Please join us on Friday, November 8th, at 3 p.m. in the Carnegie Building for our sixth Faculty Colloquium of this semester.

Presenter: Warren Binford, Director of the Clinical Law Program

Title: “4 Days in Clint”

Abstract: 4 Days in Clint is a firsthand account of what Willamette Law professor and international children’s rights expert Warren Binford discovered when she and her colleagues walked into the Clint Border Patrol Facility on a routine monitoring visit outside of El Paso, Texas, in June 2019. Over the course of four days and through interviews involving approximately 70 children, the team came to realize that hundreds of children were being unlawfully warehoused by the US government in a state of filth, hunger, sickness, and sadness, without any meaningful adult care. Some children reported being assaulted by Border Patrol while many reported being forced to sleep on concrete floors, including infants and toddlers, in overcrowded jail cells, a loading dock, and a windowless warehouse. Professor Binford will explain what had changed in their observations about the government’s treatment of the children in its care that compelled them to go to the media for the first time in 22 years of Flores monitoring visits. Professor Binford will explain the legal framework that applies to migrant children in custody, highlighting both the legal violations by the US government, as well as the loopholes that need to be closed to ensure the humane treatment of children, and how the average U.S. resident can help. Professor Binford’s talk will include direct quotations from the children’s sworn declarations to ensure that their voices and stories are known to and amplified by the American public.

Bio: Warren Binford is Professor of Law and Director of the Clinical Law Program at Willamette University. An internationally recognized children’s rights expert, Professor Binford was invited by legal counsel in Flores v. Barr to help conduct a series of site inspections of especially concerning government facilities where migrant children have been detained since 2017, including the former Wal-Mart, the Tornillo tent city, and most recently, the Clint Border Patrol Facility, among others. Professor Binford was selected as both a Fulbright Scholar in 2012 and the inaugural Fulbright Canada-Palix Foundation Distinguished Visiting Chair in Brain Science, and Child and Family Health and Wellness in 2015. She holds a B.A., summa cum laude with distinction, and an Ed.M., from Boston University, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School.

Students are welcome and coffee and treats will be provided. We look forward to seeing you there.

Note: There will also be a special TGIF reception following the lecture that will be open to faculty from all schools. This is the third TGIF event this semester with Colloquium speakers from across the University. These opportunities for cross-University gathering and conversation are sponsored by the Office of the Provost and Senior Vice President.

Bill Kelm and Stephen Patterson
Faculty Colloquium Coordinators

Please join us on Friday, October 11th, at 3 p.m. in the Carnegie Building for our fifth Faculty Colloquium of this semester.

Presenter: George Gu, Assistant Professor of Finance

Title: “Local Religious Belief and Workplace Safety”

Abstract: We study the impact of local religiosity on establishment-level workplace safety. Consistent with the view that religious people are more risk averse, we document a significant negative effect of religiosity in a county on worker injury rates in establishments located in the county. We also find that the effect of local religiosity on worker safety is primarily driven by Protestant religion. Lastly, we identify two channels by which local religiosity affects worker safety. Religious managers are more risk averse so they increase investment conducive to safety (the managerial safety investment channel). Religious rank-and-file workers are more risk averse so they comply with safety protocol more diligently and assert greater caution at work (the worker safety compliance channel). Interestingly we find that religiosity local to a firm’s headquarter has no significant effect on worker safety outcomes, safety investments, or overall safety ratings, suggesting the importance of middle level managers and rank-and-file workers (rather than top management) in shaping worker safety policy. Our results imply that local religious beliefs have a subtle yet important impact on employee welfare.

Students are welcome and coffee and treats will be provided. We look forward to seeing you there.

Note: There will also be a special TGIF reception following the lecture that will be open to faculty from all schools. This is the second TGIF event this semester with Colloquium speakers from across the University. These opportunities for cross-University gathering and conversation are sponsored by the Office of the Provost and Senior Vice President.

Bill Kelm and Stephen Patterson
Faculty Colloquium Coordinators

Please join us on Friday, October 4th, at 3 p.m. in Ford 301 for our fourth Faculty Colloquium of this semester.

Presenter: Abigail Susik, Associate Professor of Art History
Title: “Curating Between Mexico and England: Notes on the Exhibition ‘Alan Glass, Surrealism’s Secret’ at Leeds Arts University, 2020”

Abstract: Alan Glass (b. 1932) is a French-Canadian artist who has resided in Mexico City since 1963. When Glass moved to Paris from Montreal in the 1950s, his intricate pencil drawings were discovered and promoted by surrealism’s founder André Breton. The catalogue for his first exhibition featured an essay by his friend Alejandro Jodorowsky, the Chilean artist who later became a renowned cult filmmaker. In Mexico City, Glass became a collaborator with expatriate British surrealist Leonora Carrington. Much like Carrington and Jodorowsky, Glass’s works evince an esoteric poetics in which reality is transmuted through the work of the creative imagination. In addition, he quickly became a notable contributor to Mexico City’s flourishing contemporary art scene in the 60s and 70s. Continuing to draw and paint, Glass turned increasingly to assemblage, a medium much favored by surrealism. Precisely executed with found material gleaned from Mexico City’s maze-like markets, Glass’s sumptuous arrangements facilitate mysterious correspondences between disparate objects.

