Description

Dr Mark Gamsa is Senior Lecturer at the Department of East Asian Studies, Faculty of Humanities, Tel Aviv University, Israel. He has earned his DPhil at the University of Oxford in 2003 and has held visiting positions at the European University Institute in Florence and the University of Latvia. His publications include The Chinese Translation of Russian Literature: Three Studies (2008), The Reading of Russian Literature in China: A Moral Example and Manual of Practice (2010), as well as articles on Chinese history, politics, literature, and Chinese-Russian relations.

In his talk, Mark Gamsa will identify and analyze signifiers of China in Russia and vice versa. Some “refractions” of the Chinese world in Russian life became domesticated in Russia to the extent that no memory was retained of their Chinese origin, while others designated “China” as an exotic and mysterious land. Trade with China had a key role in shaping the Russian image of the other country through material culture, a process in which Chinoiserie played a part as well. In China, the image of Russia was enhanced and besmirched in turn in the course of the twentieth century by being closely associated with Russian Communism; at the same time, the idea of “Russia” was fashioned by literature, classical music and film. Whether helped or obstructed by the powerful political connection, expressions of Russian thought and cultural production came to occupy an in-between space in the Chinese imaginary as things both alien and instinctively familiar.
If these broad conclusions are correct, they may be carried further: the two cultures shared a zone of contact, in which the supposedly foreign was often surprisingly recognizable. Similar “contact zones” are better documented between other cultures with a long history of interaction; their contours have been mapped out for relationships such as those between Russia and Poland or Russia and France. It may be that the shadow of racial alterity still makes locating a Russian-Chinese field of contact – a conceptual meeting place, next to the geographical “middle ground” of border areas between the two states – seem the less natural task. Literature, language and translation are of special interest in this undertaking because of functioning as cultural vessels and bridges, and will provide us with many examples of the refractions figuring in the title of this paper.

Description

In her talk, Dr. Wooden will outline how fear about the environmental risks of gold mining in Kyrgyzstan has increasingly gained national political centrality, but has been at the heart of local opposition for more than a decade. Until recently, supporters of the industry have framed opposition to gold mining as merely manipulated by national and local elite economic interests and not “really green.” However, since 2010 the Kyrgyzstani national government has increasingly engaged in pro-environmental rhetoric, pursued compensation for supposed damage, debated mine nationalization, and taken a harder line regarding oversight, all policies closer to local residents’ environmental concerns despite the economic costs of these choices. Dr. Wooden will analyze why the recognition of this local environmental concern as a “real thing” has gained national currency, how that has contributed to policy action, and what are the changing discourses about nature exemplified in gold mining politics. In order to analyze these trends and adaptations, she dissects the various views about gold mining with environmental content, and reports results from a national public opinion survey and interviews she conducted from 2009 to 2013. This is a dynamic picture of the politics of place, where protest movements are separated by village but share a changing national consciousness about what Kyrgyzstanis value about nature. There are apt comparisons of this anti-industrialization, (at times) nationalistic discourse to similar anti-mining debates elsewhere; thus this case may be illustrative of emerging global political trends in the 21st century era of environmental uncertainty.

Dr. Amanda E. Wooden is an Associate Professor in the Environmental Studies Program at Bucknell University, Pennsylvania (US) and editor of “The CESS Blog” for the Central Eurasian Studies Society. She earned her Ph.D. in International Relations and Public Policy at Claremont Graduate University. Dr. Wooden served as Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Economic and Environmental Officer for the Osh, Kyrgyzstan field office in 2006-07. Her publications include “Another Way of Saying Enough: Environmental Concern and Popular Mobilization in Kyrgyzstan” Post-Soviet Affairs (2013), “Water Resources, Institutions, and Intrastate Conflict” Political Geography (2010) with Ismene Gizelis, and the edited volume The Politics of Transition in Central Asia & the Caucasus: Enduring Legacies and Emerging Challenges (2009) with Christoph Stefes.

