Past Speakers
The inaugural 2021 MU Peace Studies Speakers’ Series, where Abdusabur "Ozod" Abdusamadov, MU Ph.D. candidate, discussed the prospects for peace and conflict transformation in Central Asia with particular emphasis on the Afghanistan situation. Ozod placed the prospects for peace in regional perspectives drawn from both historical and contemporary experiences. Event held Sept. 23, 2021.
YouTube Link:
Dr. Raymond Ramcharitar discussed conflict among ethnic groups and social classes in post-colonial Trinidad and suggested the causes and solutions based on "culture." His arguments for reducing conflict and fostering peace invoke scholarship from Matthew Arnold, Raymond Williams, and others but are most persuasively outlined by the American philosopher Martha Nussbaum.
Raymond Ramcharitar, Ph.D., is a historian and cultural critic from Trinidad and Tobago. He has published several academic articles on the history, culture, and literature of the country. He is also a poet and novelist who has published three collections of poetry and one of fiction. Dr. Ramcharitar's talk centered on his most recent book, A History of Creole Trinidad, 1956–2010 (Palgrave, 2021). Event held Oct. 14, 2021.
YouTube Link:
Peace Studies Director Daive Dunkley talked about his new LSU Press book, Women and Resistance in the Early Rastafari Movement, during a live virtual presentation and Q&A. Click Here to see the video on Facebook. Event held Oct. 28, 2021.
Bosnia, Cyprus, and the Persistence of Genocide
While nobody today speaks of Bosnia or Cyprus as ongoing atrocities, both nations are, indeed, engulfed in genocides that persist. Based on over ten years of research in Cyprus and Bosnia, Dr. J.D. Bowers will speak to the present-day manifestations of genocidal beliefs, behaviors, and goals that continue to shape the lives of both victims and perpetrators and which perpetuate violence without mass killings. Event held Nov. 10, 2021.
YouTube Link:
Local Stories, Global Outlooks: What Hurricane María Tells Us About Climate Justice
(Right) Ricia Anne Chansky, professor of literature in the English Department at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez and (Left) Marci Denesiuk, Canadian writer who teaches in the English Department at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez. Hurricane María made landfall in the Puerto Rican archipelago in September 2017, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake. The storm was only the beginning of the disaster, though, as the aftermath was defined by inadequate aid and failed governmental relief efforts. This catastrophe in Puerto Rico is indicative of the multiple other marginalized communities on the frontlines of the climate emergency whose positionality as second-class citizens prevents them from receiving necessary support and participating in larger conversations about mitigating this global crisis. Ricia Anne Chansky and Marci Denesiuk, editors of Mi María: Surviving the Storm, Voices from Puerto Rico (Haymarket Books, 2021) discuss oral histories that narrate surviving the hurricane and its long aftermath in Puerto Rico as a means of beginning to parse through issues of climate justice on a global level. Event held Nov 17, 2021.
YouTube Link:
Religion in Latin America and the Caribbean: Past, Present and Possible Futures
The MU Peace Studies Director, Daive Dunkley, to give Paper at a Plenary Session of the Conference on Religion in Latin America and the Caribbean: Past, Present and Possible Futures, organized by the Centre for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS), University of London in collaboration with the Centre for Religion, Conflict and Globalization (CRCG), University of Groningen. The event was held Jan. 13, 2022
Title: “Caring for Patients, Self, and Community: Conversations with Black Healthcare Workers in Toronto.”
Date: Wednesday, Feb. 16, 2022
Time: 6:30 pm Central Time (CT)
Speaker: Dr. Karen Flynn, associate professor in the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies and the Department of African-American Studies Program at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
YouTube link: TBA
“Wars Against Black Freedom After Slavery”
A Peace Studies Black History Month 2022 Discussion
Feb. 17, 2022, 4:30 PM CT
Maria Mercone, University of Coimbra
Theodore S. Francis II, Huston-Tillotson University
Caree Banton, University of Arkansas
D.A. Dunkley, University of Missouri
YouTube link: TBA
Wasuk Godwin Sule-Pearce, University of West London, “Black Pupils Matter”
Feb. 25, 2022, 10:00 AM CT
YouTube Link: TBA
Talk by Abdusabur Abdusamadov “Ozod” - MU Ph.D. candidate in sociology.
Topic: Speakers' Series: Ukrainian Crisis and Post-Soviet Russia
Subtopic: Understanding the crisis in Ukraine, its origin. and what comes next.
March 16, 2022, 4:30 p.m.
YouTube Link: TBA
Talk by Angela Zimmerman, author of Alabama in Africa and professor of German history at George Washington University.
Lecture focused on a conjuror, Guinea Sam Nightingale, said to have been shot by cannon directly from West Africa to Boonville, Missouri, sometime in the 1850s.
April 7, 2022, 4:30 p.m.
YouTube Link: TBA