Author Archives: Linda Mayhew

Clements Center Upcoming Events

On Thursday, April 7th, at 12:15pm in the Eastwoods Room at the Texas Union, the Clements Center for National Security will host Mary Beth Long, former Assistant Secretary of Defense, who will give a talk on the Middle East and Terrorist Financing, as part of the Women and National Security Speaker Series. Mary Beth Long is the first-ever Senate confirmed female Assistant Secretary of Defense and worked directly with Secretaries of Defense Rumsfeld and Gates on the Department’s highest priority issues. She represented the Secretary of Defense with his foreign counterparts, and at the National Security Council and the White House and was one of the Secretary’s key advisors. This event is co-hosted by the Strauss Center for International Security and Law and the Women in Foreign Affairs student organization.

 

On Monday, April 11th, at 12:15pm in the Bass Lecture Hall at the LBJ School, the Clements Center for National Security and the UT Alexander Hamilton Society are hosting Professor Colin Dueck of George Mason University and Dr. Josh Busby of UT for a lunchtime discussion on Obama’s Foreign Policy. Dr. Dueck will discuss his recently published book “The Obama Doctrine: American Grand Strategy Today.” Dr. Busby will challenge his assertions and look back at the President’s foreign policy successes and failures.

 

On Wednesday, April 13th, at 12:15pm in SRH 3.122 at the LBJ School, the Clements Center, Intelligence Studies Project, and the Strauss Center are pleased to welcome Dr. Gregory Treverton, Chairman of the National Intelligence Council and advisor to the Director of National Intelligence, to speak on “Thinking About Global Futures.” Dr. Treverton previously held several leadership positions at RAND, including director of the RAND Center for Global Risk and Security, director of the International Security and Defense Policy Center, and associate dean of the Pardee RAND Graduate School. His work at RAND has examined terrorism, intelligence and law enforcement, as well as new forms of public–private partnership.

 

On Tuesday, April 19th, at 12:15pm in the Eastwoods Room at the Texas Union, Clements Center for National Security will host Professor Daniel Sargent of the University of California, Berkeley for a talk titled “A Superpower Transforming: Power, Agency, and the Evolution of the Pax American.” This talk will assess key inflection points in the superpower career of the United States, especially the 1970s, and it will ask how American decision-makers have tried—and failed—to comprehend, corral, and command the forces that have transformed world politics since 1945.

 

On Thursday, April 20 at 5:15pm in Bass Lecture Hall at the LBJ School, the Clements Center for National Security and UT’s British Studies Program is pleased to welcome Dr. James Williams, Director of the National Churchill Museum, to give a talk on Winston Churchill’s Iron Curtain Speech.

 

And finally, on Monday, April 25th at 12:15pm in SRH 3.122 at the LBJ School, the Clements Center for National Security and the UT Alexander Hamilton Society are pleased to host Mr. Wess Mitchell, President of the Center for European Policy Analysis. Mr. Mitchell will be talking about his latest co-authored book titled “The Unquiet Front: Rising Rivals, Vulnerable Allies, and the Crisis of American Power.”

Clements Center Undergraduate Fellows Program

The Undergraduate Fellows Program provides teaching, mentorship, professional development, and research opportunities for UT-Austin’s youngest aspiring statesmen and scholars. Fellows will convene monthly throughout the academic year to participate in discussion groups, be mentored by the Clements Center’s affiliated scholars, meet with distinguished guests and visiting speakers, and exchange ideas on their course projects. Each year will also include at least one field tour of a nearby historic site related to diplomatic and military history. Preference will be given to undergraduates whose coursework and/or extracurricular activities bear directly on American foreign policy, military and diplomatic history, and international security. A competitive application process will yield each academic year’s class of 15-20 Fellows. The deadline for the 2016-2017 academic year applications is Monday, April 18.  Please go to our website for more information and to submit your application!