Description

Professor Jean Joana is a mamber of the Centre d’Etudes Politiques de l’Europe Latine (CEPEL, Université Montpellier 1). He has written on the political sociology of the army, on European commissioners as technocrats, diplomatics and politicians, and on the political practices of French deputies in the 19th century.

Description

In Ukrainian village cultures, it is the zozulka–the little cuckoo bird–that often bears sad news, brings bad luck, or foreshadows heartbreak. Zozulka, featuring Eva Salina Primack, Willa Roberts, and Maria Sonevytsky, brings the haunting multi-part women’s vocal repertoire of the Ukrainian village to life in expressive, dynamic interpretations of songs that are little-known beyond Ukraine. Rich with harmony, strident unisons, and powerful lyrics, these songs transport you to the dense forests and wide-open steppes of another place and time. Formed in 2011 in New York City as an outgrowth of The Chornobyl Songs Project (coached by the legendary Kyivan master singer and ethnomusicologist Yevhen Yefremov), the Zozulka trio focuses on ritual and lyrical village songs from Poltava and Polissia, regions in Central and Northern Ukraine.

Website: http://zozulkatrio.wordpress.com/

Information about the trio members:

A native of Santa Cruz, California, Eva Salina Primack has been immersed in Balkan music and culture since she was a young child. She has studied with some of the greatest living singers of Balkan traditional music. Eva’’s rich, versatile, agile, deep and powerful voice and her enthusiastic, skillful, inspired and inspiring teaching have led her to quickly become a reknowned singer, interpreter, and teacher of Traditional Balkan Vocal music. Singing primarily through the traditions of Albania, Bulgaria, Greece, Macedonia, Serbia, Turkey and the Romani people, Eva has also studied Georgian, Corsican, Traditional American, and Ukrainian singing.

Eva has collaborated to varying degrees (performing, touring, recording, and teaching) with many Balkan and American musicians, including Slavic Soul Party!, Which Way East, Kadife, Veveritse, Choban Elektrik, Seido Salifoski’’s Romski Boji, Édessa, Tzvetanka Varimezova, Italian Balkan/Jazz Project Opa Cupa, Ukrainian Vocal Trio Zozulka, and KITKA. Eva received a B.A. in Ethnomusicology from UCLA, where she studied extensively with Tzvetanka Varimezova. From 2009-2011 Eva toured primarily with Ash (Æ), a vocal duo focused on the traditions of the Balkans, Appalachia, Caucasus Georgia, and Corsica. For the last 8 years, Eva has also worked closely with the Museum of Jurassic Technology, including live performances at the museum in Los Angeles, two film soundtracks, and live film score performances. Recent collaborations include a tour in Belgium and France (March 2013) with Miléna Kartowski, and concerts and live film score with Bosnian concert accordionist Merima Ključo, as well as working with Frank London on a variety of different projects.

Eva travels frequently, to perform but also as a vocal instructor, as she has quickly become one of the leading teachers of Balkan Singing in the US. Eva currently performs solo, with her quartet, and with her Big Band/Šaban Project.

Willa Roberts has been singing and playing music from Eastern Europe, Turkey, and the Middle East for fifteen years. She is a versatile vocalist and violinist, and has studied with an array of exceptional musicians in various traditions, including Bulgarian, Macedonian, Ukrainian, Turkish, Albanian, Greek, Arabic, and Georgian, among others. Willa also enjoys inspiring fellow singers with lessons and workshops in vocal techniques from these regions. Willa is a member of several ensembles in New York City, including Black Sea Hotel, Zozulka, and Zaytin Dali.

