Description

THE FIRECROSSER, director Mykhailo Illienko, 2012. Feature narrative, 105 min. Ukraine’s official entry for the Oscar consideration in the Best Foreign Language Film category.
This melodrama is inspired by the real-life story of one Ivan Datsenko (Ivan Dodoka in the film), native of the village of Chernechyi Yar in central Ukraine. He becomes a fearsome fighter pilot during World War Two, earning the highest military distinction bestowed by Stalin. He escapes first from a Nazi and then Soviet concentration camps, flees to Canada, where – suspend your disbelief – Datsenko allegedly becomes the chieftain of an Iroquois tribe. This is the first in years Ukrainian film that received a national distribution and enjoyed an unprecedented box-office success in Ukraine.

Description

Thomas de Waal is a senior associate in the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington D.C. He is a writer and analyst on the Caucasus, Russia and the Black Sea region and the author, most recently, of The Caucasus: An Introduction (2010).

In the 1990s de Waal worked as a journalist in Moscow, specializing in Russian politics and events in Chechnya. He is the co-author with Carlotta Gall of Chechnya, A Small Victorious War, (1997) and sole author of Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan Through Peace and War (2003), which has been translated into Armenian, Azeri and Russian.

De Waal has also worked for the BBC World Service and for the NGOs, the Institute for War and Peace Reporting and Conciliation Resources.

Description

The destruction of independent peasantry by the Bolshevik regime was orchestrated with an unparalleled efficiency both in terms of the actual physical elimination of millions branded kulaks and the moral justification of the mass murder to the largely acquiescing public opinion within the Soviet Union and abroad. The lecture discusses the role Soviet film played in the preparation and execution of one of the greatest mass murders of European civil population whose scale and consequences are still to be fully appreciated. The lecture presentation is based on the research of a wide body of documents and motion pictures of the period and is richly illustrated with film clips.

Description

Cinema could be considered today’s Biblia pauperum, or a poor-man’s bible, one using pictures and images to convey incontrovertible truths. Films offer many people a source of historical knowledge that is more influential than books, journals, or formal education at school or university. Recent Polish and Ukrainian movies such as “With Fire and Sword,” “In Darknesss,” and “Metropolitan Andrey” do offer audiences a certain historical truth, but more serve as a medium for manipulating and re-narrating history. This presentation will discuss the mechanism of creating “moving pictures” of shared Polish and Ukrainian history in contemporary cinematography.

Description

Dr. Leal’s primary academic interest is Latino politics. His goal is to understand how Latino individuals and communities shape, and are shaped by, politics in the United States. Because these are complex and multifaceted dynamics, his research spans the fields of public policy, political behavior, and public opinion.
In the public policy field, he is interested in issues with significant implications for Latino communities, particularly immigration and education. Dr. Leal’s political behavior research examines how factors beyond socio-economic status shape Latino electoral participation. His work on public opinion studies the opinions of Latinos themselves as well as how Latinos are viewed by others.
His recent papers examine how Mexican immigrants engage in both U.S. And transnational politics; the influence of ethnic identification (or the lack thereof) on Latino voter turnout; the political meaning of intra-Catholic identities; the testing of conventional wisdoms about Latinos and immigrants; and the distinctiveness of Latino political opinions and behaviors.
Dr. Leal’s interests often lead to interdisciplinary approaches. For instance, his work on how religion, military service, transnationalism, and ethnic identity shape Latino political engagement is influenced by sociological research. In addition, his early work examined the substantive implications of Latino descriptive representation on school boards and how political dynamics affect the adoption and implementation of education programs.
Several additional interests might be categorized as North American politics. He wrote a book about American gubernatorial elections, edited a journal symposium about Canadian politics, and has written about Mexican democratization and U.S.-Mexico border politics. Many political and policy dynamics are difficult to understand within the confines of a single nation, so an understanding of regional and border issues is increasingly important to academics and policymakers alike.

The paper “The Case of the Disappearing Latinos: The Consequences of (Non) Ethnic Identification for Understanding Latino Political Participation in the United States” was presented at the Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association in Chicago, IL, 2012.

