International Visitors: 2009-2010
International Visitor 2009-10
Laurent Cohen-Tanugi is a Paris-based international lawyer, policy adviser and public intellectual.
An alumnus of the Ecole Normale Supérieure, of the Institute of Political Studies of Paris and of the Harvard Law School, Laurent Cohen-Tanugi holds an agrégation in French literature from the University of Paris.
A member of the Paris and New York Bars, his practice focuses on international arbitration, competition law, and policy advisory work. In the fall of 2007, he was appointed by the French government to lead a task force on the future of the European Union’s Lisbon Strategy, ahead of the French Presidency of the EU (Beyond Lisbon: A European Strategy For Globalisation, Peter Lang, 2008, www.euroworld2015.eu).
He is the author of several seminal books, including Le Droit sans l'Etat (PUF, 1985), a comparative essay on the French and American legal and political traditions, prefaced by Professor Stanley Hoffmann of Harvard University, which he will revise and update during his stay at the Stanford Humanities Center; La Métamorphose de la Démocratie(Odile Jacob, 1989), on the changes affecting the French and European democratic cultures since the late sixties;L'Europe en danger(Fayard, 1992), anticipating the current crisis of political Europe. His latest English-language works include An Alliance At Risk: The United States And Europe After September 11 (Johns Hopkins University Press, September 2003), exploring the present state and future prospects of transatlantic relations, and, most recently,The Shape of the World to Come: Charting the Geopolitics of a New Century (Columbia University Press, 2008), in which he takes on both the advocates and the vituperators of globalization (Columbia University Press, 2008), which he will discuss at length during his time on campus. He will also present an in-depth analysis of the mediterranean agenda(s) of the European Union; his visit is co-sponsored by the Mediterranean Studies Forum.
Laurent Cohen-Tanugi will be visiting Stanford from mid-February to mid-March, 2010.
Related material:
"Conversations with History" -- Laurent Cohen-Tanugi
"La Décennie de la dernière chance" -- article in Les Echosby Laurent Cohen-Tanugi (January 19, 2010)
"L'avenir de la stratégie de Lisbonne" -- article in Le Mondeby Laurent Cohen-Tanugi (December 25, 2009) (English version available here.)
"Contre l'Obama-scepticisme" -- article in Les Echos by Laurent Cohen-Tanugi (December 15, 2009)
"Les nouvelles illusions perdues de la vieille Europe" -- article in Les Echosby Laurent Cohen-Tanugi (February 16, 2010)
"Lettre de Stanford" -- article in Les Echos by Laurent Cohen-Tanugi (March 16, 2010)
"The Shape of the World to Come"--article about Laurent Cohen-Tanugi in the Harvard Law Bulletin (Winter 2011)
"Quand l'Europe s'éveillera," Le Monde, by Laurent Cohen-Tanugi (February 2, 2011)
"Du Viagra pour l'Europe," in Non Fiction (January 22, 2011)
FSI-Humanities Center International Visitor 2009-10
Nuffield College, Oxford
Diego Gambetta is a sociologist at Nuffield College, Oxford, working on theories of trust and signals. He is known for his book The Sicilian Mafia and his edited volume Making Sense of Suicide Missions. While at Stanford, he will discuss his recent manuscript, "Engineers of Jihad," as well as his new book, Codes of the Underworld: How Criminals Communicate.
Diego Gambetta will be visiting Stanford from late March to late April, 2010.
Related material:
"Why are there so many Engineers among Islamic Radicals?" -- article published in the European Journal of Sociology, L, 2 (2009)
"Heroic Impatience" -- article published in The Nation( March 4, 2010)
International Visitor 2009-10
Mohsen Namjoo is an Iranian artist, songwriter, singer, music scholar, and setar player (traditional persian lute). Nicknamed the "Bob Dylan of Iran," he is one of the most groundbreaking artists in the Persian music scene today.
Namjoo was born in 1976 in Torbat-e Jam, Iran, and began his musical training at the age of twelve, studying under Nasrollah Nasehpoor until the age of eighteen. In 1994 he was offered admission to study theater and music at University of Tehran. Since the music program at the university wouldn't start for another year, he first joined the theater course, where he learnt how to connect with an audience. At Tehran University he was a student of Alireza Mashayekhi, Azin Movahed, and other masters. Namjoo has also studied Iranian folk music under Haj Ghorbane Soleimani.
His unique music style resembles a patchwork of the classical Persian poetry of Hafez, Rumi, or Saadi and Western music, namely rock, blues, and jazz.
Since 2003, he has started recording parts of his own works in Tehran. His debut album, titled Toranj, was officially released in Iran in September 2007, and featured his own voice. He has also composed soundtracks for movies and plays, and was featured in the documentary Sounds of Silence (directed by Amir Hamz and Mark Lazarz), which has been screened at international film festivals. He also appeared in the feature narrative film Few Kilograms of Dates for the Funeral (Director Saman Salur). Namjoo's first performance outside Iran was in January 2006 at the Tehran Hotspot of the International Rotterdam Film Festival where he played solo.