Maria Sonevytsky is an ethnomusicologist, multi-instrumentalist, singer and teacher. In addition to studying and performing Ukrainian village songs, she performs with cabaret-pop darlings The Debutante Hour, with the experimental new music collective Anti-Social Music, and with her husband, Franz Nicolay. She completed her Ph.D. in ethnomusicology at Columbia University in 2012, and held postdoctoral fellowships at Harvard University, Columbia University, and the University of Toronto. Beginning in September of 2014, she will be an Assistant Professor of Music at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, NY. Www.mariasonevytsky.com

Description

Recent events in Ukraine again bring up the question of Ukraine’s energy policy choices and the role of powerful domestic groups in relations with Russia and the EU. The Politics of Energy Dependency looks at theses issue from the perspective of post-independence energy politics in three post-Soviet states:
Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania. It compares these three states’ reactions to the serious external shock of their sudden transformation, virtually overnight in 1991, from constituents of a single energy-rich state to being separate energy-poor entities heavily dependent on Russia, as well as politically independent transit states. Using extensive field research and until now untapped local sources in Ukrainian, Belarusian, Russian and Lithuanian, the project analyzes how these states’ unique location, not only between a major energy producer (Russia) and its main market (the EU), but also between powerful domestic economic actors often making a profit of their situation of energy dependency (“oligarchs”), and Russian power, has affected Russia’s ability to use energy as a foreign policy tool in the region – and these states’ own political development.

Margarita M. Balmaceda is Professor of Diplomacy and International Relations at Seton Hall University and Research Associate at the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute. She is the author of, among others, Energy Dependency, Politics and Corruption in the Former Soviet Union (Routledge, 2008), The Politics of Energy
Dependency: Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania Between Domestic Oligarchs and Russian Pressure (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013), and Living the High Life in Minsk: Russian Energy Rents, Domestic Populism and Belarus’
Impending Crisis (Budapest: Central European University Press, January 2014).

Chair and commentator: Lucan Way, University of Toronto

Description

Russian Citizenship is the first book to trace the Russian state’s citizenship policy throughout its history. Focusing on the period from the mid-nineteenth century to the consolidation of Stalin’s power in the 1930s, Eric Lohr considers whom the state counted among its citizens and whom it took pains to exclude. His research reveals that the Russian attitude toward citizenship was less xenophobic and isolationist and more similar to European attitudes than has been previously thought—until the drive toward autarky after 1914 eventually sealed the state off and set it apart.

Drawing on untapped sources in the Russian police and foreign affairs archives, Lohr’s research is grounded in case studies of immigration, emigration, naturalization, and loss of citizenship among individuals and groups, including Jews, Muslims, Germans, and other minority populations. Lohr explores how reform of citizenship laws in the 1860s encouraged foreigners to immigrate and conduct business in Russia. For the next half century, citizenship policy was driven by attempts to modernize Russia through intensifying its interaction with the outside world. But growing suspicion toward non-Russian minorities, particularly Jews, led to a reversal of this openness during the First World War and to a Soviet regime that deprived whole categories of inhabitants of their citizenship rights.

Lohr sees these Soviet policies as dramatically divergent from longstanding Russian traditions and suggests that in order to understand the citizenship dilemmas Russia faces today—including how to manage an influx of Chinese laborers in Siberia—we must return to pre-Stalin history.

Description

In countries like Uzbekistan and Russia, where executive bodies historically played significant roles in public life, recently judicial review has become a more important remedy than other remedies inside administrative organizations. Judicial review in Uzbekistan, Russia, and other post-Soviet countries has its common history. Under Soviet regime, until 1960s, such reviews where basically non-existent. Since the 1960s, there have been nominal changes in law, but practices have not changed significantly. The Soviet Constitution of 1977 and the 1987 Law “On the procedure for appealing to the court unlawful actions by officials that infringe the rights of citizens” played a significant role in introducing judicial review in Soviet law. However, after the collapse of Soviet Union legal thinking and practice of judicial review has not changed substantially in many post-Soviet countries, which is causing problems in right to access to courts, fair court procedures, and independence and impartiality of courts in administrative cases. This talk will explore 1) to what extent Soviet thinking on judicial review has been set aside or to what extent is it alive in modern Uzbekistan and Russia and 2) what are the main transformation points of judicial review in modern Uzbekistan and Russia.

