Upcoming Events
Be notified about events and publications:
Getting to the Harris School:
Street parking is free but scarce. There is a free community parking lot a few blocks away on 60th and Stony Island. The Metra stops at 59th and Stony Island.
Spring 2013 workshops: Cultural Diplomacy
Traditionally considered a sleepy backwater of statecraft, at best a matter of projecting "American values" in a contest with the Soviet Union for cultural prestige, cultural diplomacy has in recent years come to be recognized as an important foreign policy concern connected to a new set of problems. The emergence of new powers like China, the threat to cultural patrimony posed by states in crisis such as Iraq, Haiti, Egypt, and Afghanistan, the increasing prominence of cultural tourism and globalized cultural markets in the economic life of nations, the need to find ways to directly engage publics in emerging democracies – all call for new ways of thinking about cultural diplomacy. This quarter's speakers will address some of these challenges and the opportunities they offer for innovative approaches in this difficult contemporary environment.
Iran, Cinema, and the Curious Logics of Circulation
Brian T. Edwards, Associate Professor at Northwestern University
Tuesday, May 21, 12:00-1:20 p.m.
Harris School of Public Policy
1155 E. 60th St.
Room 289B
Cultural diplomacy traditionally assumes that the exchange of cultural products promotes better understanding—and that the primary challenge is getting foreign audiences to engage with creative works from afar. In the digital age, the realities are much more complex.
When the Iranian film A Separation, directed by Asghar Farhadi, won Best Foreign Language Film at the 2012 Academy Awards it was cause for celebration in Tehran. But a year later, when Ben Affleck's Argo took home the 2013 Oscar for Best Picture, there was widespread dismay in Iran about the film's representations of Iranians and Iranian history. In both cases, cinema took center stage in the public discussion of US-Iranian relations, and the way both films were circumscribed and overwhelmed by international politics demonstrates the limits of cultural products to communicate in ways that defy those politics.
This discussion, drawn from my research in both Iran and the US, challenges those who argue that cultural products such as film, literature, music and art communicate simply in the 21st century (if they ever did in the 20th). I explain what the "curious logics of circulation" mean to understanding cultural diplomacy in the digital age, tell of my surprising discoveries about Shrek in Tehran, and suggest that the Canadians were more wronged by Argo than the Iranians.
Brian T. Edwards is Associate Professor of English, Comparative Literary Studies, and Middle East and North African Studies at Northwestern University. He is the author of Morocco Bound: Disorienting America's Maghreb, from Casablanca to the Marrakech Express, as well as essays and op-eds in publications including Chicago Tribune, Foreign Policy, Huffington Post, The Believer, McSweeney's, and leading scholarly journals. Edwards co-edited Globalizing American Studies, a collection that provides global perspectives on American history and culture. He is currently completing a book examining the circulation of American cultural products in North Africa and the Middle East.
Free and open to the public. No RSVP necessary.
Recent Events
Egypt: A Public Private Partnership to Protect the Cultural Heritage of Countries in Crisis
Deborah Lehr, Founding Chairman of the Capitol Archaeological Institute at The George Washington University; Director of the Paulson Institute
Tuesday, May 7, 12:00-1:20 p.m.
Harris School of Public Policy
1155 E. 60th St.
Room 289B
Since the revolution in January 2011, modern day Egypt has fallen victim to the scourge of international antiquities crime. The Capitol Archaeological Institute at the George Washington University has launched a public-private partnership with The Government of Egypt to attempt to combat looting and cultural racketeering in Egypt. Lehr will present evidence of the increase in looting since the Revolution, share the mission of the partnership and how it came about, and discuss the crisis of antiquities theft countries in crisis and how the model with Egypt might be applicable.
Deborah Lehr serves as the founding Chairman of the Capitol Archaeological Institute at The George Washington University. In that capacity, she launched the International Coalition to raise the profile of the looting of antiquities in Egypt, resulting in a private-public partnership with the Egyptian government.