Summer Student Development Fund

The Summer Student Development Fund awards funds to undergraduate and graduate students who secure unpaid summer internships in the fields of national security and foreign policy. Applications for Summer 2016 are due Monday, April 25th. Awards will be granted to those students whose summer work best reflects the mission and goals of the Clements Center. Past recipients have interned with the US Department of State, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the McCain Institute for International Leadership, the Project on Middle East Democracy, and the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs. Please go to our website for more information. Because internships in foreign and defense policy can be an essential part of professional development and career opportunities in national security policy, the Clements Center wants to help UT students in identifying and pursuing internship opportunities. We have created an Internship Database containing information on a broad range of internships in foreign policy, human rights, international development, international economics, and intelligence/security. This is an excellent resource for students that can be found on our website.

Help in recruiting student volunteers

University Events is looking for volunteers, specifically first and second-year students, to help with an event on Saturday, April 16, 2016 from 12:30-4:00 PM.  Honors Day is an event where upperclassman at the top of their school are recognized at the Frank Erwin Center. Volunteers are needed to help with check-in, passing out programs and various other tasks.

If interested in helping, please sign-up here!

Shakespeare and Medicine

Shakespeare and Medicine

Guest lecturers: Craig Hurwitz and Margaret Wardlaw

Thursday, April 7th, 7 p.m.

Craig Hurwitz and Margaret Wardlaw are Austin pediatricians. 

Drs. Hurwitz and Wardlaw will visit the Joynes Reading Room with several special guests for a short lecture on Shakespeare and Pediatric Palliative Medicine. The lecture will be followed by a pediatric performance from Richard III featuring star performers from “Play’s the Thing,” and a panel discussion. Unknown

The Bakkhai, a Foot in the Door Production

Pentheus, the young king of Thebes, has banned the wild ritual worship of the god Dionysus, a young “foreign” god (in fact, the son of Semele, princess of Thebes, and Zeus). Dionysus has traveled now to his mother’s city, retinue of maenads in tow, to establish his cult in Greece. When he meets resistance  he drives the women of Thebes mad and sends them to the hills to partake in his worship. Meanwhile, in the city with his chorus of maenads, Dionysus takes on human form in an attempt to change Pentheus’ mind. The ensuing struggle between freedom and restraint, old and new, rational and irrational, foreign and Greek, man and god eventually leads to tragic death and devastation for the city. 

About the playwright: Euripides was one of the foremost playwrights in Greece during the 5th century. Of his 90 plays, 19 have survived including The Bakkhai, his final masterpiece. 

About the translator: Anne Carson is a poet, Classicist, and writer from Canada. She has translated over ten Greek plays over the course of her career, and her translation of The Bakkhai was first performed in 2015 at the Almeida Theatre in London.

See the attached poster for performance times. bakkhai poster

Advanced Spanish-speaking student research assistant position (linguistics, anthropology)

McDonough, Kelly – Spanish & Portuguese

Starting on: As soon as possible

Contact: kelly.mcdonough@austin.utexas.edu

This project studies the representation of Mexican indigenous “informants,” collaborators, and authors in their own right during the twentieth century in anthropological and linguistic research (specifically related to Nahua culture, Nahuas being native speakers of Nahuatl – language of the Aztecs and more than 1.5 million people today). For the majority of the twentieth century many of the indigenous people who provided the information for academic studies were seen as sources of raw data that the “intellectual” academician would then analyze and interpret. In reframing indigenous peoples as intellectuals in their own right,  I argue for an expanded understanding of indigenous intellectualism addresses both the tensions and complementary nature of oral and written modes of creating and transmitting oral and written indigenous knowledges. At the same time, with this approach as example, I advocate for a return to early twentieth-century anthropological and linguistic studies in order to tease out and recover voices of indigenous intellectuals that can and should inform contemporary studies of Nahua culture.

Research assistants will identify linguistic and anthropological studies on/with Nahua people in the 20th century in pertinent journals; download and code essays for general topics; assess how the indigenous person who provided the source material (usually called an informant or collaborator, but sometimes author) is recognized in the essays. 

Qualifications:  

Required: Advanced proficiency in Spanish; knowledge of Word and Excel; basic research skills.

