Abstract:

Why do governments provide bilateral bailouts to countries that experience
financial crises above and beyond what the IMF provides? We argue that
governments face a trade off. On one hand, they have incentives to rescue a crisis
country because they want to prevent the spread of the crisis to their own country.
On the other hand, governments experience pressures from domestic constituents
who are oftentimes opposed to financial rescues. Politicians aim to balance these
countervailing pressures. Whereas they are more likely to provide financial support

Our work on this topic seeks to bridge the divide between medieval and early modern studies by taking a long view of three questions surrounding particular uses of vernacular languages and broader processes of vernacularization in this period: How did changes in technologies of communication, such as the rise of letterpress printing, intersect with the uses of vernacular languages? How were the structures of "vernacular theology" transfigured during the period leading up to and following the Protestant Reformation and Catholic Counter-Reformation?

Nicholas Vazsonyi is Professor of German and Comparative Literature at the University of South Carolina and the editor of the Cambridge Wagner Encyclopedia (forthcoming 2013), an international effort involving some 80 scholars from 11 academic disciplines and residing in 9 countries. He teaches and researches on German literature and culture, including music and film, covering the 18th through the 21st centuries. He has published monographs on Wagner and on Goethe, and edited volumes on Wagner’s Meistersinger and on German national identity from 1750 to 1871.

If the purpose of "Speaking in Tongues" is to bridge the divide between medieval and early modern studies, then one issue that must be faced is whether there was a great change in emotions or affectivity from one period to the other. Certainly the prevailing thesis, hanging on the coattails of Norbert Elias's Civilizing Process, is that there was a great change--and it can be summed up as the transition from medieval emotionality to modern restraint.

Dr. Venuti will give a seminar focusing on different ways of thinking about translation, using theory and examples of translations between English and other languages. He will focus on particular texts and ways to teach them, again, to students without strong second language skills. Amani Attia (Arabic Coordinator), Lina Insana (Associate Professor of Italian), and Gina Peirce (Assistant Director of Russian and East European Studies) will also speak at this workshop.

For seminar materials, contact: Carol M. Bové.

Prof. Venuti will give an overview of literary translation including the ways in which a translated text offers a set of relations, a form of intertextuality, analogous to the set offered by the source text. He will discuss particular strategies one might use with undergraduates and beginning graduate students who often lack advanced knowledge of a second language, for instance two English versions of the same source text. There will be ample opportunity for discussion.

Abstract:

Story-telling is ubiquitous, ranging from fiction to gossip, but what exactly is the core structure of narrative? This talk will propose that narrative thinking takes place when we consider alternative versions of an event – and make excuses. Based on this suggestion, the talk provides an overview of this theory of narrative and ends with a speculation about the connection of narrative and moral reasoning.

The personal wealth of state office holders and their associates has exploded during the three decades of China’s revived market economy. This is seen in such varied phenomena as the recent reports on the $2.7 billion in assets of Premier Wen Jiabao and family, and the high number and rank of state officials linked to a private firm in the Yuanhua smuggling scandal. How can corruption of this magnitude be explained?

Professor Hancock’s research interests have been primarily focused on the intersections made between theology, politics, and rhetoric. In this Brown Bag Lunch Colloquium Series, she examines how the dominant political rhetoric at the end of the Weimar years infiltrates the language of the church, questioning what factors influenced the mix of gospel and Germanness.

An author of several books posing an anthropological perspective on government, political labor, and power, Professor Schumann will offer an argument for the Welsh, UK, and EU development hierarchies, and how the organizational cultures of Welsh rural authorities shape local interpretations and administrations of UK/EU development policies. The discussion will be framed in terms of analyzing civil-state relations in a changing Wales, UK, and Europe. Following the talk Dr. Schumann will welcome questions from the audience.