Professor Esposito is the author of over two-dozen works, many of which concern Islam. Islam: The Straight Path is an important work that is in its fourth edition. He is editor of The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World, and author or co-author of several other important studies: The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality?, Islam and Democracy (with John Voll), Islam, Gender, and Social Change (with Yvonne Haddad), Islam in Asia, and Voices of Resurgent Islam. Professor Esposito?s lecture inaugurates the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies at The School of Humanities and Sciences, Stanford University.

Amira Sonbol specializes in women, gender, and Islam and is the author of several books including The New Mamluks; Women, Family, and Divorce Laws and Divorce in Islamic History; The Creation of a Medical Profession in Egypt: 1800-1922; The Memoirs of Abbas Hilmi II: Sovereign of Egypt; and Women of the Jordan: Islam, Labor and Law. Professor Sonbol is co-editor of Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, a quarterly journal co-published with Selly Oak Colleges (UK) and the forthcoming HAWWA: Journal of the Women of the Middle East and the Islamic World to be published by E.J. Brill, 2003. She teaches courses on the History of Modern Egypt, Women and Law, and Islamic Civilization.

The act of suicide can take many forms and is an old "way out". However, the act always engenders some sort of statement in the community left behind. The recent political and war-like statements of suicide bombers trigger both general concerns and scholarly questions. Suicide is an individual act, but at the same time it can give shape to a movement. How can we understand the current acts of suicide bombing? In what way does it raise new ways of thinking about the underlying assumptions and mechanisms behind social behavior?

Papers Presented:

1. "Inside the Terrorist Mind" by Arie Kruglanski, University of Maryland. Paper presented to the National Academy of Science, April 29, 2002, Washington D.C.

2. "Education, Poverty, Political Violence and Terrorism: Is there a Causal Connection?" by Alan B. Krueger and Jitka Maleckova, Working Paper 9074, National Bureau of Economic Research.

3. "The Interpersonal Influence Systems and Organized Suicides of Death Cults" by Noah E. Friedkin, Department of Sociology, University of California, Santa Barbara.

4. "The Paradox of Suicide in Solidary Groups" by Douglas D. Heckathorn, Cornell University.

5. "Hamas, Taliban and the Jewish Underground: An Economist's View of Radical Religious Militias" by Eli Berman, Rice University, National Bureau of Economic Research.

6. "Suicide Missions: Motivations and Beliefs" by Jon Elster, Columbia University.

7. "Suicide Bombing: What is the Answer?" by Howard Rosenthal, Princeton University and Russell Sage Foundation.

In "Gender Militarized" Frhstck deals with how masculinity is created, constituted, and negotiated in present-day Japan. She describes how Japanese "militarized masculinity" constantly evolves, is culturally specific, contested, debated and resisted. In this talk, she argues that "militarized masculinity" draws from various kinds of manhood, depends on the subordination of alternative modes of manhood, cuts itself off from other modes of gender and is informed by past and present Japanese and non-Japanese militarisms as well as American militarism on its soil. At the core of Frhstck's analysis are the processes of institutional coercion and the expectations and struggles of enlisted personnel and officers in Japan's armed forces to create a "militarized gender" that is distinct from other types of manhood.

About the speaker:

Sabine Frhstck is an associate professor of modern Japanese cultural studies in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her publications include Colonizing Sex: Sexology and Social Control in Modern Japan (University of California Press, 2003); "Managing the Truth of Sex in Imperial Japan" in the Journal of Asian Studies (2000); and (with Eyal Ben-Ari) "Now We Show It All! Normalization and the Management of Violence in Japan's Armed Forces" in the Journal of Japanese Studies (2002), among other articles and book chapters. She is currently working on a book about military-societal relations in modern and contemporary Japan entitled "Avant-garde: The Army of the Future."

Ching Kwan Lee is Assistant Professor of Sociology at University of Michigan. She is author of Gender and the South China Miracle (University of California Press, 1998). Her current research is on the transformation of the Chinese working class under market reform.

Jin Hwa Jung is a Research Fellow at the Korea Institute for Industrial Economics and Trade (KIET) in Seoul, Korea, and currently a Visiting Scholar at the Institute for Research on Women and Gender (IRWG), Stanford University. She earned her Bachelor's and Master's degrees at Seoul National University, and Ph.D. degree in economics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Jung has undertaken substantial work on the analysis of the Korean labor market. Her current research focuses on the gender differences in employment and wage structures in the industries with differing knowledge intensity. Abstract: Knowledge-based industries have taken an increasingly large role in the Korean economy since the mid-1980s in terms of value-added, employment, and productivity growth. Compared with traditional industries, knowledge-based industries are characterized by higher ratio of knowledge-intensive jobs, higher wage rates, and higher wage growth in the recent past. In particular, the gender wage gap is less noticeable in knowledge-based industries and, more importantly, less attributable to non-productivity-related discrimination against women. Policies to promote women's employment and career development in knowledge-based sectors are called for.