Description

A lawyer by profession, Stephen Stec’s career has straddled academia and international development assistance, having worked in countries in transition (primarily Central and Eastern Europe) on issues related to environmental governance, sustainable development policy development, human rights and the environment, and environmental security. He serves as Director of the Environmental Security Program of the Center for Environment and Security (CENSE) and Adjunct Professor at Central European University (Budapest), and is a fellow of the Institute for East European Law and Russian Studies at Leiden University (Netherlands). An author of several books and numerous academic publications, he most recently edited ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENTAL CHALLENGES TO SECURITY (Springer: 2009), and is currently finishing a second edition of THE AARHUS CONVENTION: AN IMPLEMENTATION GUIDE (UN: 2000; 2d ed. forthcoming 2012).

Mr. Stec studied at Kenyon College, the Johns Hopkins University, University of Maryland School of Law, and Central European University. In 2007 Mr. Stec was a co-recipient of the Rule of Law Award.

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Professor Artur Nowak-Far: double Ph. D. (in Economics and European Law), senior researcher at Warsaw School of Economics, Socio-Economic Collegium where he also chairs Department of European Law.

In 1999-2000 member of the Special Task Force for Technical Harmonization (created by the Prime Minister), 2003-2005 special advisor to the Minister of Agriculture on EU-related matters; since 2007 member of the College of the Polish Supreme Chamber of Control (in 2010 nominated by the Parliament for the second term).

Author of more than 200 academic publications (including 7 books) published mainly in Poland but also in Denmark, France, Moldova, Russia Ukraine and the USA. His main academic interests include: legal theory and semiotics of European and international law, European administration in comparative setting, Economic and Monetary Union and public finance of the EU.

In 2010-2011 prof. Nowak-Far directed a nation-wide academic research on EU Presidency under the Treaty of Maastricht and the preparations for Polish Presidency in the EU. The results of the research were published in a 3-volume book Prezydencja w Unii Europejskiej (Presidency in the European Union), vol. 1: Institutions, Law and Organisation, vol. 3: Practice and Theory, Vol. 3: Poland 2011, Oficyna Wydawnicza SGH, Warsaw 2010-2011.

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The event will be marking the anniversary of what the Nazis termed Kristallnacht, the destruction of Jewish homes, stores and synagogues on 9-10 November 1938. Cech writer’s Jiří Weil’s remarkable text, Eulogy for 77,297, written in 1959, portrays individuals who were turned into mere numbers, and makes them human again by relaying their stories is being introduced for the first time to the English world in a translation by David Lightfoot (PhD, University of Toronto), alongside the breathtaking photo-essay “Last Folio” by the critically acclaimed Toronto based photographer Yuri Dojc. The well-known and award-winning actress Marilyn Lightstone has kindly agreed to read this text. The internationally successful singer and composer Lenka Lichtenberg will perform Jewish songs.

The event is organized by Professor Veronika Ambros from the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures. Department Chair Professor Maxim Tarnawsky will open the evening. Also speaking are: Professor Ivan Kalmar, Deputy Chair of the Department of Anthropology, who will introduce the event historically; and Professor Anna Korteweg, Acting Director (2011-2012)
of the Centre for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies and the Munk School of Global Studies.

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Based on his recent book, Stalin’s Genocides, Naimark will discuss the history of the concept of genocide and how it should be applied to the Ukrainian killer famine in 1932-33. He also places the Holodomor within the overall context of Stalin’s crimes.

Norman Naimark holds the Robert and Florence McDonnell Chair in East European History at Stanford University. Naimark’s writings have focused on the problems of radical politics in the Russian Empire and Eastern Europe. He is the author of two books on the Russian and Polish revolutionary movements of the late nineteenth century. He has also edited or co-edited books and document collections on the nationality problems of the Soviet Union, on the outbreak of World War II on the eastern front, on politics and history in the Soviet Union, on relations between Moscow and the Soviet Military Administration in Germany, on the establishment of communist power in Eastern Europe, on the Soviet occupation of Austria, and on the war in former Yugoslavia. Since publishing a major study of the Soviet occupation of Germany, The Russians in Germany (Harvard 1995) and a comparative study of ethnic cleansing and genocide in 20th Century Europe, Fires of Hatred (Harvard 2001), he has been working on two projects: a Mellon Foundation sponsored seminar series on “Mass Killing in the 20th Century” and his most recent book, Stalin’s Genocides (Princeton, 2010).