Jurabek Nematov is originally from Uzbekistan. He is currently a PhD candidate at Nagoya University Graduate School of Law. Jurabek researches administrative justice of Soviet and post-Soviet countries (mainly Russia and Uzbekistan) in comparative perspective. He has publications about Uzbekistan`s administrative law and administrative litigation, as well as Japanese administrative litigation system, in Russian and Uzbek languages. This spring, Jurabek is a visiting doctoral student at UofT, were he studies Canadian administrative justice.

Description

First Deputy Prime Minister of Crimea, Rustam Temirgaliev, stated that he is confident that the region will be a part of the Russian Federation “in a few days.” Ukraine’s Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk told journalists that the “so-called” referendum was illegal... Russian troops have occupied positions in Ukraine, and the West is threatening sanctions and Russia’s expulsion from the G8. A panel of specialists on Russia and Ukraine at University of Toronto will discuss how the greatest crisis in Europe since the collapse of the USSR is unfolding.

Live stream of the event can be viewed here http://hosting.epresence.tv/MUNK/1/live/266.aspx

Description

Ethnonationalist Conflict in Postcommunist States investigates why some Eastern European states transitioned to new forms of governance with minimal violence while others broke into civil war. In Bulgaria, the Turkish minority was subjected to coerced assimilation and forced expulsion, but the nation ultimately negotiated peace through institutional channels. In Macedonia, periodic outbreaks of insurgent violence escalated to armed conflict. Kosovo’s internal warfare culminated in NATO’s controversial bombing campaign. In the twenty-first century, these conflicts were subdued, but violence continued to flare occasionally and impede durable conflict resolution.
In this comparative study, Maria Koinova applies historical institutionalism to conflict analysis, tracing ethnonationalist violence in postcommunist states to a volatile, formative period between 1987 and 1992. In this era of instability, the incidents that brought majorities and minorities into dispute had a profound impact and a cumulative effect, as did the interventions of international agents and kin states. Whether the conflicts initially evolved in peaceful or violent ways, the dynamics of their disputes became self-perpetuating and informally institutionalized. Thus, external policies or interventions could affect only minimal change, and the impact of international agents subsided over time. Regardless of the constitutions, laws, and injunctions, majorities, minorities, international agents, and kin states continue to act in accord with the logic of informally institutionalized conflict dynamics.
Koinova analyzes the development of those dynamics in Bulgaria, Macedonia, and Kosovo, drawing on theories of democratization, international intervention, and path-dependence as well as interviews and extensive fieldwork. The result is a compelling account of the underlying causal mechanisms of conflict perpetuation and change that will shed light on broader patterns of ethnic violence.

Dr. Maria Koinova is Associate Professor at Warwick University in the United Kingdom. She received her Ph.D. from the European University Institute in Florence, Italy, and spent 10 years in the United States on professional appointments at Harvard, Cornell, Dartmouth, and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington DC. She is currenty directing a large research project entitled “Diasporas and Contested Sovereignty: Transnational Mobilization of Diasporas in Europe and Its Impact on the Balkans, Caucasus, and the Middle East.” The project is sponsored by the European Research Council, has four research scholars and will be conducted until 2017. Koinova’s comparative work on diaspora politics, conflicts and post-conflict reconstruction has been published by Review of International Studies, Foreign Policy Analysis, Communist and Post-communist Studies, International Political Sociology, and Ethnic and Racial Studies. Another article is forthcoming with the European Journal of International Relations. Her book “Ethnonationalist Conflict in Post-communist States: Varieties of Governance in Bulgaria, Macedonia, and Kosovo” was published by University of Pennsylvania Press in 2013.