In addition, Lehr is the Director of the Paulson Institute, a think tank founded by former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, at the University of Chicago. Lehr has managed a successful consulting business representing Western and Chinese companies such as Sesame Workshop, Tory Burch, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Pfizer, Sony Music, Time Warner and Boeing. Lehr has also served in the US Government where she was a lead negotiator for China's WTO Accession at the US Trade Representative, a Director of Asian Affairs at the National Security Council, and involved in export control and trade policy issues at the Department of Commerce. She serves as a member of the Council of Advisors for National Geographic, and on the Board of the Archaeological Institute of America and the International Advisory Board of the London School of Economics.
Saving Haiti's Heritage: Cultural Recovery after the Earthquake
Richard Kurin, Smithsonian Institution's Under Secretary for History, Art, and Culture
Wednesday, May 1, 12:00-1:20 p.m.
Harris School of Public Policy
1155 E. 60th St.
Room 289B
From Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy to the looting of the Iraqi museum and the current destruction in Mali, natural disasters, climate change, war, looting, and civil unrest can threaten the survival of cultural treasures in the U.S. and around the world. In the aftermath of the devastating 2010 earthquake in Haiti, the Smithsonian led an international coalition of organizations to care for damaged collections by establishing a Cultural Recovery Center in Port-au-Prince. The Smithsonian quickly mobilized scores of conservators, and the necessary support to save more than 35,000 items—from paintings and historic murals to sculptures and rare documents, trained 150 Haitians to care for their own collections, and generated respect for America in that country and around the world. The presentation describes how, and points to Smithsonian efforts to ensure adequate U.S. responses to emerging and future cultural crises at home and abroad.
Richard Kurin is the Smithsonian Institution's Under Secretary for History, Art, and Culture with responsibility for most of its national museums and cultural programs. Kurin earned his Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from the University of Chicago, and taught at The Johns Hopkins University Nitze School of Advanced International Studies. He is the author of several books, and honored by the International Council of Museums and Harvard University's Peabody Museum, he served on the U.S. Commission for UNESCO, and helped UNESCO draft an international treaty on safeguarding the world's living cultural heritage now ratified by more than 130 nations. Kurin first worked for the Smithsonian in 1976 for the Bicentennial of the United States, and for decades directed the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage responsible for the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, Smithsonian Folkways Recordings and national celebration programs on the Mall and in the museums. He represents the Smithsonian on the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, the White House Historical Association and other boards, and is currently in the last stage of writing a book The Smithsonian's History of America in 101 Objects to be published by Penguin in the fall.
U.S. Cultural Policy: People, Places, and Property in U.S. Foreign Relations
Christina Luke, Boston University; and Morag M. Kersel, DePaul University
(Sadly, Prof. Luke has had to cancel due to the events in Boston. Prof. Kersel will present the material that they developed together.)
Tuesday, April 23, 12:00-1:20 p.m.
Harris School of Public Policy
1155 E. 60th St.
Room 289B
Archaeology and archaeologists are routinely deployed as "agents of the state", acting as official and unofficial ambassadors on behalf of their countries of origin. As a result of coalition forces' failure to protect cultural institutions in Iraq, unwanted operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan and recent inactivity in protecting the cultural resources and people in places like Mali and Syria, it is essential for the U.S. to present a kinder, gentler, caring face. What better way to reconfigure negative perceptions than through archaeology and the conservation and investigation of the common history of humankind? Archaeology and archaeologists can and do play a vital role in furthering diplomatic goals and agendas in countries and areas of the world where an apolitical, non-military appearance is very desirable. Through an examination of various programs at the U.S. Department of State this discussion will assess the interplay between archaeology and cultural diplomacy in shaping U.S. cultural heritage policy and diplomatic relations in the international arena.
Christina Luke is a Senior Lecturer in the Writing Program and Anthropology Department and a Senior Research Associate Professor in the Archaeology Department at Boston University. Her current work focuses on cultural heritage policy and legal implementation in the United States as well as archaeological landscapes and heritage management in western Turkey. She worked for two years in the Cultural Heritage Center of the Department of State and for four years directing programs for the Cultural Heritage Center and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security at the University of Pennsylvania Museum.
