UPCOMING EVENTS
November 10, 2009 - CRUDE WORLD: THE POLITICS OF OIL
with George Caffentzis, Silvia Federici, and Peter Maass
The environmental devastation wrought by the world’s reliance on petroleum can no longer be denied, but the insidious cultural effects of oil extraction, production, and exportation still receive scant attention. Join Peter Maass, contributing editor at The New York Times Magazine and the author of the recently published Crude World: The Violent Twilight of Oil, George Caffentzis, Professor of Philosophy, University of Southern Maine, and Silvia Federici, Professor Emerita of Philosophy and International Studies at Hofstra University, as they discuss big oil’s cultural and political violence.
Moderated by Ashley Dawson, Associate Professor of English, The Graduate Center, CUNY.
Skylight Room (Ninth Floor), 6:30pm
Co-sponsored with the Humanities Center
November 11, 2009 - Book party for Marjorie Rosen, CPCP fellow
Please join us for a reception to celebrate the publication of
Boom Town: How Walmart Transformed an All American Town into an International Community
(Chicago Review Press, 2009)
By Marjorie Rosen, Associate Professor of Journalism, Lehman College, and author of Popcorn Venus: Women, Movies, and the American Dream
Room 6107, 5:00pm
November 16,2009 - Film Screening: Jashn-e-Azadi:
How We Celebrate Freedom
In India, the contours of the conflict in Kashmir are invariably buried
under the facile depiction of an innocent population trapped between
the terrorist’s gun and the Army’s boot. But after 18 years of a bloody
armed struggle, after 60,000 civilians dead, and almost 7,000 enforced
disappearances, what really is contained in the sentiment for Azadi –
for freedom?
Shot and edited between August 2004-2006, Jashn-e-Azadi engages us with
the idea of Azadi in Kashmir.
Discussion to following the screening with Sanjay Kak, Director.
Room 9204/9205, 5:000 pm
PAST EVENTS
November 4, 2009 - JUSTIFYING THE AFGHANISTAN WAR:
A Conversation with
Talal Asad, Omar Dahbour, and Richard Miller
Is the war in Afghanistan essentially different from the war in Iraq? Was the purported connection of al-Qaeda to 9/11 a good reason for the US to intervene? Does the nature of the Taliban affect the justifications for the conflict? Has the way the US has been fighting the war change our view of its legitimacy?
A discussion with:
Talal Asad, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology, CUNY Graduate Center. Professor Asad focuses on the phenomenon of religion and secularism as an integral part of modernity as well as links with the modern discourse on human rights. He is the author of Formations of the Secular (Stanford University Press, 2003).
Omar Dahbour, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Hunter College & Graduate Center, CUNY. He is editor or author of Philosophical Perspectives on National Identity. His new book, Self-Determination Without Nationalism: Elements of A New Theory Of Sovereignty, is forthcoming from Temple University Press.
Richard Miller, Professor of Philosophy, Cornell University and author of Globalizing Justice: The Ethics of Poverty and Power (Oxford University Press, forthcoming). Professor Miller’s research concerns the ethics of war, the moral implications of American power, and how transnational relationships shape political responsibilities.
Room C201-202 (Lower Level), 6:30pm
November 3, 2009 - Right to the City, Right to Rights, and
Urban Citizenship
James Holston, author of Insurgent Citizenship: Disjunctions of Democracy and Modernity in Brazil, and Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, will give a public talk.
Rooms C198 (Lower Level), 6:30pm
November 2, 2009 - CONTESTING HONDURAS:
The Coup and Aftermath
Greg Grandin, Professor of History at NYU and Nation contributor, will discuss the coup in Honduras and its aftermath with Rodolfo Pastor, visiting professor at Harvard University.
Rooms C204-205 (Lower Level), 6:30pm
October 27,2009 - WOMEN AMONG WARLORDS: Rebuilding Afghanistan
Democratization in Afghanistan is ineluctably tied to realizing the rights of women as a central part of grassroots civic engagement and development. This panel presents women working on the ground in Afghanistan to reconstruct their country. Speakers:
Malalai Joya, Minister of Parliament in the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. Joya set up a secret underground school for girls under the Taliban and, when they were toppled, ran for parliament. She is the author of A Woman Among Warlords: The Extraordinary Story of an Afghan Who Dared to Raise Her Voice (Simon and Schuster, 2009).
Awista Ayub fled Afghanistan in 1981 for the U.S. After the fall of the Taliban, she returned to Kabul and founded the Afghan Youth Sports Exchange, dedicated to nurturing Afghan girls through soccer, as described in However Tall the Mountain (Hyperion 2009).
Nasrine Gross, founder of The Roqia Center for Women's Rights, Studies and Education in Afghanistan. Professor Gross’ work is profiled in Walking the Precipice: Witness to the Rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan (Feminist Press, 2009).
