Olga Kamenchuk is director of international studies at VCIOM (Russian Public Opinion Research Center), the leading opinion polling company in the post-Soviet area. She has headed over 100 opinion research projects for such institutions as the European Commission, United Nations Development Program, Cambridge University, Annenberg School for Communication, Bloomberg, Thomson Reuters, and Asahi Shimbun. In this presentation, she will discuss why a majority of Russians have gone from regarding the United States as a friend 25 years ago to an enemy today. Kamenchuk is head of the Department of Sociology of Mass Communication at Moscow State University of International Relations and teaches political psychology, applied sociological analysis, and sociology of mass media. Read more and register at go.osu.edu/kamenchuko

Raymond "Bud" Duvall is Morse-Alumni Distinguished Teaching Professor of Political Science at University of Minnesota. Among his publications are Power in Global Governance (Cambridge, 2005, co-edited with Michael Barnett) and Cultures of Insecurity: States, Communities, and the Production of Danger (Minnesota, 1999, co-edited with Jutta Weldes, Mark Laffey and Hugh Gusterson). In this talk, Duvall will address a newly emerging conceptualization of war in which humans are largely removed from direct participation on the battlefield through the use of drones, battlefield robotics, cyber warfare, and the weaponization of orbital space.  Duvall asks how this type of war affects the principle of territorial state sovereignty, which is the foundation of the nation-state system. Read more and register at go.osu.edu/duvallr

Cardinal Peter Turkson, one of the primary contributors to Pope Francis's environment encyclical, Praise Be to You (Laudato Si'): On Care for our Common Home, will contribute to the worldwide dialog on the relation of humans to the natural world that has been sparked by Pope Francis's encyclical. Cardinal Turkson's talk will be followed by a fireside chat with Ohio State's President Drake. Turkson has become the face of climate change at the Vatican, having led the drafting process of Pope Francis' encyclical on the environment. The purpose of encyclical is to elevate the debate on the moral dimensions of protecting the environment and to highlight the intrinsic connection between respect for the environment and respect for people. Turkson's visit to Ohio State is part of a four-day stay in Columbus. Read more and register

Ryan Irwin is assistant professor at State University of New York-Albany. His first book was Gordian Knot: Apartheid and the Unmaking of the Liberal World Order (Oxford, 2012), and he is currently completing two new book projects. The first is a collective biography -- focused on Dean Acheson, Felix Frankfurter, Harold Laski, and Walter Lippmann -- that explores the growth and meaning of American liberal internationalism during the mid-20th century. The second book project looks at six moments when the United States tried to reorganize world affairs in the 20th century. In this talk, Irwin will discuss how a generation of U.S. elites debated the instruments and purpose of global governance in four historical moments from World War I to the 1990s. Read more and register at go.osu.edu/irwinr

• Jonathan Shay, author of Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character and Odysseus in America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of Homecoming, will deliver the symposium's keynote address.
• Czech designer Simona Ryb�kov� leads the creation of a performance/installation and will deliver the Ohio State Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee Theatre Research Institute lecture.
• Emmy and Independent Spirit award-winning filmmaker Heather Courtney will screen her film Where Soldiers Come From.
• Kevin McClatchy will perform his new solo play, Scrap Heap, about a Special Forces veteran with PTSD.

Other notable participants include Mershon affiliate and decorated veteran Peter Mansoor (left), Ohio State endowed chair of History Bruno Cabanes, combat veteran and founder of American Women Veterans Genevieve Chase, and award-winning playwright and actor Bianca Sams.

 

The goal of the symposium is to employ the interactive, visceral nature of the performing and visual arts in conjunction with leading scholarly enterprise as well as community outreach efforts to provoke new dialogue, explore creative works, share resources, advance scholarship and promote a lasting, active engagement with the realities of the costs of war.

 

As the United States emerges from nearly 14 years of sustained military combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, Responsibility, Morality and the Costs of War: PTSD, Moral Injury and Beyond will expand and deepen the examination into the myriad costs of war. We hope to galvanize the Ohio State student population and the Central Ohio community as a gateway to impacting the national/international conversation concerning war and its costs.

 

Find a full conference schedule at go.osu.edu/costsofwar

Over the past weeks, the world has observed dramatic scenes of desperate people trying to reach Europe by embarking on flimsy boats in Turkey and Greece, crossing barbed wire fences in Bulgaria and Hungary, catching rides in overcrowded trains in Macedonia, and sleeping in public squares in Serbia and elsewhere. Locals are divided; while some greet the refugees with water, blankets, and toys, others utter ugly words, emphasize their own economic vulnerability, or simply turn their eyes away. This discussion will focus on the difference between local and national media representations of the refugee crisis in Europe and how they vary from country to country, as well as the role of human trafficking. Panelists include Yana Hashamova (left), chair, Department of Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures (co-sponsor); Theodora Dragostinova, associate professor, Department of History (co-sponsor); and Jessie Labov, associate professor, Department of Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures. Read more at go.osu.edu/refugeecrisis

Tania Murray Li is professor of anthropology at University of Toronto, where she holds the Canada Research Chair in the Political Economy and Culture of Asia. Her publications include Land's End: Capitalist Relations on an Indigenous Frontier (Duke, 2014), Powers of Exclusion: Land Dilemmas in Southeast Asia (with Derek Hall and Philip Hirsch, NUS Press, 2011), The Will to Improve: Governmentality, Development, and the Practice of Politics (Duke, 2007) and many articles on land, development, resource struggles, community, class, and indigeneity with a focus on Indonesia. In this talk, Li will draw on two decades of ethnographic research in Sulawesi, Indonesia, to offer an intimate account of the emergence of capitalist relations among indigenous highlanders who privatized their common land to plant a global market crop, cacao. Some prospered; others lost their land. The story has potent messages for social movement activists, who expect indigenous people to be guardians of community, tradition, and food production. It also interrupts transition narratives in which people who lose their land march off to find jobs. When jobs are scarce, land's end is a dead end, from which a different politics must emerge.

Climate change poses major challenges to local communities throughout the world as to how best to adapt and innovate. This panel draws on a team of experts that have done community-level climate adaptation research in multiple ecological settings in North America, Latin America and Southeast Asia to identify methods that can work for successful adaptation. Panelists include Cornelia Flora (left), Charles F. Curtiss Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Iowa State University; C.K. Shum, Distinguished University Scholar, School of Earth Sciences, at The Ohio State University; and Mary Emery, head of the Department of Sociology and Rural Studies at South Dakota State University. It will be moderated by Craig Jenkins, professor of sociology, political science and environmental science at Ohio State. Read more and register at go.osu.edu/watersecurity

• Promote active research collaborations between Ohio State faculty and partners 
• Address global issues (e.g. public health, public policy, climate change, sustainability) in a regional context
• Connect discipline-specific research to the implementation of projects and programs in diverse geopolitical and cultural settings 
• Explore the languages, cultures, arts, politics, economy, or socio-demographic aspects of an international region 
• Promote the understanding of countries, cultures and peoples though academic study