Description

Immigration and Public Opinion in Liberal Democracies (Gary Freeman, Randall Hansen & David Leal), Routledge, 2012
&
Becoming Multicultural: Immigration and the Politics of Membership in Canada and Germany (Phil Triadafilopoulos), UBC, 2012. Randall Hansen (Editor), Jobst Koehler (Editor), Jeannette Money (Editor)
&
Wanted and Welcome? Policies for Highly Skilled Immigrants in Comparative Perspective (Phil Triadafilopoulos, Editor), Springer, 2012

Description

Tarik Amar works on the history of the Soviet Union, Russia and East Central Europe. His manuscript “Paradox City” focuses on the often violent twentieth-century transformations of the borderland city of Lviv, also known as Lwów, Lvov, and Lemberg. Between 2007 and 2010 he directed the Center for Urban History of East Central Europe in Lviv.

Description

Refreshments will be served

Description

Sándor Orbán is the program director of the South East European Network for Professionalization of Media (SEENPM) which unites seventeen non-for-profit media development centers from twelve countries of the region. He designs, coordinates, and supervises media policy, research, advocacy and journalism training projects. His main fields of expertise include media freedom and pluralism, reporting diversity, and journalism ethics. Orbán is also a guest lecturer at the Budapest College of Communication and Business.

Prior to this current position, in 2006, he managed research and academic training programs at the Center for Media and Communication Studies of the Central European University in Budapest. From 1997 to 2005, he served as director of the Center for Independent Journalism (Budapest), established by the Independent Journalism Foundation (New York).
In 2000 Orbán gave a series of lectures on media in Eastern Europe to graduate students at the University of Toronto. In 1983–95, he worked at Hungarian media outlets as an international news editor and reporter covering political, social, and cultural events in the United States, Canada and Europe.

Orbán was a beneficiary of several international journalism fellowships, including the Hubert H. Humphrey program at the University of Maryland in 2004–2005, and a four-month US study tour organized by the World Press Institute (St. Paul, MN) in 1993. He completed a one-year diploma program at the Bologna Center of the School of Advanced International Studies/Johns Hopkins University in 1989–90. He received his M.A. degree in international relations and journalism at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations in 1983.

Description

CONFERENCE PROGRAM: http://romaconference2013.wix.com/toronto#!agenda/cjg9

Thursday, March 7, 2013: Keynote speaker, Dr. Bernard Rorke
Admission free and open to the public. Please register through Munk registration

Friday, March 8, 2013: Conference program
Admission free to students with identification; tickets $10 if reserved in advance, $15 at the door, includes lunch. Cash only

To order tickets:
Please send an e-mail to with “Registration” in the subject line to reserve a ticket for the panels of March 8th. Include name and student number (if applicable).
Tickets will be picked up and paid for (cash only) in person at the door.

Description

To Register:
Please send an e-mail to romaconference@utoronto.ca with “Registration” in the subject line.
Students attend the panels of March 8th free of charge with a valid student ID.
For members of the public, tickets for March 8th are $10 if reserved in advance and $15 at the door. Cash only!

Conference Program:

March 7th 2013

Dr. Bernard Rorke, International Research and Advocacy Director, Open Society Roma Initiatives Office

Keynote Address and Reception, 5:30-7pm



March 8th 2013



Coffee and light refreshments, 9:00-9:30

Panel 1: Roma and the Media: Perceptions and Misconceptions, 9:30-11:30am​

Chair: Prof. Harald Bauder, Ryerson University

Discussant: Sandor Orban
​
Julianna Beaudoin (PhD candidate, University of Western Ontario), “Bogus” Refugees: Deconstructing How Roma are Represented in Canadian Media

Stefan Benedik, (PhD candidate, University of Graz), Criminalization and De-individualization of Romani Migrants in Examples from Austrian and Slovak Media

Olsi Jazexhi, (PhD candidate, European University Institute, Florence), Avdiu and Shaqira: The Depiction of the Roma Presence in the Albanian Media

Tatjana Peric, (PhD candidate, University of Novi Sad), “It’s Time for Us to Define How People Perceive Romani Women”: A Case Study in Digital Activism



Lunch 11:30-1pm



Panel 2: The Roma and the Holocaust, 1pm-3pm​

Chair: Prof. Doris Bergen, University of Toronto
Discussant: Prof. Gilad Margalit, University of Haifa

​Harika Dauth, (MA 2012, Leipzig University), Contested Research or the Burdens of the Past: Romani Activists versus Scholars of Romani Studies in Germany

Martin Holler, (PhD candidate, Humboldt University), The Nazi Persecution of Soviet Roma in North-West Russia, 1941-1944

Sara Swerdlyk, (MA candidate, University College London), A Feminist and Postcolonial Analysis of the Holocaust of Czech Roma

Dr. Piotr Wawrzeniuk, (PhD 2005, Stockholm University), The Romani Genocide in Distrikt Galizien in the Light of Testimonies of Survivors and the Occupation Press

