As part of the Syracuse Symposium, the annual program for the public Humanities at Syracuse University, the SU Humanities Center will sponsor the Syracuse Symposium Seminars to correspond with this year’s annual theme: "Conflict: Peace and War." Seminars will be taught at the undergraduate and graduate levels by faculty from across all divisions and Colleges, and will include visiting lecturers as part of the Watson Distinguished Visiting Collaborator series co-sponsored by the Mellon CNY Humanities Corridor initiative. The Syracuse Symposium Seminars will become a regular curricular program each spring semester. 

Courses that will be offered in the spring 2011 include:

"Peace War and Security” (ANT/HUM 300), taught by Robert Rubinstein, professor of anthropology and international relations in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. This seminar will explore anthropological approaches to questions relating to peace, war and security. It considers to what extent there is a biological imperative for humans to war and explores the socio-cultural and archaeological evidence about early warfare. The course considers the effects of colonial expansion on war among indigenous peoples and in postcolonial society. Insights gained from these studies are linked to anthropological approaches to contemporary peace and security issues. Topics considered include: postcolonial conflicts, peace operations, and humanitarian intervention.

"Is Perpetual Peace Possible” (HUM 200/400), taught by Gregg Lambert, Dean’s Professor of the Humanities and founding director of SU’s Humanities Center. In this seminar, built around Kant’s idea of perpetual peace, students will grapple with questions concerning peace and conflict outside the more specialized disciplinary settings where they are usually posed in the context of the historical failures that make the idea of perpetual peace appear impractical, if not impossible. Students will be asked to consider whether in modern Western societies, the separation of the so-called religious and more inward sense of peace and the highlighting of the outward political sense, referring only to the absence of civil hostilities, has contributed to the distortion of the entire meaning of peace. The environment of the seminar and its location in the general Humanities is aligned to the overarching philosophical approach, which will give students the opportunity to pursue questions with no plausible answer, and should concern students regardless of their background, chosen area of study, or prospective vocational goal.

"Seminar on Rhetoric and Public Address" – Rhetorical Frames for War (CRS 862), taught by Kendall Philips, professor of communication and rhetorical studies in the College of Visual and Performing Arts.  One of the most powerful and intense examples of rhetoric is the declaration of war.  The words of such a declaration help to frame the notion of armed conflict and have fundamentally changed the course of human history.  In this course, students will attend to major instances in which U.S. presidents have utilized rhetoric to frame, justify and declare states of war.  Specific attention will be paid to Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War, Woodrow Wilson and World War I, Franklin D. Roosevelt and World War II, Harry S. Truman and the Cold War, and Lyndon B. Johnson and Vietnam.  Watson Distinguished Visiting Collaborator David Zarefsky will also be involved in the course. Zarefsky is the Owen L. Coon Professor of Communication Studies and former cean of the School of Communication at Northwestern University and a renowned expert on public address, rhetoric and argumentation.  Zarefsky is the author of several important books and is currently president of the Rhetoric Society of America.

“Music of the Middle East and West Asia” (HOM 300/HUM 300), taught by Carol Babiracki, associate professor of music history and cultures in The College of Arts and Sciences. This new course offers an overview of rural and urban music cultures of Turkey, Israel, the Arab Middle East, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan; cultural areas long connected by trade, migration, and cross-cultural artistic exchange. Students will take a broad, interdisciplinary view of musical life across the region, engaging history, ethnography, textual studies, aesthetics, and the media. Topics will include signature musical genres, styles, and instruments; ideas and strategies of performance, improvisation, and innovation; the social organization of musical life; the impact of religion on musical life; politics and music; and broad historical forces such as trade, colonization, modernization, revolution, revival, war and reconciliation.