The "blue wave" of Democratic Party victories on November 7th has altered the dynamics inside Congress and between the legislative and executive branches. U.S. policy toward Asia will be significantly affected. We can expect new and different pressures on relations with regional actors including China and the Koreas, on Asian regionalism, and on trade and economic issues. Indonesia is likely to come in for particular scrutiny. Join us for a timely discussion of the changed domestic politics of U.S. Asia policy now and in the final two years of the Bush administration.

The U.S.-Indonesia Society (USINDO) is an independent NGO specializing in policy issues relating to Indonesia and Southeast Asia. Alphonse La Porta assumed the presidency of USINDO in 2004 after a 38-year career in the U.S. Foreign Service. In the latter capacity he served as ambassador to Mongolia and held diplomatic positions in Indonesia, Malaysia, Turkey, and New Zealand. A former president of the American Foreign Service Association, Ambassador La Porta is a graduate of the National War College, Georgetown University, and New York University.

Cosponsored with the Iberian Studies Program, the Mediterranean Studies Forum, and the Department of History.

Noël Valis is a Professor of Spanish at Yale University. She previously taught at Johns Hopkins University, the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, and the University of Georgia. Her areas of interest include nineteenth- and twentieth-century Spanish literature and culture, comparative literature, and interdisciplinary approaches to modern Spanish culture.

She has published 19 books and numerous articles in PMLA, Novel, Romanic Review, Hispanic Review, Modern Age, MLN, Comparative Literature Studies, Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies, and other journals and essay collections. In May 2004 she was elected President of the Twentieth-Century Spanish Association of America. She is the recipient of both an NEH (National Endowment for the Humanities) Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship for 2006-07, for the book project, Body Sacraments: Catholicism and the Imagination in Modern Spanish Narrative.

She received her B.A. from Douglass College and her Ph.D. in Spanish and French from Bryn Mawr College.