GSAS New Student Spring 2012 Orientation

The Graduate School of Arts and Science (GSAS) is pleased to invite you to the Spring 2012 New Student Orientation and let you know about the variety of electronic resources that will help ease your transition to graduate school.

We will hold the 2012 GSAS Spring Orientation on Friday, January 27, 2012, from 5:30pm to 7:30 pm on campus. The New Student Orientation is designed to introduce you to the Graduate School of Arts and Science and offer information on University based resources and services. Registration will open at 5 pm so we will be able to begin our program at 5:30 sharp. The orientation provides an opportunity to meet other newly admitted students as well as current graduate students. A wine and cheese reception will immediately follow.

SAVE THE DATE!

To register for this event, respond to this message with your name and academic department.

We know you have many questions about the GSAS graduate offices, registration, tuition, the NYU Wellness Center, Health Services and health insurance, as well as other aspects of NYU. To help you keep organized about joining the student body, please follow our New Student Checklist <gsas.nyu.edu/page/new.student.checklist> and read the Guide to University Resources <http://gsas.nyu.edu/page/nyu.grad.resources> page that contains important reminders, dates and deadlines.

To learn more about the Master's College, please view our videos on-line:

http://gsas.nyu.edu/page/grad.masterscollege;

http://gsas.nyu.edu/object/grad.students.profiles;

http://gsas.nyu.edu/object/gsas.masterscollege.thethreesischallenge.

If you are an international student, please carefully read our International

Student Reference Guide <http://gsas.nyu.edu/object/grad.ne.intlnews>.

For University Life Events use this link: http://www.nyu.edu/life/resources-and-services/student-resourcecenter.html

We look forward to welcoming you to GSAS in the New Year!

Sincerely,

Graduate Enrollment Services,

The Master’s College &

The Office of Academic and Student Life

Spring Course: From Third World to Global South

We'd like to highlight another of our spring Topics classes--Topics in Global Histories: From Third World to Global South--taught by Prof. Maia Ramnath. Prof. Ramnath was Draper's previous faculty fellow in Global Histories and has recently published two books: Haj to Utopia: How the Ghadar Movement Charted Global Radicalism and Attempted to Overthrow the British Empire (University of California Press, 2011) and Decolonizing Anarchism (AK Press, 2011).

The course description is below; please contact Larissa Kyzer at larissa.kyzer@nyu.edu if interested in enrolling.

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Topics in Global Histories: From Third World to Global South

DRAP-GA.3005

Prof. Maia Ramnath

Course Overview

The aim of this class is to explore the political and intellectual legacy of anti-colonialism. In it we will trace the development of ideologies and practices of decolonization through transnational solidarities and internationalist movements from the late 19th century to the present.

Paying attention to the continuities as well as the turning points in the structures that have defined a global field of power and action, we confront systems of political, military, economic and cultural dominance and their legitimating ideologies of race and civilization: "high" imperialism, capital expansion, Cold War geopolitical blocs, developmentalism, neoliberal globalization, and the "new" imperialism.

On the other side we see the precursors of today's call to "globalize resistance" through cultural/civilizational or class categories of allegiance and identity, as Pan-African, Pan-Asian and Pan-Islamic movements fed into interwar congresses of Oppressed Peoples and the Comintern-backed League Against Imperialism, succeeded by the post-war/Cold War era of the Non-Aligned Movement, Afro-Asian and Tricontinental collaborations and Third Worldist liberation struggles, and finally into the contemporary notion of the Global South and "globalization from below."

Since the cultural dimension has been so crucial to questions and practices of anti-colonial resistance and so interconnected with political, social and economic conditions, we will supplement each discussion with student-presented modules on some of the many writers whose literary contributions were intrinsic to the experience of Third Worldist politics and the later development of postcolonial criticism.

Students will be expected to produce a substantive research paper, an oral presentation and brief weekly critical reading responses.