Coffee break, 3-3:30pm​

Panel 3: The Roma and the European Union’s Decade of Roma Inclusion, 2005-2015​, ​3:30-5:30pm

Chair: Dr. Nadine Blumer
Discussant: Dr. Laszlo Kulcsar, Kansas State University

Dr. Barbara Bello, (PhD 2012, University of Milan), Trajectories of Resistance and Empowerment of Roma Young Activists in the Enlarged Europe: Making the National Strategies for the Roma Inclusion Work
​
Dr. Ramneek Grewal, (PhD 2011, University of Edinburgh), Transnational Advocacy and Roma Mobilization in Macedonia and Serbia
​
Daniel Manson, (MA candidate, University of British Colombia), What Happened to Freedom of Movement? The Politics of Roma Migrant Illegality and Deportation in France

Description

Susan Viets worked as a journalist in Eastern Europe and the USSR during the collapse of communism. Starting in Budapest with the Guardian (1988 – 1990), she then became the first accredited foreign correspondent in Ukraine, reporting for the Independent (1990 – 1992) and the BBC (1994 – 1996). After a year with the International Red Cross in Bosnia-Herzegovina (1997 – 1998), Susan returned to Canada as a CBC news writer and producer. In 2004 she visited Ukraine and covered the Orange Revolution for the Independent on Sunday.

Her memoir focuses on experiences of everyday people she encountered while reporting overseas. East Germans, emboldened by news of Hungarian and Polish reforms, escaped in a picnic at the Iron Curtain just weeks before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Later, Chernobyl workers summed up Soviet incompetence when they described their evacuation to a purpose built safe town only to find the town was situated on radioactive land. In Picnic at the Iron Curtain, Susan tells adventure stories from a zone of change that stretched from Budapest to Bishkek and Chernobyl to Chechnya.

Description

The last parliamentary election in Ukraine exposed strong authoritarian proclivities of the country’s rulers, but also demonstrated a striking competitiveness of its party system and a growing discontent of the society. This talk will address key factors that enabled a rollback of Ukraine’s earlier democratic gains, but prevented the ruling elite from establishing a full-fledged authoritarian regime. It will also examine various indicators of regime stability or lack thereof including cohesiveness of the ruling elite, strength of the party of power, loyalty of the oligarchs, viability of opposition forces and mobilization capacity of the civil society. In conclusion the talk will assess near-term prospects of democratic change in Ukraine and the conditions of its further slide towards authoritarianism.

Serhiy Kudelia is an assistant professor of political science at Baylor University. In 2009-10 he was Petro Jacyk post-doctoral fellow at the University of Toronto. He also held teaching and research position at Johns Hopkins University, George Washington University and Kyiv-Mohyla Academy (Ukraine). His most recent articles appeared in Communist and Post-Communist Studies, East European Politics and Societies and Problems of Post-Communism.

Description

The presentation focuses on parliamentary recruitment and careers of businessmen in 14 Eastern and Central European countries. More specifically, socio-demographic profile, prior political experience (also during the Soviet period), and parliamentary career duration of businessmen will be scrutinized in a longitudinal perspective. A specific emphasis of this presentation will be done on the Russian and Ukrainian national parliaments (the State Duma and the Verkhovna Rada).

Elena Semenova is a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Jena, Germany. Her recent articles appeared in Comparative Sociology, Historical Social Research, and East European Politics and Societies

Description

Professor Taylor’s research focuses on the role of state coercive organizations, such as the military and the police, in domestic politics. Additional interests include comparative state-building and comparative federalism. His geographic area of specialization is Russia and the post-Soviet region.
He has recently completed a book on Russia’s power ministries, especially law enforcement structures, and their role in state building in the post-Soviet period. Other projects include reform of law enforcement structures in Russia, patrimonialism in the power ministries in post-soviet countries, and the implications for civil-military relations theory of the changing nature of war and states.
Publications: State Building in Putin’s Russia: Policing and Coercion After Communism (Cambridge University Press, 2011). Politics and the Russian Army: Civil-Military Relations, 1689-2000 (Cambridge University Press, 2003).

Description

The Lecture will be followed by a Reception in the Campbell Lounge from 7:00-8:00pm

Istvan Rev is a professor of history at Central European University in Budapest. He is the author of several books, including Retroactive Justice:
Prehistory of Post-Communism. He is Director of the Open Society Archives at Central European Univeristy.