Morag M. Kersel is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at DePaul University. Her research considers the legal remedies employed by countries in the Eastern Mediterranean to protect against archaeological site destruction as a result of the market demand for archaeological artifacts. From 2000–2003 she administered the Ambassadors Fund for Cultural Preservation at the U.S. Department of State. She is also a Research Associate at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, where she is the co-director with Yorke Rowan of the Galilee Prehistory Project.
Cultural Diplomacy as Creative Collaboration: Applied Humanities Networks and Post-Values Partnerships
Robert Albro, Assistant Professor and Scholar-in-Residence, American University
Tuesday, April 16, 12:00-1:20 p.m.
Harris School of Public Policy
1155 E. 60th St.
Room 289B
Diplomacy is laboring through a sustained cultural crisis. Publics are now less distant than previously, more assertive, and actively engaged participants in the making of their encompassing cultural worlds. To embrace this new reality likely requires rethinking many of the methods of cultural diplomacy and perhaps its basic goals.
This talk upends diplomacy's typical politics of representation, in particular, the assumption of "shared values," and government-to-government cultural exchange, to the end of message delivery. Instead, it explores "diplomatic" entailments as part of other, often humanitarian, varieties of collaboration, including participatory curation, social media community-building, archival training, oral history and public memory projects, cultural heritage conservation, digital game design, documentary film, culture mapping, the negotiation of cultural copyright and building of cultural commons, and the management and exhibition of antiquities.
Trained in sociocultural anthropology (Ph.D., University of Chicago, 1999), Robert Albro has maintained long-term ethnographic research and published widely on urban indigenous and popular politics in Bolivia, with a focus on citizenship, democratic participation, and identity. Much of this work is summarized his book, Roosters at Midnight: Indigenous Signs and Stigma in Local Bolivian Politics. His present research and writing address domestic and global cultural policy, including the increasing application of culture to security policy. Some of this work appears in his edited volume, Anthropologists in the Securityscape: Ethics, Practice, and Professional Identity. Dr. Albro serves on the Board of Directors of the Public Diplomacy Council and is in residence at American University's School of International Service. More information about his work can be found at robertalbro.com.
Starting Over: Reconfiguring American Cultural Diplomacy for the 21st Century
Bill Ivey, Director of the Vanderbilt University US-China Center for Education and Culture and a former NEA chairman
Tuesday, April 9, 4:00-5:30 p.m.
Logan Center for the Arts
915 East 60th Street
Theater East
Reception to follow
American art and artists played an important Cold War role, projecting American values and ideas into the US/Soviet contest. Since 1990, and especially since 2001, strategies, tactics, and the context shaping the projection of American influence in the world have changed dramatically. What is the new reality? Who are the key actors? What reasonable objectives are available to a contemporary cultural diplomacy regime? How can value be assessed?
Bill Ivey is director of the Vanderbilt University US-China Center for Education and Culture. Ivey was director of the Country Music Hall of Fame for 25 years and served as chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts in the Clinton-Gore administration. He was founding director of the Curb Center for Art, Enterprise, and Public Policy at Vanderbilt, and returned to Washington in 2008 to serve as Team Leader in the Obama presidential transition. Ivey was twice elected chairman of the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences, is past president of the American Folklore Society and today serves that organization as China Liaison. Bill Ivey is the author of two books on public policy and culture, Arts, Inc.: How Greed and Neglect Have Destroyed Our Cultural Rights, and Handmaking America: A Back-to-Basics Pathway to a Revitalized American Democracy.
Winter Workshop Series: What can you do with an interest in the arts and cultural policy?
