Faculty Members:
Steve Stern
Steve J. Stern is a historian of Latin America, and is the Alberto Flores Galindo Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin—Madison. In recent years, he has worked on the history of "dirty war" dictatorships and civil wars in South America, and "memory struggles" to shape the ways atrocities are remembered, denied, and interpreted culturally and politically. In this phase of his research, he has also worked as a faculty member of a Social Science Research Council project to train young Latin American scholars in the interdisciplinary literature on "memory" that may shed light on their own countries' recent experiences. His most recent book is Battling for Hearts and Minds: Memory Struggles in Pinochet's Chile, 1973-1988 (Duke Univ. Press, 2006).
Email: sjstern@facstaff.wisc.edu
Kenneth H. Shapiro
Associate Dean, College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Email: kshapiro@cals.wisc.edu
Scott Straus
Scott Straus is an Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Studies. Scott's principal interest in human rights comes from his work on genocide, in particular his research on Rwanda. At UW-Madison, Scott teaches courses on the politics of human rights, the comparative study of genocide, and empirical studies of civil war and violence. For more information about his research and teaching interests, please visit http://www.polisci.wisc.edu/users/straus/
Email: sstraus@wisc.edu
Susan Friedman
As director of the Institute for Research in the Humanities, I am interested in the relationship between the humanities and the history and concepts of human rights. The Institute is involved with the Center for the Humanities project on What Is the Human? I consider the issue of the rights of human beings to be a part of the question of what is the human. In my research and teaching, I work with feminist theory and human rights as well as issues of migration, diaspora, borders and human rights. I am currently writing a conference paper for the Modern Language Association entitled "Narrating 'Women's Rights as Human Rights: Feminist Theory, Monica Ali's Brick Lane, and Kiran Desai's The Inheritance of Loss" for a panel entitled Narrative and the Human Rights Paradigm.
Email: ssfriedm@wisc.edu
Sharon Hutchison
Professor Hutchinson has conducted ethnographic research in Sudan since 1980. For much of this period, her research has concentrated on war-provoked processes of social and cultural change among Sudanese Nuer, the second largest ethic group in southern region of the country. Her current research interests include the anthropology of civil warfare and post-war reconstruction, international humanitarianism and human rights, war-provoked population movements and post-conflict returns, and the local impacts of expanding international oil development activities in Sudan. She is presently working on a book manuscript on the ethical complexities of conducting long-term ethnographic research in a war zone.
For more information about his research and teaching interests, please visit
http://www.anthropology.wisc.edu/people_hutchinson.html
Email: sehutchi@wisc.edu
David Trubeck
David M. Trubek is Voss-Bascom Professor Emeritus of Law and Senior Fellow of the Center for World Affairs and the Global Economy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
His main interests are in socio-legal studies and global political economy. He has written on law and development, the legal profession, civil litigation, EU law and policy, new governance, critical legal studies, transnational regulation, and social theory.
Professor Trubek has helped develop and manage numerous academic projects and institutions in law and international studies. He has been active in the Law and Society Association and was a founder of the Conference on Critical Legal Studies. He was the founding Director of the UW-Law School’s Institute for Legal Studies and from 1989-2001 served as the UW-Madison’s Dean of International Studies and Director of the International Institute.
Trubek has taught at Yale and Harvard Law Schools and the Catholic University Law School of Rio de Janeiro and been Visiting Scholar in Residence at the European University Institute, the Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, the London School of Economics, the Harvard Center for European Studies, and the Joaquim Nabucco Foundation in Recife, Brazil.
Email: dmtrubek@wisc.edu
Jo Ellen Fair
Jo Ellen Fair is professor of Journalism & Mass Communication and also serves as faculty director for Chadbourne Residential College. Fair joined the UW faculty in 1989. She earned her Ph.D. in mass communications from Indiana University in 1988.
Much of Fair’s research has examined U.S. media images of conflicts in Africa. This work is concerned with how American notions of race shaped the telling of African conflicts and catastrophes. Over the past several years, she has explored the ways that African media influence popular culture to create new social realities for Africans.