Description

The talk will examine the way Leibniz envisions a Europe wide collaboration in rounding up resistance against what he considers a genuine political threat. The talk will examine not just Leibniz but also a wider range of European intellectuals and how they theorize China in the context of an emerging European identity.

Daniel Purdy is Professor of German at Penn State University, College Park and the author of The Tyranny of Elegance: Consumer Cosmopolitanism in the Era of Goethe and On the Ruins of Babel: Architectural Metaphor in German Thought.

Description

Panel 1, 10-12pm, Room 108N

Occupied France: Collaboration and Antisemitism

Chair Michael Marrus, University of Toronto
Laurent Joly, CNRS, “French Bureaucrats and the Persecution of the Jews. A survey inside the Préfecture de Police de Paris (1940-1944)”
Suzanne Langlois, York University, Collège Glendon, “Knocking on all Doors: a Jewish Family’s Journey out of France in 1941.”
Barbara Lambauer, IRICE, Paris, “What Collaboration Meant in the Eyes of the Occupier.”

Panel 2, 2-4pm, Room 208N

Wartime France and its Colonial Empire

Chair, Susan Solomon, University of Toronto
Fabrice Virgili, Université de Paris I, “When the French judged Japanese War Criminals: Saigon, 1946-1950”
David J. Smith, University of Toronto, “Race, Population, and North African migration in wartime France”
Eric T. Jennings, University of Toronto, “Free French Africa at War, 1940-1944”

Description

Maria Sonevytsky is an ethnomusicologist and musician based in Brooklyn, NY. Her primary research interests include discourses of indigeneity and “wildness” in post-Soviet Ukrainian popular music, cultural policy, music and nationalism, and folklore and nuclear experience after Chornobyl. She also works on critical organology, and wrote her M.A. Thesis on the piano accordion and its “cultural baggage” among performers in New York City. In February 2012, she received her PhD in Ethnomusicology from Columbia University. Her dissertation, “‘Wild Music’: Ideologies of Exoticism in Two Ukrainian Borderlands,” was based on fieldwork that she did in Crimea and Western Ukraine (among Hutsuls) in 2008-9 and was awarded distinction.
In the fall of 2012, she was a Mihaychuk Postdoctoral Fellow at the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute. In the spring semester of 2013, she will be a Jacyk Visiting Instructor and Research Fellow at the Harriman Institute at Columbia University.
For more information please visit www.mariasonevytsky.com

Description

In Ukrainian villages, the zozulka – the little cuckoo bird – bears sad news, brings bad luck, 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.

For more information please visit: zozulkatrio.wordpress.com

Description

Jeffrey Brooks is Professor of Russian and European history at the Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of When Russia Learned to Read: Literacy and Popular Literature, 1861-1917 (2003, 1985); Thank You, Comrade Stalin! Soviet Public Culture from Revolution to Cold War (2000); and Lenin and the Making of the Soviet State, with G. Chernyavskiy (2006). He received a Guggenheim, a Vucinich Prize, and other awards. He has also written many essays about Russian politics and culture. In progress, Russian Culture High and Low in a Great Age.
Recent and upcoming essays include: “The Russian Nation Imagined: The Peoples of Russia as Seen in Popular Imagery, 1860s-1890s,” The Journal of Social History Vol. 43, No. 3(2010), 535-557; “Chekhov, Tolstoy, and the Illustrated Press in the 1890s,” Cultural and Social History, Vol. 78, No. 2 (2010), 213-232; “Neozhidannyi Tolstoi: Лев и медведь. Юмор в “Войне и мире” in Novoe Literaturnoe obozrenie (New Literary Observer) No. 109 (summer, 2011), 151-71; “The Moral Self in Russia’s Literary and Visual Cultures (1861-1955),” The Space of the Book: Print Culture in the Russian Social Imagination, Miranda Remnek ed., (2011), 201-30; “Soviet Culture, 1932-1992,” with Sergei Zhuk, in the Oxford Handbook of Twentieth Century Russia, (2013); and “Marvelous Destruction: Left-Leaning Satirical Magazines of 1905-1907,” in Eksperiment in 2013.

Description

This book explores the political imagination of Eastern Europe in the 1830s and 1840s, when Polish, Russian, and Ukrainian intellectuals came to identify themselves as belonging to communities known as nations or nationalities. Bilenky approaches this topic from a transnational perspective, revealing the ways in which modern Russian, Polish, and Ukrainian nationalities were formed and refashioned through the challenges they presented to one another, both as neighboring communities and as minorities within a given community. Further, all three nations defined themselves as a result of their interactions with the Russian and Austrian empires. Fueled by the Romantic search for national roots, they developed a number of separate yet often overlapping and inclusive senses of national identity, thereby producing myriad versions of Russianness, Polishness, and Ukrainianness.