Although Glass is one of Mexico’s most revered artists, as is evidenced by the prestigious award he received in 2017, the coveted Medalla Bellas Artes, Mexico’s highest recognition for production in the fine arts, he must also be considered surrealism’s best-kept secret. Including his first solo show in Paris in 1958, there have been only three exhibitions devoted to his work in Europe, the most recent of which took place in Spain more than a decade ago. The art of Alan Glass, then, is ripe for exploration and discovery, and the Leeds Arts University exhibition of 40 drawings, paintings, and assemblages in autumn of 2020 will be the artist’s first show in the United Kingdom. Situating Glass’s art in the context of an internationally dispersed surrealism with longevity far beyond what is often assumed, the exhibition will bring Glass’s production into conversation with the Mexican influences and networks which have come to define it.

Students are welcome and coffee and treats will be provided. We look forward to seeing you there.

Bill Kelm and Stephen Patterson
Faculty Colloquium Coordinators

Looking ahead: Next week’s Colloquium will be delivered by Atkinson professor George Gu presenting on “Local Religious Belief and Workplace Safety”.

Please join us on Friday, September 27th, at 3 p.m. in the Carnegie Building for our third Faculty Colloquium of this semester.

Presenter: Saghar Sadeghian, Assistant Professor of History
Title: Conversion as Boundary Crossing: Non-Muslim Conversions in Mid 19th and Early 20th Century Iran

Abstract: Iranian non-Muslim communities are instances of Fredrik Barth’s ethnic groups (10-11). They live in separate geographic communities, have their own languages, were forced to follow specific dress codes, and created a community of ‘us’ in comparison to the Muslim ‘them’. At the same time, the boundaries between these groups were blurred and negotiable. Group boundaries could be crossed by interfaith marriages, economic interactions, or notably religious conversions.

Apart from religious spiritual motivations, some individuals converted to other religions, voluntarily or by force, for economic, cultural, or political reasons. However, this was not a simple transition from one religious community to another. The converts normally kept their previous rituals, family ties, and languages; but were banned from their former community’s institutions. On the other hand, in the new group, they were welcomed and awarded with certain privileges; but could not completely integrate. For example, titles such as ‘Jewish-Baha’is’—for those Jews converting to the Baha’i Faith—indicated the Jewish community could not totally let their former members leave. At the same time, this could also indicate that the Baha’i community might not have let them totally integrate. They might change their religion but were still Jews by blood. Labels like ‘Jadid al-Islam’, or ‘New Muslim’ for converts to Islam differentiated them from the ‘old’ or ‘original’ Muslims.

This paper studies Iranian non-Muslim conversions to Islam or other faiths, during the mid 19th and early 20th centuries, as a means of social mobilization. It addresses the topic in two main ways: discussing the reasons one might convert voluntarily or by force; and the ways each community treated its dissidents or new members. Employing “social identity theory” (Tajfel and Turner 7-20), the article argues that converts did not lose their old religious affiliation by gaining a new one; instead, they lived with fluid multiple identities in Iranian society.

Students are welcome and coffee and treats will be provided. We look forward to seeing you there.

Note: There will also be a special TGIF reception following the lecture that will be open to faculty from all schools. This is the first TGIF event this semester with Colloquium speakers from across the University. These opportunities for cross-University gathering and conversation are sponsored by the Office of the Provost and Senior Vice President.

Bill Kelm and Stephen Patterson
Faculty Colloquium Coordinators

Please join us on Friday, September 20th, at 3 p.m. in Ford 102 for our second Faculty Colloquium of this semester.

Presenter: Ortwin Knorr, Associate Professor of Classics

Title: “Suppressed Desire: The Latin Poetess Sulpicia and her Poetry of Love” ([Tib]. 3.13-18)

Abstract: The six slender elegies of Sulpicia, a mere 40 lines, are justly famous as the only surviving Latin poems written by a female poet. In the past, critics have tended to dismiss her work as the clumsy products of a woman amateur (Smith 1913, Tränkle 1980). More recently, this has begun to change as scholars such as Santirocco 1979, Hinds 1987, and Keith 1997 have pointed out Sulpicia’s artistry and her clever play with the conventions of male Love Elegy. Nevertheless, aspects of Sulpicia’s art remain only partially understood. Most importantly, the very way in which Sulpicia has arranged her poems means that, on the one hand, we get to see tantalizing glimpses of her scandalous love affair but, on the other hand, she also communicates how she successfully manages to suppress her desire, just as Roman society would expect a young woman of the upper classes to do.

Students are welcome and coffee and treats will be provided. We look forward to seeing you there.

Bill Kelm and Stephen Patterson
Faculty Colloquium Coordinators