Description

**This event will also be streamed live via webcast. A link is provided at the bottom of this listing.**

Annual Munk School Lecture on European Affairs

Professor Margaret MacMillan became the fifth Warden of St Antony’s College in July 2007. Prior to taking on the Wardenship, Professor MacMillan was Provost of Trinity College and professor of History at the University of Toronto. She was educated at the University of Toronto (Honours BA in History) and at St Hilda’s College and St Antony’s College, Oxford University (Bphil in Politics and Dphil). From 1975 until 2002 she was a member of the History Department at Ryerson University in Toronto and she also served as Chair of the Department. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a Senior Fellow of Massey College, University of Toronto, and sits on the boards of the Mosaic Institute, the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, and the editorial boards of International History and First World War Studies. She has honorary degrees from the University of King’s College, the Royal Military College, Ryerson University, Toronto, the University of Western Ontario, and Huron University College of the University of Western Ontario. In 2006 Professor MacMillan was invested as an Officer of the Order of Canada.

Professor MacMillan is the author of Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed The World (2003) and The War That Ended Peace: The Road to 1914 (2013).

Description

Dr. Anton Symkovych will discuss prisoners’ organization in a Ukrainian medium-security correctional colony for men; prisoners’
culture and power relations between themselves and with prison staff. He argues that despite official disapproval of the ‘inmate code’, prison authorities are heavily dependent on the prisoner-controlled informal structure to keep prison order and maintain uninterrupted industrial production. This rigid hierarchy is a permanent fixture which predetermined an individual’s role, expectation, and behaviour.
Without it the power balance and, thus, order could not be maintained. Drawing on the data from his ethnographic study, the speaker posits that the ‘inmate code’ ensured a peaceable co-habitation for prisoners as it granted individuals some confidence and assurance of their position, if not a degree of autonomy. The majority of prisoners believed that this traditional arrangement was the only just and safe way to survive incarceration and thus it was normative behaviour to comply. Whilst this informal structure was inescapable and entailed harsh punishments for violations, it, to some degree, controlled and limited arbitrary violence. Finally, the talk will explore how the changing profile of traditional informal prisoner leaders, the availability of drugs, and policy changes such as the availability of early release, have threaten the legitimacy and sustainability of the informal prisoner control structure.

Description

Why have neo-liberal economic ideas been so resilient since the 1980s, and have continued to be so ever after the onset of the economic crisis in 2008? In Europe in particular, how do we explain the response to the Euro-crisis by EU member-states that have embraced ‘market discipline’ through austerity and structural reform, and in so doing have condemned themselves to slow or no growth? This talk proposes five lines of analysis to explain such resilience, illustrating with a range of examples, including the role of the state, the regulation of financial markets, governance of the euro, reform of labor markets and the welfare state in a range of European countries. The talk builds on the speaker’s co-edited book: Resilient Liberalism in Europe’s Political Economy (V.A. Schmidt and Mark Thatcher—Cambridge University Press 2013).

Vivien A. Schmidt is Jean Monnet Chair of European Integration, Professor of International Relations and Political Science, and founding director of the Center for the Study of Europe at Boston University. She has been a visiting professor or visiting scholar at major European universities and has published ten books and over 100 articles on European political economy, institutions, and democracy, as well as lately on the Eurozone crisis. Recent books include the forthcoming Resilient Liberalism in Europe’s Political Economy (co-edited, Cambridge 2013), Debating Political Identity and Legitimacy in the European Union (co-edited, Routledge 2011), Democracy in Europe (Oxford 2006; updated in French, La Découverte 2010), and The Futures of European Capitalism (Oxford 2002). Professor Schmidt is former chair of the European Union Studies Association—USA. Among recent distinctions, she was awarded a doctorate honoris causa from the Free University of Brussels, held the Franqui Interuniversity Chair of Belgium, and was Senior Visiting Research Scholar at the Free University of Berlin. She received her B.A. cum laude from Bryn Mawr College, her M.A. and Ph.D from the University of Chicago, and also attended Science Po, Paris.