Description

The lecture will be followed by a Reception in the Campbell Conference Lounge.

Charles Clarke, a former UK Home Secretary, Education Secretary, and close ally of Tony Blair will be giving a public lecture on the UK’s place within the European Union. For the first time since Britain’s 1973 accession, there is a chance that the UK will leave the European Union – an event that would have immense consequences for both the UK and the EU – as a majority of citizens favour withdrawal. Charles Clarke will explain the UK’s often complicated relationship with Europe, the reasons for the currently high level of disaffection with Europe, and the likelihood that the UK will withdraw.

Charles Rodway Clarke (born 21 September 1950) is a British Labour Party politician, who was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Norwich South from 1997 until 2010, and served as Home Secretary from December 2004 until May 2006. He was a close ally of Party Leader Neil Kinnock in his efforts to modernize the Labour Party in the 1980s, and was a key figure in Tony Blair’s New Labour project. Described by the New Statesman as “one of Labour’s most intellectually confident heavyweights,” he saw through difficult and controversial reforms to tuition fees, and was an early critic of Gordon Brown. Following his departure from Parliament in 2010, he has been Visiting Professor in the School of Political, Social and International Studies at the University of East Anglia and been Visiting Professor of Politics and Faith in the Department of Politics, Philosophy and Religion at Lancaster University. He gives public lectures across Europe, appears regularly on the BBC, and is frequently quoted and interviews in the British Press.

For more information please visit www.charlesclarke.org

Description

Winner of the 2012 Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize.

Finalist for the 2012 Governor General’s Literary Award for English-Language Fiction.

In December of 1944, the Red Army entered Budapest to begin one of the bloodiest sieges of the Second World War. By February, the siege was over, but its effects were to be felt for decades afterward.

Siege 13 is a collection of thirteen linked stories about this terrible time in history, both its historical moment, but also later, as a legacy of silence, haunting, and trauma that shadows the survivors.Set in both Budapest before and after the siege, and in the present day — in Canada, the U.S., and parts of Europe — Siege 13 traces the ripple effect of this time on characters directly involved, and on their friends, associates, sons, daughters, grandchildren, and adoptive countries.

Written by one of this country’s best and most internationally recognized short story authors — the story “The Restoration of the Villa Where Tibor Kallman Once Lived” won the 2011 O.Henry Prize for short fiction — Siege 13 is an intelligent, emotional, and absorbing cycle of stories about war, family, loyalty, love and redemption.

Description

At the level of general principle, representative democracy is appealed to by the EU institutions and member-states alike. Yet in today’s Europe it risks being marginalised amidst the actions and rhetoric of emergency – a norm to be waived in a state of exception, leaving decisions of lasting consequence shielded from public debate. A German constitutional theorist once famously defined as sovereign the one who has the power to declare the state of exception, and linked this power closely to suspensions of the law. The European setting invites a different understanding of an emergency regime: one that is manifest in the contravention of norms which may or may not be legally codified, and which is collectively produced by multiple actors. The persistence of politics in the emergency register indicates precisely the weakness of political authority. The paper goes on to examine how exceptional this exceptionalism is. Is Europe’s emergency politics a recent phenomenon, or has it been one of the currents of European integration from the beginning?

To read more about the speaker please visit: http://www2.lse.ac.uk/europeanInstitute/staff/academicStaff/white/home.aspx

Description

Dr. Volodymyr Viatrovych – one of the leading Ukrainian historian, researcher of the history of the Ukrainian liberation movement. In 2009-2010, while being the Director of Branch-Wise State Archive of Security Service of Ukraine, was busy with declassifying previously secret KGB archives and making them accessible through specially established network of inquiry centres and e-Archive. The Author of the first course for high school “Ukrainian Liberation Movement, 1920-50”. In 2002, Dr. Viatrovych founded the Center for Research on the Liberation Movement (CDVR) www.cdvr.org.ua – non-governmental organization that deals with various aspects of the Ukrainian liberation movement in the ХХ century. CDVR publishes the journal “Ukrainian Liberation Movement” and collaborates with academic and state institutions of Ukraine, Lithuania, Poland and Slovakia.

