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Friday Bulletin March 31, 2017

Screening of “La Piedra Austente” (“The Absent Stone”)

The Crime, Law, and Governance in the Americas Working Group is excited to announce an upcoming event!

Screening of “La Piedra Austente” (“The Absent Stone”) followed by a Q&A session with director, Sandra Rozental

Date: Monday, April 3, 2017

Time: 6-8 PM

Location: The Hippodrome Cinema

This event is free and open to the public.

This event does not require an RSVP or tickets.

Synopsis: In 1964, the largest carved stone of the Americas was moved from the town of San Miguel Cuatlinchan in the municipality of Texcoco to the National Anthropology Museum in Mexico City in an impressive feat of engineering. The extraction of the monolith, which represents the pre-Hispanic water deity, set off a rebellion in the town and led to the intervention of the army.

Today, the enormous stone, now upright, is an urban monument; it has been transformed into one of the principal icons of Mexican national identity. The inhabitants of Coatlinchan insist that the removal of the stone has caused droughts. Representations and replicas of the absent stone appear everywhere in Coatlinchan, where it resonates in the memories of the inhabitants. Using animations, archival materials and contemporary encounters with the protagonists of the transport of the stone, this documentary explores the relevance of the ruins of the past in the present day.

Sandra Rozental (Mexico City, 1979) has worked as a researcher, curator in museums of anthropology and popular culture, cultural journalist, film production assistant, and art critic. She received her doctorate in anthropology from New York University in 2012, and has published in journals and volumes on archaeological patrimony. This is her first film, and is based on nearly a decade of her ethnographic and archival research.

Please forward this event to friends and colleagues that you think would be interested in attending.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact me at laura.chren@ufl.edu or Dr. Kernaghan at kernaghan@ufl.edu.

We look forward to seeing you there!

 

Migration Dreams: Africans in China

Presented by: The Center for African Studies’ China Working Group, the College of Journalism and the African Student Union

“The History of African Trading Communities in Guangzhou, China”

Dr. Heidi Østbø Haugen, University of Oslo

“The Bridge is not Burning: Transformation and Resilience within China’s African Diaspora Communities”

Dr. Adams Bodomo, University of Vienna

April 5th, 404 Grinter Hall 11:45 AM— 2 PM

Lunch will be provided

Film Showing: Guangzhou Dream Factory

April 5th 6:00 PM, Room TBA

With Filmmaker Christiane Badgley

“A Doorway to the Divine: Islamic Bodies and the Sufi Saints as Connecting the Living to the Dead”

Ellen Amster (McMaster University)

Thursday, 6 April, 5:30 pm , Smather Library 100

Nineteenth-century French visitors to Morocco remarked that pilgrims in North Africa visited the tombs of Islamic “saints” (awliya’) searching for healing from a variety of mental, physical, and moral afflictions.  These were dead who brought healing to the living—through touch, prayer, or cures performed at the shrine. The Moroccan jurist Hasan al-Yusi (d. 1691) called these saints “a medicine and a cure,” for the saint “connects the various layers of reality to one another;” he is an axis around whom reality revolves (qutb) and a murabit (marabout, one who binds men to God). Saint tombs also have political significance. In visiting graves, Moroccans constructed a topographical map of the collective past, a geographical representation of the Islamic political community (umma) and God’s presence in the world, a political imaginary yet contested in the contemporary world. The key connecting the living to the dead is knowledge, a knowing that realizes the potentiality of the human body as an isthmus between the “oceans of God and the Cosmos,” as the Qur’an describes, and a station for the Lord of the Two Worlds to reside. In this talk, we consider the hagiographical compendium of Muhammad ibn Ja’far al-Kattani, Salwat al-Anfas wa Muhadathat al-Akyas bi man Uqbira min al-Ulama’ wa al-Sulaha bi Fas, and the city of Fez. In Morocco, we see how this knowing operated in physical space and time, and how French colonial interventions and science impacted Moroccan understandings of death and life.