Vivien A. Schmidt’s webpage: http://blogs.bu.edu/vschmidt/

Description

In the Slavic imagination, the Jew was a quintessential inn-keeper: cunning, but ready with low prices on high-quality vodka. The Jewish tavern was a multi-purpose shtetl institution, where Poles, Russians, Ukrainians, and Jews did deals, arranged marriages, heard and discussed news, listened to music, played billiards and cards—and smoked, drank, ate, and danced. Since liquor-trade revenues yielded a handsome income, both the Russian administration and Polish nobility did their best to control and tax liquor. Explore how the Jews in the shtetls outwitted the liquor monopolists and why for the shtetl dwellers of different creeds the right to drink turned into a quest for freedom.

Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern will also be presenting his new book “The Golden Age Shtetl: A New History of Jewish Life in East Europe” (available early March, 2014). You will find more information on the book here: http://press.princeton.edu/titles/10186.html

Description

**This event will also be streamed live via webcast. A link is provided at the bottom of this listing.**

German Conference in Toronto 2014
Germany’s New Government and the EU: plus ça change?

Friday, March 28, 2014

9:00 – 9:15
Welcome – Walter Stechel, Consul General of the Federal Republic of Germany to Toronto; Pia Bungarten, Friedrich Ebert Foundation; Janice Gross Stein, University of Toronto

9:15 – 10:00
Rolf Mützenich, Member of the German Bundestag
Germany in Europe: Challenges for the New Government – Keynote

10:00 – 11:15
Germany’s Role in Europe, Europe’s Role in the World
German and Canadian Perspectives
Panel and Q&A
• Rolf Mützenich, Member of the German Bundestag
• Manfred Auster, Delegation of the European Union to Canada, Head of Political and Public Affairs Section
• Paul Dewar, Member of Parliament, Official Opposition Critic for Foreign Affairs
Moderator: Kira Kosnick, Goethe University Frankfurt

11:15 – 11:45
Coffee break

11:45 – 13:00
The European Crisis – Over or Ongoing?
Panel and Q&A
• Kurt Hübner, University of British Columbia
• Peggy Nash, Member of Parliament, Official Opposition Critic for Industry
• Uwe Optenhögel, Friedrich Ebert Foundation, Brussels Office
Moderator: Randall Hansen, University of Toronto

13:00 – 14:00
Lunch

14:00 – 15:30
Youth Unemployment in Germany, Europe, and Canada
• Michael Chong, Member of Parliament
• Karen Foster, Saint Mary’s University
• Johanna Uekermann, Leader of the Young Socialists in the SPD (Jusos)
• Tomás Valero Ribes, BMW Group Canada
Moderator: Margaret Wente, The Globe and Mail

15:30 – 15:45
Closing Remarks – Randall Hansen, University of Toronto

Description

Modern Ukrainian Pagans strive to revive beliefs and practices from the past millennia. They offer an alternative vision for a nation based on the rediscovery of ethnic roots in the contexts of socio-political turmoil. Modern Paganism spread among the urban Ukrainian intelligentsia in the North American diaspora after World War II, and developed actively in Ukraine following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Today, although experiencing a great decline in the diaspora, it is rapidly growing in Ukraine, involving many different Pagan communities and thousands of believers. Pagans resist both the external political oppression of Ukraine and the prominent position of Christianity in that country. Since Christianity dominates the spiritual discourse in Ukraine, Pagans are marginalized, and their ideas are perceived as radical and hostile by the larger society.

Drawing upon her book The Return of Ancestral Gods: Modern Ukrainian Paganism as an Alternative Vision for a Nation recently published by McGill-Queen’s University Press, Mariya Lesiv will discuss modern Ukrainian Paganism in relationship to nationalist politics and aesthetics. The majority of researchers of Slavic Paganisms concentrate predominantly on official Pagan discourse, namely, the voices of leaders as presented through official media such as publications, websites, and public presentations. These media indeed often reveal nationalist, racist and anti-Semitic sentiments expressed by some Ukrainian Pagans. However, Lesiv finds it important to consider not only how Paganism is preached but also the way that it is embraced on a private level. She will show that Paganism attracts a growing number of Ukrainians largely because of its aesthetic aspects rather than its associated politics, and will discuss the role that aesthetics may play in the further development of Ukrainian Paganism.

