Venus in arms

Top 5 by Venus in Arms – Week 86

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This week we start with pundits, IR theories and US foreign policy. The question is: “Do the greatest op-ed pages in America discriminate against foreign policy realists?”. Here some possibile answers.

Is Ebola over? The epidemic  has killed more than 11,000 people. However, as reported by The Guardian, the efforts to prepare for pandemics have been chronically underfunded.

Moving to contemporary warfare, here you’ll find an interesting analysis on the never-ending crucial role of the artillery in the battlefield. Even in Syria.

What about “Brexit“? Der Spiegel provides the last news on the EU strategy to keep Britain from leaving.

Finally, a song. We already missing you.

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Top 5 by Venus in Arms – week 82 “Political Science and Star Wars”

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Honoring Star Wars – The Force Awakens, here below our Top 5 of recent IR/Political Science articles on this great saga.

Patrick Thaddeus Jackson and Charli Carpenter have announced an International Studies Association 2016 Conference panel on Star Wars. They seek “paper abstracts examining the relationship between the Star Wars franchise and socio-political dynamics in the area of international security”.

Dan Drezner has illustrated how the Rebel Alliance’s victory in the Battle of Endor “was a catastrophic success”.

In another brilliant post Drezner had already expressed his concern about how the “Star Wars” narrative explicitly addresses politics. A lot of politics (as in the most recent movies) is not per se a recipe for success.

Here you’ll find a compressive list of analyses and papers by political scientists on Star Wars. Indeed, a “significant number of political scientists are nerds or geeks”. Therefore, the intersection of politics and speculative fiction proves irresistible.

Finally, one of the most famous example of such connection between political science and Star Wars. The neo-con Bill Kristol tried to Defend the Galactic Empire. Here a funny report.

As we say in Italy, “ci vediamo al cinema”….

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The SISP XXIX Annual Conference

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A brief post to remind the SISP (Italian Political Science Association) Annual Conference. The SISP meeting will be held in Arcavata di Rende (Cosenza) and it will start on Thursday 10th. the conference end date is Saturday 12th.

The conference is organized by the Department of Political and Social Science of the University of Calabria.

Here you’ll find info on the programme. Here on sections.

As stated bt the official website: The SISP Annual Conference offers the opportunity to explore and discuss core issues, new theoretical and methodological perspectives and recent research results in political science.The programme includes a plenary event, the Assembly of SISP members and numerous panels, divided in thematic sections, in which participants present and discuss recent research and analyses of high scientific impact and visibility.

All information on transport, accommodation, maps, and more are available on the dedicated website (here)

Here you’ll find the abstracts of the papers that will be presented at the IR section. At a first glance, a lot of interesting studies.

Unfortunately this year Venus won’t be at the Sisp. We will surely miss the conference (especially the “after-dinner” where we usually play the role of chair…)

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