Ellen Amster is the Jason A. Hannah Chair in the History of Medicine and is jointly appointed in History and the Department of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics in the Faculty of Health Sciences. She has been a Fulbright scholar, a Chateaubriand scholar of the French government, and received her Ph.D. in history from the University of Pennsylvania. She is a historian of the Islamic world, France, and medicine. Her research addresses the relationship of citizen bodies to the body politic, the history of biomedicine in global context, religion and science, birth and maternal health, the body as the center of political sovereignty, and the encounter of French and Islamic scientific epistemologies. Her 2013 book, Medicine and the Saints: Science, Islam, and the Colonial Encounter in Morocco, 1877-1956, is an interdisciplinary study of health, healing, and the body in Morocco.

Thomas Jefferson Fund: 2017 Call for Proposals

We are delighted to announce that the 2017 Call for Proposals from the Thomas Jefferson Fund is now open.

This new program, launched by the French Embassy in the United States and the FACE Foundation with the support of the French Ministry of Higher Education and Research, aims to encourage and support cooperation among the most promising young French and American researchers, and foster forward-looking collaborative research projects. Each selected French-American project will receive a maximum of $20,000 over a period of two years.

Applications are accepted in the three following fields:

?  Humanities and Social Sciences (SSH)

?  Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM)

?  Science for Society (interdisciplinary STEM-SSH projects)

The most innovative projects involving transatlantic mobility, collaborative research activities, the organization of joint workshops or conferences, the publication of joint articles, and the participation of younger researchers (PhDs) will receive the highest priority.

Joint project proposals must be submitted by April 9th, 2017 (Midnight, EST).

We would be grateful if you could widely circulate the 2017 Thomas Jefferson Fund Call for Proposals information flyer (attached) to the research units and relevant departments of your institution. Interested parties are invited to get more information and to apply here: http://face-foundation.org/thomas-jefferson-fund/

The Thomas Jefferson team is available to provide you and your teams any additional information you may need.   Respectfully,  The Thomas Jefferson Team  thomasjeffersonfund@ambafrance-us.org

 

Roman Baths Excavation Italy 2017 (Extended deadline) 

Excavations of the Baths at Roman Carsulae (ITALY)

June 11 – July 22, 2017

and related programs:

Analysis of Archaeological Ceramics

Restoration of Archaeological Ceramics

May 29 – June 23, 2017

Excavations of the Baths at Roman Carsulae (ITALY)

June 11 – July 22, 2017

We are accepting applications from students and volunteers to participate in our eleventh season of excavations of the baths at Roman Carsulae, and we have extended the deadline to Friday, April 14, 2017.

Project and Location  

The Roman city of Carsulae, founded in the third century BCE along the Via Flaminia in modern Umbria, was extensively excavated by the Soprintendente for Umbria, Umberto Ciotti, from the 1950s to the 1970s.  He uncovered a number of its public buildings including the forum, amphitheatre and theatre and transformed the entire area into an archaeological park.  In 2004, our team, under the direction of Professor Jane K. Whitehead of Valdosta State University and the Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologici dell’Umbria commenced a long term project to re-excavate the baths, which are located just south of the city limits and were left exposed after Ciotti’s excavation 40 years earlier.

In 2011, we received grants from Italian sources, in particular the Associazione Valorizzazione del Patrimonio Storico, which enabled us to construct a roof over the remains of the baths.  Because it affords greater protection from the elements, during the 2012 and 2013 seasons we were able to open up areas that were more fragile, thus further exposing the structure.

Our goal for the 2017 season is to complete the excavation of the portion of the baths that lies beneath the protective roof in preparation for an intensive conservation plan that will ultimately encompass the entire bath complex.  We will also explore the area immediately to the east in order to determine the dimensions and function of two partially exposed rooms.

Program  

Our field program welcomes both students and volunteers. No experience is necessary, only an enthusiasm for archaeology and the ability to work hard in rigorous conditions.  Participants are instructed in excavation strategies, techniques and recording, the formulation of research questions and priorities, identification and handling of artifacts, drafting of site plans, and analytical rendering. Throughout the season, participants are given the opportunity to work with our conservators in the lab cleaning and consolidating small finds, or in the field helping to conserve the mosaics we have discovered over the course of the excavations.

Cost   

The program fee is $975.00 per week, which includes a shared room as well as breakfast every day and lunch and dinner five days a week. All equipment and local transportation is also provided.

