VIULECTURES 2|14

Monday, 1 December 2014
5 pm, room 1 G

The Quality of Mercy. A Reflection on 30 Years of Humanitarian Work and International Cooperation

Guest speaker: Filippo Grandi, Italian diplomat and United Nations official

Filippo Grandi is an Italian diplomat who has served in Iraq, the Congo, Afghanistan, the Middle East and other humanitarian frontlines, engaging in refugee and humanitarian work over the past 26 years, 22 of which have been with the United Nations, encompassing refugee assistance, protection, emergency management, donor relations and humanitarian and political affairs. Filippo Grandi served as Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine refugees from January 2010 to March 2014, after having served as UNRWA’s Deputy Commissioner-General since October 2005.

About UNRWA: UNRWA provides assistance, protection and advocacy for some 4.7 million registered Palestine refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and the occupied Palestinian territory, pending a solution to their plight. The Agency’s services encompass education, health care, a social safety-net, camp infrastructure and improvement, community support, microfinance and emergency response, including in times of armed conflict.

This open lecture is organized in association with Collegio Internazionale Ca’ Foscari.

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Wednesday, 12 November 2014
5 pm, room 9 A

Symbolic Violence: Reshaping Post-Patriarchal Discourses on Gender

In this Lecture, Franca Bimbi will present and discuss her study Symbolic Violence: Reshaping Post-Patriarchal Discourses on Gender*.
Gender dualism seen through the lens of symbolic violence is both an appearance and a structural field within the dynamics of domination: patriarchal patterns continue to exist in “gender regimes”, where women’s self-determination is recognized as a normative frame. As regards the emphasis on interpretative dualism in migrant and native women’s victimization, Franca Bimbi will specifically examine the encounter between Bourdieu’s view of male domination and classical feminist constructs as lived body experience, sexual contract, and trafficking in women. This is to highlight the many “gazes” which can reveal the illusio of universal gender rights and the neo-colonial discourse on migrant women.

This open lecture forms a part of Prof. Trappolin’s course at VIU on Gender Studies.

* Recently published in the journal Advances in Gender Research (vol. 18B, 2014, pages 275-301).

Franca Bimbi is full professor of Sociology at Padova University, where she teaches General Sociology and Social Policy and leads a research group at  the Department FISPPA (Philosophy, Sociology, Education and Applied Psychology). Besides collaborating with local, national and European political committees, she is coordinator for European projects on violence against women, migration, family and urban life security. Her current interests mainly focus on "Gender, Citizenship, Pluralism identity" and in particular on the cultural processes of transformation of family relationships.

Luca Trappolin is assistant professor of Sociology at the Department of Philosophy, Sociology, Education and Applied Psychology (FISPPA) of the University of Padua. He is a member of the University Forum on Gender Politics and Studies, and directs the section on Queer Studies. He is also member of editorial boards of online and printed publication series on Gender Studies. His research topics focus on: transformation of gender and sexual identities, social construction of the body, conflicts related to recognition, and the public sphere.

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Friday, 3 October 2014

10 am, room 9 A

Europe’s Unique Experiment: The Bottom-up Creation of a Large Polity

To celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of the research program The Origins of the Modern State in Europe, 13th-18th Centuries, conducted by Prof. Jean-Philippe Genet of Université Paris-Sorbonne, Prof. Mikhail Krom from the European University at St. Petersburg invites the emeritus professor Wim Blockmans to illustrate the new and compelling challenges regarding Europe’s role and its legacy concerning individual states at present.

What are the origins of this challenge, and to what degree does it constitute an obstacle to Europe’s role in a globalizing world?
Starting from a far-reaching historical analysis of the various forms European states have taken in the course of centuries, the lecture “Europe’s Unique Experiment: The Bottom-up Creation of a Large Polity” seeks to provide a better understanding of the tension between the traditional longing to belong and the ongoing globalization world-wide.

This open lecture forms a part of Prof. Krom’s course on Comparative History and Early Modern State Building: a Comparative Perspective.

VIUlecture abstract

Wim Blockmans is Professor Emeritus at Leiden University. Prof. Blockmans has taught social and political history at Erasmus University, Rotterdam and medieval history at Leiden University. In 2002 – 2010 he was Rector of Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences in Wassenaar. He is Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy and member of other scholarly societies in Europe. Prof. Blockmans’s interests include political and cultural history of the Netherlands and medieval Europe, urban history, and history of representative institutions. His publications have been translated into English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Chinese and other languages.

Mikhail Krom is Professor of Comparative Studies in History at European University at St. Petersburg. He has also taught as Visiting Professor at École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (Paris). Prof. Krom has published several works on the history of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Muscovy in 15th and 16th centuries. His research interests include early modern social and political history, patronage systems, historiography, comparative methodology. Prof. Krom is teaching two courses in the 2014 Fall semester of the VIU Globalization Program: “Comparative History” and “Early Modern State Building: A Comparative Perspective”.