Description

The 1990s were a period of tremendous artistic vigour, experimentation, and liberation for Ukrainian culture. The artists who emerged at this time unleashed a tidal wave of creativity that deliberately and aggressively reshaped inherited models. In this first English monograph on contemporary Ukrainian literature, Mark Andryczyk provides an in-depth analysis of the cultural explosion that engulfed Ukraine in its first decade of independence. The Intellectual as Hero in 1990s Ukrainian Fiction weaves a fascinating narrative full of colourful characters by examining the prose of today’s leading writers. Andryczyk delves into the role of the intellectual in forging a post-Soviet Ukrainian identity, and follows these protagonists as they soar and stumble in pursuit of redefining their creative realm. In addition to introducing readers to vibrant literary gems, this book explores the artistic tendencies that determined the course of the Ukrainian cultural scene in the 1990s, and continue to shape it today.

Description

In January 2013, France deployed a major force of combat troops and air support to Mali to intervene in an ongoing conflict and internal political crisis. In 2012, an insurgency composed of a constellation of movements, ranging from Tuarag separatists to Islamist groups, seized control of large parts of northern Mali. Faced with a deteriorating military situation, elements of the Malian army mutinied, forcing the president out of power in a coup d’etat, thus bringing to an end what had been considered one of the most stable and successful democracies in West Africa. In the face of the Malian insurgency’s military advance in late 2012, France committed military forces to drive the insurgency’s north and restor the Malian government’s authority in central Mali. Given France’s long history in the region as colonial power and military intervention in the region, its intervention raises numerous questions. The emergence of radical Islamist groups in sub-Saharan Africa likewise represents a new and important phenomenon for understanding the region. A panel of specialists will address the issues in this upcoming roundtable.

Description

Books:

Understanding Central Asia (London: Routledge, 2012)

Sovereignty After Empire (co-ed.with Raymond Hinnebusch ,Edinburgh and Columbia University Presses, 2011)

Symbolism and Power in Central Asia: Politics of the Spectacular (ed. Routledge, 2010)

Domestic and International Perspectives on Kyrgyzstan’s ‘Tulip Revolution’ (ed. Routledge, 2009)

Kazakhstan: Power and the Elite (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2005)

Oil, Transition and Security in Central Asia (ed., London and New York: Routledge, 2003)

Power and Change in Central Asia (ed.London and New York: Routledge, 2002)

Kosovo: Perceptions of War and its Aftermath (co-ed. With Mary Buckley, London and New York: Continuum, 2001)

Kazakhstan: Centre-Periphery Relations (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution and London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 2000)

Wars and Peace in the Former Soviet Space (ed. Conflict Studies Centre, Royal Military College, Sandhurst, 2000)

Description

Efraim Sicher is professor of English and comparative literature at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel. He has published on modern Jewish culture, Russian literature, Holocaust memory, and the representation of the “Jew” in Western culture. He has extensively researched the life and work of Isaak Babelʹ and has edited several volumes of Babelʹ’s uncensored works in Russian, English, and Hebrew. His most recent books are The Holocaust Novel (2005), Rereading the City / Rereading Dickens (2nd edition 2012), and Under Postcolonial Eyes: Figuring the “Jew” in Contemporary British Writing (with Linda Weinhouse, 2012).

Description

FRIDAY MORNING, APRIL 19, 2013
Munk School for Global Affairs, 208 North Wing, 1 Devonshire Place, University Toronto

9:00 – 9:30 WELCOME & OPENING REMARKS
John Zilcosky, Chair of German, University of Toronto
Meric Gertler, Professor of Geography, Dean of Arts & Science, University of Toronto
Sabine Sparwasser, Consul General, German Consulate Toronto
Angelica Fenner, Associate Professor of German & Cinema Studies, University of Toronto
Uli Linke, Professor of Anthropology, Rochester Institute of Technology

9:30 – 11:00 PANEL 1: GEOGRAPHIES OF IN/VISIBILITY
Moderator: Stefan Soldovieri, Associate Professor of German, University of Toronto

The “Unheimlich”: Geographies of Race and Nation at the Edges of Berlin
Bettina Stoetzer, Collegiate Assistant Professor of Social Sciences, University of Chicago

Moving Mountains: The Diasporic Optic and Archives of the West in Alpi
Vasuki Shanmuganathan, Doctoral Candidate in German & Women & Gender Studies, University of Toronto

11:00 – 11:15 Break

11:15 – 12:30 PANEL 2: MING WONG’S REENACTMENTS
Moderator: Kass Banning, Lecturer, Cinema Studies Institute, University of Toronto

Screening of Angst Essen (Eat Fear, Ming Wong, 2008, 28 Min.)