Instead of exploring what the West says about Africa, Fair looks at what Africans are saying about themselves, to themselves, and to others. One of her field-based research on media and new forms of identity in urban Africa resulted in a book chapter called “Francophonie and the National Airwaves: A History of Television in Senegal.” Based on archival work, observations, and interviews, this work explored how the Senegalese government, after 1960, took Western television technology and its accompanying institutions, and transformed them according to local needs, creating a television culture recognized by viewers as Senegalese.
In 2001, Fair was invited to Ghana to develop a training protocol for Ghanaian journalists preparing to report on the proceedings of the country’s National Reconciliation Commission, charged with uncovering abuses of past authoritarian governments. This training exercise in Ghana led to a research project with Audrey Gadzekpo, a faculty member at the University of Ghana, on the capacity of Ghana’s under-trained and politically polarized journalists to provide accurate reporting and credible interpretation of the work of the Ghanaian reconciliation commission. Recently, she has a new interest in the emergence of bourgeois culture and the importance of mass media in shaping middle class cultural ideas and values in African cities. Fair is especially interested in changing ideas of love because the contrasts are so sharp between older customs deriving from rural realities (arranged marriage, brideprice, polygamy, normative male philandering) and new urban ideals (monogamy, the love match, marriage as a partnership).
Fair has facilitated journalism-training workshops in Zambia and Namibia, and was involved in curriculum development for the media studies program at the University of Namibia. She is editor of African Issues and on the editorial board of several African Studies journals and communications journals; she is a frequent reviewer for numerous African Studies and media journals. She also has served as research chair and president of the International Communication division for the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. She is an active member of the African Studies Association, the West Africa Research Association, and the International Communication Association.
Email: jefair@facstaff.wisc.edu
James Sosman
James Sosman graduated from the University of Chicago, Pritzker School of Medicine in 1985. He completed his internship, residency, and Chief-residency in Internal Medicine at Stanford University Medical Center. Dr. Sosman is currently an Associate Professor of Medicine at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health, and practices General Internal Medicine at the UW Health University Station Clinic. He is also an HIV specialist, and practices at the UW Immunology Clinic at UWHC. He is board certified in Internal Medicine and Geriatrics.
Email: jms@medicine.wisc.edu
Heinz Klug
Heinz Klug is Professor of Law at the University of Wisconsin Law School and an Honorary Senior Research Associate in the School of Law at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. He is also the Director of the Global Legal Studies Center and R H. I. Romnes Faculty Fellow. He teaches International Human Rights Law, Comparative Constitutionalism and Public International Law at the Law School.
Growing up in Durban, South Africa, he participated in the anti-apartheid struggle, spent 11 years in exile and returned to South Africa in 1990 as a member of the ANC Land Commission and researcher for Zola Skweyiya, chairperson of the ANC Constitutional Committee. He was also a team member on the World Bank mission to South Africa on Land Reform and Rural Restructuring. He has taught at Wisconsin since September 1996.
Professor Klug taught law at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg from 1991-1996, offering courses on Public International Law, Human Rights Law, Property Law, Post-Apartheid Law and Introduction to South African Law, among others. He also worked as a legal advisor after 1994 with the South African Ministry of Water Affairs and Forestry as well as the Ministry of Land Affairs on water law and land tenure issues.
Professor Klug's book on South Africa's democratic transition, Constituting Democracy was published by Cambridge University Press in 2000.
Email: klug@wisc.edu
Steve Stern
My specialization is Latin America (esp. colonial, Andes, Mexico, Chile).
My Research and Teaching Interests: I teach and research Latin American history. My research and teaching interests vary widely, but often focus on the various ways people cope with problems of power and social conflict in their societies. Specific research themes have included Amerindian responses to colonialism, gender relations, political economy, social acquiescence and rebelliousness, and memories of trauma and political violence. My regional interests focus especially on the Andes, Mexico, and Chile/Southern Cone. I think of students, both undergraduate and graduate, as potential colleagues and teach accordingly.
