Ambassador John Beyrle presented his credentials to President Parvanov as U.S. Ambassador to Bulgaria on September 8, 2005. A career officer in the senior Foreign Service at the rank of Minister-Counselor, Ambassador Beyrle has held policy positions and foreign assignments with an emphasis on U.S. relations with Central and Eastern Europe, Russia, and the USSR since joining the State Department in 1983.

Ambassador Beyrle's overseas service has included two tours at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, most recently as Deputy Chief of Mission. He was Counselor for Political and Economic Affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Prague, and a member of the U.S. Delegation to the CFE Negotiations in Vienna. He served an earlier tour at the U.S. Embassy in Bulgaria 1985-87. His Washington assignments include Acting Special Adviser to the Secretary of State for the New Independent States, and Director for Russian, Ukrainian and Eurasian Affairs at the National Security Council. He served as a staff officer to Secretaries of State George Shultz and James Baker, and as a Pearson Fellow and foreign policy adviser to the late Senator Paul Simon.

Ambassador Beyrle received a B.A. degree with honors from Grand Valley State University, and an M.S. degree as a Distinguished Graduate of the National War College.

Ambassador Elena Poptodorova has been the Ambassador of the Republic of Bulgaria since February 2002. Prior to assuming the ambassadorial post, Mrs. Poptodorova has held a number of government positions and served as a member of parliament for 11 years (1990-2001) as a representative of the Bulgarian Socialist Party. She is a signature figure of the new Bulgarian democracy, playing an active role in policy making and known as one of the liberal and maverick members of her party. In the period of June 2001 to August 2002, she led the Directorate of International Organizations and Human Rights. She served as Spokes of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs immediately before becoming Bulgarian Ambassador to the United States.

Ambassador Poptodorova received her B.A. and M.A. in English and Italian Language and Literature from Tthe Kiment Ohridski University of Sofia, Bulgaria. She has a M.A. in international relations and diplomacy from the University of National and World Economy, Sofia, Bulgaria.

This event is co-sponsored by the Forum on Contemporary Europe and the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies.

Calendar of the Ambassadors' trip in the US

Rotimi Suberu is a professor of political science at the University of Ibadan, where he has taught since 1986. He is currently Senior Fellow, Jennings Randolph Fellowship Program at the United States Institute of Peace. Suberu has served as a consultant to the Nigerian government, and the EU delegation to Abuja as well as to the National Democratic Institute and National Endowment for Democracy. He recently led a research project on ethnic and federal studies funded by the Ford Foundation. His publications include Federalism and Ethnic Conflict in Nigeria (USIP Press, 2001); Ethnic Minority Conflicts and Governance in Nigeria, (Spectrum Books [Ibadan], 2003); Public Policies and National Unity in Nigeria (Development Policy Center [Ibadan], 1999).

Suberu has won fellowships and visiting positions from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the University of Pennsylvania, Northwestern University, New Delhi's Center for the Study of Developing Societies, and from the U.S. Institute of Peace. He holds an M.S. and Ph.D. in political science from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria.

This event is co-sponsored by the Center for African Studies at Stanford.

Tsuyoshi Hasegawa is a professor of history at UC Santa Barbara. His book, "Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan", was published by Harvard University Press in 2005. It has won various awards, including the Robert H. Ferrell Book Prize, sponsored by the Society of Historians of American Foreign Relations, and the Yomiuri Yoshino Sakuzo Prize. Earlier this year, Stanford University Press published a volume edited by Professor Hasegawa, "The End of the Pacific War: Reappraisals."

This event is cosponsored by the Department of History, CREEES, and FSI.

An additional seminar will be held on May 7th at 3:15pm, Bldg 200, Room 307. Professors Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, Barton Bernstein, and David Holloway will be commenting on Professor Hasegawa's work.

Ambassador Bernardo Alvarez, formerly Vice Minister of Hydrocarbons in the Ministry of Energy and Mines, is also Professor in the School of Political and Adminstrative Studies at the Universidad Central de Venezuela.In addition to his previous positions in the Ministry of Energy and Mines, he is currently the Venezuelan Representative to the Energy Council of the U.S. and has coordinated different international agreements with the U.S. Department of Energy, the French Energy Task Force, and the Conferences of Ministers of OPEC. He served as Deputy of the National Congress of Venezuela from 1994-1999.

This event is co-sponsored by the Woods Institute for the Environment, The Progam for Energy and Sustainable Development, and the Center for Latin American Studies.

The Stanford Program on Energy and Sustainable Development (PESD) is concluding a major study aimed at understanding the future role for natural gas in the rapidly growing economies of China and India. On June 4-5, 2007 PESD will convene a meeting at Stanford to present the results of the study and engage with participants from industry and academia on the implications of this work for global energy markets.

PESD has partnered with leading regional research centers in both China and India to construct detailed assessments of the key drivers for future gas demand in both countries. At the June meeting PESD and its research collaborators will share results from the natural gas study and explore the study's broader implications on China and India's role in the future world energy market. Meeting participants will include representatives from government, industry, academia, and non-government organizations from the United States, China, India, Europe, and others.

Panels at the meeting with focus primarily on the implications of the study on larger questions of energy and global geopolitics, including:

§ Competitiveness of natural gas vis a vis coal in the power sector

§ Geopolitical implications of major supply projects

§ Regulatory reform and pricing

§ Implications for CO2 and climate change

Kurahashi Yumiko's 1985 novel Amanonkoku Okanki (Record of a Round-Trip Journey to Amanonkoku) has been described as fantasy science fiction, feminist literature, political satire, and futurist picaresque. Whatever label one might pin on this novel, its thematic and structural emphasis on sexual adventures as an engine of storytelling is undisputable. The tale centers on the missionary P's journey to and from the land of men on earth to the land of women on Amanonkoku in the heavens, where his mission is to civilize and convert them to the monotheistic (monokami) belief system of men. By the end of the novel, however, the outer space travels of P turn out really to have been inner space travels in a woman's body; consequently, the imperialist plot to control Amanonkoku is revealed also to have been a bio-political plot about reproduction, sexuality, and gender difference.

Kurahashi's satire interrogates the politics of both feminism and anti-feminism even as it never lets the violence of presumptive male superiority off the hook. Professor Knighton will read Amanonkoku Okanki against the backdrop of Kurahashi's late-1960s Anpo and Beiheiren-era protests novel, Sumiyakist Q no Boken (The Adventures of Sumiyakist Q). In doing so, in today's historical moment of feminist backlash in Japan, American exceptionalism, and globalized military and religious war-mongering, Kurahashi's work takes on an almost prescient contemporary relevance.

Mary A. Knighton received her M.A. and Ph.D. in English (American Literature), as well as an M.A. in Japanese, at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research attends to global Modernism, the relationship between politics and aesthetics, and postwar Japanese literature, with a special interest in women writers and feminist theories of race, class and gender.