- Angelique Power: "So, you want to work at a Foundation? One funder's story"
- Ra Joy: "Give Voice to a Creative State: The Future of Arts Advocacy in Illinois"
- Karen Gahl-Mills, Joe Spencer, and Julie Burros: "With Arts at the Heart: Promoting artistic vitality in St. Paul, MN, and Cuyahoga County, OH"
- Rebecca Parker: "Practicing Community"
- Peter Linett: "Not Your Grandmother's Arts Scene: Cultural Change, Organizational Adaptation, and Social Research"
- Susannah Engstrom: "Building a Midwest Cultural Capital: Professional Theater in 1960s Minneapolis"
- Maria Kouri: "Economic crisis! Greece and the quest for cultural diplomacy"
Fall 2012 Workshops: Topics raised by the Chicago Cultural Plan
- Nick Rabkin and Ra Joy: "The New Chicago Cultural Plan: Looking ahead or a retread?"
- Richard Evans: "The Real Work — New Practices for a New Era in the Arts"
- Lynn Basa, Martin Atkins, Halena Kays, Onye Ozuzu, and Laura Shaeffer: "What Have Artists Got To Do With It?: Artists Respond to the New Cultural Plan"
- Ian David Moss: "Solving the Underpants Gnomes Problem: Towards an Evidence-Based Arts Policy"
Spring 2012 Workshops: New Media and Evolving Cultural Networks
Libby Hemphill on social networks and cultural production; Patrick Jagoda on transmedia games; Eszter Hargittai in variations in online creative expression; Stephanie Pereira on Kickstarter art project policies and successes; and Rebecca S. Graff on archaeology in the city of Chicago.
View details and video
Winter 2012 Workshops: City Cultural Planning continued
Drew Williams-Clark on mapping regional cultural indicators; Monika De Frantz on reconstructing contemporary Europe in Vienna and Berlin; Lawrence Rothfield on measuring the cultural vitality of scenes; Daniel Silver on cultural mapping; Eleonora Redaelli on authentic participation using GIS; and Ann Markusen and Anne Gadwa Nicodemus on creative placemaking.
View details and video
Fall 2011 Workshops: City Cultural Planning
Michael C. Dorf on the original Chicago Cultural Plan; Alan Brown on "creative capital"; Alan Freeman on the evidence base for city cultural planning; Robert Bruegmann on patterns in urban growth; Carl Grodach on the cultural policy of Austin, Texas; and Jonathan Vickery on cultural policy in an age of scarcity.
View details and video
Teaching Artists and the Future of Education — panel & community forum — February 15, 2012
The first Chicago presentation of the Teaching Artist Research Project, a study of teaching artists and their work in a dozen cities, including Chicago.
With Nick Rabkin, Jessica Hudson, Cecil McDonald, Mario Rossero, and Margaret Beale Spencer.
This forum is presented by the Teaching Artist Development (TAD) Studio at Columbia College Chicago's Center for Community Arts Partnerships and sponsored by the Center for Community Arts Partnerships (CCAP) at Columbia College Chicago; the Cultural Policy Center, Harris School of Public Policy Studies, and NORC at the University of Chicago; and Ingenuity, Inc.
Funding for this colloquium was made possible by support from the Lloyd A. Fry Foundation, JPMorgan Chase Foundation, the Cultural Policy Center, Harris School of Public Policy Studies, and NORC at the University of Chicago.
Read more and watch the video.
Future of the City: The Arts Symposium — June 7, 2011
Co-hosted with the National Endowment for the Arts and the University of Chicago's Office of Civic Engagement.
The University of Chicago presents Future of the City: The Arts Symposium, a one-day gathering of leaders who are shaping the cultural landscape of Chicago and beyond.
Arts and culture are proving their power as economic and social catalysts for the creative transformation of cities. Strategic collaborations between government, businesses, foundations and academic sectors have helped to rejuvenate neighborhoods, inspire civic and community engagement, and incubate the next generation of creative entrepreneurs. We will explore these themes, related research, and public policies as they apply to Chicago and other urban centers.
David Simon and Wendell Pierce (The Wire and Treme) will hold a special lunch-time conversation during a day full of discussions between internationally recognized researchers, artists, academics, and civic leaders.
John Holden, author of Capturing Cultural Value: How Culture Has Become a Tool of Government Policy, will provide introductory remarks to expert panelists discussing how cultural policies and arts practices around the world are evolving as individuals, organizations, and cities adjust to social changes, technological advances and economic uncertainty.
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