Email: sjstern@facstaff.wisc.edu
Michael Carter
Michael Carter is professor of agricultural and applied economics at the University of Wisconsin. He is also director of the BASIS Collaborative Research Support Program that studies rural poverty alleviation strategies in Africa, Asia and Latin American. Author of numerous articles and books, Carter’s research focuses on the nature of growth and transformation in low income economies, giving particular attention to how inequality in the distribution of assets shape, and are shaped by, economic growth. While working primarily through the econometric analysis of household and firm level data, Carter has also made theoretical contributions on the economics of asset accumulation, institutional innovation and credit rationing. He carried out the fieldwork for his dissertation on the Peruvian land reform, and has since had numerous other research projects in Latin America, Africa and Asia. Carter has been working on South African income distribution dynamics since 1994 when he joined a team analyzing a national living standards survey. His current projects include analyses of the long-run impact of HIV/AIDS on poverty, social capital and the reproduction of inequality in ethnically stratified societies, and poverty dynamics and productive social safety nets. Carter’s teaching at Wisconsin includes undergraduate and graduate courses in development economics, as well as courses on the economics of globalization.
Email: mrcarter@wisc.edu
Helen M. Kinsella
Helen Kinsella is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She completed her Ph.D. at the University of Minnesota and held a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.
Email: hkinsella@wisc.edu
Lori Diprete Brown
Lori DiPrete Brown serves as the Assistant Director of the UW-Madison Center for Global Health. She is committed to a broad definition of human rights that takes into account determinants of suffering/well-being such as access to food, water, health care, education, a peaceful existence, an opportunity to live in a sustainable and harmonious relationship to the natural environment, and political and civil rights. Her interest in health and human rights began as an undergraduate at Yale University where she majored in philosophy and psychology and began her studies in public health. After Peace Corps service in Honduras (1983-1985), she pursued interdisciplinary graduate work at Harvard. Her studies combined degrees in Public Health, with a focus on access to quality primary care in developing countries, and Theological Studies, with a focus on comparative religion and faith-based movements for liberation and social change. While at Harvard she founded the Nicaragua Health Study Collaborative at Harvard, CIES, and UNAN. The group carried out health and human rights research which documented the health effects of low-intensity warfare on civilians in two rural communities in Nicaragua. Since the early 90’s she has worked with health programs in developing countries to improve access and quality of health services. In addition to working extensively in Latin America (Chile, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Guatemala) she has been a collaborator in other regions including work in Pakistan, Thailand, Bangladesh, Cameroon and Senegal. She joined the UW Center for Global Health in 2002, where she is involved in teaching and curriculum development related to global health. Currently she is working to develop interdisciplinary partnerships for development with rural communities in Mexico and Ecuador. She is also working to develop and implement a regional strategy for providing quality care to AIDS orphans and vulnerable children. This effort, which integrates applied research and management strategies with rights-based approaches, has taken her to Ethiopia and Tanzania, and the regional effort is now active in 14 African countries.
Email: dipretebrown@wisc.edu
Francine Hirsch
Francine Hirsch is an Associate Professor at Department of History of UW-Madison. She received her PhD and MA Degrees from University of Princeton and a BA Degree from Cornell University. Her specializations are Russian and Soviet history and her research and teaching interests include Russian and Soviet History, Modern European History, and Comparative Empires. She teaches many courses and seminars at the undergraduate and graduate levels, including “History of Soviet Russia,” “Soviet Union & World, 1917-1991” and an advanced seminar on “History of Idea of Human Rights.”
Her book on Empire of Nations: Ethnographic Knowledge and the Making of the Soviet Union was published by the Cornell University Press in 2005. Other publications include "Toward a Soviet Order of Things: The 1926 Census and the Making of the Soviet Union," in S. Szreter, H. Sholkamy, and A. Dharmalingam eds., Categories and Contexts. Anthropological and Historical Studies in Critical Demography (Oxford University Press, 2004) and “Getting to Know ‘The Peoples of the USSR’: Ethnographic Exhibits as Soviet Virtual Tourism, 1923-1934,” Slavic Review 62, No. 4 (Winter 2003): 683-709.
