Speaker Series: Roberta Buffett Visiting Professor Lectures

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Rwandan Genocide Expert to give Buffett Visiting Professor Lecture

This spring, on May 29th, BCICS will celebrate its first anniversary as the Roberta Buffett Center for International and Comparative Studies with a public lecture by José Kagabo, that will be held in Harris Hall 108 at 4 pm. José Kagabo will be the Roberta Buffett Visiting Professor of International Studies in Spring 2008. Kagabo teaches at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in France, and is an internationally renowned expert on the Rwandan genocide. He has testified before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and has written numerous books and articles on crises in central Africa including Islam and the “Swahili” in Rwanda and The Question of Rwandan Refugees. Kagabo is currently working on a book about the Rwandan genocide that will focus on how the nework of conspirators was organized and examine the role of politicians, intellectuals, and businessmen in motivating ordinary citizens to become the perpetrators of violence. Building on his distinct knowledge of the Rwandan genocide, international justice programs, and the truth-seeking tribunals, Kagabo will develop and teach two courses while at Northwestern

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Roberta Buffett Visiting Professorship Lecture :: Thu 04/19/07 : 5:00 – 6:30 p.m.
Aleš Debeljak, Roberta Buffett Visiting Professor of International Studies
"War and Poetry"
Guild Lounge, Scott Hall First Floor, 601 University Place

Aleš Debeljak will present a personal meditation on the relevance of poetry today and its ability to give voice to extreme situations, to what resists articulation, such as madness, war, pain, etc. In illuminating the conditions after the wars of Yugoslav succession that gave birth to Debeljak’s collection of poems, The City and the Child, the author will lay the groundwork for a better appreciation of the poems that will be recited in the second part of the lecture. Aleš Debeljak (Ph.D. Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University) has published numerous books of cultural criticism and poetry in his native Slovenian. His collections of poetry translated in English include: Anxious Moments (1994), Dictionary of Silence (1999) and The City and the Child (1999). His non-fiction books in English include The Hidden Handshake: National Identity and Europe in a Post-Communist World (2004), Reluctant Modernity: The Institution of Art and its Historical Forms (1998), and Twilight of the Idols: Recollections of a Lost Yugoslavia (1994). His books are translated into more than a dozen languages. A winner of The Slovenian National Book Award and Chiqyu Poetry Prize (Tokyo), Debeljak directs the Center for Cultural and Religious Studies at the University of Ljubljana.

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