Month: October 2019

New Wave Realism Conference

IA Academic Event

September 27th, Mershon Center for International Security Studies, 12:00-4:00pm

Through the Mershon Center for International Security Studies, I attended a conference focused around New Wave Realism. Building off of the Cold War, realism is a view of international politics that stresses its competitive and conflictual side, an ideology contrasting to liberalism and idealism. Specifically, this conference aimed to cultivate a new wave of realist thinkers in light of the increasing geopolitical conflicts arising with China, Russia, the U.S, and many other geopolitical entities. This event relates to current international affairs because it informed me about prevailing scholars and their research regarding realism, which has helped me to understand how the international atmosphere has developed to the point we see in the present. After listening to two researchers, as well as the following constructive criticism given by Mershon Center staff, I was still a bit confused as to the central focus of realism. In the future, I’d love to attend another event that goes even further into the meaning of realism in political discourse today, hopefully answering my underlying confusion regarding the tenants of the modern ideology.
The content of the presentations didn’t intersect with my academic goals, but the aspect of conducting research at the collegiate level is one aspect of the conference in which I want to implement into my career in the near future. From the few presentations I watched, I picked up a better idea of the level of complexity and clarity that is reached at the collegiate level of research. Going forward it, the event has encouraged my previous belief in research and I hope to find a way in which to contribute to a conference similar to this one soon!

Party at the Wexner Center for the Arts

IA Social Event
September 28th, 2019, The Wexner Center for the Arts, 8:15-11:15pm
After walking in to the exhibit area, my attention was immediately drawn to multicolored strips lining the walls, all containing a different explicit statement taken from various religious and political manifestos. To bridge the medium into the 21st century, the artist, Jenny Holzer, included an LED word scrawl with explicit expressions more similar to those found on the internet.
Each aspect of the exhibit serves as a testament to the various, biased manners in which we receive our news, and in turn, how we construct our world views. Although there could be a completely separate exhibit highlighting the positive examples of education and the institutions that promote those methods, this exhibit forced me to come to terms with the fact that in international affairs, as well as domestic affairs and almost any human interaction, our outlook towards the unknown and/or different is at least in part guided by inflammatory media that our society has normalized. After that exhibit had informed and challenged my beliefs more than I was expecting, given that I was a college student out on a Friday night, my friend and I completed a full sweep through the gallery, admiring the fused steel pins and glass of Maya Lin’s exhibit, as well as Ann Hamilton’s stacked newspaper gallery. When we finished, we caught word that there was a showing of Thelma and Louise in the Wexner center’s movie theater, so we rushed over and became witnesses to a classic of a movie.
Looking back on this whirlwind of events, I’m so glad that I was able to experience what the Wexner has to offer. Even though the forms of artistic expression I was able to view aren’t avenues I intend on focusing on in my academic career, I was given another example of the diversity of human expression, a reality that does connect to my academic career. In whatever career I pursue, I want to understand, advocate for, and participate in human expression, whatever form it takes.