Amy J. Elias (English, University of Tennessee) and Christian Moraru (American Literature and Critical Theory, University of North Carolina) are authors of The Planetary Turn: Relationality and Geoaesthetics in the twenty-First Century (Northwestern, 2015). In the opening session, they will introduce the core concepts of the book, and in the following sessions each will present a major lecture on their current research.

Session 1: The Planetary Turn
1:00-2:00pm

Maneesha Deckha is Associate Professor of Law at the University of Victoria, British Columbia. Her research interests include health law and bioethics, critical animal studies and animal law, feminist analysis of law, law and culture and law society. Her work has been published widely in international legal and interdisciplinary venues. She has also contributed to several anthologies relating to feminism, cultural pluralism, and health law and policy.

Margaret Mallonee is a senior majoring in Economics and Chinese. Her project evaluates the South-North Water Transfer Project (SNWTP), the world's largest water diversion project. Policy-makers world-wide argue that the SNWTP's costs exceed its benefits because it is only short-term solution for China's long-term water scarcity problem and does not solve the difficulty of high water demand for a limited freshwater supply. To test this theory, this project runs a cost-benefit analysis on the SNWTP's central route's costs and benefits to Beijing.

Su'ad Abdul Khabeer holds a PhD from Princeton University. She is currently the Anthropology and African America Studies programs at Purdue University. She is a scholar-artist-activist who uses anthropology and performance to explore the intersections of race and popular culture.

This talk examines the creative sartorial practices of American Muslim Men, and particularly Black Muslim men, who are increasingly using the aesthetic of Black Dandyism to signify on white supremacy as well as the ethno-religious hegemonies within US Muslim communities.

Teresa Lane, a staff member in the School of Education's Department of Technology, will present photos and audio as part of the College of General Studies' Humanities in Continuing Education Event: Human Beings/ being Human. Teresa's exhibit is based on her June 2015 trip to Bolivia, where she met with the Quechua elders and children in a rural village to record indigenous folklore.

Lameeci Issaq is the founding director of the Noor Theater, which is dedicated to supporting, developing and producing the work theatre artists of Middle Eastern Descent. Ms. Issaq will be reading from the play Nahda: Five Visions of an Arab Awakening. Who is the Arab today? Five visions explores modern Middle Eastern identities in the West, including the parental obligation of naming a child to survive post-9/11 America.

Assaf Gavron is an acclaimed Israeli writer of five novels (Ice, Moving, Almost Dead, Hydromania and The Hilltop); a collection of short stories (Sex in the Cemetery); and a non-fiction collection of Jerusalem falafel-joint reviews (Eating Standing Up). His fiction was translated into 11 languages, and has been adapted for the stage in Israel's national theatre. Mr. Gavron is the recipient of several awards including the Bernstein Prize for The Hilltop, the Israeli Prime Minister's Creative Award for Authors, the Buch Fur die Stadt in Germany and the Prix Courrier International in France.

Assaf Gavron is an acclaimed Israeli writer of five novels (Ice, Moving, Almost Dead, Hydromania and The Hilltop); a collection of short stories (Sex in the Cemetery); and a non-fiction collection of Jerusalem falafel-joint reviews (Eating Standing Up). His fiction was translated into 11 languages, and has been adapted for the stage in Israel's national theatre. Mr. Gavron is the recipient of several awards including the Bernstein Prize for The Hilltop, the Israeli Prime Minister's Creative Award for Authors, the Buch Fur die Stadt in Germany and the Prix Courrier International in France.

This event will begin with a reception at 7:00pm, followed by a Reading, Talk, and Q&A at 7:30, and ending with dessert and an informal discussion at 8:00pm.

The second in a series of annual UCIS professional development workshops organized for faculty and staff of community colleges in the Western Pennsylvania region with the aim of internationalizing these community college campuses. Presenters from the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University will discuss admissions, orientation, academics and student life in relation to international students attending US colleges.