In January we will be welcoming 100 students from 40 different countries for an open-minded exchange of diverse perspectives on contemporary global challenges. The IYLC blends social interaction with cultural and academic components to create a cohesive experience that promotes cross-cultural youth participation and socially responsible leadership.

The Asian Youth Forum (AYF) is a college-aged students and young people’s network organization founded in 1999 by Professor Kip Cates of Tottori University (Japan) together with the help of language educators and academic professionals who have been actively part of the Pan Asian Conference (PAC) and are members of international language (English) associations in the Asian region. The idea of the AYF is to bring together college and university students and young people from all over the Asian region to an international convention to meet with other youth and educators and provide them a venue where they could share…

To provide a critical forum for the continued examination of African identities, the African and African American Studies program at George Mason University will host a multidisciplinary conference titled "African Identities in the Age of Obama." On January 20, 2009, the first African-American president Barack Hussein Obama was sworn in as the President of the United States of America. His inauguration as the 44th president reminds us that beliefs about persons of African ancestry based on their phenotypical appearance are precarious at best. We should not assume, for example, that the black skin of the newly-elected leader of the United…

One of the oldest and most historical centers of the globe, Istanbul is the “capital of the world”, uniting various cultures and many civilizations in its soul and keeping their histories in its every hidden corner. As ‘a city of noble dreams’ characterized by the desire and jealousy of all other cities, its conquest in 1453 closed an age as well as opened a ‘new’ one. Istanbul became the capital of Turkish culture and arts since then. The Seventh International Congress on Turkish Culture will be held in 2009 with the theme of “Istanbul in Turkish and World Culture” with…