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**A link to the live webcast of this event can be found at the bottom of this page. The webcast begins at 5 p.m.*

Western specialists and practitioners have struggled to explain why Russia has been ready to challenge Ukrainian sovereignty so graphically since the Maidan Revolution. For many the default explanation lies with the shifting tectonic plates of geopolitics and the prospect of Ukraine engaging deeply with the EU and NATO. However, Russian officials and analysts cast the crisis as a struggle not merely over power relations, but over the identity of Russian communities and even historically and culturally defined territories. More fundamentally, acute observers point to the Russian fixation on threats arising from ‘regime change’ and to domestic sources of Russian foreign policy and strategic conduct. Given fears of renewed conflict and deeper Russian intervention in Ukraine or beyond, with all the implications of that for collapsing Russian-Western relations, this lecture argues that it is essential to think beyond simple geopolitical categories to explain Russian actions and the severity of the challenge to European stability.

Prof. Allison joined the School of Interdisciplinary Area Studies (SIAS) in 2011 from a Readership in International Relations at the London School of Economics. He was previously a doctoral student and an ESRC Postdoctoral Research Fellow at St. Antony’s College, Oxford; a Lecturer and Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Russian and East European Studies, University of Birmingham (1987-99) and Head of the Russia and Eurasia Programme at the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) (1993-2005). Between 2001 and 2005, Prof. Allison was also a Senior Research Fellow attached to the Centre for International Studies in the Department of Politics and International Relations, Oxford University. His broad research interests include the international relations, foreign and security policies of Russia and Eurasia and has travelled extensively there for research projects under his direction.

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PROGRAM:

Tuesday May 12, 2015

2:00 Opening Remarks

2:10 Lambert Zuidervaart, University of Toronto
Creating a Disturbance: Art, Social Ethics, and Relational Autonomy

3:10 Lydia Goehr, Columbia University
Music De-Tuned and Works Dis-Composed

4:10 Espen Hammer, Temple University
Happiness and Pleasure in Adorno’s Aesthetics

5:10 David Suchoff, Colby College
Dissonant Lineages: Beckett, Blanchot, Kafka, Rosenzweig

Wednesday May 13, 2015

10:10 Martin Morris, Wilfried Laurier University
Negative Dialectics and Popular Music

11:10 Sherry Lee, University of Toronto
Dissonant Opera, Dissident Fragments

12:10 Rebecca Comay, University of Toronto
Disappearance and Dissonance in Contemporary Sculpture (Doris Salcedo)

1:00 Lunch Break

2:10 Asaf Angermann, University of Toronto
The Ghosts of Normativity: On Law, Form, and the Law of Form

3:10 Willi Goetschel, University of Toronto
Heine’s Aesthetics of Dissonance

4:10 Open Round Table Discussion

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Sir Suma Chakrabarti has been President of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) since 2012. Sir Suma has extensive experience in international development economics and policy-making, as well as in designing and implementing wider public service reform. Most recently he held the position of Permanent Secretary at the British Ministry of Justice and was its most senior civil servant. Prior to this, from 2002, he headed the UK’s Department for International Development (formerly the Overseas Development Administration (ODA) ) where he worked closely with economies undergoing substantial reform in eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union and the Middle East and North Africa. Sir Suma is notable for playing a key role developing the UK’s successful Know-How Fund for Central and Eastern Europe and worked with the European Commission in improving its programmes in the Middle East and North Africa. Sir Suma also worked in the late 1990s in the UK Treasury, where he was responsible for UK public expenditure, and in the early 2000s in the Cabinet Office, where he led on cross-departmental strategic issues and subsequently the management of the Cabinet agenda. After studying Politics, Philosophy and Economics at the University of Oxford, Sir Suma took a Masters in Development Economics at the University of Sussex. He also holds honorary doctorates from the Universities of Sussex and East Anglia and the Bucharest University of Economic Sciences.