Description

The Orator (Voiz) (Uzbekistan, 1998, 83 min) — Writer and producer Yusup (Jusuf) S. Razykov (b. 1957) — tells a witty and poetic story of Iskander, a poor cart man, who can’t give up his three-woman harem and therefore happens to find himself at the centre of events that impact his marital life, family relations and his position in the society. The Orator takes place in the 1920s, at the dawn of Soviet power in Uzbekistan. The Orator is crucially concerned with gender, specifically the early-Soviet reform of Uzbek women’s rights and marriage policies. Razykov said in an interview: “My favorite costume is the veil. It’s much more interesting to peek under that shroud, which expresses nothing but conceals a great deal.” The Orator is a landmark not only, or even primarily, in the director’s own career, but in Uzbek film generally. The film made the international festival rounds to great acclaim.
Discussion will follow the film.

Description

In 2007 the EU commenced a Strategy for Central Asia. Since then, relations with the Central Asian countries have been acknowledged as a priority for Brussels and an integral part of the Europe’s eastern policy. Kamoludin Abdullaev, a research fellow from the Tajik National University, will address major security issues facing Central Asia and Tajikistan in particular.

Abdullaev was born in Tajikistan and educated at Tajik State University. He has authored numerous books and professional articles on the modern history of Central Asia and national and Muslim movements in this region.

Description

This event is a screening of the 2006 film “Fatherland” followed up a Q & A with the filmmaker.

Description

As part of CUI International Partnership, we offer a variety of international internships to young professionals. These internships provide them with the opportunity to work overseas, develop their professional and leadership skills, and contribute to sharing Canada’s knowledge with transitioning and developing countries. Internships are open to youth 30 years of age or under.

Internships are funded through CIDA’s International Youth Internship.The program is designed to provide entry-level professional work experience to recent graduates of university degree programs related to urban management, local government, planning and other associated fields. The program provides travel and living expenses for interns to work overseas for six months through a placement in a CUI international project office or within one of our overseas partner organizations. It provides a unique opportunity for young professionals to work as part of a team alongside seasoned international development professionals within the structure of a long-term CIDA-funded project. During the course of the internship, interns are provided with professional learning experiences and upon return to Canada, career development assistance to help them find long-term employment.

This event is also for students interested in the field of international development and/or those looking for professional opportunities overseas. The event would include a brief presentation on CUI’s work internationally and our internship program, a short talk from a current intern about their experiences, and a question and answer period.

Description

Judging by their presence and influence in the national capitals and Brussels, business and employer associations appear to be the most organized and resourceful social actors in the new EU member states. Still, there are considerable cross-national differences to the extent business community is organized in the former communists societies. This talk explores causes of differential success in overcoming the problem of collective action faced by the organizing business community. Among other factors affecting business participation in employer and trade associations, administrative corruption emerges as the most unexpected and counterintuitive stimulus for organization.

Description

A discussion on the contemporary cultural life in Ukraine by a Ukrainian team of sculptors who came to Canada to compete in the ice sculpture contest at Quebec’s Winter Festival 2009. It is accompanied by screening of a documentary ” Volodymyr Ivasyuk: My Life is a Broken String” (2007) and animation and short feature films.

This event is in Ukrainian.

Description

The bombing of cities, from Guernica in 1937, through the Blitz in wartime London, and to Gaza City in 2008, remains among the most controversial ways to wage war. By far, the most hotly debated air raid over the last 100 years was the Feb 13/14 1945 destruction of Dresden by American and British (and therefore Canadian) air forces.

Bringing together three renowned historians of the air war, the panel will explore the reasons and justification for the bombing of Dresden, whether the action constituted a war crime, and when if every civilians may become legitimate targets of war.

Above mentioned books will be offered for sale at the event.

Description

David Preston joined the Department of External Affairs in 1972 and has served abroad in Jakarta, Accra, Canberra and as High Commissioner to Bangladesh. In Ottawa, he has been a desk officer for the Anglophone Africa and Southeast Asia divisions, Deputy Director for the Japan Relations and Personnel Assignments divisions and Director for the U.S. Transboundary Relations Division and the Economic Relations with
Developing Countries Division. He has most recently completed an assignment as Director General, Central, East and South Europe Bureau. David Preston becomes Ambassador to the Republic of Poland in November 2005.