Moderated by:
Laura Flanders, GritTV
Tuesday, October 27, 2009 at 3.00 pm
Skylight Room (9th floor)
October 23,2009 - Witness to War: Afghan Poetry and Narratives
PCP presents an evening of readings from Afghan American writers. These pieces are by survivors, those who escaped, those who returned, those haunted, those who have suffered loss. Their work is published in the first Anthology of Contemporary Afghan American Literature (University of Arkansas Press, forthcoming). Authors:
Naheed Elyasi fled Afghanistan in 1982, three years after the Soviet invasion. Her family walked across the mountains into Pakistan, where they lived for one year before being accepted as refugees to the U.S. She is a contributing writer for Zeba Magazine.
Masood Kamandy is an image maker and an aspiring sufi who splits his time between Brooklyn and Khorasan. His work is on wordsbecomeimages.com
Zohra Saed received her MFA at Brooklyn College. Her poetry and essays have been Gallerie International Journal: Afghanistan Ed. Bina Sarkar (India: 2009); The Crab Orchard Review (Summer/Fall 2009); and in Speaking for Herself: Asian Women’s Writings (Penguin India Books: 2009).
Sahar Muradi was born in Kabul, Afghanistan. She and her family emigrated to the United States when she was three years old. Sahar received her M.P.A. in Interntional Development from New York University. Her writing has been featured in literary magazines, newspapers, as well as read on public radio. In 2003, Sahar returned to her native Kabul to work for two years.
Afifa Yusufi is currently working in the Green Zone in Baghdad, Iraq. She was born in Kandahar and fled the Russian invasion of Afghanistan with her family when she was two. She returned in 2003 to assist U.S. Medical and Civil Affairs unites on behalf of destitute Afghans. She is currently working as a strategic consultant for senior government officials in Baghdad.
Skylight Room, 6.30 pm
October 15,2009 - Film Screening: Iracema: Uma Transa Amazonica
Iracema, an Amazonian Affair (1976), directed by Jorge Bodanzky and Orlando Senna, is about a fifteen year old prostitute who meeets truck driver Sebastio, a.k.a. "Tiao Brazil Grande", and travels with him along the Amazon Forest through a highway built by the military government. Its documentary scenes of massive slash-and-burn deforestation and abandonment of Brazilian people was key in bringing international concern over the future of the Amazon.
Discussion to following the screening with
Tatiana Schor, Professor at Federal University of Amazonas
Fiona Jeffries, Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Center for Place, Culture and Politics.
Room C198, 6.30 pm
October 14,2009 - Fixer: The Taking of Ajmal Nashqbandi
Fixer: The Taking of Ajmal Naqshbandi (2009) ) is a feature-length documentary that follows the relationship between an Afghan interpreter and his client, American journalist Christian Parenti. The situation shifts dramatically when Ajmal is kidnapped by the Taliban along with an Italian reporter, but is singularly executed. This intimate portrait of two colleagues presents a provocative insight into the social and cultural politics of producing journalism from the heart of the 21st century’s killing fields.
Discussion to following the screening with director Ian Olds, recipient of the Tribeca Film Festival’s 2009 Best New Documentary Filmmaker award, and Christian Parenti, correspondent for The Nation and author of The Freedom: Shadows and Hallucinations in Occupied Iraq.
Moderated by Saadia Toor, Professor of Sociology at the College of Staten Island and Fiona Jeffries, Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Center for Place, Culture and Politics.
Proshansky Auditorium, 6.30 pm
Click here for flyer
Co-sponsored with the Center for Humanities and
the Ralph Bunche Institute
October 7,2009 - Faultlines Afghanistan:
Ending Obama's War
October 7th marks the eighth anniversary of the launch of the US led “War on Terror” in Afghanistan. Defending it as a “war of necessity,” the Obama administration is on the precipice of an enormous troop surge in Afghanistan and an escalation in Pakistan. This strategic dialogue will explore a deeper historic analysis of the realities on the ground in order to inform our resistance in the U.S.
Speakers:
Jeremy Scahill is the author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army. He is a frequent contributor to The Nation magazine and a correspondent for Democracy Now!
Zoya is a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee of Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan.
Bill Fletcher is the Executive Editor of The Black Commentator and founder of the Center for Labor Renewal. A longtime labor, racial justice and international activist, he is the immediate past president of TransAfrica Forum.
Proshansky Auditorium, 7.00 pm
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Co-sponsored with the South Asia Solidarity Initiative and The Nation
October 5, 2009 - Film Screening: Lei Fung
Directed by Dong Zhaoqi
This is a classic propaganda film that celebrates the life of Lei Feng (1940-1962) a peasant from Hunan Province who devoted his life to “serving the people.” He joined the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and worked as a truck driver before being made a squad leader. After his death from “a traffic accident” he was immortalized by Chairman Mao who wrote an essay “Learn from Lei Feng” that portrayed Lei as a model worker and as a powerful emblem of socialist collectivism. This film is not just a provocative historical document but a springboard for a discussion about the state of the Chinese worker today.
