Panel discussion featuring the following presenters and topics:
Pamela Ballinger (University of Michigan): "Humanitarian Futures"
Susan Waltz (University of Michigan): "Finding Political Will to Implement the 2013 Arms Trade
Treaty"
Chaired by Fatma Müge Göçek (University of Michigan)

This symposium explores possible future directions in the realms of war and peace, focusing on the inextricably entangled nature of these two spheres. Technologies of war and violence, such as drones and nuclear weapons/energy, for instance, also possess many peacetime functions. Humanitarianism similarly blurs the lines between war and peace, given that humanitarian initiatives may not only respond to situations of war but may aim to forestall it–sometimes through preemptive military actions. With the rise of unconventional and robotic warfare, too, the "front" becomes a hybrid of fighting and governance, raising pointed questions as to the future boundaries between civilian and soldier. The three panels comprising this symposium explore these and many other timely issues.

Pamela Ballinger is Fred Cuny Professor of the History of Human Rights and associate professor of history at the University of Michigan. She is the author of History in Exile: Memory and Identity at the Borders of the Balkans (Princeton University Press, 2003). She has published on topics such as refugees, displacement, ethnic cleansing, and human rights in journals that include Comparative Studies in Society and History, Contemporary European History, Current Anthropology, History and Memory, Journal of Modern Italian Studies, New Global Studies, and Past and Present.

Fatma Müge Göçek is a professor of sociology and women's studies at the University of Michigan. Her research focuses on the comparative analysis of history, politics and gender in the first and third worlds. She critically analyzes the impact of processes such as development, nationalism, religious movements and collective violence on minorities.

Susan Waltz is professor of public policy at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan. Both a scholar and a practitioner in the field of international human rights, she began her career as an area specialist, focusing on the North African countries of Tunisia, Morocco, and Algeria. Over the past twenty years she has conducted research on North African regional politics and the local human rights movement. More recently, her research has focused on the historical origins of international human rights instruments and the political processes that produced them. She is co-author of the website Human Rights Advocacy and the History of International Human Rights Standards (http://humanrightshistory.umich.edu).

This LSA Bicentennial Theme Semester event is presented with support from the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts and the University of Michigan Bicentennial Office. Additional support provided by the Department of History and the Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies.