- Fall 2008 Colloquia

- New York Immigration Series

- Politics and Protest

Fall 2008 Colloquia

Sept. 19

Faculty Membership Committee - cancelled
Open Faculty Meeting 1 - 2pm
Colloquim and Reception 3 - 6pm

Professor Seyla Benhabib
“ Cosmopolitan Norms, Human Rights and Democratic Iterations”
Yale University

In this lecture I will discuss one of the most divisive controversies of our times:
What are cosmopolitan rights? Are they, as some argue, “the Trojan horse” of an imperial neo-liberal order extending throughout the globe (James Tully)? Or are they principles of any future cosmopolitical order based on the principles of equality, autonomy and self-government, as I would like to claim, along with others such as Juergen Habermas and David Held?
I will argue that those who see these transformations to be “Trojan horses” of a neo-liberal empire or others who view them as inevitable by-products of neo-liberal globalization are equally wrong. The “world is not flat” (Thomas Friedman) and the “Trojan horse” does not just migrate from the center to the periphery but from the periphery to the center as well.

Oct. 24

Professor Rick Fantasia -
Smith College

"The Magic of 'Americanism': French Gastronomy in the Age of Neo-Liberalism"

Rick Fantasia is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Kahn Liberal Arts Institute, an innovative center for collaborative and interdisciplinary research at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. His research interests have centered on questions of labor, of culture, and of their interpenetration, in both the U.S. and in France. His principal publications include the book Cultures of Solidarity: Consciousness, Action and Contemporary American Workers (U. of California Press, 1988), which won three awards from the ASA, and Hard Work: Remaking the American Labor Movement (U. of California Press, 2004) (with K.Voss), an enlarged version of a book published by the late Pierre Bourdieu in his celebrated Raisons d’Agir book series. In 2004 his article “Dictatorship OVER the Proletariat: Repression and Work in the U.S.” (published in ACTES de la recherche en sciences sociales in 2001) won the prize for best article on labor published from 2001 to 2003" by the Labor and Labor Movements Section of the ASA. For over a decade Fantasia has been doing research on social transformations in the field of French gastronomy and is currently completing a book with the working title of “The Magic of ‘Americanism’: French Gastronomy in the Age of Neo-Liberalism”.

Nov. 14

Professor Jerry Jacobs- “Interdisciplinarity: A Skeptical View”
University of Pennsylvania

Jerry Jacobs is Professor of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, where he has taught since earning his PhD in Sociology from Harvard University in 1983. He has served as President of the Eastern Sociological Society and recently completed a three-year term as editor of the American Sociological Review.
He has written extensively on opportunities for working women over the last two decades. His research has addressed a number of aspects of women's employment, including authority, earnings, working conditions, part-time work, and entry into male-dominated occupations. His research projects include a study of women's entry into the medical profession, and a study of working time and work-family conflict among university faculty

Dec. 5

Professor Robin Wagner–Pacifici
“Restless Events”
Swarthmore College

Robin Wagner-Pacifici is the Gil and Frank Mustin Professor of Sociology at Swarthmore College. Her work has examined critical social and political events, analyzing their trajectories into and out of violence. This work includes analysis of terrorist kidnappings (The Moro Morality Play: Terrorism as Social Drama, 1986), urban police actions (Discourse and Destruction: The City of Philadelphia vs MOVE, 1994), extremist groups in standoffs with the law enforcement (Theorizing the Standoff: Contingency in Action, 2000), and military surrenders at the conclusion of war (The Art of Surrender: Decomposing Sovereignty at Conflict's End, 2005). Recently, she has published work on policy documents of state strategy, “The Innocuousness of State Lethality in an Age of National Security,” South Atlantic Quarterly, 2008, and has presented on unacknowledged connections between different forms of state violence, “Torture, War, and Capital Punishment: Linkages and Missed Connections,” at a workshop on capital punishment. Her talk will present a theory of events that builds from her work on violent events.