Description

David Makovsky, the director of the Washington Institute’s project on the Middle East Peace Process, will discuss the future of the peace process on Wednesday February 25th from 7:30 till 9 pm. With numerous books written on the subject, including his upcoming book Myths, Illusions and Peace, as well as his membership in the Council for Foreign Relations and the International Institute for Strategic Studies allow him to speak with great knowledge about the future of Israel and Palestine. With the change in the political climate in the region due to a nuclear Iran, the war in the Gaza Strip and the recent elections in Israel Dr Makovsky will help explore what effect these will have on the peace process.

Description

Two models of the ‘authentic’ Ukrainian woman are imagined as forms of feminine reclamation in the post-Soviet era. Late twentieth-century nationalists have recreated the Berehynia as goddess of the hearth, protector of family and nation. An alternative, which Ukrainian ethnographer Oksana Kis (2005) dubs the hyper-feminine Barbie, and describes as “a pretty and expensive doll” and “a pleasant man’s toy,” is more globally-informed. The most successful Barbie is one who attracts a husband, enabling her to simultaneously act out the role of the Berehynia. Both models define the accepted ‘centre’ and unaccepted ‘margins’ of women’s citizenship in the nation-state.

Gendered ideologies are deeply implicated in constructions of and responses to alcohol addiction in western Ukraine. Problematic drinking among men is met with a sympathy that women do not enjoy. For men, addiction reveals their inherent inflexibility, an inability to adopt or adapt to a changing social, economic and political “system of priorities and values.” For women, addiction primarily signifies a conscious abandonment of the sacred duty to protect family and nation. A difference is recognized between acceptable social suffering, that which provides laudable evidence of bravery, strength and endurance (e.g., coping with a husband’s or son’s addiction), and the unacceptable social suffering of those who have “fallen,” who have not overcome their personal circumstances to embody ‘authentic’ Ukrainian femininity. Many research participants, including health care professionals, recognize little or no relationship between addiction and a “lack of self-realisation,” family problems including violence, and anxiety brought on by social and economic pressures. Rather, addiction is most often attributed to a lack of moral fortitude. Accordingly, women who become addicted to alcohol are seen to have consciously rejected the very essence of Ukrainian womanhood. As such, women are especially reluctant to “confess” and seek treatment. The presentation will examine the relationship between addiction, gender, stigma and nationalism. Focussing upon the everyday experiences of women and men who self-identify as alcoholics or recovering alcoholics, I will explore the multiple ways that women pursue healing, and simultaneously, a shift from a marginalized periphery to a moral centre.

Description

Nira Yuval-Davis is a Professor and Graduate Course Director in Gender, Sexualities and Ethnic Studies at the University of East London. She is the past President (2002-2006) of the Research Committee 05 (on Racism, Nationalism and Ethnic Relations) of the International Sociological Association, and is an elected member of the Academy of the Learned Societies for the Social Sciences. She has been a founder member of the international research network on women in militarized conflict zones and has served as an expert consultant to, among others, UNDP, Amnesty International and the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women. Nira Yuval-Davis has published widely (19 written and edited books and more than a hundred refereed articles and chapters in books) on theoretical and empirical aspects of nationalism, racism, fundamentalism, citizenship and gender relations in Britain and Europe, Israel, and other settler societies. Her book Gender and Nation (Sage 1997) has been translated into seven languages. She is currently working on a monograph on Nationalism and Belonging (Sage, forthcoming) and is the Director of an ESRC funded research project on Identity, Performance, and Social Action: Community Theatre among Refugees.

