Eric Beaty – Economic and Commercial Attaché
United States Consulate for Western France

 
Born in Sapulpa, Oklahoma on October 21, 1958, Eric Beaty grew up in Nacogdoches, Texas.  He graduated from Nacogdoches High School in 1976 and did his undergraduate studies at Stephen F. Austin University in Nacogdoches, earning a B.A. (Cum Laude - 1979) with a double major in French and German and a minor in history.  He went on to earn an M.A. in French literature at Rice University in Houston, Texas (1982).  Later, Beaty received an Msc. in Linguistics from Aston University in Birmingham, U.K. (1996).

Beaty began his career at the University of Rennes 2, France in 1981 as a lecturer in American studies.  He then worked as the assistant director of courses at two Chambers of Commerce in France.  In 1986, Beaty became the executive director of a bi-national center known as the Franco-American Institute, an organization created by Rennes City Hall, the U.S. Embassy in Paris and Rochester, N.Y. City Hall in 1961. 

In 1999, Beaty was instrumental in setting up the United States Consulate for Western France. He was hired in 2000 by the U.S. State Department that same year as the Economic and Commercial Attaché. 

Beaty has participated in the organization of 14 White House visits and 36 congressional delegation visits.  He has chaired the Rennes-Rochester, N.Y. sister-city relationship since 1986.   He is on the board of the University of Rennes 2.  Beaty has received 18 meritorious and superior service awards from the White House, the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Department of Commerce.  Beaty received a National Export Initiative award for his export success stories in 2011.   

Karen E. Till is Senior Lecturer of Cultural Geography at Maynooth University and Director of the Space&Place Research Collaborative. Till’s geo-ethnographic research examines the significance of place in personal and social memory, and the ongoing legacies of state-perpetrated violence. In addition to numerous articles and chapters, her publications include The New Berlin: Place, Politics, Memory(2005), Mapping Spectral Traces (2010), and the co-edited volumesTextures of Place (2001) and Walls, Borders and Boundaries (2012). Till’s book in progress, Wounded Cities, highlights the significance of place-based memory-work and ethical forms of care at multiple scales that may contribute to creating more socially just futures.

Throughout Europe, a wave of anniversary commemorations remembering events such as war and division has been celebrated over the past five years. Using examples from the ‘Super-Gedenkjahr’ in Berlin (2014) and the ‘Decade of the Centenaries’ in Dublin, I examine how recalling difficult pasts may extend conservative agendas of ‘normalising’ the nation, but may also work to recall the foundations of the democratic state as a means of challenging forms of current-day social violence in a neoliberal and transnational Europe. 

For more information visit: http://www.uky.edu/academy/2016BBS.

Professor Joel Gordon will explore the depiction of ‘normative’ religious practices and personal expressions of religious identity in recent Egyptian movies with a particular focus is on Egyptian youth.  Whereas in the past signs of piety had been restricted to either ‘traditional’ Egyptians – often in comic fashion – or political extremists, a few recent films have dared to depict ‘normal’ veiled women and bearded men and even a social environment in which questions of piety, morality and proper behavior dominate the discussions, concerns and conflicts between young Egyptians.  These films may point to a growing willingness by film artists to honestly explore social trends that have been taboo, especially as Egypt enters a new political era.

Prof. Joel Gordon: Professor of History and Director of Middle East Studies, University of Arkansas; Specialist in modern Egyptian history and Arab popular culture; Author of Nasser' Blessed Movement, Revolutionary Melodrama, and Nasser: Hero of the Arab Nation