Spring 2023 Recorded Series

Recordings are available for the following Faculty at Home webinars that have already happened.  Recordings are usually available about two weeks after the webinar.

Marc Lapin-What kind of ancestor do you want to be?-Lessons from Perennial Agriculture

What does agriculture have to do with our ways of thinking, healing, teaching, creating art, and engaging in sacred practices? What might our human ways of doing and organizing ourselves look like if we were to practice perennial, natural-systems agriculture rather than continuing to grow the bulk of our foods by ripping apart the soil in annual-disturbance, plow-based cropping? 

Joyce Mao-How China Made the "New Right" New: A Brief History

After Japanese bombs hit Pearl Harbor, the American Right stood at a crossroads. Generally isolationist, conservatives needed to forge their own foreign policy agenda if they wanted to remain politically viable. Joyce Mao, Associate Professor of History, will discuss how foreign policy changes following the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 and during the Cold War led to American conservatism as we know it today.

Amanda Gregg-Corporations Under Autocracy

The past is full of useful economics. This presentation outlines what we can learn from studying corporations in the Russian Empire, a key “emerging market” of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Using newly collected data from historical sources such as balance sheets and corporate charters, this presentation explains the strategies that corporations in the Russian Empire used to finance operations and expansion, to design their charters to attract outside investment, and to decide whether to remain in operation or exit the market. Overall, this research presents an optimistic picture of the Russian economy under autocracy with several important caveats. For example, I will highlight the distortions created by restricting access to the corporate form.

Netta Avineri-Pedagogies of Interdisciplinarity: Possibilities and Prospects for the Social Issues of Our Time

In this talk, Netta Avineri will explore how dialogue among different experiences and identities can create new avenues for hope and change. She highlights the ‘pedagogies of interdisciplinarity’ she uses in her coursework and community engagement at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey (MIIS). She will discuss case studies including educational/language inequities, housing insecurity, immigration, Indigenous representation, and public health. By bringing together a range of viewpoints, recognizing the conflicts involved, and ‘coalescing’ around common intentions and goals, these intercultural exchanges can foster students’ critical abilities to address the world’s most complex problems.

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