Description

Rogers Brubaker has written widely on social theory, immigration, citizenship, nationalism, and ethnicity. His first book explored the idea of rationality in the work of Max Weber, while his essays on Pierre Bourdieu helped introduce Bourdieu to an English-speaking audience. His subsequent work analyzed European nationalism in historical and comparative perspective. Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany (1992) sought to explain the sharply differing ways in which citizenship has been defined vis-à-vis immigrants in France and Germany; Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe (1996) compared contemporary East European nationalisms with those of the interwar period, both emerging after the breakup of multinational states into would-be nation-states. More recently, in a series of analytical essays, many of them collected in Ethnicity without Groups (2004), Brubaker has critically engaged prevailing analytical stances in the study of ethnicity and nationalism and sought to develop alternative analytical resources. His most recent book, Nationalist Politics and Everyday Ethnicity in a Transylvanian Town, co-authored with Margit Feischmidt, Jon Fox, and Liana Grancea, was published by Princeton University Press in 2006.
Brubaker has taught in the Department of Sociology at UCLA since 1991. Before coming to UCLA, he was a Junior Fellow in the Society of Fellows of Harvard University (1988-1991). He has been awarded a MacArthur Fellowship (1994-99), a Presidential Young Investigator Award from the National Science Foundation (1994-99), and a Fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (1999-2000). He was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in 1995-96. Brubaker is a Senior Editor of Theory and Society and a member of the Editorial Board of numerous journals. He serves as a Recurring Visiting Professor in the Nationalism Studies Program of the Central European University in Budapest.

Description

Having worked in the private and public sectors in Ukraine since 1991, Dan served for over ten years as a United Nations-sponsored senior governance adviser on rule of law, anti-corruption and public administration issues to two Ukrainian Prime Ministers, the Vice-Prime Ministers of Ukraine for Economic Affairs and for European Integration, the Cabinet Secretariat, and was twice chief of staff to the Minister of Justice of Ukraine, focusing on transparency, accountability and anti-corruption strategies in the Ukrainian justice system.

Following the “Orange Revolution” in December 2004, Dan was appointed a Member of the UNDP-sponsored Blue Ribbon Commission providing recommendations on a new wave of reforms to newly-elected President Victor Yushchenko and co-authored the proposals on judicial reform, governance and administrative reform. He was then was appointed by the President of Ukraine to the National Commission on the Strengthening of Democracy and the Rule of Law, established to direct Ukraine’s European integration process.

Dan has also advised the governments of Bulgaria and Lithuania with respect to the transformation of their respective systems of administrative justice.

Description

Hasan-Arbakesh (Tajikistan, 1965) Director: Boris Kimyagarov
At first glance, Hasan-Arbakesh seems to tell an ordinary story about an arbakesh named Hasan, who has a cart and a horse and dreams of earning enough to marry his beloved. As in a traditional fairy-tale, Hasan is young and handsome, strong, determined and very much in love. The fairy-tale plot, however, is set against a very real historical background, which soon starts to interfere brutally with the romantic thrust of the story. The film was shot during the so-called ‘Thaw’ of the 1960s and contains a metaphorical protest against the establishment of Soviet regime in Tajikistan. Its main theme is the clash between the traditional Tajik culture, and the new ‘invading’ Soviet one. Unlike most of the ‘revolutionary’ films that were shot in the Soviet Asian republics and focused on the bloody fights between the ‘reactionary’ forces of traditional societies and the ‘righteous’ Soviet ‘liberators,’ Hasan-Arbakesh shows the process of peaceful sovietization, that nevertheless, ruthlessly reroutes the fates of its characters.
Discussion will follow the film.

Description

Daniel Caron, Ambassador of Canada to Ukraine since July 2008, will talk about Ukraine, its role in the region, its relations with NATO, the EU, Russia and Georgia and Canada-Ukraine bilateral relations; his presentation will be followed by a question period and discussion.

Ambassador Caron has occupied several senior positions with the Government of Canada over the last 27 years. Prior to his nomination as Ambassador of Canada to Ukraine, he was deputy head of mission and minister-counsellor at the Embassy of Canada in Mexico. He served at the Mission of Canada to the European Union in Brussels and as trade commissioner at the Consulate General of Canada in Boston. In Ottawa, he occupied positions in the Japan Division, the Northern Europe Division, he was part of the Canadian team that negotiated with France fishing rights around Saint-Pierre and Miquelon and completed an assignment as regional director with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

Description

An panel discussion on career paths, for senior undergraduate students and Masters’ students.

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The series will present THE LIVING (2008), Serhiy Bukovsky’s new feature documentary on the Great Famine in Ukraine in 1932-33. The non-commercial free-of-charge screening of the film will be a de-facto Canadian premier of this critically acclaimed film by one of the most accomplished documentary filmmakers Ukraine has today.

