Network Winter 2009 was held from Monday, January 12 to Friday, January 16, 2009 at the University of the Sacred Heart in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
The following seminars were offered:
Climate and Carbon: The Mechanics of Warming
Political Cultures of the Middle East
Writing from Experience: The Theory and Practice of Narrative
To application deadline for Network Winter 2009 has passed.
CLIMATE AND CARBON: THE MECHANICS OF WARMING
The Program
"The most colossal environmental disturbance in human history is under way. Ever-rising levels of the potent greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) are altering the cycles of matter and life and interfering with the Earth's natural cooling process. Melting Arctic ice and mountain glaciers are just the first relatively mild symptoms of what will result from this disruption of the planetary energy balance."
This quotation, from the MIT Press announcement of Tyler Volk's book, CO2 Rising: The World's Greatest Environmental Challenge, describes the central process that underlies global warming and climate change: the global carbon cycle. Today there is universal acceptance of the fact of global warming; until recently, however, there was acrimonious debate about the role of human emissions in this situation. The ever increasing level of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide is surely the world's biggest environmental challenge, as emissions from any point on earth can and do spread to any other part of the globe. Because the fossil fuel source of these emissions is the literal power behind global economic development, carbon dioxide will be in the headlines every year for the rest of our lives. What determines the rate at which carbon dioxide levels rise and how well can we predict its future behavior? Answering these questions requires us to understand the global carbon cycle, the astounding integration of biogeochemical pathways of carbon in living things, soil, air, and ocean.
This workshop is intended for instructors who teach science to majors and non-majors in courses ranging from environmental science to chemistry, geology and biology and those simply interested in better understanding climate change. No specific scientific expertise is necessary; some familiarity with statistics would be helpful.
Participants in this seminar received an in-depth look at the global carbon cycle, with focus on understanding the dynamics of the current rise in carbon dioxide. We created a picture that is based on biology, chemistry, geology, and the dynamics of atmosphere and ocean. The seminar included dissemination of information on the carbon cycle and its effect on plants, animals, land-dwelling organisms, ocean, and climate. We learned how to project the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and determine its effect on climate change. Participants engaged in sessions intended to develop and test materials for introducing these topics into their teaching.
Seminar readings were taken from Dr.Volk's new book, CO2 Rising: The World's Greatest Environmental Challenge (The MIT Press, Fall 2008), as well as a variety of recent journal articles and reviews dealing with this crucial problem.
Convener:
Tyler Volk is an award winning teacher at New York University whose published works include Gaia's Body: Toward a Physiology of Earth (The MIT Press, 2003), CO2 Rising: The World's Greatest Environmental Challenge (The MIT Press, Fall 2008), and numerous technical papers on the global carbon cycle. He received his Ph.D. in Applied Science from New York University in 1984 and is the founding director of NYU's Environmental Studies program. His current research interests include research on ecosystems and the function of metapatterns - functional universals for forms in space, processes in time, and concepts in mind - across a number of disciplines.
POLITICAL CULTURES OF THE MIDDLE EAST
The Program
This interdisciplinary seminar explored the influence of cultural norms, religious traditions, and values on political behavior and institutional patterns in the Middle East. Beginning with a critical review of the concept of political culture and its uses in political analysis, we focused on a select number of Middle Eastern societies, including Egypt, Iran, Turkey, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Saudi Arabia, examining several spheres of political life within these societies. These spheres include conceptions of political leadership and legitimacy, particularly in relation to religious authority; varying responses, to the West, modernity, and secularism; Islamic revival and the rise of fundamentalism; the relationship between the individual and the political community (with special reference to notions of rights vs. obligations, citizenship, and human rights); conceptions of "the Other" and their implication for the treatment of ethnic and religious minorities; the role of women in private and public life; patterns of associational life, civil society, and the prospects for democratic governance; and the impact of new media and globalization on political participation and change.
Our emphasis on the cultural dimension of politics is in no way intended to downplay the role of institutions, economic interests, natural resources, power relations, and external factors in Middle Eastern politics. What we demonstrated is not the primacy but the relevance of cultural traditions, religious beliefs, world views, and cultural norms and values to developing a deeper understanding of a society's political system. We will also be mindful of the considerable diversity in the political cultures of Middle Eastern countries and the widely different historical experiences (including colonial or semi-colonial relationship with the West), religious traditions (both majority and minority religions), economic resources, geography, and demographic characteristics that have created such diversity.
The seminar was of interest not only to faculty members in political science but also to those from the fields of history, cultural studies, women's studies, religion, and sociology whose focus is the Middle East or comparative studies.
Convener:
Ali Banuazizi is Professor of Political Science at Boston College and Director of the Program in Islamic Civilization and Societies. After receiving his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1968, he taught at Yale and the University of Southern California before joining the Boston College faculty in 1971. Since then, he has held visiting appointments at Tehran University, Princeton, Harvard, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Oxford University, and M.I.T. He served as the Editor of the journal of Iranian Studies from 1968 to 1982 and is a past President of the Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA).
Banuazizi is the author of numerous articles on society, culture, and politics in Iran and the Middle East, and the co-editor (with Myron Weiner) of three books on politics, religion and society in Southwest and Central Asia, including The State, Religion, and Ethnic Politics in Afghanistan, Iran, and Pakistan (1986), The Politics of Social Transformation in Afghanistan, Iran, and Pakistan (1994), and The New Geopolitics of Central Asia and Its Borderlands (1994). His forthcoming book on political martyrdom is tentatively titled Sacrificing the Self and Others in the Way of God.
WRITING FROM EXPERIENCE: THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF NARRATIVE
The Program
There are many disciplines that use autobiographical writing to explore the relationship between analytical thought and critical/creative writing. The feminist essays compiled in This Bridge Called My Back (1981), bell hooks' love, Ruth Behar's writings on auto-anthropology, and the urban chronicles of Carlos Monsiváis, José Joaquín Blanco, Pedro Lemebel and Edgardo Rodriguez Juliá have established that experience is a source of knowledge, especially in the construction of identity and its logos. Through these and other works, autobiography has been validated as a point of departure (or arrival) in the validation of different rationalities and knowledges.
In this seminar, we discussed the basic elements of creative writing and how to use these writing techniques for the development of critical and analytical thought. Areas of focus included: how an anecdote turns into an argument; how to select the proper tone, vocabulary and style for writing about the Self; how to depict characters in different and distinct cultural settings; and how to solve the problems of structure and editing. We also referred to the writing practices of Rubén Darío, José Martí, Alejo Carpentier, Carlos Monsiváis, Elena Poniatowska, Tom Wolfe, Ana Lidia Vega, Edgardo Rodríguez Juliá, Federico Campbell, Alma Guillermo Prieto, Pedro Juan Gutierrez, Pedro Lemebel Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Truman Capote and others to demonstrate writing from experience.
This seminar was open to any faculty members, regardless of discipline, who wanted to explore how autobiographical writing may be used as a pedagogical tool.
Each session was divided into two parts. First, we discussed the theory of autobiographical writing and related terms, such as autofiction, auto-anthropology, experience, chronicles, new journalism and testimony. Then we engaged in writing and editing exercises. The class created a weblog where participants will post texts they produce during the course. The blog also served as a pretext to discuss the role of experience and identity utilizing emergent information and communication technologies.
Convener:
Mayra Santos-Febres is a professor in the Department of Hispanic Studies in the College of the Humanities at the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras. She is an award-winning novelist and poet as well as a specialist in Latin American and Caribbean literatures. Her published works include Glass Fish, a collection of short stories, and Our Lady of the Night, her latest novel.