Description

Taras Kuzio is a Toronto-based expert on contemporary Ukrainian and post-communist politics, nationalism and European integration at the Centre for Political and Regional Studies, Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta and Non-Resident Fellow, Center for Transatlantic Relations (CTR), School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), Johns Hopkins University. Taras Kuzio has been a political consultant to governments and legal and business consultant to the private sector on legal and economic questions.
Visit Dr. Kuzio’s webpage for more information: http://www.taraskuzio.net/

Description

Partitioning and territorial separation along group lines has been suggested as a solution to resolve many conflicts within states. But does dividing territory along group lines contribute to resolving a conflict? The talk will discuss whether territorial approaches to conflict resolution in divided societies offer an appropriate mechanism to manage or decrease inter-group conflict. Discussing two cases of partitioning: Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia; this talk will examine the challenge of linking an ethnic or religious group with a specific territory.

Description

Rinna Kullaa is an area studies expert for Southeastern Europe and an Assistant Professor of Modern European History and International Relations at the University of Jyvaskyla in Finland, where she directs the teaching of European studies. She completed her postgraduate degree at St. Antony’s College, the University of Oxford and a doctorate University of Maryland. She works on modern Mediterranean history since the Second World War, political questions of EU accession, and is interested in the current construction of EU foreign and security policy. Her most recent monograph is Non-Alignment and its Origins in Cold War Europe: Finland, Yugoslavia and the Soviet Challenge. London: I.B. Tauris, 2012.

Chair: Robert Austin (CERES)

Description

A book launch to mark the appearance of Serhiy Bilenky, editor, Fashioning Modern Ukraine: Selected Writings of Mykola Kostomarov, Volodymyr Antonovych, and Mykhailo Drahomanov recently published by CIUS Press.

Dr. Bilenky will speak on “How ‘Nationalist’ was Ukrainian Nationalism? The Nineteenth-Century Ukrainian National Movement”

Professor Paul R. Magocsi, Professor Piotr Wrobel, and Professor Taras Koznarsky of the University of Toronto will discuss the significance of the new collection for the study and teaching of nineteenth-century Eastern European intellectual history

New Book Features Founders of Modern Ukrainian National Idea

Book description:
*Fashioning Modern Ukraine: Selected Writings of Mykola Kostomarov, Volodymyr Antonovych, and Mykhailo Drahomanov. Edited by Serhiy Bilenky.*

A new book, published by the CIUS Press as part of the Monograph Series of the Peter Jacyk Centre for Ukrainian Historical Research, is a collection of selected works by leading Ukrainian scholars whose academic writings became the founding pillars of Ukrainian national ideology in the 19th century and were the driving force behind Ukrainian national movement in the early 20th century.
Mykola Kostomarov was the founder of the populist trend in Ukrainian historiography and national movement. Cofounder of the Cyril and Methodius Brotherhood in the 1840s and the author of its programmatic text The Book of Genesis of the Ukrainian People, Kostomarov took a moderate stance in national politics and regarded proliferation of culture and education as the best way of promoting the Ukrainian national idea. Apart from its vivid description of life in the mid-19th century, Kostomarov’s “Memoirs” represents one of his best known works on Russo-Ukrainian cultural and political relations from the 1840s to the 1860s. His essay on the “two Rus’ nationalities” is an in-depth analysis of the cultural and societal differences between Ukrainians and Russians.
Volodymyr Antonovych was born into a Polish family in the Right-bank Ukraine. His life and works exemplify the creation of a modern Ukrainian national identity. His transformation from a Pole into a Ukrainian began with his discovery of the Ukrainian culture and folklore. This journey of discovery and identity-formation is described in his “Memoirs” and in “My Confession.” Antonovych switched his loyalties and his identity from Polish to Ukrainian and became the leader of the Old Hromada in Kyiv. He founded the so-called Kyiv school of historians and had a direct influence on the ideas and works of the renowned Ukrainian historian Mykhailo Hrushevsky.
Mykola Drahomanov was born in Poltava to a family of Ukrainian Cossack nobles. He was an uncle of a famous Ukrainian poetess Lesia Ukrainka (Larysa Kosach). Drahomanov’s writings are regarded as positivist and liberal, and he considers individual freedom to be the highest goal to be achieved regardless of one’s nationality. He studied relations between an individual and a state and lobbied for a federal state system that would acknowledge freedoms and autonomy of cultural minorities. Drahomanov was the author of the first Ukrainian modern political program (presented in his introduction to the journal Hromada), which had a profound effect on the political parties in Western Ukraine and on the later policies of the Ukrainian Central Rada in 1917.
The book’s editor Serhiy Bilenky provides an informative introduction, in which he explains the historical context of the writings presented in the book, and provides numerous explanatory footnotes.