Film synopsis:
They were children when everything was taken away from their parents. Children of farmers who lived on and tilled the world’s most fertile soil and who were thrown into the grip of hunger to die a slow agonizing death. Those who survived were destined to serve as an obedient army of slaves... Only now are these people beginning to talk about their experience. How their parents were whipped and driven towards a “bright future”. How every last possession was taken away. How whole villages were dying. And how they survived, despite it all... “I wish our generation had never been born,” says one of the witnesses.

Ukraine failed to win its independence after the end of World War I, although it briefly had a chance. The results of that loss became clear at the end of 1920s, when Ukrainians found themselves face to face with the Bolshevist Empire.

The film interlaces the Holodomor tragedy with the global upheavals of the early 1930s: the collapse of economy in the USA, Hitler’s coming to power in Germany, Stalin’s war with the peasantry. This last group was defending private property, so they either had to acknowledge defeat, or die. But in 1933 peasants were left with no choice. The Ukrainian problem–any display of independent national policy–was meant to be solved at the same time.

The film also tells the story of Gareth Jones, a British journalist, whose investigative reporting was not heard in the West. Jones acts as a guide in this journey through history. Governments of numerous countries showed indifference to the suffering, even though they were informed about the situation in Ukraine. This is evident from numerous documents shown in the film. Stories of people who survived the Great Famine are interlaced with these documents and fragments of Gareth’s diaries, which he kept during his trip to Ukraine in March of 1933.

“What is your dream, baba Nastia?” Sergiy Bukovskiy asks one of the survivors. Her answer is short: “Death”. But these aging men and women, who survived hell on earth, are so real, so living and natural... They bring an agricultural society back to its feet and make it master of its own land. Only the living can rise again.

“The Living” is the best documentary film on the history of Ukraine I have ever seen. The filmmakers have achieved what no one before them was fully able to do-–to combine true historical facts and a genuinely emotional experience, and to present Ukrainian history in the context of world history. The result is not only a monument to those who perished [in the Holodomor] and a tribute to the survivors, but also a fervent, dignified missive to their descendants.”
Serhii Plokhii, the Hrushevsky Professor of Ukrainian History, Harvard University

The film was funded by the International Charitable Fund “Ukraine 3000”

Description

The series will present S. Bukovsky’s documentary SPELL YOUR NAME (2006). Produced by the USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education (http://college.usc.edu/vhi/), made possible by a generous grant from Victor Pinchuk, and in continued partnership with the Victor Pinchuk Foundation, Spell Your Name is a feature-length documentary about the Holocaust in Ukraine.

Bukovsky crafted the film using Ukrainian and Russian-language testimonies from the USC Shoah Foundation Institute archive and new footage shot on location in Ukraine. The film director takes the viewer on a journey of discovery as he and several Ukrainian students absorb the testimony of local people who escaped brutal execution and those who rescued friends and neighbours during the Holocaust. A collection of men and women share the details of their experiences, and we are afforded a glimpse of modern day Ukraine: the ethnic stereotypes that continue to exist and the manner in which Post-Soviet society is dealing with the question of how to memorialize the sites where tens of thousands of Jewish families and others were executed and thrown into mass graves.

The screening will be followed by a panel discussion with Doris Bergen, Chancellor Rose and Ray Wolfe Professor in Holocaust Studies, Frank Sysyn, Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, and Yuri Shevchuk, the Ukrainian Film Club’s director.

Description

Gerhard L. Weinberg was born in 1928 in Hanover, Germany. He served in the US Army in 1946-47, took a history PhD at the University of Chicago, worked on Columbia University’s War Documentation Project, and established the program for microfilming the captured German documents. He taught at the Universities of Chicago, Kentucky, Michigan, and North Carolina, and has served on several US government advisory committees. Now retired, he is the author or editor of ten books including: World in the Balance: Behind the Scenes of World War II; Hitler’s Foreign Policy 1933-1939: The Road to World War II; A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II; Visions of Victory: The Hopes of Eight World War II Leaders; and over 100 chapters, articles, guides to archives, and other publications.

Presented by the Chancellor Rose and Ray Wolfe Chair in Holocaust Studies and the Faculty of Arts and Science, with the support of the Canada Research Chair in Modern German History, Department of History, Centre for Jewish Studies and Joint Initiative in German & European Studies.

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Information is not yet available.

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Information is not yet available.

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Information is not yet available.

