The Jackson School’s Winter 2021 Lecture Series, “Protest, Race and Citizenship across African Worlds,” invited emerging scholars to trace Horn of Africa connections to today’s global trends in popular politics, racial formation, and new forms of belonging. Watch the recordings of past talks below. Each lecture was moderated by Jackson School Director Leela Fernandes followed by

In a particularly timely Task Force after the wildfires of 2020, Dr. Scott Montgomery’s JSIS 495 – Climate Change and the Wildfire Threat: What Can Be Done? tackles the question of how the wildfire threat should be addressed. The course has three key aims: 1) research the key causes of these fires, 2) evaluate methods being used

The latest Jackson Report – an annual sampling of JSIS activities; new offerings; and student and faculty research, honors, and awards – is now available online. From Leela Fernandes, JSIS Director and Stanley D. Golub Endowed Chair: “The first six months of my Directorship took place in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, a sharply contested election and

Associate Professor and Chair of the South Asia Center Sunila S. Kale is the special issue editor of the November issue of The Journal of Peasant Studies on comparative land politics in China and India. Kale has also written on the topic in this recent piece also published in the Journal on November 6, 2020. The twelve

Drs. Hajin Jun, Mika Ahuvia, and Richard Watts have received the Society of Scholars Fellowship for next year, granted by UW’s Simpson Center for the Humanities. Only eight awards are given each year. Awards are based on the scholarly merit of the individual applications, and scholarship likely to contribute to intellectual exchange among a diverse group

Priority deadline: February 1, 2021. Apply here! Applications for the University of Wisconsin’s Central Eurasian Studies Summer Institute (CESSI) are now open! CESSI is an intensive, eight-week language program held each summer in Madison, Wisconsin.  Students receive the equivalent of one year of language study during this time and earn eight credits upon completion of

Affiliate faculty Maya Angela Eipe Smith’s book, Senegal Abroad: Linguistic Borders, Racial Formations, and Diasporic Imaginaries, is a winner of The Modern Language Association’s  Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for French and Francophone Studies. Her volume explores the fascinating role of language in national, transnational, postcolonial, racial, and migrant identities. Drawing on extensive interviews with people of Senegalese heritage, Maya Angela Smith contends

A new edition of the Oxford Handbook of Electoral Systems, co-edited by JSIS professor Robert Pekkanen, has just been published in paperback. No subject is more central to the study of politics than elections. All across the globe, elections are a focal point for citizens, the media, and politicians long before-and sometimes long after—they occur.

Recently, local media published two articles on China featuring members of the JSIS community. In her opinion piece for The Seattle Times, JSIS China Studies alumna Amy Sommers examines what President-elect Joe Biden could do to strengthen U.S. foreign policy toward China. She also highlights the value of the Jackson School’s China Program, stating that she “benefited from the

Taso Lagos, JSIS lecturer in Hellenic Studies, has recently published his new book, Charisma and Religious War in America: Ministries and Rivalries of Sister Aimee and “Fighting Bob” (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2020). The book explores spiritual innovation in 1920’s Los Angeles through the biographies of two key Protestant figures –and rivals– in the movement:  Sister Aimee