Email: fhirsch@wisc.edu
Leigh Payne
Her main teaching and research interests are in Latin American politics. She is particularly interested in the study of democratization, and the challenges posed to democracy from groups currently or previously associated with political violence. Her research directly concerns the role that the legacy of authoritarian rule plays in institutional and extra-institutional processes in new democracies. For that research she has received support from Fulbright, Social Science Research Council, and the MacArthur Foundation among other granting institutions.
Among many publications, she is the author of Uncivil Movements: The Armed Right-Wing and Democracy in Latin America (2000, Johns Hopkins) as well as numerous articles and chapters devoted to truth telling, the confessions of torturers and collaborators, and memory politics in new democracies. Her forthcoming book, Unsettling Accounts: The Politics and Performance of Confessions by Perpetrators of Authoritarian State Violence (2007, Duke) examines how democratic institutions and societies deal with past authoritarian state violence. Unlike many transitional justice scholars, her research poses a more skeptical view of the relationship of these processes to “settling accounts with the past,” hence the title of her book "Unsettling Accounts."
Email: lapayne@wisc.edu
Aili Tripp
Aili Mari Tripp is Professor of Political Science and Women's Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her teaching and research interests are in African politics, comparative politics, women and politics and gender studies in an international context. She is author of Women and Politics in Uganda (2000) and Changing the Rules: The Politics of Liberalization and the Urban Informal Economy in Tanzania (1997). She has a forthcoming book co-authored with Isabel Casimiro, Joy Kwesiga and Alice Mungwa entitled Women in Movement: Transformations in African Political Landscapes (Cambridge University Press).
Tripp has edited Sub-Saharan Africa: The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Women's Issues Worldwide (2003), and co-edited with Myra Marx Ferree Global Feminism: Transnational Women's Activism, Organizing, and Human Rights (New York University Press, 2006), The Women's Movement in Uganda: History, Challenges and Prospects (2002) as well as What Went Right in Tanzania? People's Responses to Directed Development (1996). She has published articles and book chapters on women and politics in Africa; women's responses to economic reform; and transformations of associational life in Africa.
Aili Tripp co-edits (with Kathleen Dolan) the journal Politics & Gender of the Women and Politics Research Section of the American Political Science Association. She also co-edits a book series with Stanlie James on Women in Africa and the Diaspora for the University of Wisconsin Press.
Professor Tripp is on research leave 2007-08. When she returns in the fall of 2008 she will resume her position as director of the Women's Studies Research Center.
Email: tripp@polisci.wisc.edu
Guido Podesta
Professor Podestá teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in Latin American Literature, cinema, and cultures. His main area of research is Modernity and Modernism. He is the author of two books on the Peruvian writer Cesar Vallejo: Cesar Vallejo, su estetica teatral (1985) and Desde Lute cia: modernismo y modernidad en los escritos teatrales de Cesar Vallejo (1994). He has published numerous articles in journals and critical anthologies. He is the Peruvian literature (poetry) editor for the Handbook of Latin American Studies, Library of Congress.
Email: gpodesta@wisc.edu
Florence Chenoweth
Chenoweth, a national of Liberia, earned both her master's degree in agricultural economics (1970) and her doctorate in land resources (1986) at UW-Madison. She became Liberia's (and Africa's) first female minister of agriculture at the age of 32, serving from 1977 to 1979. Chenoweth and her family narrowly escaped Liberia after a violent coup, walking across the country to safety in Sierra Leone. She returned to UW-Madison to complete her doctorate while Liberia spiraled into civil war. Only recently have there been signs that Liberia's political instability is abating.
From 1983 to 1986, Chenoweth served as technical adviser to the World Bank in Lusaka, Zambia and as a consultant to the Bank in Washington, D.C. From 1987 to 1993, she was Chief of Party for a UW-Madison project in Zambia that helped improve agricultural policy formation and management. She joined the FAO in 1995 as its representative in Banjul, the Gambia, serving until January 1998 when she was appointed FAO representative in Pretoria, South Africa, following the end of apartheid. In June 2001, she was named FAO liaison with the UN in New York, serving as the main link between the FAO and the UN's General Assembly and community. Her recent post at the UN expired in April, 2007.
Email: chenoweth@bascom.wisc.edu