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Goldschmidt Memorial Lecture

Description

The crisis currently gripping Ukraine’s banks has already permeated the broader economy, leading to cutbacks in production, rising unemployment, and a marked reduction in foreign trade. The political tensions arising from this crisis are evident in the dispute between Premier Tymoshenko and President Yushchenko over a way out of it. The European Union figures prominently in the current situation insofar as it is Ukraine’s single-most important trading partner, and its member states’ banks are the biggest investors into Ukraine’s ailing financial sector. Whether the EU and institutions like the IMF, EBRD and EIB can help Ukraine out of its current predicament will affect its long-term attitudes towards east and west. Right now, Ukraine’s leaders are looking carefully at how the core EU member states are dealing with Hungary, Latvia, and other new EU member states that have been badly afflicted by the same crisis.

Description

Eric McGlinchey (Ph.D., Princeton University, 2003) is Assistant Professor of Politics and Government at George Mason University. His areas of research include comparative politics, Central Asian regime change, political Islam, and the effects of Information Communication Technology on state and society. He has written articles on regime change and on political Islam for Democratization, Current History, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, Freedom House’s Countries at the Crossroads, Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, and the Journal of Central Asian Studies. He is currently revising a manuscript on Patronage and Authoritarian Rule in Central Asia and is a co-principal investigator on a National Science Foundation supported study, “The Effect of the Internet on Society: Incorporating Central Asia into the Global Perspective.” In addition to his academic affiliation, Professor McGlinchey is a member of the Center for Strategic and International Studies Program on New Approaches to Russian Security and is an advisor to the Eurasia Program at the National Bureau of Asian Research.

Description

Information is not yet available.

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Twenty Years After: Dealing with the Heritage of Communism
An international conference at the Munk Centre for International Studies

March 19-20, 2009

Program:
THURSDAY, MARCH 19, 2009

9:00 am:
Welcome address and introduction
Thomas Großbölting (Visiting DAAD Professor. Department of History, University of Toronto, and IGES Magdeburg)

9:15 am
I: Lustration and Decommunization: A View from Inside

Poland and its Contested Past –
Lukasz Kaminski (IPN Warsaw, Vice-Director of The Public Education Office)

Deutschlands Umgang mit der DDR-Vergangenheit (How Germany Deals with the Past of the former GDR)
Marianne Birthler (Federal Commissioner of the Stasi Files, Berlin)

Lustration in the Western Balkans: A Regional Overview
Nenad Sebek (Director of the Center for Democracy and Reconciliation in Southeast Europe, Thessaloniki)

Discussant:
Jennifer Jenkins (Department of History, University of Toronto)

1:30 pm
II: “Lessons from the Past”? Public Debates, Scientific Research, and their Effects on the Young Democracies and the European Union

The Forgotten Velvet Revolution? Handling the Past in the Czech Republic
Tůma Oldřich (Institute for Contemporary History, Prague)

Toward a New Antitotalitarian Consensus: Remembering the Dictatorial Past and Transition to Democracy in Germany after 1945 and 1989
Thomas Schaarschmidt (Zentrum Zeithistorische Forschungen Potsdam)

Aufarbeitung”and “Geschichtspolitik” – The Contested GDR Past
Thomas Großbölting (Visiting DAAD Professor. Department of History, University of Toronto, and IGES Magdeburg)

“The Need for International Condemnation of Crimes of Totalitarian Communist Regimes” – The Resolution 1481/2006 of the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly and its Consequences
Göran Lindblad (Member of the Swedish Riksdag and The Council of Europe)

Discussant:
Doris Bergen (History Department, University of Toronto)

*

Introduction of A. James McAdams by Randall Hansen (Department of Political Science, University of Toronto)

Transitional Justice: The Issue that Won’t Go Away
James McAdams (William M. Scholl Professor of International Affairs, and Director, Nanovic Institute for European Studies, University of Notre Dame)

Discussant:
Randall Hansen

FRIDAY, MARCH 20, 2009

9:15 am
III: Discourses and Practices in Post-Communist Societies

Lustration and its Effects in the Czech Republic
Pavel Žáček (Director of the Office for the Documentation and the Investigation of the Crimes of Communism Police of the Czech Republic, Prague)