Description

Rinna Kullaa is an area studies expert for Southeastern Europe and an Assistant Professor of Modern European History and International Relations at the University of Jyvaskyla in Finland, where she directs the teaching of European studies. She completed her postgraduate degree at St. Antony’s College, the University of Oxford and a doctorate University of Maryland. She works on modern Mediterranean history since the Second World War, political questions of EU accession, and is interested in the current construction of EU foreign and security policy. Her most recent monograph is Non-Alignment and its Origins in Cold War Europe: Finland, Yugoslavia and the Soviet Challenge. London: I.B. Tauris, 2012.

Chair: Edith Klein (CERES)

Description

**SEE LINK TO LIVE WEBCAST BELOW**

Professor Dan Healey joined St Antony’s College as Professor of Modern Russian History in October 2013.

Before that he taught at the University of Reading (2011-2013) and at Swansea University (2000-2011). He received his BA in Russian Language & Literature from the University of Toronto in 1981, and after a career in the travel industry, his PhD from the University of Toronto in 1998.

He is the author of several books and articles on modern Russian history. His study of the history of homosexuality in tsarist and Soviet Russia, Homosexual Desire in Revolutionary Russia: The Regulation of Sexual and Gender Dissent, was published in 2001 by University of Chicago Press, and was designated proxime accessit for the Royal Historical Society’s 2001 Gladstone History Book Prize. It was published in Russian by Ladomir Press, Moscow, in 2008. A study of the early Soviet “sexual revolution” followed in 2009, entitled Bolshevik Sexual Forensics: Diagnosing Sexual Disorder in Clinic and Courtroom, 1917-1939. He is currently researching a book on the history of medicine in Stalin’s Gulag camps.

He has also edited two essay collections: Soviet Medicine: Culture, Practice, Science (2010) with F. Bernstein and C. Burton; and Russian Masculinities in History and Culture (2002) with B. Clements and R. Friedman. He has published many articles and book chapters on the history of Russian homosexuality, on Russia’s contemporary politics of so-called “non-traditional” sexualities, on the history of Russian psychiatry and forensic medicine, on gender, and on the Gulag.

He was joint Reviews Editor of Gender & History, 2004-2008, and he co-edits the H-Histsex History of Sexuality H-NET Discussion List. He also serves on the Editorial Board for Slavonic & East European Review.

Http://hosting.epresence.tv/MUNK/1/live/276.aspx

Description

Each year, the German Marshall Fund through its Washington office elects a small number of Transatlantic Fellows. These fellows are at the peak of their professions in the academy, journalism, and business. Over eight months, they work intensively on a joint report. This year’s report examines threat to the liberal world order (understood as the institutions of Western Europe and North America) posed by the rise of China, the spread of cyber-terrorism, protectionism, and the west’s own economic decline. The report will be presented and discussed, and the floor will be open to questions.

Report authors:

Trine Flockhart
Charles A. Kupchan
Christina Lin
Bartlomiej E. Nowak
Patrick W. Quirk
Lanxin Xiang