Blackface Reloaded: Restaging Fassbinder’s Fear Eats The Soul
Katrin Sieg, Professor of German, Georgetown University

12:30 – 1:30 Lunch Break

FRIDAY AFTERNOON, APRIL 19, 2013
Media Commons Theatre, 3rd Floor, Robarts Library, 130 St. George Street

1:45 – 3:15 PANEL 3: IDENTIFICATION AND ATTACHMENT IN THE BLACK DIASPORA
Moderator: Yasmin Aly, Doctoral Candidate in German, University of Toronto

Why Images Move Us
Tina Campt, Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies; Director, African Studies Program, Barnard College/Columbia University

Occupying African-American Bodies and Reconfiguring European Spaces:
Possibilities For Non-Citizen Articulations In Berlin And Beyond
Damani Patridge, Assoc. Professor of Anthropology & African Studies, University of Michigan

3:30 – 5:45 SCREENING: The Education of Auma Obama (Branwen Okpako, 2011, 80 min.)

Moderator: Angelica Fenner, Assoc. Prof of German & Cinema Studies, Univ. Of Toronto
Respondents: Marième Lo, Asst. Professor of Women and Gender Studies, Univ. Of Toronto
and Pablo Idahosa, Professor of International Development Studies, York University

6:00 – Reception

SATURDAY MORNING, APRIL 20, 2013
Munk School for Global Affairs, 208 North Wing, 1 Devonshire Place, University Toronto

9:00 – 10:30 PANEL 4: PERFORMATIVITIES OF RACE, GENDER, & ETHNICITY
Moderator: Anna Stainton, Doctoral Candidate in German, University of Toronto

Hardboiled Performance: Re/Mediations of Turkish-German Identity in the Tatort Series
Claudia Breger, Associate Professor of Germanic Studies, Indiana University

Voice, Accent, Authenticity: Female Labor in Contemporary German-Language Films
Barbara Mennel, Associate Professor of German & English, University of Florida

10:30 – 10:45 Break

10:45 – 12:15 PANEL 5: REPRESENTATIONAL CLAIMS: ART, RITUAL, RIGHTS
Moderator: Stefana Gargova, Doctoral Candidate in German, University of Toronto

The Indianerfilm Revisited: Ulrich Weiss’s Blauvogel (1979)
Reinhild Steingroever, Associate Professor of German, University of Rochester

Art, Politics, and Diversity at dOCUMENTA
Barbara Wolbert, Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of Minnesota

12:15 – 1:15 Lunch Break

1:15 – 2:00 Wrap-up Session

Description

In discussions about multiculturalism, migration, Islam and law, migrant and Muslim fathers have predominantly been discussed in terms of their overall power over women and children. The recurring question seems to be how much room they should be granted to have a polygamous marriage, keep their daughters out of school and marry them off. This contribution argues that the socio-legal position of migrant fathers is much more complex, and is possibly more vulnerable than often perceived, as a consequence of the workings of family law and immigration law. Using (black) feminist critiques on family law, the question is to what extent migrant fathers’ weaker legal position is being caused by ideologies about fatherhood in family law and immigration law, that exclude them as ‘good fathers’. The argument is based on an analysis of European Court of Human Rights case law on affiliation, divorce, custody and visiting rights.

Description

The present lecture is going to focus on the relationship between globalization and sport. It will address issues related to the impact of globalization on sport with emphasis given to the main actors in international sport governance. It will further attempt an evaluation of the influence of globalization on traditional sport governing bodies.

Description

9:30 Welcome and Keynote Remarks by Heydar Mirza.

10:30-12:30 Panel 1 “Economics, Security and, International Relations in Contemporary Azerbaijan”
Panel Chair: Aslan Amani, LSE
Panel Members: Polina Osmerkina, Lindsay Parrott, Elshan Alekberov, Kemal Makili-Aliyev
Discussant: Matthew Light, U of T

12:30-13:30 Lunch Break

13:30-15:30 Panel 2 “Society, Culture and Identity in Contemporary Azerbaijan”
Panel Chair: Ilham Akhundov
Panel Members: Yoonhee Lee, Emily Pittman, Spencer Nordwick, Aslan Amani
Discussant: Edward Schatz, U of T

15.30-16.00 Coffee Break

16.00 Concluding Remarks/Question and Answer with Mr. Arif Mammadov, Second Secretary of the Embassy of Azerbaijan in Canada

Description

After overviewing the current discursive context in Europe, the main purpose of this lecture is to propose a theoretical framework (discourse as politics) and a heuristic model to monitor xenophobic discourses. With the construction of this tool and its application the objective is to identify and counter whatever tendency of political parties of radicalizing their position towards xenophobia and racism. This is an especially urgent democratic task to do in times of crisis, which is a favorable context for such re-active discourses. This is a first dissemination project financed by Open Society Foundation to counter xenephobia.