Ambiguous Recollections: An Anthropological Perspective on Memory Work in East Germany
Anselma Gallinat (Newcastle University)

Options and Limits – Transitional Justice in Different East European Societies
Lavinia Stan (Department of Political Science, St Francis Xavier University)

Discussant:
Gary Bruce (Department of Political Science, University of Waterloo)

1:30 pm
IV: Establishing Democracies: Historical and Actual Comparisons

Dealing with the Past in Spite of the Present: Transitional Justice in Chile
Claudio Fuentes (Director ICSO, Universidad Diego Portales)

Memory Politics in Transition and Post-Transition: Experiences from Latin America
Cath Collins (School of Political Science, Universidad Diego Portales)

The Truth and Reconciliation Process: The Experience of South Africa
Charles Villa-Vicencio (Former Director of Research, South Africa Truth and Reconcilation Commission)

Discussant:
Judith Teichman (Department of Political Science, University of Toronto)

4:30 pm
Closing Session: New Ways and Perspectives to Face a Dictatorial Heritage: An Open Debate

Chair:
Randall Hansen (Department of Political Science, University of Toronto)

Description

The contents of the recent European Pact on Immigration and Asylum reconfirm the thesis that the EU’s member states are ceding their decision-making prerogatives on immigration-related matters but slowly, compromising only as much interdependence sovereignty as is necessary. As a result, the central questions persist: Is a comprehensive European immigration policy desirable and, if so, is it politically feasible?

Author’s Bio
Anthony M. Messina specializes on the politics of ethnicity, race, and immigration in Western Europe. He is the author of Race and Party Competition in Britain (1989) and The Logics and Politics of Post-World War II Migration to Western Europe (2007) and has either edited or co-edited Ethnic and Racial Minorities in the Advanced Industrial Democracies (1992), West European Immigration and Immigrant Policy in the New Century (2002), The Migration Reader (2006), and The Year of the Euro: The Social and Political Import of Europe’s Common Currency (2006). His articles have appeared in the numerous scholarly journals and anthologies. In July 2009 he assumes the position of John R. Reitemeyer Professor of Comparative Politics at Trinity College in Hartford, CT.

Description

Born in Ankara in 1961 and living in Germany since 1970, Zafer Senocak is a writer and intellectual whose publications have garnered several German-language literary awards and made him a leading contributor to German discussions of multiculturalism and cultural identity. He will read from a selection of literary and essayistic pieces in German and English and discuss the current state of (multi-)cultural life in Germany today.

Description

You Are Not An Orphan (Uzbekistan, 1963)
Directed by Shukhrat Abbasov

The film is the story of an Uzbek family who gave shelter to 14 children evacuated to Uzbekistan during World War II while the family’s own son was drafted to the front. Children of different nationalities and ages learn to live together in one house – a veritable metaphor for the multi-national country itself. The Makamov family shelters a Russian, an Uzbek, a Jew and Lithuanian a Tatar, a Kazakh, etc. Every child gets into the family by accident but eventually stays on by the decision and the good will of the foster parents who realize that their house is a safe haven for the kids during the complicated times, certainly preferable to the orphanage. The film combines staple patriotic and internationalist ideas of the time with the affirmation of the national mentality of the Uzbek people. The film’s director, Shukhrat Abbasov, received the ‘Hamza,’ a State award of Uzbek SSR. The film was also awarded best screenplay prize at the first All-Union film festival in Leningrad, 1964.

Description

Information is not yet available.

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The aim of this public forum is to bring together leading scholars whose work focuses on immigration policy from a variety of perspectives in different European countries (including the post-Soviet region) to explore the challenges for migration policies in 21^st century Europe. Thus, this public forum provides an opportunity for a diverse range of faculty and graduate students, who often work in isolation, to meet and discuss issues of common interest and across national borders. It thus helps break down the tendency within the study of immigration policy to focus on individual national case studies. The inclusion of the post-Soviet region is intended to help integrate discussion of this important zone of international migration with the more established scholarly literature on immigration in North America and Western Europe.