Preferred: Interest in Indigenous Studies

Time Commitment: Negotiable, usually 4-5 hours per week, less during midterms and finals

Duration: through the end of the semester; summer opportunities also available. Research team meets one hour every other week

Compensation: Credit in the acknowledgments of the completed article

The sponsor of this project is available for meetings every other week

For more information please contact Kelly McDonough at kelly.mcdonough@austin.utexas.edu

Student job opening in Dean’s Office

The Student Division has a few job openings in the Dean’s Office for Peer Advisors. For those of you who aren’t very familiar with this position, it largely involves answering policy and procedure questions, making appointments for students and advisors, and helping students fill out paperwork to drop classes, change majors, etc. Some perks of the job include being able to work on homework during downtime, flexible schedules between the hours of 8-5, M-F, a start pay of $10/hr, and the opportunity to gain office experience. 

Students can find the position at http://www.hirealonghorn.org under “Senior Student Associate/Peer Advisor” or job posting 59638. It’s open through Sunday the 27th, though I may extend it if needed. Feel free to contact me with any questions!

Positions in language research (linguistics, cognitive neuroscience) for spring graduates

The Department of Linguistics at the University of Maryland, is looking to fill up to four full-time positions for post-baccalaureate researchers. 

Starting date for all positions is Summer/Fall 2016. Salary is competitive, with benefits included. The positions would be ideal for individuals with a BA degree who are interested in gaining significant research experience in a very active research group as preparation for a research career. Applicants must already have permission to work in the US, or be a Canadian citizen or permanent resident, and should have completed a BA or BS degree by the time of appointment. The ability to interact comfortably with a wide variety of people (and machines) is a distinct advantage. Applicants may request to be considered for all four positions. 

The positions are open until filled. For best consideration, applications should be submitted by April 1st, 2016. However, review of applications will begin immediately. 

Positions #1–#2: Baggett Research Fellowships 

Baggett Fellowships are full-time positions. Fellows can pursue research in linguistics, cognitive (neuro-)science of language, language acquisition, or computational modeling. 1–2 positions are available for 2016-2017. Positions are for one year and are not renewable.

Contact: Dr. Andrea Zukowski

Position #3: Research Assistant in Psycholinguistics/Cognitive Neuroscience 

This person will be involved in all aspects of studies of language comprehension using behavioral and neuroscientific techniques, including electrophysiological brain recordings (training provided). The person will also contribute to Maryland’s Language Science program (http://languagescience.umd.edu/). Previous experience in (psycho)linguistics preferred. 1 year initial appointment, possibility of extension. 

Contact: Dr. Colin Phillips

Position #4: Research Assistant in Syntax and Morphology 

This person will be involved in all aspects of syntactic analysis of several languages, some of which are new to the study of linguistics, using methods of morpho-syntactic analysis and corpus construction (training provided). The person will also assist in bibliographical research and website construction.The person will also contribute to Maryland’s Language Science program (http://languagescience.umd.edu/). Previous experience in linguistics preferred. 1 year initial appointment, possibility of extension. 

Contact: Dr. Maria Polinsky

Application Requirements

Applicants may request to be considered for all four positions, or any subset. Applicants for any of these positions should submit a cover letter outlining relevant background and interests, including  potential faculty mentors, if applying for the Baggett Fellowships (multiple mentors are both possible and fruitful), a current CV, and names and contact information for 3 potential referees. Reference letters are not needed as part of the initial application. Applicants should also send a writing sample. All application materials should be submitted electronically to the following recipients:

Positions #1–#2 – Andrea Zukowski; zukowski@umd.edu. Put ‘Baggett Fellowship’ in the subject line.

Position #3 – Colin Phillips; colin@umd.edu. Put ‘Research Assistantship’ in the subject line.

Position #4 – Maria Polinsky; mpolinsk@gmail.com. Put ‘Research Assistantship’ in the subject line. 

The Department of Linguistics has shared facilities for testing of infants, children and adults, 2 eye-tracking labs, an ERP lab and a whole-head MEG facility. The department is part of a vibrant language science community (http://languagescience.umd.edu) that numbers 200 faculty, researchers, and graduate students across 17 departments and centers spanning 6 colleges, and is affiliated with the Neuroscience and Cognitive Science (http://www.nacs.umd.edu/) and the Maryland Neuroimaging Center (http://mnc.umd.edu/).

The positions are open until filled. For best consideration, applications should be submitted by April 1st, 2016. 

However, review of applications will begin immediately.

Details about these positions may be found here:

http://ling.umd.edu/baggett/jobs/