Pop Culture, Youth, and Peacebuilding
Catherine Bolten, Professor of Anthropology and Peace Studies, sits down to talk with Siobhan McEvoy Levy, professor of political science and peace and conflict studies at Butler University. They discuss peace studies, pop culture, and the instrumental role of youth and young adults in building peace.
Experience the Episode
Meet the Faculty: Catherine Bolten
Professor Catherine Bolten is a socio-cultural anthropologist whose interests range from generational friction in modes of labor, education, and agriculture, to multi-species entanglements in rapidly degrading forest-savanna mosaics. She has conducted research in Sierra Leone since 2003, and worked in Botswana from 1996 to 2002. She is currently Director of Doctoral Studies for the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, in addition to teaching and mentoring in the anthropology program. Professor Bolten is also concurrent faculty in the Africana Studies Department, a fellow in the Kellogg Institute for International Studies and in the Pulte Institute, and a member of the Eck Institute for Global Health. She is a core faculty member of the Keough School for Global Affairs, which houses the institutes.
Professor Bolten is the author of two books and over a dozen articles and book chapters. Her current research is a collaboration with primatologist Andrew Halloran, of Save the Chimps, on the Tonkolili Chimpanzee Project. This project examines chimpanzee survival, conservation, and multi-species entanglements in light of rural food insecurity, overpopulation, climate change, elephant grass desertification, and the recent Ebola epidemic. Publications related to this project appear in The American Journal of Physical Anthropology, African Studies Review, the edited volume Living with Animals, and a forthcoming edited volume on widowhood in Africa. Dr. Bolten is working on a book from this project tentatively titled Chimpanzees Avoid Rebel Shit: Multi-Species Dwelling in a Troubled Place.
Meet the Faculty: Siobhan McEvoy-Levy
Siobhán McEvoy-Levy is Professor of Political Science and Peace and Conflict Studies and Director of The Desmond Tutu Peace Lab at Butler University in Indianapolis, Indiana, USA. Her current research focuses on ‘everyday’ sites of international relations, youth and peacebuilding, and critical studies of political violence and peace (formation). She the author of Peace and Resistance in Youth Cultures: Reading the Politics of Peacebuilding from Harry Potter to the Hunger Games (Palgrave, 2018), American Exceptionalism and US Foreign Policy (Palgrave, 2001); the editor of Troublemakers or Peacemakers? Youth and Post-Accord Peacebuilding (University of Notre Dame, 2006); and a co-author of Peacebuilding after Peace Accords (University of Notre Dame, 2007). She has also published articles on youth and conflict, and on pop culture, reconciliation and peacebuilding. McEvoy-Levy holds a B.A. Hons degree (Politics and English) from Queen’s University, Belfast, and M.Phil. and Ph.D. degrees in International Relations from the University of Cambridge.