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Till van Rahden holds the Canada Research Chair in German and European Studies and is associate professor in the department of literature and modern languages at the Université de Montréal. His research activities focus on three areas: “Democracy and Intimacy after Genocide: The Politics of Memory in Western Europe, 1945-2005,” “Visions of the Family and Political Order in Postwar West Germany,” and “Cultures of Diversity in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Europe.”

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Information is not yet available.

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Dr. Biskupski, a specialist in Polish history, will tell the story of how World-War Two era movies represented the Poles and Poland. M.B.B. Biskupski received his B.A. in history, summa cum laude, from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1971. He received his M.A. in history from UCLA in 1972, and his M. Phil., also in history, from Yale University in 1975. He completed his Ph.D. in history at Yale in 1981. At Yale he held dissertation fellowships from the Fulbright-Hays Foundation and the International Studies Association/Ford Foundation. He was named the Stanislaus A. Blejwas Endowed Chair in Polish and Polish American Studies at CCSU in 2002. Prior to his arrival, he taught at Millersville University, the University of Rochester, and St. John Fisher College. In 1995, he held a Fulbright Research Professorship in the Institute of History at the University of Warsaw.
Dr. Biskupski’s teaching interests include Poland, Central and Eastern Europe including the Balkans, international relations, and historical theory. His current research includes: Poland and international politics, 1914-39; Polish political culture; American cinema and Poland; and the Poles and international espionage.

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A traveling exhibit commemorating and documenting the lives, struggles and achievements of the 37,565 Hungarian refugees who immigrated to and settled in Canada following the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. This wave of refugees irrevocably changed the way Canada dealt with refugees. Created in partnership with the Multicultural History Society of Ontario and the Rakoczi Foundation, the Exodus Exhibit has already travelled to many city halls, universities and museums across Canada.

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The screening will be followed by Q&A and discussion, mediated by Yuri Shevchuk, the Ukrainian Film Club’s director.
The event is free and open to the public. The films will be shown in its Ukrainian or Russian language version with English subtitles.

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The key themes and points that will be discussed during Mr. Michalevic’s talk will be:
• Situation of human rights
• Working conditions of lawyers and the need to have independent
justice
• Need to reform democratic institutions in order to have freedom

Description

The screening will be followed by Q&A and discussion, mediated by Yuri Shevchuk, the Ukrainian Film Club’s director.
The event is free and open to the public. The films will be shown in its Ukrainian or Russian language version with English subtitles.

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Emanuelis Zingeris, is a longstanding and distinguished member of the Seimas (Parliament ) of Lithuania, who chairs the Foreign Affairs Committee. First elected in 1990 he has also been part of numerous interparliamentary groups including those with the UK, Ukraine , Georgia, Israel, Hungary, and others. He has been a strong promoter of human rights domestically and internationally.

Marko Mihkelson, an historian and journalist, who has also written on Russian politics, is a member of the Parliament of Estonia and the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee. He is the recipient of numerous awards from various states, including France, Poland, Lithuania, Italy and Portugal for his work.

Romualds Razuks, is a member of the Saeima (Parliament) of Latvia and the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee. He is a member of the Zatlers Reform Party and is also a member of the Citizenship Law Implementation Committee of the Saeima.

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Much has been written about the troublesome confrontation with the Nazi Past in postwar Germany. Scholars have considered how Germans did or did not face their past and their role in the mass murder of millions of European Jews from many different vantage points: from the silence of the 1950s; to the many thousands of trials which had relatively dismal results; to the return of many old Nazis to their respective professions and doctors, journalists, lawyers, judges, professors, and civil servants; to the more nuanced and earnest reckoning that has happened in the last two decades. This conference will examine the relationship between violent anti-government terrorism in 1970s Germany and frustration with lingering elements of Nazism in that period. Just how much of the terrorist movement – which after all blossomed out of a sincere attempt by students in West Germany to change the rigidly conservative structure of the university system, a throwback from the Nazi period with many old Nazis still at the lectern – was a direct reaction to silence about the Nazi past? The conference will examine this question on various different levels: it will address the radical response to conservatism in the 1970s, the disconnect between the violent actions of the RAF and the lingering elements of Nazism in society and government, terrorism as a response to the silence of the perpetrator generation, the harsh crackdown and stiff sentences that terrorists received in comparison to Nazis on trial at the same time, and larger questions of the influence of the endless Nazi past on the 1970s and 1980s.