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Literature

(possibilities; focus to be determined by students in collaboration with instructor)

George Lamming, Patrick Chamoiseau, Derek Walcott, Wole Soyinka, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Pramoedya Ananta Toer, Naguib Mahfouz,Mahmoud Darwish, Chinua Achebe, Pablo Neruda, Jose Marti, Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Agha Shahid Ali, Sajjad Zaheer, Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, Saadat Hasan Manto, Ismet Chughtai, Buchi Emecheta, Forugh Farrokhzad, Mulk Raj Anand, Lu Xun, Sam Selvon, V.S. Naipaul, Assia Djebar, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Salman Rushdie, Amitav Ghosh, Hanif Kureishi, Monica Ali, Zadie Smith, Ama Ata Aidoo, Shani Mootoo, Jessica Hagedorn, Ahdaf Soueif, Hanan Ashrawi, Jean Rhys, E. M. Forster, Rudyard Kipling,Joseph Conrad, Albert Camus...the sky's the limit.

Apply for GSAS' Second Annual Threesis Challenge for MA Students: Applications Due 1/31

Three weeks until the Threesis Challenge deadline!

Draper encourages applications to GSAS' second annual Threesis Academic Challenge for Master's students. Eight of Draper's students participated in last year's challenge and two of our students were semi-finalists. More information about Threesis is below or is available on the GSAS website here. The application is attached, or can be picked up in hard copy in Draper's office.

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Save the date and submit your Application today for the 2012 GSAS Threesis Academic Challenge will be held on March 30th (qualifying rounds) and March 31st (final rounds)

The application for the 2012 GSAS Threesis Academic Challenge is open! This academic competition is for GSAS Master's Students. Students present the work of their thesis or final project (eg. creative project, science experiment or research paper) to a panel of judges in accessible language a non-expert can understand in three minutes or less. Competitors are judged on how well they grasp the subject of their thesis, their ability to discuss the topic to non-experts and presentation skills. Students compete for a grand prize of $1,000 and other prizes while learning to organize ideas and speak about them persuasively in a fun, academic atmosphere.

Look at what one competitor had to say about last year's experience:

The Threesis encourages students to take a step back from their research to see how it sits in a world outside of academia. It is about explaining what you are writing about in a way that grandma and grandpa, mom and dad and the random person that you meet on the street can understand. It is the opposite of what were are trained to do in our masters work and that's what makes it so challenging.

Jailee Rychen 2011 GSAS

Threesis Winner

Have you submitted your 2012 Threesis application? To submit your application, send the application and your abstract to gsas.threesis@nyu.edu. Applications are due by January 31st!

Watch the highlight video from last year's competition here:
http://gsas.nyu.edu/object/gsas.masterscollege.thethreesischallenge

CFP: How to End a Revolution? Interdisciplinary Humanities Grad Conference, Harvard (Due 1/31)

"How to End a Revolution?" - CALL FOR PAPERS (DEADLINE: JANUARY 31st, 2012)


The Annual Interdisciplinary Humanities Graduate Student Conference


Harvard University, Cambridge MA, United States


April 13-14, 2012



How to begin a revolution is a question that has received much attention from many great thinkers. The goal of the 2012 Interdisciplinary Graduate Conference at the Mahindra Humanities Center is to reverse that perspective and ask: How to end a revolution?



The end of a revolution is not something inherently given, but a process in the making that serves different perspectives and interests. At the same time, the phase of transition characterized by chaos and instability very often opposes and challenges the attempts of making an end - from both a theoretical and a practical perspective. Is an end of a revolution even possible if history is understood as a constant process based on a linear definition of time and temporality? What challenges does the idea of a leaderless movement pose towards traditional views of political authority and authorship? What happens when unity and cohesion break apart and many different individual interests and powers evolve? What comes after the revolution?



The ongoing revolutions and uprisings in the Arab world highlight both the challenges of making a (constructive and collective) end, as well as the significance and timeliness of these questions to be addressed at the conference. Drawing upon contemporary and historical examples like the Arab Spring and the French Revolution, we invite you to examine the complex, multifaceted and mutable discourse that is shaped by historians who define, politicians who declare, writers who narrate and lawyers who legitimate the end of a revolution. In what violent and non-violent ways have people tried to stop, use or influence a revolution? Which strategies, tools and techniques are employed to end a revolution and how are they determined by underlying concepts of time, history and change? Through our collective inquiry - by analysing how people deal and dealt with moments of transition and by comparing their strategies, interests and narratives - our goal is to better understand the phenomenon of social and political change. With this approach we hope not only to expand the knowledge of revolutions but also to develop new ideas and strategies that will potentially prove to be practically important and relevant.