Presented by Peter Hitchcock,
Associate Director
Center for Place, Culture and Politics
Monday, 5th October, Room C198, at 6.30pm
Click here for flyer
September 29, 2009 - The Right to the City and the Urban Commons
A conversation between Don Mitchell, Neil Smith and David Harvey
The right to the city concerns not only access to the public spaces and to the common property resources that currently constitute the city. It also entails a political project to open up new public spaces and to shape a new urban commons open to all, no matter what a person's or a social group's economic power or civil status. Don Mitchell (The Right to the City: Social Justice and the Fight for Public Space, New York and London: Guilford Press 2003), Neil Smith (Uneven Development: Nature, Capital and the Production of Space, University of Georgia Press 2008) and David Harvey (Social Justice and the City, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973) will offer up their own ideas and debate the nature of this political project.
Recital Hall, 7.00 pm
September 22,2009 - The End or Future of Capitalism
A conversation between Alexander Cockburn and David Harvey
Moderated by Laura Flanders from GRIT/TV
Proshansky Auditorium, 7.30 pm
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September 18, 2009 - The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
Discussion to follow with Executive Producer Rod Stoneman, Irish Film Board
and Sujatha Fernandes,Professor of Sociology, Queens College
Click here for flyer
June 29, 2009 - Shape or Shaped?
In a city that has long-catered to the needs of global capital, what openings does the current fiscal crisis present for the re-shaping of NYC according to people's needs? Join us for the closing of the Jan-June Season of the Out of the Global City series, as we explore the cracks opening up space for our dreams, needs, and desires to take root.
Speakers from The Alliance of Resident Theatres/New York (A.R.T./New York) and The Right to the City will lead the discussion.
St. Mark's Church, 2nd Ave. and E.10th Street, 3.30 pm - 6.00 pm
For more information visit www.thefoundrytheatre.org
May 30, 2009 - The Safe City
"Broken windows" style policing and security has had detrimental consequences for NYC's diverse communities and cultural landscape. It was also a major factor in New York's transformation into a global city - New York was bought and sold as "safe" to national and international financial and media conglomerates. Today, finances circulated here flow to fund security, prisons, and detention industries critical to America's 'War on Terror'. How have these ongoing transactions worked to create an even more contested space? How has New York City been made unsafe - and for whom?
Part of the "Out of the Global City" public dialogue series of
the Foundry Theatre.
St. Mark's Church, 2nd Ave. and E.10th Street, 3.30 pm - 6.00 pm
May 19, 2009 - Whose Land Is It? A conversation with Max Rameau
“Whose Land Is It?” is a roundtable discussion with Take Back the Land leader Max Rameau on land and housing; squatting, showdowns, and takeovers; and local and national movement-building.
Discussants include:
Peter Marcuse, Neil Smith, Brenda Stokely, and Frank Morales.
Martin Segal Theatre, 6.30 pm - 9.00 pm
May 4, 2009 - Breaking the Siege:Justice for Atenco
Documentary screening about social movements against the privatization of
development in Mexico
Martin Segal Theatre, 1.30 pm - 4.30 pm
Click here for flyer
May 2, 2009 - We Are Gaza:
Connecting the Dots Between Gaza, Afghanistan, Iraq, Kashmir & Pakistan
At the Brecht Forum, 451 West Street
6.30 pm - 9.00 pm
Click here for more information
April 20, 2009 - Profiling Alienated Labor:
Racism, Crisis and Prisons in the Age of Obama
Ruth Wilson Gilmore, University of Southern California
The Skylight Room (9th floor), 4.30 pm
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April 2 and 3, 2009 - Crisis States:
The Uncertain Future of Israel/Palestine
The Martin Segal Theatre, 10.30 am
Click here for poster
Click here for program
March 17, 2009 - Banishing Brazil:
The Politics of Place in 1920s Coffee Commerce
Micol Seigel, Assistant Professor of African Diaspora Studies,
Indiana University at Bloomington
The Skylight Room (9th floor), 6.30 pm
Click here for flyer
March 11, 2009 - AIDS and Gender Violence
Panel discussion with authors Ida Susser and Sally Merry
Moderated by Neil Smith
Room C198, 6.30 pm; Reception to follow in the Brockway Room
March 10, 2009 - The Right to the City
Solidarity Reception
The Center for Place, Culture and Politics, Room 6107, 6.30 pm
February 25, 2009 - Armed Struggle and
The Future of Tamil Politics in Sri Lanka
The Skylight Room (9th floor), 6.30 pm
Click here for flyer
February 4, 2009 - Uneven Development:
