Archive for the ‘IE Humanities Center’ Category

Last Wednesday, the students from the Segovia Campus had the opportunity of enjoying the third event planned within the Cycle of Conferences, focusing this year on India, and organised by the IE Humanities Center. This session, entitled “India: Visions from Within” revolved around the self-perceptions of Indians about their country and traditional culture, and the future challenges for Indian society. We were honoured with the presence of Veena Venugopal, writer, journalist and editor of Blink and the Hindu Business Line, and of Prof. Eugenio Luján, Dean of Philology of the Universidad Complutense (Madrid) and Associate Professor of Humanities at IE Business School, and one the most renowned Spanish specialists in India’s religion and culture. Their conversation was moderated by Susana Torres, Professor of Humanities at IE University.

The conversation started by highlighting the vast diversity of languages, ethnic origins and religions of the peoples of India and how each of these factors serves as a personal and social identifier of Indians today. Veena Venugopal stressed the idea that conflict and riots are often used as a political weapon, particularly before elections, in order to gain votes, as well as the high degree of tolerance that is common in Indian society. We then talked about the cast system, and Eugenio Luján explained its origins, deeply linked to religious beliefs, going back to almost 3,000 years, and how is it related to social and economic development in India. It was agreed that the level of awareness of their own cast is more powerfully felt by Indians of lower classes and Ms. Venugopal explained the pros and cons of current policies of cast quotas and the social response to them.

One of the issues that also emerged in the talk was the situation of women in Indian society today, the tension between their traditional roles and their place in current society. There was time to discuss how they are portrayed in modern cinema and television, what the reaction of Indian society, and of women in particular, has been to attacks on women that have made international headlines recently, and how Indian women try to find their own place in modern Indian society and politics.

The floor was then opened to students, who asked about several social and political issues in modern India and gave their own first-hand impressions of some of the questions discussed.

On Thursday November 24th the IE Humanities Center hosted the second conference of the Cycle India: Present and Future, focusing this time on the subject of politics, under the title “Politics: the Largest Democracy”. This event was dedicated to the complex Indian political reality and the discussion panel included IE University’s IR Professor Babita Bhatt, Universidad Complutense’s Professor and expert on India Eva Borreguero and IE’s IR Academic Director Daniel Kselman, who acted as moderator.

Professor Kselman introduced the conversation speaking about the incredible diversity of India, a country with more than a billion people and 22 official languages and remembering how this “diversity in democracy” was thought impossible to survive at the time of its independence as, for example, Britain thought it was rather a civilization than a nation. However, as professor Kselman said “the diversity glues the country as they need one another” specially after configuring a multi party system, despite the different interests of state-level democracies, as well as national and regional parties, which has contributed to a progressive institutionalization of democracy.

Professor Bhatt started the discussion on the first thematic block of the event focused on domestic policies of India, centered on the two parties that have ruled India since the independence, namely, the Indian National Congress (I.N.C.) and Bharatiya Janata Party (B.J.P). After explaining the common view of each of them (I.N.C. is considered a dynastic party of the Nehru-Gandhi family and B.J.P. a pro Hinduist nationalist party), it was inevitable to talk about current Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi. Professor Bhatt gave an exhaustive description of the controversial figure, often compared to Trump or Putin and of his intention to project an image of a C.E.O rather than a politician, of an honest man who is an example of social promotion (he comes from a humble background), dedicated to his country (a single man whose only concern is the welfare of the Indians) with a successful record (as governor of Gujarat he got its economy increased by double figures during his term in office). The panel then analysed his two years in office and the recent issue of the demonetization and how could it affect the average citizen as well as politics in terms of party funding.

The second block was dedicated to India’s foreign affairs and its capacity to equate its economic position with its international influence. Professor Borreguero was quite clear India in expressing that “India has too many internal problems to become a global player and too many differences with his neighbours” referring to Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bangladesh. The moderator ask both speakers on the lasting Pakistani-Indian Conflict on Kashmir. Both experts agreed that the more likely scenario was interspersed periods of tension and calm between the two nuclear powers, since an external enemy is always useful in domestic policy, and that an open conflict or a long lasting peace was quite a remote scenario.

As a conclusion, Prof. Borreguero insisted on the “elastic” capacity of the Indian democracy to face present and future challenges and Prof. Bhatt pointed out that maybe the biggest threat was the growing Indian middle-class who does not necessarily perceive democracy as a form of government leading to economic growth.

The moderator invited the audience to give their insights in all of these issues and the discussion was enriched by the comments of IE’s students.

