International

Part of the Humane Society of Chittenden County, Virginia Morell is an acclaimed science journalist, author, and National Geographic Society lecturer. A passionate lover of the natural world and a creative thinker, Morell has covered evolutionary and conservation biology for Science since 1990. Morell is also a regular contributor to National Geographic and Conde Nast Traveler. An accomplished public speaker, she spent March 2009 as a principle lecturer for National Georgic Society’s Expeditions Program.

Isobel Coleman, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, gives a talk titled “Women, Sharia Law and Reform in the Middle East” at the University of Vermont.

Coleman directs the Civil Society, Markets and Democracy program at the Council on Foreign Relations. Her areas of expertise include the political economy of the Middle East, democratization, civil society, economic development, educational reform and gender issues. She is the author and coauthor of numerous books, including Pathways to Freedom: Political and Economic Lessons from Democratic Transitions (Council on Foreign Relations, 2013), The Routledge Handbook of Religion and Security (Routledge Press, 2012), Paradise Beneath Her Feet: How Women are Transforming the Middle East (Random House, 2010), Restoring the Balance: A Middle East Strategy for the Next President (Brookings Institution Press, 2008), and Strategic Foreign Assistance: Civil Society in International Security (Hoover Institution Press, 2006).

In addition to the Marsh Professor-at-Large program, the talk is sponsored by President Tom Sullivan; the Department of Economics; the Department of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies; the Department of Political Science; and the Vermont Council on World Affairs.

Ayda Erbal teaches Middle Eastern Politics and Democratic Theory, as adjunct professor of politics at New York University, Department of Politics. She is interested in democratic theory, the politics of "post-nationalist" historiographies in transitional settings, the political-economy of mass violence and state formation, and the politics of apology. An award winning filmmaker on the side, Erbal is in the process of writing her second narrative short-film "Meligone". Erbal is also a published short-story writer and one of the founding editors of Azad Alik (http://azadalik.wordpress.com), a multilingual politics blog primarily dealing with minority issues in Turkey. Erbal also occasionally contributes to newspapers and magazines in Turkey, France and the United States.

A Crime with No Name, an Apology with No Agency: Armenian Genocide as Reconstructed by Turkish Intellectuals, by Ayda Erbal is sponsored by the Middle East Studies and Holocaust Studies Programs, and the Department of History at the University of Vermont.

A panel discussion with screening of clips, geared toward filmmakers as well as the general public, looks at many aspects of repurposing footage for new uses. With Alice Apley, Executive Director of Documentary Educational Resources (co-sponsor of the symposium), filmmaker Caroline Martel, an internationally renowned award-winning documentary artist (Phantom Of The Operator, Wavemakers), Sandra Forman, entertainment lawyer (Eyes on the Prize), Rick Prelinger and Adrian Wood. As part of the symposium VTIFF is excited to launch the GVM – Second Time Around initiative, announcing seed money for restoring and digitizing older Vermont-made films.  Part of the Vermont International Film Festival .