Jason Brozek

Tag: Jason Brozek

Green Roots Sponsoring “Community Read” Spring Term

Farm City BookTaking a page from Freshman Studies, Green Roots is sponsoring a special 1-unit course for Term III under the umbrella of Topics in Environmental Studies that will feature a campus community read of the 2009 book “Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer.” The book’s author, Novella Carpenter, will visit campus in April in conjunction with Earth Day and the Fox Cities Book Festival.

The book chronicles Carpenter’s efforts to operate a sustainable farm 10 blocks from the ghetto of downtown Oakland, Calif., utilizing a vacant lot to grow pumpkins and artichokes and the scraps in dumpsters to feed her collection of chickens, turkeys, ducks, rabbits and pigs.

Registration for the one-hour-per-week, five-week-long class is currently open to all students and will feature 16 faculty from across the curriculum team-teaching the course with a colleague.

“I am thrilled to see such a positive campus-wide response to this initiative,” said Associate Professor of Geology Andrew Knudsen, who spearheaded the community read course with Jason Brozek, assistant professor of government and Stephen Edward Scarff Professor of International Affairs. “We have students and instructors from all across the university signed up to participate in this program. It will be very exciting to be a part of a campus-wide discussion of this book. If you can run a farm on a vacant lot in Oakland, it seems like the possibilities are limitless.”

International Relations Film Festival Examines Conflict, War

Issues of civil war and domestic conflict will be explored in Lawrence University’s four-part International Relations Film Festival which begins Monday, Feb. 1. Sponsored by the Lawrence government department, each film will be shown at 7 p.m. in the Warch Campus Center cinema. All showings are free and open to the public.

“We wanted to explore a single topic through multiple lenses — cultural, geographic and time,” said Jason Brozek, assistant professor of government and Stephen Edward Scarff Professor of International Affairs, who organized the film series. “These films address universal themes of violence, nationalism and politics. We hope to make this an annual series with a different topic each year.”

The films and dates are as follows:

&#149 Feb. 1 — “Battle of Algiers,” 1966, 125 minutes, Not Rated

A documentary-style depiction of the Algerians’ struggle to liberate themselves from French colonial power. The film combines actual newsreel footage of the political torture and violence with staged sequences recreating the action.

&#149 Feb. 8 — “Bloody Sunday,” 2002, 110 minutes, Rated R

On January 30, 1972 in Derry, Ireland, a peaceful civil rights protest march that was staged to protest British laws was stopped by a heavily armed British militia. Seen through the eyes of one of the central organizers of the march, the film uncovers a shocking instance of excessive force, ending the hope for nonviolent resolution.

&#149 Feb. 15 — “The Devil Came on Horseback,” 2007, 85 minutes, Not Rated

As a military observer, U.S. Marine Captain Brian Steidle witnessed the horrors of the conflict between the Arab government and the black African citizens of Darfur, Sudan. Frustrated by the lack of response from the international community, Steidle returned to the U.S. to confront the urgent situation.

&#149 Feb. 22 — “Paradise Now,” 2005, 91 minutes, Rated PG-13

Palestinian childhood friends Said and Khaled are chosen to carry out a suicide bombing in Israel. After being separated while crossing the border, they must return and find each other to reconcile their conflicting views of the mission.