Deconstructing Supper, Limited Wars, and Microfinance (awesome talks are coming your way!)

March. Tis a month where everything becomes crazy busy, time moves quickly and the libraries are even more crammed than usual. But assignments aside, March is also a time of amazing talks and events around campus. Don’t miss out – some of the deepest learning I’ve done at UBC has been through attending incredible lectures (Vandana Shiva, David Orr, Peter Mansbridge, Bill Reese, Norman Finkelstein, Cedza Dlamini, Stephen Lewis.. the list could go on for quite a while!), and I’ve never regretted investing an hour or two to hear a world expert.  Here are just a few events (not an exhaustive list) happening soon that sound particularly interesting. Happy learning!

1)  From the Department of History and the Liu Institute for Global Issues

Limited Wars, Unltd.

A  lecture by Dr. Marilyn Young of New York University, Thursday, 25 March 2010 from 5:00pm – 6:30pm at the Liu Institute for Global Issues at the University of British Columbia.

Dr. Young will bring her skills as an award-winning historian to an exploration of the history of the United States over the past sixty years through the lens of its permanent state of war as waged in places like Korea, Vietnam, and most recently, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Click  here for more information.

2) Dr. Simon KY Lee Global Lounge Open House & Movie Night
Date: Tuesday, March 16th
Time: 3:30-5:30 (open house) 6-8 pm (movie night)
Details: Sustainable food, live world music and a chance to meet globally-minded students, staff, and faculty. Stay around and watch our Global Lounge Film Series Movie – Deconstructing Supper – and join us for a question & answer session with Vancouver Restauranteur, John Bishop! (Please RSVP at global.lounge@ubc.ca for the movie portion of the evening). This is an amazing opportunity to meet one of the most famous chefs in the city – please RSVP as space will be limited!

3) “Border crossings: Interdisciplinary Explorations of Transnationalism and Globalization”, an annual lecture series hosted by the Liu Institute for Global Issues, together with UBC’s Geography, Anthropology and Sociology departments.

Poverty Capital: Microfinance and the Making of Development

Ananya Roy, Tuesday, March 23, 12:00 - 2:00 pm
Liu Institute for Global Issues, Multipurpose Room

The turn of the century has been marked by the emergence of a “kinder and gentler” project of development. From the recalibration of the World Bank as a “knowledge bank” committed to the eradication of poverty to the ambitious campaigns that imagine the “end of poverty,” a new global order is in the making. Through ethnographic attention to the Washington D.C.-Wall Street complex, Professor Roy will examine the circuits of capital and truth that structure “millennial development.” In particular, she will focus on microfinance, which is an active frontier of “creative capitalism.” But microfinance is also the site of important experiments in poverty policy, from the massive civil society institutions of Bangladesh to the Hezbollah militia of Lebanon. It is thus implicated in the emergence of counter-geographies of development.

Please download the poster here or visit www.ligi.ubc.ca for more information.

If possible, please register for this free public event at: http://www.ligi.ubc.ca/events/register.htm