UConn Department of Political Science

On Tuesday, February 5, Matthew Parent will present "Outgunned: Israeli Military Innovation and the Talpiot Program" for our Faculty Colloquium series. A kosher lunch will be provided.

The talk is free and open to the public. It is made possible by the UConn Center for Judaic Studies and Contemporary Jewish Life and the UConn Department of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages.

If you require an accommodation to participate, please contact Pamela Weathers at 860-486-2271 or pamela.weathers@uconn.edu.

About the Talk:

Engaged in conflict from its inception, the Israeli military faced complex challenges requiring creative solutions. While military aid and acquisitions from other countries, like the US, proved essential to early conflicts, Israel quickly needed its own indigenous solutions. Culminating in the establishment of the Talpiot program, military innovation was--and is--pivotal in the strengthening of Israel's military power. This presentation looks at the history, challenges, and major events in Israeli military innovation, as well as its unique characteristics compared to many other military establishments around the globe.

About the Speaker:

Matthew Parent is a PhD candidate in the Political Science Department at UConn, concentrating in International Relations. His research focuses on the intersection of security studies, military innovation, and popular culture. His data comes from diverse electronic and print sources, popular media, as well as from places like NATO's archives in Brussels, Belgium. His work attempts to intentionally bridge the gap between scholarly study and practical policy applications. He holds degrees from the University of Massachusetts, the Catholic University of America, and the University of Connecticut.

This UConn Foreign Policy Seminar will feature Dr. Gretchen Heefner of Northeastern University to speak on "Hiding Tanks in the Desert: U.S. Military Engineers and Extreme Environments."

Heefner's first book, The Missile Next Door: The Minuteman in the American Heartland, was published by Harvard University Press in 2012.

The reception will begin at 4:30 pm, followed by the presentation at 5:00 pm. If interested in attending the catered dinner, please RSVP to Frank Costigliola at frank.costigliola@uconn.edu.

Postcolonial Atmospheres: How Delhi's Air Pollution Crisis is Shaped by Colonialism.

Asher Ghertner
Department of Geography
Rutgers University

This presentation examines how popular and governmental responses to extreme air pollution levels in Delhi-which the WHO declared the most air-polluted city in the world in 2014-draw from spatial logics, aesthetic orientations, and scientific protocols with roots in colonial rule. Using three case atmospheres-the Indian lung, the hill station, and the air-purified home-it argues that a geographical imaginary institutionalized in colonial urban planning has led spatial practices of sequestration to supersede post-colonial investment in pollution abatement. By focusing on the infrastructures through which urban air pollution is rendered a tropical norm, it argues that until the colonial ontology of sequestration is broken down, investment in prosthetic technologies of seclusion will detract from structural efforts to produce air otherwise. It concludes with reflections on how we might conceptualize a postcolonial Anthropocene.

Featuring Rebecca Sanders (University of Cincinnati)

Prof Kevin McMahon (Trinity College)

The REP grad certificate program will bring Prof. Rob Nixon of Princeton University to campus on Mon, Mar 11 for a talk entitled: Environmental Martyrs and the Fate of the Forest.

The talk will take place in The Class of '47 Room in the Homer Babbidge Library at 12:15 pm. Refreshments will be served.

Rob Nixon holds the Barron Family Professorship in Humanities and Environment at Princeton. He is the author of four books, most recently Dreambirds: the Natural History of a Fantasy and Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor, which won numerous awards, including an American Book Award and the Sprout prize from the International Studies Association for the best book in environmental studies. Nixon writes frequently for the New York Times. His writing has also appeared in The New Yorker, Aeon, Atlantic Monthly, The Guardian, The Nation, London Review of Books, The Village Voice, Slate, Truthout, Huffington Post, Edge Effects, Times Literary Supplement, and Chronicle of Higher Education. He has been the recipient of an NEH fellowship, a MacArthur Foundation fellowship, and a Guggenheim, and has been awarded residencies at a number of artist colonies, including MacDowell and Yaddo.

Featuring Eric Mielants (Fairfield University)

This UConn Foreign Policy Seminar will feature Professor Matthew Karp of Princeton University to speak on “Millions of Abolitionists: The Republican Party and the Radical Democratic Struggle against American Slavery."

Karp's first book, This Vast Southern Empire: Slaveholders at the Helm of American Foreign Policy, was published by Harvard University Press in 2016.

The reception will begin at 4:30 pm, followed by the presentation at 5:00 pm. If interested in attending the catered dinner, please RSVP to Frank Costigliola.