In this video Digital Humanities Prof. Susana Torres proposes a new approach to the humanities because, she says, today’s students are iconic – they learn from what they see. This is just one of several reasons she believes that in this digital era the humanities matter more than ever.

Published in the The Other Side of IE Professors

IE Humanities Center is glad to announce that, following the great success of the Cycle “Russia: Past and Present”,  during the Academic year 2016/17 will organize cycle of conferences entitled “India: Present and Future” directed by Humanities Professor Susana Torres and hosted by IE University.

Program of lectures

Thursday October 20th 2016
Pradeep Bhargava (CaixaBank) and Patricia Gabaldón (IE Business School)
Economy: The emergence of a new player

Thursday November 24th 2016
Babita Bhatt (IE School of International Relations) and Eva Borreguero (Universidades Complutense de Madrid)
Politics: The largest democracy

Wednesday January 18th 2017
Eugenio Luján (Universidad Complutense de Madrid) and Veena Venugopal (The Hindu Business Line)
Visions. India from Within

Wednesday March 15th 2017
Namita Gokhale (Jaipur Literary Festival) and Malashri Lal (University of Delhi)
Literature: 3000 years of tradition 

Thursday April 20th 2017
María de Muns (Colores de Calcuta) and Ramón Álvarez (Manos Unidas)
Cooperation in the ocean of diversity

Thursday May 2017
William Dalrymple and Javier Moro (Authors)
Visions. India from Without

 IE Foundation Humanities Prizes 2016 were awarded on the evening of Thursday September 22nd at the Ritz Hotel Madrid. The event was attended by a large audience consisting of the winners, their families, jury members and IE’s International Advisory Board.

The ceremony began with the institutional notes by  IE Foundation  President Diego de Álcazar and Vice President Rafael Puyol. The President’s speech focused on the importance that IE gives to the Humanities, a central part in both academic and extracurricular life. In his words “the Humanities enhance the qualities students need to excel in their future careers”. Vice President Puyol offered an overview of the IE Foundation’s work and of the Prizes. As a piece of advice he remenbered Leonard Cohen’s words when receiving the Prince of Asturias Award for Literature: “Being awarded is not the end of anything –it is only a tool that will allow me to keep doing better what I have been awarded for”.

After the institutional notes the Prizes were given to the winners. Besides the Honorary Merit Diploma all winners will receive 100 copies of th book contaning all awarded works. Once all the works the diplomas were delivered the first prizes in Poetry and Short Story proceeded to read their winning works, the poems in full and excerps of the short stories . All readers carried on the task with extreme passion and dramatic skills – special mention deserves LLB student Joy Cierrea Archer Holmes for her impressive recital.

The event was closed by the President congratulating the winners, calling the IE Foundation Humanities Prizes 2017 and inviting all attendees to share their views with the award winners in a cocktail served at the hotel’s garden.

List of winners. Short Story in Spanish: 1st. María Isabel Macías Núñez (MCC 2016) for “Un hombre con el abrigo largo”. 2nd. Elisa Carrara (MVDM 2016) for “Una expresión sardónica”. 3rd. Sofía Quetglas Diz (MIM 2016) for “De vuelta a Barcelona”. Special mention to María Isabel Macías Núñez (MCC 2016) for “Muerte en María de Molina”. Short story in English: 1st. Do Xuan Hoang (BAR 2020) for “Aroma”. 2nd. Alyssa Flora Najafi (MVDM 2016) for “Death Valley”. 3rd. Marieke Elisah Lensvelt (MVDM 2016) for “The Other Side”. Poem in Spanish: 1st. Sofía Rondán González (MIR 2016), for “Nadie”. 2nd. María Isabel Macías Núñez (MCC 2016), for “Primer round”. 3rd. Jesús Arcenegui Méndez (Madrid, Spain, 1997, Bachelor in International Relations, 2019) for “Quiero”. Poem in English: 1st. Joy Cierrea Archer Holmes (LLB 2017), for “Beautuful Imperfectiums [sic]”. 2nd. Sumedha Sharma (MCC 2016), for “One Place – A Haiku”. 3rd. Malak El Halabi (MMRCB 2016), for “23”. Photography: 1st. Nathalie Lagard (BAR 2017) for “Rendez-vous”. 2nd. Romain O. Lepoutre (BAR 2019), for “Hangman”. 3rd. Jazmin C.Harb Andrade (MVDM 2016) for “Dancejazz”. Video: 1st. Montserrat Gutiérrez Mesegue (BAR 2018) for “Apparently”.