Dates

The excavation season runs for six weeks, and we strongly encourage participation in the entire program so one can experience all stages of an excavation.  Alternatively, you may participate in a three-week session: the first beginning on Sunday, June 11 and the second on Sunday, July 2.  We offer a discounted rate to those who opt to enroll for the full six week season; see our website for further details.

There is a minimum length of stay of three weeks.

Credit

We are not offering credit this season, however we are happy to work with your university.

Accommodations and Meals  

We stay at the Albergo Duomo, three or four people to a room, in the charming hill town of San Gemini, just three kilometers from Carsulae.  All rooms have private baths and air conditioning, and the hotel is equipped with free wireless.  Our meals are eaten in the elegant dining room of the hotel.

Schedule

Participants work in the field Monday through Friday from 6 AM to 1 PM (or an hour earlier, depending on the weather). After lunch and a well-earned siesta, afternoons are spent in the lab processing each day’s finds and attending classes, lectures, or working with our conservators. Weekends are open for travel or relaxation. Group trips to nearby sites of interest are often available.

The application deadline is Friday, April 14, 2017.

related program:

Analysis of Archaeological Ceramics

Restoration of Archaeological Ceramics

May 29 – June 23, 2017

Our colleagues at San Gemini Preservation Studies offer a number of programs that also take place during the summer in San Gemini.  We encourage you to look at their website and consider participating in one of their courses before or after your time spent working with us.  Of particular relevance to our project are the Analysis of Archaeological Ceramics and the Restoration of Archaeological Ceramics workshops, which provide an excellent background in conservation and restoration that is very useful when working in the field and lab.

Thank you.  Jane K. Whitehead, Director of the Excavations of the Baths at Roman Carsulae, Professor Emerita, Department of Modern and Classical Languages, Valdosta State University and Polly Withers Admissions and Recruiting San Gemini Preservation Studies Program

Call for Papers

American International Journal of Contemporary Research

ISSN 2162-139X (Print), ISSN 2162-142X (Online)

American International Journal of Contemporary Research (AIJCR) is an open access, peer-reviewed and refereed multidisciplinary journal published by Center for Promoting Ideas (CPI), USA. The main objective of AIJCR is to provide an intellectual platform for the research community. AIJCR aims to promote contemporary research in business, humanities, social science, science and technology and become the leading journal in the world.

The journal publishes research papers in three broad specific fields as follows:

Business and Economics

Management, marketing, finance, economics, banking, accounting, human resources management, international business, hotel and tourism, entrepreneurship development, business ethics, development studies and so on.

Humanities and Social science

Anthropology, communication studies, corporate governance, criminology, cross-cultural studies, demography, education, ethics, geography, history, industrial relations, information science, international relations, law, linguistics, library science, media studies, methodology, philosophy, political science, population Studies, psychology, public administration, sociology, social welfare, linguistics, literature, paralegal, performing arts (music, theatre & dance), religious studies, visual arts, women studies.

Science and Technology

Astronomy and astrophysics, Chemistry, Earth and atmospheric sciences, Physics, Biology in general, Agriculture, Biophysics and biochemistry, Botany, Environmental Science, Forestry, Genetics, Horticulture, Husbandry, Neuroscience, Zoology, Computer science, Engineering, Robotics and Automation, Materials science, Mathematics, Mechanics, Statistics, Health Care & Public Health, Nutrition and Food Science, Pharmaceutical Sciences, and so on.

The journal is published both in print and online versions.

AIJCR publishes original papers, review papers, conceptual framework, analytical and simulation models, case studies, empirical research, technical notes, and book reviews.

AIJCR is indexed with and included in Cabell’s, EBSCO, Ulrich’s , IndexCopernicus International, and Gale. Moreover the journal is under the indexing process with ISI, ERIC, ProQuest, Scopus, DOAJ and Econlit.

AIJCR is inviting papers for Vol. 7 No. 2 which is scheduled to be published on June 30, 2017.Last date of submission: April 30, 2017. However, an early submission will get preference in case of review and publication process.

Send your manuscript to the editor at editor@aijcrnet.com

For more information, visit the official website of the journal www.aijcrnet.com

With thanks,

Dr. Andrew Lessard

The Chief Editor, American International Journal of Contemporary Research

Contact: editor@aijcrnet.com