Lisa Hajjar is a professor of sociology at the University of California – Santa Barbara. She was the Edward Said Chair of American Studies at the American University of Beirut in 2014 – 2015, and served as the director of the Alwaleed Center for American Studies and Research (CASAR) at AUB in 2015 – 2016. Hajjar’s publications include Courting Conflict: The Israeli Military Court System in the West Bank and Gaza (University of California Press, 2005) and Torture: A Sociology of Violence and Human Rights (Routledge 2013). She is currently working on a book titled The War in Court: The Legal Campaign against US Torture in the “War on Terror.” Her work focuses mainly on issues relating to law and conflict, military courts and occupations, human rights and international law, and torture and targeted killing. Hajjar served for several terms as a member of the editorial committee of Middle East Report, and is one of the founding co-editors of Jadaliyya. She currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Middle East Studies Association.
Keynote Address: “Owning Up to American Torture”
David Palumbo-Liu‘s fields of interest include social and cultural criticism, literary theory and criticism, East Asia and Asian Pacific American studies. His most recent book, The Deliverance of Others: Reading Literature in a Global Age (Duke, 2o12) addresses the role of contemporary humanistic literature with regard to the instruments and discourses of globalization, seeking to deiscover modes of affiliation and transnational ethical thinking; he is also co-editor with Bruce Robbins and Nirvana Tanoukhi of Immanuel Wallenstein and the Problem of the World: System, Scale, Culture (Due, 2011). Palumbo-Liu is most interested in issues regarding social theory, community, race and ethnicity, human rights, globalization, ecology, and the specific role that literature and the humanities play in helping address each of these areas. With Prof. James Cavallaro of Stanford Law School he started the interactive human rights website, Teaching Human Rights: An International Student-Teacher Collaboratory, whcih currently lists over sixty collaborators from around the world including NGOs, combined classrooms in Europe, and other participants. David Palumbo-Liu is the founding editor of Occasion: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Humanities (found on Arcade) and blogs for Truthout, The Nation, Salon, The Huffington Post, Al Jazeera, openDemocracy, AlterNet, and other venues. He is also a Contributing Editor for the Los Angeles Review of Books. He serves on the Executive Council of the Modern Language Association, the HASTAC (Humanities, Arts, Science & Technology Alliance and Collaboratory) Steering Committee, and the Academic Sterring and Advocacy Committee of the Open Library of the Humanities. He was recently elected Second Vice President of the American Comparative Literature Association, and will assume the presidency March 2018. He is a former Chair of the Stanford Faculty Senate and a member of the Advisory Board of the Academic Council.
Keynote Address: “Human Rights and the Moral Imagination”
José Manuel Valenzuela Arce: Doctor en Ciencias Sociales con especialidad en Sociología por El Colegio de México. Es profesor-investigador del Departamento de Estudios Culturales de El Colegio de la Frontera Norte desde el 14 de agosto de 1982 a la fecha. Miembro del Sistema Nacional de Investigadores (Nivel III) del Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología. Sus investigaciones han abordado temas relacionados con cultura e identidad, fronteras culturales, movimientos sociales, culturas juveniels, sociología urbana y cultura popular. Además fue fundador de El Colgeio de la Frontera Norte (1982) y del Departamento de Estudio Culturales, del cual fue director de 1990-1993 y 1999-2003. También fue director de la Unidad Regional Norte de Culturas Populares (Baja Californai, Baja California Sur, Sonora, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Tamaulipas, Nuevo León, Durango) de 1993 a 1994 y fundador de la Unidad de Tijuana de 1993 a 1994, además fue Director de la Revista Frontera Norte de El Colegio de la Frontera Norte de 1995 a 1998. Sus trabajos han sido publicados en español, inglés, portugués, italiano, catalán, alemán y francés. Se ha presentado en Estados Unidos, México, Venezuela, Colombia, Chile, Río de Janeiro, Bolivia, Sao Paulo, Guatemala, Panamá, Argentina, Perú, Cuba, Berlín, Italia, España e Indonesia. Ha publicado 25 libros, 13 como autor único y 12 como coordinador y coautor. Uno de ellos obtuvo el premio Internacional “Casa de las Américas” Cuba 2001; 3 de ellos han sido premiados con la mención honorífica del Premio Nacional de Antropología Social Fray Bernardino de Sahagún. Recientemente recibió la Beca Guggenheim 2005 que otorga la John Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Pertenece al Paseo de la Fama de Tijuana. También ha sido autor de 44 capítulos en libros y 41 artículos en revistas académicas. Sus obras han sido de gran importancia para la comprensión de los procesos socioculturales que definen a la frontera México-Estados Unidos y a los movimientos juveniles en América Latina y Estados Unidos.
Keynote Address: “Necropolítica: feminicido y juvenicido en América Latina”
