The Graduate School is pleased to sponsor a series of lectures that will be given by a number of recent recipients of our Senior Faculty Research Fellowships. These lectures will give the Georgetown faculty community an opportunity to hear about and discuss important work that is being done by their colleagues across a variety of disciplines. Faculty who serve on our research committee always comment that it's interesting to see what their colleagues are doing; this program will extend that benefit to the wider community.

The format will be different from that of the Graduate School Distinguished Lecturer Series (which will conclude with Noam Chomsky on November 8th). These lecturers will follow the general format of James O'Donnell's Provost Seminars that were offered recently. A 45-minute (or so) presentation will be followed by 30 minutes (or so) of discussion,
allowing what we hope will be high quality conversations about important work. All of the lectures will begin at 4:15 p.m. and will end at 5:30 p.m.

Four of these lectures are scheduled for the 2005-06 academic year:

Tuesday, October 11, 2005, Joanne Rappaport, Department of Spanish and
Portuguese

Topic: "Collaborative Ethnography: Activist Research and Anthropological
Theorizing in Colombia."

Precis: When scholars collaborate with grassroots organizations, the benefits that accrue to these groups is generally quite evident, but how does collaborative research contribute to the development of anthropological theory? My presentation will focus on collaborative
research I have been conducting over the past five years with Colombian indigenous organizations, focusing on the types of hybrid conceptual frameworks we have developed and on the ways in the dialogue between indigenous theorizing and anthropological theory has helped me to develop new perspectives on cultural planning in new social movements.

Thursday, February 9, 2006, Harley Balzer, Department of Government.

Topic: “Encountering the Global Exconomy After Communism: Russia and
China Compared”

Precis: Two events in mid-December 2004 illustrate the puzzle addressed here. Baikal Finanz, a previously unknown firm with no known officers and operating from a post box, won an auction to buy one of Russia’s major oil production companies, effectively re-nationalizing it. The same week Lenovo, a computer producer initially established by the
Chinese Academy of Sciences, purchased IBM’s personal computer division. Most observers looking at Russia and China in 1978 would have bet that Russia was better positioned for economic growth and international economic integration. The Soviet Union was a superpower with many of the “requisites” for development; China was an overwhelmingly peasant society emerging rom the chaos and isolation of the Cultural Revolution.  The literature on modernization and development suggests that Russia was
more likely to become a major industrial power; instead, Russia has experienced massive de-industrialization while China has become a significant global player. Why has this happened? Answers may be found in the character of the two countries’ integration with the international economy. Russia has become a natural resource exporter with many characteristics of petro-states. Russia’s economy is open, but integration is “thin,” involving sales of raw materials and import of finished goods. China has become a major
industrial producer, moving up technology chains and increasingly interdependent with other countries. China’s integration with the international economy is “thick,” and has generated coalitions of interests that have forced the government to permit greater openness and integration than Communist leaders intended.

Thursday, March 16, 2006, Sandra Calvert, Department of Psychology

Topic: “Entertainment Media for Children’s Learning in the 21st Century:
Lessons from the Children’s Digital Media Center”

Precis: The 21st century brings with it a vast array of emerging technological devices ranging from digital television to rapid online computer interfaces to videogames with rich visual graphics. Given that children and adolescents’ invest approximately 6 and a half hours per day with these technologies, how youth learn from these interfaces is of
considerable importance. This lecture summarizes interdisciplinary research findings from the Children’s Digital Media Center, a National Science Foundation Center based at Georgetown University with additional sites at Northwestern University, UCLA, UC Riverside, and the University of Texas at Austin. In particular, I will discuss the role of dialogue, defined as interactivity and identity, for children’s learning from various media platforms and the implications of a rapidly changing and pervasive media environment for literacy in the 21st century.


Wednesday, April 5, 2006, Jason Rosenblatt, Department of English

Topic: “Rabbinic Ideas in the Political Thought of John Selden”

Precis: John Selden (1584-1654) stands out in a century of greatness as one who sought “not fame but truth in an erudition more vast than was ever garnered by any other human mind.” Although scholars have examined his contributions to political theory, legal and constitutional history, and England’s Parliament, they have generally neglected Selden’s
rabbinic and especially talmudic publications, which take up most of the six folio volumes of his complete works and constitute his most mature scholarship. Professor Rosenblatt will discuss some of the post-biblical Hebraic ideas that served as the foundation of Selden’s own politica and religious thought. The history of the religious toleration of Jews in Britain is incomplete without acknowledgment of the impact of Selden’s uncommonly generous Hebrew scholarship.