His main lines of research deal with contemporary issues of liberal democracy in contexts of diversity, especially the relationship between democracy, citizenship and immigration. More information about his research: http://dcpis.upf.edu/~ricard-zapata/

Description

Malgorzata Potocka will be present at the screening.

Małgorzata Potocka’s award-winning documentary, The Guardian of the Past, is about the art historian Borys Voznytsky, who fought relentlessly under Soviet tyranny to preserve some twelve thousand works of Ukrainian and Polish sacred art. Voznytsky spent decades traveling around Ukraine and its abandoned churches in search of neglected icons, religious paintings, sculptures, and liturgical objects. Potocka’s film offers an exclusive peek at the collection, maintained until today at the St. Bernard Monastery in Olesko, Ukraine, where Voznytsky first hid it.

In 2013 the National Art Gallery in Lviv and the Mystetskyi Arsenal (Art Arsenal), a former
munitions factory turned into Kyiv’s largest art space, created the Boris Voznytsky Award in recognition of outstanding contribution in the field of fostering and furthering museum development. The prize will be awarded every other year on Voznytsky’s birthday, April 18th.

Borys Voznytsky (1926-2012) was a revered art historian, long-time director of the Lviv National Art Gallery, honorary member of the Academy of Arts of Ukraine, doctor emeritus of the Kraków Pedagogical Academy, and chairman of the Ukrainian National Committee of the International Council of Museums (ICOM). During World War II he served in the Soviet Army, but once the war was over he enrolled in the Ivan Trush (Trusz) School of Fine Arts, and subsequently went on to study art history at the Academy of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg. In 1960, he became a deputy director of the National Museum of Art in Ukraine, and in 1962 – the head of the Lviv National Art Gallery. At that time, the gallery consisted of approximately 10,000 artifacts, housed in a single room; during Voznytsky’s term as the Director, the collection grew exponentially, prompting the extension of the gallery by 15 additional sections. During the 1960s and 70s, he engaged art historians and enthusiasts to preserve some 12,000 museum-worthy artifacts, which otherwise would have been destroyed as a part of the Soviet campaign against religion. The works of art salvaged from abandoned churches, houses and convents were then housed in castles administered by Voznytsky. The collection boasts a large selection of sculptures by the Galician Baroque sculptor Johann Georg Pinzel, known among researchers as the “Slavic Michelangelo.” The exhibition Johann Georg Pinsel: Un sculpteur baroque en Ukraine au XVIIIe siecle, on display at the Louvre in Paris through February 25, 2013, “would have not taken place without [Borys Voznytsky’s] many years of work,” said the curator Hilem Scherf in an interview published in an Ukrainian paper The Day. Late in his career, Voznytsky’s explorations expanded to churches of more recent periods. The fact that the Lviv National Art Gallery is currently home to 60,000 works is a lasting testimony to his steadfast dedication, hard work, and undying love for the arts. Borys Voznytsky died in a car accident on the way to one of the sites he cared for in the spring of 2012.

Małgorzata Maria Potocka (b. 1953) is a Polish actress, director, photographer, and producer of documentaries, experimental film, and video. She studied acting and directing at the National Film School in Łódź, Poland. In 1985, she has been a lecturer at the Boston Arts Academy. She is most famous for her role in Andrzej Wajda’s Everything for Sale (1968); she starred in The Crystal Ball (1972) directed by Stanisław Różewicz and in The Circus is Leaving (1982), by Krzysztof Wierzbiański. Her photographic work has been shown in Warsaw, Kraków, Paris, Budapest and New York. Since 1980, Potocka has been a member of Society for Creators of Culture and the Polish Filmmakers’ Association, major organizations involved in promoting Polish art and culture abroad. The Guardian of the Past garnered awards at documentary festivals in Los Angeles (2005), Kyiv (2006) and Moscow (2007).

THE POLISH CULTURAL INSTITUTE NEW YORK, established in 2000, is a diplomatic mission to the United States serving under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland.

The Institute’s mission is to build, nurture and promote cultural ties between the United States and Poland by presenting Polish culture to American audiences and by connecting Polish artists and scholars to American institutions, introducing them to their professional counterparts in the United States, and facilitating their participation in contemporary American culture.