Dec 16, 2021
Registration is now open for our Winter Semester. Fulfill that New Year’s resolution and learn a new language or brush up on one that you used to speak. Either way, you will be exercising your mind, broadening your horizons, meeting new people, and creating new opportunities. Classes begin the week of January 3rd and will be completed by February 25th for 8 weeks of instruction. Upstate International offers both regular and intensive classes, online and in-house.
Students must be members of UI ($50/year/individual or $75/year/family.) We make it easy for you so you can sign up for membership at the same time that you register for class.
Winter Regular Classes: $90 for members; Meet once a week for 75 minutes per lesson
Winter Intensive Classes: $265 for members; Meet twice a week for 90 minutes per lesson
Click below to see the Schedule of Classes and to Register
**Fees are non-refundable unless cancelled by UI.
Questions? Please contact Linley Crocker, programs@upstateinternational.org, or call us at 864-631-2188.
We look forward to welcoming you to Upstate International and seeing you, virtually or in-person, in class!
Oct 6, 2021
Join the World Affairs Council Upstate for the 2nd in our monthly series, Beyond the Headlines: Critical Issues Impacting our World. Over the last 20 years, Vladimir Putin has used various methods to consolidate an authoritarian regime in Russia. Despite media coverage of opposition movements and opposition leader Alexei Navalny, Putin’s regime remains stable. This lecture will discuss the mechanisms of consolidation and control used by Vladimir Putin and his affiliated United Russia party. Further, it will discuss the attitudes of ordinary Russians toward the regime, and the prospects for change within it.
Matthew Placek is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of South Carolina Upstate. His research focuses on the influence of social media and the internet on political attitudes in new democracies and non-democratic regimes. His work has been published in Democratization, East European Politics, and The Washington Post’s Monkey Cage Blog.
Sep 1, 2021
“The No Rights Zone”: Violence Against Muslims in China Edit
Sep 15 @ 12:00 pm – 1:30 pm
Join the World Affairs Council Upstate for the first in our 2021-2022 series, Beyond the Headlines: Critical issues Impacting Our World
The Chinese government has forced more than a million Muslims into internment camps, where they face psychological and physical torture. The vast majority are ethnic Uighurs, a Turkic minority group living in Xinjiang, though the “Sinification of Islam Campaign” now impacts several minority groups and regions. While many outside of China accuse the Communist Party of genocide, Chinese officials adamantly insist the internment camps are “vocational training schools” and a necessary tool for “combatting extremist thought and international terrorism”. What, if anything, can be done to improve conditions in Xinjiang? How will developments in Afghanistan, and increasing US-China tensions impact the plight of China’s Muslim population?
Katherine “Kate” Palmer Kaup is the James B. Duke Professor of Asian Studies and Political Science at Furman University in Greenville, SC. She holds an A.B. from Princeton University ’89 and an M.A./Ph.D ’97 in Government and Foreign Affairs from the University of Virginia. Kaup’s research focuses on ethnic minorities, rule of law, and human rights developments in China. In her most recent article “Controlling Law: Legal Developments in China’s Southwest Minority Regions,” in The China Quarterly she examines how conflicts between customary minority law and state law are resolved. She is the author of Creating the Zhuang: Ethnic Politics in China, several articles and chapters on ethnic minorities, and editor and contributor to the textbook Understanding Contemporary Asia (2nd edition 2021). She serves on the Board of Directors for the National Committee on United States-China Relations (NCUSCR) and is a NCUSCR Public Intellectual Fellow. Kaup has served as special adviser for Minority Nationalities Affairs at the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, Chair of Furman’s Asian Studies Department and of the Furman Faculty, Director of the Riley Institute’s China Programs, Distinguished Visiting Professor at Yunnan Nationalities University, Visiting Scholar at the Guangxi Ethnic Affairs Commission, and PI/Program Director for several federally-funded Chinese language programs and for the Luce Initiative on Asian Studies and the Environment. She regularly leads groups to China, including student/faculty/alumni/government groups.
Please join us in-person OR live-stream by Zoom
Wednesday, September 15 at 12:00 pm
Presentations generally run from 12-1:00 with plenty of time afterwards to ask your specific questions of our speaker.
Where: Kroc Center, 424 Westfield Street, Greenville, SC 29601
Cost: $13.50 in-person includes choice of 3 boxed lunch options or $5.00 to live-stream the event by Zoom.
Once you register you will receive a confirmation email.
____________________________________
Questions? Interested in sponsor opportunities? Please email tracie@upstateinternational.org