Participants:

Karin Bauer, Professor of German, McGill University
Annette Vowinkel, Institute of Contemporary History, Berlin
Karrin Hanshew, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI
Thomas Pegelow Kaplan, Davidson College, Davidson, North Carolina

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Aladár Horváth, a former member of the Hungarian parliament is now chairman of the Roma Civil Rights Foundation in Hungary. Mr Horvath is currently lecturing at Brown University about the fate of the Roma in central Europe. His lecture will examine the impact of twenty years of democracy has had on the Roma communities in Hungary. It will also examine the now large influx of Roma refugees from Hungary.

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Fourth-year undergraduate students are invited to an information session on the MA Program in European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies.

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Effective non-profit organizations are crucial for the civil society. While developed countries have decades of experience, nonprofits in post-soviet states have started to emerge only after proclamation of independence and market orientation in these counties. Was 20 year period enough to catch the knowledge lag on how to create and run an effective non-profit? Is there still a difference in the way non-profits function in these economies? Dr. Pavlyk did a comparative survey-based study in Ukraine. Like other parts of Soviet Union, Ukraine for decades had only governmental organizations which have never been interested in efficiency. Currently, over three hundred thousand non-profits are officially registered in Ukraine. However, experts estimated that only 2,500 are actively operating. Khrystyna Pavlyk argues that operational environment is still among of the main differences creating the wide gap between non-profits in the developed and post-soviet countries. Most respondents mentioned that they are working in the legal environment which is less favorable than the one existing in developed countries. Assuming that Ukraine is a good representation of other post-soviet economies, her study shows that currently non-profits in these countries are still lagging behind the global trend, by having organization-centered marketing philosophy. This means that services are provided based on funding requirements which organization is capable to meet, and not the needs of society non-profits serve.

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Date: Wed Mar 28
Contact: ceresdocs@gmail.com
Description:
The monthly series of documentary films on Central and Eastern Europe continues with ‘The Woman with the Five Elephants’. Join us for the screening followed by a discussion.

THE WOMAN WITH FIVE ELEPHANTS
Vadim Jendreyko’s film introduces one of the most renowned translators of Russian literature. The “five elephants” are Dostoevsky’s major novels that Svetlana Geier translated into German over the span of many years. While sharing her fascinating life story from Soviet and later, Nazi occupied Ukraine to her emigration to Germany, Geier poetically reflects on language and the art of translation.

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The Centre for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies (CERES) at the University of Toronto is pleased to announce the fifth bi-annual Ukrainian Studies Graduate Student Symposium. The Symposium will be held on January 27-28, 2012 at CERES, the Munk School of Global Affairs, 1 Devonshire Place. This year’s topic is “Ukraine in a Global Context,” which will bring a comparative perspective into focus. Continuing the tradition of this symposium, we invite young scholars from various disciplines to present their research and engage in discussion.

In 2011 Ukraine celebrates the 20th anniversary of its independence. This is a great occasion to consider changes that have occurred in the past few decades as well as where contemporary Ukraine stands in relation to Russia, other post-Soviet countries, the European Union, and the world. What has been achieved? How does Ukraine fit the international political and economic arena today? Have language and identity issues changed and, if so, how? What have been some of the international influences on the development of Ukrainian culture? Participants are invited to explore and elaborate on these and related questions.

Key note address: Serhy Yekelchyk (University of Victoria), “No Longer Between East and West”: Ukrainian Cultural History Meets Regional Studies”. This paper examines the newest trends in Ukrainian history writing. With the emergence of independent Ukraine old-fashioned debates about this country’s place between the “East” and “West” gave way to a more sophisticated understanding of the region as a cultural frontier. What is even more promising, in recent historical works there is a switch from the “national-history” perspective to that of the regional or local history, often benefitting from the use of microhistorical or cultural-anthropological approaches.

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Information is not yet available.