemi Fuentes-George, Assistant Professor of Political Science. States, transnational networks of scientists, corporate actors, and institutions in the climate change regime have known for decades that iron ore, when dumped in the ocean, can stimulate the growth of plankton. In the 1990s, a network of oceanographers argued that doing so could capture atmospheric carbon and fight global warming.

Lecture “ ‘Singing Archaeology’: Creating AKHNATEN, an American opera set in Ancient Egypt” by Shalom Goldman, Pardon Tillinghast Professor of Religion. In 2016 AKHNATEN was performed to great acclaim in London and Los Angeles. The opera, first performed in the mid-1980s, was written by composer Glass in collaboration with Shalom Goldman and other writers. In this lecture I will describe the collaborative process that shaped the final work and will highlight the process in which I worked to interpret and translate Ancient Egyptian culture into modern American musical and theatrical idioms.

International and Global Studies Colloquium “Mimetic Bodies: Repetition, Replication, and Simulation in the Marriage Charter of Empress Theophanu” by Eliza Garrison, associate professor of the history of art and architecture. As an object and as a collection of text and images, the Marriage Charter of Empress Theophanu (Wolfenbüttel, Niedersächsisches Staatsarchiv, 6 Urk 11) relies on replication, repetition, and doubling to reinforce the meanings relayed in its text and to enhance its function as a legal document.