We seek rich, rigorous graduate student contributions from the humanities, social and political sciences (in particular from the following disciplines: law, literature, history, philosophy, political sciences, sociology), and even natural sciences if relevant.

Discussion themes may include, but are not restricted to:


* What is an End? Thinking About and Representing the End


* The End Versus Ending - Revolution as Process or Given?


* Controlling the End - Controlling the Power. Attempts of Overtaking the Protest


* Temporality, Change - and Order? How to Transform Chaos into Stability


* New Beginnings. Manifestos and Literary Narratives


* The People, the Media or the Military? Authorship of Revolution


* Continuity of Power. How to Deal with the Old Structures?


* Circular Revolution, Linear Progress and Permanent Evolution?


* Arts, Religion and Empathy. Lessons to Unite the People


* Trials, Constitutions and Elections. The Role of Law in Transitional Periods



We ask prospective participants to submit a short curriculum vitae and a 500 word abstract that outlines the paper's topic, methodology and argument, as well as how the prospective participant's research interests relate to the theme of the conference more generally. Participants will be notified by mid-February whether their paper has been accepted into the conference. Please note that participants can apply for a limited number of travel grants.



DEADLINE FOR ABSTRACT SUBMISSION: TUESDAY, JANUARY 31st, 2012



For more information and submission details, please visit:


http://isites.harvard.edu/revolution2012



For further questions, please contact the coordinators by e-mail:


hcconfer@fas.harvard.edu



Conference coordinators:


Eike Hosemann, Harvard Law School


Scott Liddle, Center for Middle Eastern Studies


Matthias Meyer, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures


Ani Nguyen, Chemical Biology Graduate Program, Department of Systems Biology

Call for Papers: EQUINOXES Conference

EQUINOXES 2012

Call For Conference Papers

Transgression(s)

April 20-21, 2012 | Brown University | Providence, Rhode Island

Keynote speaker: Sylvaine Guyot

Assistant Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures

Harvard University

The notion of transgression is a ubiquitous theme of humankind’s history. The word in itself evokes the act of overstepping a defining boundary between what is lawful from criminal; what is permitted from forbidden; what is good from evil. To transgress is to bend a norm, to infringe upon a law, to violate a proscription, to go beyond what society deems a prescribed limit. Transgression, therefore, raises the question of the norms and values on which a group or community is founded, along with the question of the conditions under which one will or will not be considered as a member of the group. The various effects that are expected from the transgressive act or behaviour - effects of emancipation, salvation, or inversely of destruction, regression - and the various modes of social regulation of transgression - punishment, absolution - are some other aspects of the question from which it is possible to deeply explore the representations of the norm and anti-norm in French and Francophone

literature.

In the aim of investigating the various stakes pertaining to the notion of transgression, we invite submissions in literary, cultural, and media studies dealing with all periods and genres of cultural production from all areas of the French-speaking world. Potential avenues of exploration may include but are not limited to:

aesthetics of transgression

logics and/or aesthetics of the scandal, the shock

sacrality, aura

passion, excess, violence, irrationality

representations of the body, erotics, pleasures

notion of the Other

power, domination, emancipation

breaking knowledge barriers

temporality, spatiality, universality of transgression

taboos, prohibitions

judgement, punishment, redemption, catharsis

activism, radicalism

performance, "actionism"

knowledge, initiation, truth

Graduate students who wish to participate in the conference should submit an abstract of roughly 250 words. The presentations, in French or English, should not exceed

20 minutes. Please send abstracts with name, institutional affiliation and address to brown.equinoxes@gmail.com before January 15, 2012. The conference proceedings will be published in the Equinoxes electronic journal (http://www.brown.edu/Research/Equinoxes).

Join us to start off the spring semester right and honor the achievements of our September 2011 and January 2012 graduates!

Draper's Spring Party and Graduate Celebration
Friday, January 27
Starts at 5:00 PM
Draper Map Room: 14 University Place, 1st Floor
Food and drink will be served
RSVPs to draper.program@nyu.edu