His Stanford visit is co-sponsored by the Hamid and Christina Moghadam Program in Iranian Studies. Mohsen Namjoo will be on campus from mid-October to mid-January, 2010. His residency at the Humanities Center was made possible through the generous support of the Flora Family Foundation and the Hariri Family.
Related material:
Live performance at the Pan-Asian Music Festival - Friday, February 5, 2010 Dinkelspiel Auditorium | 7:00p.m. Pre-Concert Talk on Music in Iran after the Revolution | 8:00p.m. Dela Didi: Do You See My Heart? Read more >>
Live performance by Mohsen Namjoo - Dah-e-Shast (The Eighties)
Live performance at the Humanities Center - Del Miravad
Live performance at the Humanities Center - Ro Sar Bench
Live performance at the Humanities Center - Untitled song in the Iranian Nava music scale
FSI-Humanities Center International Visitor 2009-10
Chulalongkorn University
Thitinan Pongsudhirak, an International Visitor in 2009-10, is a high-profile expert on contemporary political, economic, and foreign-policy issues in Thailand today.
Pongsudhirak is not senior in years, but he is in stature. His career path has been meteoric since he earned his BA in political science with distinction at UC Santa Barbara only ten years ago. In 2001, he received the United Kingdom’s Best Dissertation Prize for his doctoral thesis at the London School of Economics on the political economy of the Thai economic crisis in 1997.
Since 2006 he has held an associate professorship in international relations at Thailand’s premier institution of higher education, Chulalongkorn University, while simultaneously heading the Institute of Security and International Studies, the country’s leading think tank on foreign affairs.
His publications include: “After the Red Uprising” in Far East Economic Review, May 2009; “Why Thais Are Angry” in The New York Times, 18 April 2009; “Thailand Since the Coup” in Journal of Democracy, October-December 2008; “Thaksin: Competitive Authoritarian and Flawed Dissident” in John Kane, Haig Patapan and Benjamin Wong (eds), Dissident Democrats: The Challenge of Democratic Leadership in Asia, New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. He was Salzburg Global Seminar Faculty Member in June 2009, Japan Foundation’s Cultural Leader in 2008, Visiting Research Fellow at ISEAS in Singapore in 2005.
For ten years, in tandem with his academic career, he worked as an analyst for The Economist’s Intelligence Unit. He has written on bilateral free-trade areas in Asia, co-authored a book on Thailand’s trade policy, and is admired by Southeast Asianist historians for having insightfully revisited, in a 2007 essay, the sensitive matter of Thailand’s role during World War II.
Thitinan Pongsudhirak will be visiting from March 1 to April 30, 2010.
Related material:
"Thailand's Endless Endgame" (2009) - Article in Project Syndicate
"The Search for a New Consensus" (2009) - Article in The Journal of International Security Affairs
"Battle Between Continuity and Change: Thailand's Tospy-Turvy Foreign Policy Directions" (2009) - Article in Global Asia
"Thai Protestors Shed Culture of Restraint" - New York Times article from March 31, 2010, cites Thitinan Pongsudhirak
"Thailand's Battle of Attrition" - New York Times op-ed, April 1, 2010
"Thailand in Yellow and Red" - Article in Project Syndicate,March 18, 2011
"From Truce to Reconciliation in Thailand"- Wall St. Journal, May 6, 2012
FSI-Humanities Center International Visitor 2009-10
Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology, University of Stellenbosch
Steven Robins is an anthropologist from Stellenbosch University in South Africa whose research covers issues of governance, citizenship, and social mobilization in post-conflict societies. Robins will give lectures and seminars based on his book, From Revolution to Rights in South Africa: Social Movement, NGOs and Popular Politics.
Steven Robins will be visiting from mid February to mid March, 2010.
FSI-Humanities Center International Visitor 2009-10
IRICE lab (Identités, Relations Internationales, et Civilisations de l’Europe), CNRS, Paris I and IV
Anne Simonin is a historian at the CNRS in the IRICE lab (Identités, Relations Internationales, et Civilisations de l’Europe), which is affiliated with the universities of Paris I and IV. During her visit, she will focus on her latest groundbreaking work, published in 2008, Le Déshonneur dans la République, devoted to the concept of “indignity” in a cultural and legal context from the French Revolution to the emergence of the Fifth Republic (1789-1958).
Anne Simonin will be visiting Stanford from mid-January to mid-February 2010.
Related material:
Bliss Carnochan Visitor 2009-10
Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London
Julian Stallabrass is one of the most influential art critics in the United Kingdom and a Reader in modern and contemporary art at the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London. His most recent book, Art Incorporated (2004), is an investigative work about the globalization of the art world since 1989, and its ideological affinities with neoliberalism.
Julian Stallabrass will be visiting Stanford from April 1 to April 20, 2010.
The Bliss Carnochan Visitor is presented in honor of Bliss Carnochan, the Richard W. Lyman Professor of Humanities, Emeritus, and director of the Humanities Center from 1985-1991.
Related material:
