Description

In July of 1863, the Russian Minister of Internal Affairs Valuev banned a large portion of publications in “the Little Russian language.” On November 1, 2013, four scholars will reflect on the event and its meaning for the development of Ukrainian culture, as well as wider implications of banning and restricting the usage of languages and dialects in global history.

PROGRAM

“Neither Dead Nor Alive”: Ukrainian Language on the Brink of Romanticism, Taras Koznarsky.

This presentation explores statements about, attitudes toward, and classifications and conceptualizations of the Ukrainian language in the cultural discourse of the Russian empire in the first two decades of the nineteenth century, a transitional period before the advent of romanticism. In particular, it focuses on the conceptualizations of Ukrainian language in ethnographic descriptions of Ukraine (Markovych, Levshin), in the first grammar of Ukrainian by Oleksii Pavlovsky (1818), and in literary applications of the Ukrainian vernacular in poetry and prose in the early nineteenth century.

The Valuev Circular and the language that “has not, does not and cannot exist,” Michael Moser.

This presentation explores the following questions: Has the language that was, according to the Valuev Circular, “the same as the Russian language, with the exception of some corruptions from Poland,” actually ever been “the same as the Russian language”? When does a language exist or not exist? With regard to the concept of modern standard languages, to what level had the Ukrainian language developed by 1863? And what did the Ukrainian activists themselves think about it?

Fiction and forgery in official information about Ukrainian national movement in the beginning of 1860s, Johannes Remy.

Russian imperial authorities used intentional disinformation and even forged a revolutionary proclamation in order to discredit Ukrainian national activists in the 1860s in order to convince doubters in their own ranks concerning the Ukrainian question and their repressive policy. The myth of the Ukrainian movement as a Polish creation was created and disseminated for this purpose.

Ivan Nechui-Levytskyi and the Prohibitions on Publishing Ukrainian Literature,
Maxim Tarnawsky.

The impact of the Valuev Circular and Ems Ukaz on Ukrainian culture is a complex question that warrants a finely tuned and nuanced examination. The paper attempts to measure the impact of the Valuev Circular (and the later Ems Ukaz) by tracing their influence on the career and the writing of Ivan Nechui Levytskyi. Most of Nechui’s adult life was shaped in one way or another by these repressive measures. Of course, they hampered his ability to publish his works, but they also contributed to his developing relations with a number of other figures, particularly publishers in Lviv and the Kyiv Hromada. These links were instrumental in creating a robust and effective mechanism for the development of a unified and attractive Ukrainian cultural movement.

Description

Professor Laszlo Borhi works on war history, communism in Hungary, and history of international relations in the 20th century.

Description

A talk by the Ambassador of Hungary to Canada

Description

Jeffrey G. Reitz (Ph.D., FRSC) is the R.F. Harney Professor and Director of the Ethnic, Immigration and Pluralism Studies Program at the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto, and Professor and former Chair in the University’s Department of Sociology. He has published extensively on immigration and inter-group relations, emphasizing the case of Canada in comparative perspective. During 2012-2014 he is conducting a comparative study of the integration of Muslim immigrants in France, Quebec, and Canada, and is a Marie Curie International Fellow at l’École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris. Prof. Reitz’ most recent book is Multiculturalism and Social Cohesion: Potentials and Challenges of Diversity (Springer 2009). Recent journal articles include “Race, Religion, and the Social Integration of Canada’s New Immigrant Minorities,” (International Migration Review 2009), “Comparisons of the Success of Racial Minority Immigrant Offspring in the United States, Canada and Australia” (Social Science Research 2011), “The Distinctiveness of Canadian Immigration Experience” (Patterns of Prejudice 2012), and “Immigrant Skill Utilization: Trends and Policy Issues” (Journal of International Migration and Integration 2013).

Description

The talk presents both a brief description of the Hungarian network of Roma special colleges run by the so-called historical churches of the country as well an outline of the research conducted among the students. The results reported in this study can be considered only preliminary, because the network of these colleges has started only recently, consequently, the number of students whose value system has so far been surveyed through an adapted version of EVS questionnaire is rather small. The preliminary results indicate that the Roma students participating in the network are definitely religious but do not participate regularly and frequently in religious services. Furthermore, they trust the churches and the educational system.

Description

Sterilized by the State is the first comprehensive analysis of eugenics in North America focused on the second half of the twentieth century. Based on new research, Randall Hansen and Desmond King show why eugenic sterilization policies persisted after the 1940s in the United States and Canada. Through extensive archival research, King and Hansen show how both superintendents at homes for the “feebleminded” and pro-sterilization advocates repositioned themselves after 1945 to avoid the taint of Nazi eugenics. Drawing on interviews with victims of sterilization and primary documents, this book traces the post-1940s development of eugenic policy and shows that both eugenic arguments and committed eugenicists informed population, welfare, and birth control policy in postwar America. Simply put, the anti-population growth movement, and the Great Society programs, and the early choice movements were shot through with eugenicists and eugenic arguments.

Book launch will be followed by reception.

Description

Recent mobilization against same-sex marriage has taken France by surprise. In mobilizing against same-sex marriage, the movement is articulating a critique of “bobo” (bourgeois bohemian) consumerism, claims to be against “gender theory,” and insists that they can be feminist and non-homophobic at the same time. This talk makes sense of these seemingly disparate threads. Based on ethnographic research and interviews with the movement’s founders and members, Prof. Geva argues that the movement has formed around a sophisticated critique of economic and political liberalism. The movement draws from French psychoanalysis, in conjunction with Catholic notions of natural law and “human anthropology,” and strains of French feminism emphasizing the universality of sexual difference. These intellectual currents enable the movement to view same-sex marriage as symptomatic of a cosmopolitan class of elites perpetuating radical commodification under the guise of arguing for individual rights, where anything can be bought and sold for the purposes of individual satisfaction, including children (through a market of adoption), women’s bodies (through surrogacy), and even one’s gender or sexual identity.

Description

To mark the occasion of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Centre for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies, four of CERES’s former Directors and the current Director will reflect on the changes in the region over the last half-century and the future of area studies and the region itself into the twenty-first.

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Yves Cohen is the author of Le Siècle des Chefs: une histoire transnationale du commandement et de l’autorité (1890-1940) (Amsterdam, 2013). Drawing on archival documents, original texts, and a deep understanding of the importance of social and political practices, Le Siècle des Chefs presents a broad comparison of the leadership cultures and practices in four countries undergoing industrialization—France, Germany, Russia and the United States.

Description

As the Warsaw University is preparing to celebrate its 200 anniversary in several years, many scholars are researching the past of this academic institution. In her talk Hanna Bazhenova will to discuss one of the most unknown and controversial pages of the university’s history: the Russian period of its existence (1869–1915). The talk will demonstrate why Warsaw Imperial University was established, what was its main mission in Polish society and why it was forced to leave the city in 1915, after 46 years of existence. Special attention will be devoted to the analysis of the faculty members of the History and Philology Department (many of whom were the graduates of Saint Vladimir University in Kyiv). Hanna Bazhenova chose to focus on historians because their work was closely connected to the language and ideology of power.

Dr. Anna Bazhenova (Petro Jacyk Visiting Scholar) is a doctoral candidate in John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin and a research fellow of the Institute of East-Central Europe (Poland). The areas of her scientific interests include the history of the European universities of the 19th and 20th centuries, the history of Ukrainian humanities and arts, international contacts of historians and modern European historiography.

Description

Joost Lagendijk is a columnist for the Turkish dailies Zaman and Today’s Zaman. He was born in the Netherlands and graduated as a historian from Utrecht University. He was a publisher of magazines and non-fiction books for ten years. From 1998 till 2009 Mr. Lagendijk was a Member of the European Parliament (EP) for the Dutch Green Left Party. In the parliament he mainly worked on foreign policy and EU enlargement. For many years he was the chairman of the Turkey Delegation of the EP and the rapporteur for the parliament on the Balkans and Kosovo.
Together with his colleague from the EP Jan Marinus Wiersma, Mr. Lagendijk wrote three books (in Dutch), on the borders of Europe, on the foreign policy strategies of the US and the EU and on European policy towards its Muslim neighbours (translated into English and Turkish).
In 2013 he published, together with his wife Nevin Sungur, a book (in Dutch) on modern Turkey under the title The Turks Are Coming!.
From 2009 till 2012 Mr. Lagendijk worked as a senior adviser at the Istanbul Policy Center, the think tank of Sabanci University in Istanbul.

Description

This week, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians flooded the streets of Kiev in response to President Yanukovych’s decision to postpone an Association Agreement with the European Union. Why did efforts to reach an agreement between the EU and Ukraine fail? What does this failure tell us about Russia’s influence in the region? Is a second orange revolution in Ukraine in the offing? Two experts on Ukrainian politics, Taras Kuzio (CPRS, CIUS, University of Alberta) and Lucan Way (CERES, University of Toronto), will discuss Ukraine’s future on Friday between 2 and 4 in the Campbell room at the Munk School of Global Affairs. Katerina Sosnina, a second-year PhD student in Ukrainian history at the National University “Kiev-Mohyla Academy” who is on academic exchange at CERES this semester, will join the panel to share her reflections on the events in Ukraine and youth involvement in the protests. Professor Peter Solomon (CERES, University of Toronto) will moderate.

Description

Drawing on the author’s research and travels, this talk will consider Ukraine’s ambiguous positioning within global cultural discourse by recourse to theories of borderlands (via Walter Mignolo and Gloria Anzaldua), hybridity and amodernity (via Bruno Latour and Donna Haraway), postcommunism and postcolonialism, and to images of anomalous zones and errant wanderings, with particular attention to Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker.

Adrian Ivakhiv is Professor of Environmental Thought and Culture at the University of Vermont’s Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources. His research focuses at the intersections of ecology, culture, identity, religion, media, and the creative arts. He is the author of Ecologies of the Moving Image: Cinema, Affect, Nature (2013), Claiming Sacred Ground: Pilgrims and Politics at Glastonbury and Sedona (2001), and executive editor of The Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature (2005). He blogs at Immanence: EcoCulture, GeoPhilosophy, MediaPolitics.

Description

Despite the global recognition of social and economic costs of corruption, sociological understanding of its political causes remains very limited. Focusing on post-Soviet Ukraine, this talk explains the variation in the ordinary citizens’ participation in petty bureaucratic corruption in light of the country’s political trajectory in the post-transitional era. On the micro-level, I argue that Ukrainians’ decisions to carry out informal economic exchanges are influenced by organizational cultures of local bureaucracies. On the meso-level, I suggest that Ukrainian bureaucracies are fragmented into corruption-favorable and corruption-unfavorable sectors, which operate according to distinct institutional logics and cater to different clients. On the macro-level, I show that this bureaucratic fragmentation is a product of the country’s recent oscillation between the pro-Western and pro-Russian courses of political and economic development. The talk is based on several years of fieldwork, analysis of online discussion forums, local media, and a survey of Ukrainian university students.

Marina Zaloznaya is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Iowa. Prior to joining Iowa’s faculty, Dr. Zaloznaya received her PhD in Sociology from Northwestern University, a Master’s degree in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and an undergraduate degree from Middlebury College. In her work, Dr. Zaloznaya applies ethnographic and comparative-historical methodologies to the topics of corruption, white-collar crime, and economic deviance. Currently, she is working on a book manuscript that focuses on macro-political roots of informal economic behavior of ordinary citizens in post-Soviet Ukraine and Belarus. Dr. Zaloznaya’s work has been featured in leading sociological, criminological, and socio-legal journals, including Law & Social Inquiry, Crime, Law, and Social Change, Comparative Sociology, Population and Development Review, and others. Dr. Zaloznaya teaches classes in sociology of white-collar crime, law & society, and global criminology.

Description

Pierre Singaravélou is an acclaimed specialist on French colonial history, with a particular focus on the sciences and networks of empire. He teaches at the University of Paris I, Sorbonne. His many publications include a history of the Ecole française d’Extrême-Orient, books on geographers of empire, and Professer l’Empire: les « Sciences colonials » en France sous la IIIe République. He recently obtained a prestigious fellowship from the Institut Universitaire de France. His lecture is made possible by CEFMF and CERES.

Description

Since late November, thousands of anti government protesters have occupied the center of Kyiv in Ukraine. Three experts on Ukrainian politics will discuss the progress, implications, and likely fate of the protests: Marta Dyczok (University of Western Ontario and CERES), Taras Kuzio (CPRS, CIUS, University of Alberta), and Lucan Way (CERES, University of Toronto). Volodymyr Kravchenko (University of Alberta) will moderate.

Description

The talk addresses the failed effort to create a regional truth commission to address mass violence in the Balkans from 1991-2001. The effort, spearheaded by an NGO in Serbia, along with colleagues in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, was lauded by the international community for its ambition, yet drew disdain from those most affected by the conflict. The study draws on data collected over a two year period, mainly in Bosnia and Herzegovina but also in Serbia and Croatia, and reveals the problematic popularity of truth commissions. It also points out how the process through which it was promoted fostered expectations that were impossible to fulfill.

Description

In the 1940-50s tens of thousands of Ukrainian women were sentenced to long-term imprisonment in the Gulag for political reasons. Their experiences of living in brutal conditions of the Soviet camps have not yet been a subject of special historical-anthropological research. This study is based primarily on the analysis of personal narratives of the Ukrainian female former prisoners of the Gulag (written memoirs, autobiographies, oral histories) as well as other sources (archival documents, demographical data, statistics, newspapers, male prisoners’ memoirs etc.), which help to reconstruct most comprehensively the Ukrainian women’s lives in confinement. This talk will discuss strategies devised by Ukrainian women to adjust to extremely harsh living conditions, to survive on the verge of starvation and physical exhaustion, to resist the prevalent violence and demoralizing impact of the camp regime, to preserve their ethnic, gender, and religious identities, and to protect their human dignity in the situation of total deprivation of rights and resources. Some traditional women’s practices and skills (housekeeping, singing, embroidery, religious celebrations, body care, etc.) helped women to create semblance of normal life and thus to maintain their connectedness to basic cultural values and social norms. Special attention will be paid to women’s solidarity and mutual support in resisting the systemic violence to which they were exposed.

Description

Drawing on evidence from Russian archives and the archives of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, this paper examines the role of armed punitive detachments in maintaining order through mass violence and intimidation in areas under German military administration. It focuses on the ethnic composition of punitive detachments, the escalation of violence over the course of the war, and Soviet attempts to manipulate the memory of punitive violence in the postwar years.

Steven Maddox is Assistant Professor of History at Canisius College in Buffalo, NY. His book, Saving Stalin’s Imperial City: Historic Preservation, Restoration, and Commemoration in Leningrad, 1930-1950, is forthcoming from Indiana University Press. His current project is a study of Leningrad Province under German military administration and the subsequent return of Soviet authority.