Speakers: Adrian Hearn (Melbourne), Ariel C. Armony (Pittsburgh); Chair: Paulo Drinot (UCL-IA) - This presentation examines Latin American perceptions of deepening Chinese trade and investment. China’s growing influence in Latin America is evident in the growth of bilateral trade to $240 (£143) billion in 2013, and a new wave of investment announced during Xi Jinping’s July 2014 regional tour. Alongside mining and energy, agriculture has become critical to Sino-Latin cooperation, driven by unprecedented demand for food as Chinese cities progress toward the target of one billion residents. Chinese acquisition of Latin American land for food production has proven more contentious than investment in other primary sectors, mainly because of local suspicion of Chinese state-owned enterprises. In Brazil, which provided 45 per cent of China’s 2013 soybean imports (amounting to 33 million metric tons worth $17.2 billion), President Rousseff has warned that 'inane xenophobia' may ward off Chinese investment.


UCL Americas Seminar: China and LatinAmerica: from Cyberspace to the Farm Gate

This paper, originally given as the Luis González lecture at the Colegio de México in early 2014, compares the (neglected) military dimension of the Mexican Revolution to the First World War in Europe, using the concept of 'total war' as the bridge; it defines 'total war' (in two distinct senses) and argues that, notwithstanding the dismissive comments of some historians of Mexico - for whom the armed revolution was a chaotic fiesta de balas, a 'carnival of bullets' - the revolution involved very costly mass conventional warfare. The argument, involving both demographic and military analysis, concludes that, in Mexico as in Europe, total war profoundly affected society, leaving a legacy of violence, veteran activism, and an incipient 'social pact' that underpinned the social reform and state-building of the 1920s and '30s.

UCL Americas Seminar: Mexico - Europe 1914 Total War

In this episode, Awa and Lavin discuss diasporic consciousness, focusing on the themes of belonging, identity, and home. Drawing on their experiences and reflecting on Warsan Shire's poem "Home," they explore what it means to feel at home.

Diaspora Diaries Episode 2: Diasporic Consciousness

Discussion of Gargi’s research and the new module designed to open conversations about how we might understand the interplay between global politics and the global economy in this moment of rapid realignment.

Speakers:
Gargi Bhattacharyya, Paige Patchin, Luke de Noronha

In Conversation with the SPRC: Geopolitics, catastrophe and trying to comprehend the world

Live dissections, Leonardo da Vinci and vodka on the brain ... 

Professor Dilwyn Knox (UCL School of European Languages, Society and Culture) provides some background to 'Neuroscience in the Renaissance', on 26 May. https://www.ucl.ac.uk/festival-of-culture/events/neuroscience-and-renaissance

The focus of the session is natural philosophers’ understanding and depiction of the human brain during the Renaissance.

Neuroscience in the Renaissance

What role does writing play in an age of austerity and rapid digital evolution?

Dr Nick Shepley talks about One Day in the City, UCL English’s bi-annual celebration of London and Literature, the high-octane conclusion to the UCL Festival of Culture on 27 May.

Come and listen to, question and rub shoulders with some of the greatest living poets, novelists and writers in London: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/festival-of-culture/events/one-day-in-the-city




One Day in the City

From the Civil Rights movement to the modern efforts to legalize gay marriage, the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution has been central to many of the most important issues in American history. UCL historian Adam Smith takes us through its significance. |

Read along while listening at our Medium: bit.ly/2aEpNZE |

Narrated by Adam Smith and Vidish Athavale | Music by Sergey Cheremisinov and Kai Engel |

Adam is a Senior Lecturer in the History Department at UCL and a frequent broadcaster on BBC Radio 4. An expert on the nineteenth century United States, his latest book is ​'The Stormy Present: Conservatism and American Politics in an Age of Revolution, 1848-1877', shortly to be published by the University of North Carolina Press.

Why Martin Luther King had the US Constitution on his side | Adam Smith

Iwan Morgan, Ronald Reagan’s first British biographer, discusses Reagan’s life from small-town Illinois boyhood, through his Hollywood years, to his political career – first as California governor, then as national conservative spokesman, and finally as US president – in his newly published book.

Iwan Morgan's 'Reagan: American Icon' Book Launch

Professor John Mullan (UCL English) reads one of his favourite festive poems,  T. S. Eliot’s, ‘Journey of the Magi’ (1927).

A specialist in 18th-century literature, Professor Mullan is also a broadcaster, journalist and host of the Guardian’s Book Club.

For more information about studying literature, visit the UCL English website: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/english

T.S. Eliot’s ‘Journey of the Magi’

For Valentine's Day, Professor Helen Hackett (UCL English) reads two love sonnets from Lady Mary Wroth's collection Pamphilia to Amphilanthus (1621). 

Wroth was the first Englishwoman to write a sequence of love sonnets, a prose romance (the Urania) and a tragicomedy (Love's Victory).

Professor Hackett is an expert on 16th and 17th century literature, with a special interest in women's writing.

Lady Mary Wroth's 'Pamphilia to Amphilanthus'

by Anthony Gardner (University of Oxford), Magdalena Radomska (Art History Institute, Adam Mickiewicz University inPoznań), Marko Ilić (SSEES, UCL). Moderated by Maja and Reuben Fowkes (Post-socialist Art Centre, IAS, UCL)

This panel discussion brought together contributors to the special issue of Third Text on Actually Existing Artworlds of Socialism and guest respondents to debate the legacy of the socialist system for contemporary art and politics.

'Research into the institutional settings and practicalities of artistic production during the socialist period is giving rise to more nuanced accounts that complicate the distinctions made between the heroism of the neo-avant-garde and complicity of official artists, revealing an art system that was more variegated, flexible and generative than has been widely assumed. This panel examines the far-reaching implications of the understanding that artists from across the stylistic and ideological spectrum were productively imbricated in the calculated opacities and unlikely rapprochements of the ‘actually existing’ artworlds of socialism. Discussion of the specific traits of Eastern bloc artworlds and the key differences between art institutional landscapes across the Cold War divide opens onto the critical question as to what might be salvaged from the historical experience of art under socialism. Furthermore, if post-socialism is conceived not as a timeless category but as a specific historical period, then what are the prospects for the socialist project in the new social and political circumstances of unfolding global disorder?

IAS Book Launch: Another Artworld Was Possible - the Socialist Art System Revisited

The IAS is a space dedicated to intellectual freedom where disruptive thinking is not only allowed but encouraged and supported. It is a centre of advanced research, debate and dialogue across any kind of boundary, intellectual or institutional. It’s a forum where difficult, even intractable, social questions can be exposed to the scrutiny of rigorous critical enquiry from a variety of perspectives

This Soundcloud channel showcases content produced by the Institute of Advanced Studies and its research centres.

Note on the logo: the blue and green background is a detail of a banner (300x120cm; oil paint, oil pastel and compressed charcoal on canvas) that artist Lucile Haefflinger produced for and which is on display at the IAS.

IAS Book Launch: Another Artworld Was Possible - the Socialist Art System Revisited

UCL Institute of Advanced Studies