Nature, Capital and the Production of Space
(University of Georgia Press, 2009 [Third Edition])
Book party for Professor Neil Smith
The Center for Place, Culture and Politics, Room 6107 at 6.30 pm
Click here for flyer
December 12, 2008 - Radical Urbanism:
Critical Discourse on the Right to the City
A one-day conference in honor of the
80th birthday of Professor Peter Marcuse
The Recital Hall, 9 AM - 6 PM, Reception to follow
Free and open to the public
Click here for flyer
December 4, 2008 - Secular Devotion:
Afro-Latin Music and Imperial Jazz (Verso, 2008)
Book party for Tim Brennan, University of Minnesota
The Center for Place, Culture and Politics, Room 6107 at 6.00 pm
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November 18, 2008 - Rebuilding Local Food Economies
Room 9204 at 6.00 pm
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November 13, 2008 - CPCP Film Series 2008: Manufactured Landscapes
Room 9206/9207 at 6.00 pm
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November 12, 2008 - New York For Sale: Community Planning
Confronts Global Real Estate (MIT Press, 2008)
Book party for Tom Angotti,
Professor of Urban Planning, Hunter College
The Sociology Lounge, Room 6112 at 6.00 pm
Click here for flyer
November 11, 2008 - Postcolonial Perspectives on the
Financial Crisis
A panel discussion with:
Fernando Coronil, University of Michigan, Anthropology
Manu Goswami, New York University, History and East Asian Studies
Hester Eisentein, CUNY Graduate Center, Sociology
Don Robotham, CUNY Graduate Center, Anthropology
Moderated by:
Professor Ida Susser (CUNY Graduate Center, Anthropology) and
Padmini Biswas (Columbia University, Urban Planning)
Click here for flyer
October 30, 2008 - Das Kapital Party
A reception celebrating the completion of Professor David Harvey's
free digital lectures on Das Kapital (www.davidharvey.org)
The Brockway Room (Room 6410), 5.30 pm
Click here for flyer
October 29, 2008 - The Disruption: Left Interpretations
of the Financial Crisis
A panel discussion at 6.00 pm in the Proshansky Auditorium with:
Leo Panitch, Distinguished Research Professor, University of York and Editor of the Socialist Register
Doug Henwood, Editor of The Left Business Observer
David Harvey, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Geography, CUNY Graduate Center
Hector Figueroa, Secretary-Treasurer of SEIU Local 32BJ and affiliate, New York Civic Participation Project
Maliha Safri, Assistant Professor of Economics, Drew University
Co-sponsored with the Humanities Center
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October 7, 2008 - How Does It Feel To Be a Problem?
Being Young and Arab in America
Book party for Moustafa Bayoumi,
Professor Of English, Brooklyn College
Click here for flyer
October 1, 2008 - Soybean Wars: Militarization, Agribusiness Exploitation and Community Resistance in Paraguay
Leticia Galeano, Campesina and youth leader from Paraguay
Click here for flyer
September 11, 2008 - CPCP Film Series 2008: The Weather Underground
Discussion to follow with Cathy Wilkerson, former Weather Underground activist
Click here for flyer
May 14, 2008 - CUNY Center for Place, Culture & Politics Spring Party!
Click here for flyer
May 8, 2008 - Housing Not Warehousing : a panel on vacant property, gentrification, and the possibilities for resistance Featuring:
Ed Ott, New York City Central Labor Council
Helena Wong, Chinatown Tenants Union at the Committee Against Anti-Asian Violence
Stephen Pimpare, PhD, author and academic
Housing campaign leaders from Picture the Homeless (www.picturethehomeless.org)
Click here for flyer
May 6, 2008 - Conservative and Progressive Geopolitics: Paranoia, Force and Law: Paranoia, Force & Law
Gerry Kearns
Click here for flyer
March 27, 2008 - The Fire and the Word: A History of the Zapatista Movement
Gloria Munoz Ramirez
Click here for flyer
March 28, 2008 - Demystifying Pakistan: Understanding the Current Crisis
Dr. Ayesha Siddiqa
Anil Kalhan
Kiran Khalid
Dr. Sahar Shafqat
Moderated by Saadia Toor
Click here for flyer
March 25, 2008 - Precipitation and Event: Climate Change and the Politics of Water
Melinda Cooper
Click here for flyer
March 17, 2008: Reception: Branding New York: How a City in Crisis was Sold to the World
Miriam Greenberg
Click here for flyer
February 26, 2008 - Outlaw Bodies and Lawless Spaces: How Law Produces Abjection
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December 12, 2007 - Winter Celebration
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November 29, 2007 - Decoding Liberation
PDF
November 13, 2007 - The Movement for Justice in el Barrio
PDF
November 1, 2007 - The Living New Deal
PDF
October 30, 2007 - Cities as Battlespace: The New Military Urbanism
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