Among the key issues/questions to be discussed are the following:

* national and regional particularities in the policing and
governance of immigrant communities;
* effects of differing national immigrant enforcement strategies,
especially with respect to situation of “the undocumented”
* changes in immigrant enforcement strategies, border control, and
policing of different communities in the post-9/11 period
* policing of immigrant youth groups and gangs on the micro- (or
local) level
* the ambiguities of national policies and legislation, and their
enforcement or non-enforcement by local officials and police,
including the phenomena of corruption and malfeasance in the
enforcement of immigration controls
* strategies by which members of immigrant groups negotiate their
legal status and enforcement controls

Description

Dr. Mikhail Denisenko is deputy director of the Institute of Demography and Chairman of the Department of Demography at the State University – Higher Schoolof Economics. He received his Ph.D. in Economics (specialisation – demography) in 1992 from Moscow State University. His research focuses on demographic trends in the Soviet Union and post-Soviet States, especially Central Asia, including issues such as ageing, marriage, fertility, health and mortality, population dynamics, internal and international migration, and human development.

Description

The young author Alina Bronsky is the 4th recipient of the Munk-Goethe Writers Residency, which aims to foster German-Canadian exchange on European migration topics. Alina Bronsky, born 1978 in Iekaterinburg/Russia, grew up on the Asian side of the Ural Mountains as well as in Marburg and Darmstadt. After dropping out of her medical studies, she worked as a copywriter and journalist. “Scherbenpark” is her first literary publication and has been released in August 2008.

In cooperation, the Goethe-Institut Toronto and the Munk Centre for International Studies at the University of Toronto created the Munk-Goethe Writers Residency within the regional focus on “Cultures on the Move” as a basis for the long-term collaboration of Canadian, German and international artists, journalists and academics. In 2006 Lena Gorelik has been the residency, 2007 the journalist Dr. Thomas Medicus has been in Canada and in 2008 the author Jagoda Marinić. The residencies resulted in countless texts, new research interests, future conference ideas, new books and new international artistic and academic friendships.

Alina Bronsky, who took part in the Ingeborg Bachmann Competition 2008, will be involved in readings, presentations and discussions with students and Canadian artists as well as in informal meetings. She will read in English and German amongst others in Waterloo, London and at Munk Centre Toronto.

Her debut “Scherbenpark” is about 17-year-old Sascha who came from Moscow to Germany and lives with her younger brother and sister in the Park of Fragments – a ghetto of high-rise buildings ruled by its own laws which she breaks with fierce determination. She visits the Catholic elite high school, which accepted Sascha because of her giftedness and her precarious living conditions. Sascha is a commuter between two worlds and not at home in either of them but sharp-tongued and precocious enough to stand her ground – and to take the reader with her on a constantly accelerating journey.

What the critics are saying about “Scherbenpark” or “Park of Fragments”:

“Most exciting newcomer of the season.“ (Spiegel)

“Electrifying debut“ (Süddeutsche Zeitung)

“A literature, that develops an incredible narrative flow... the text really inspired me.“ (Ijoma Mangold, member of jury at Ingeborg Bachmann Competition Klagenfurter 2008)

“Soon you cannot escape the malestrom of this book. Sascha’s development for all of the easy language is very authentic and maximal psychological advanced to realise...” (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung)

Description

“A Kingdom Reborn: Treasures from Ukrainian Galicia”, Canada (2007)
duration: 57 min (English)
for full synopsis and reviews: www.akingdomreborn.com
written by Peter Bejger, directed and produced by Dani Stodilka
Presented by Prof. Frank Sysyn (Canadian Institute for Ukrainian Studies)
Sponsored by the Petro Jacyk Program for the Study of Ukraine.

The documentary film brings to life one of the legendary cities and regions of Central Europe. Lviv is the capital city of the medieval principality Galicia, whose architecture and treasures offer an exquisite blending of the Byzantine and Latin aesthetic. Long subject to historic narratives imposed by foreign rulers, the Ukrainians of Galicia — museum curators, historians and icon painters — now tell their own history of Galicia through their artistic heritage.

The film will be followed by Q&A session moderated by Prof. Frank Sysyn.

Description

In 1999 the Scottish Parliament was re-convened after a 300 year hiatus. In May 2007 the people of Scotland elected its first ever Nationalist supporting Government. Two years later the Scottish National Party is still in government and committed to bringing before the Scottish Parliament proposals for the people of Scotland to take part in a referendum on their country’s Constitutional future – to remain as part of the United Kingdom or vote for Independence. Mr Russell will present his Government’s position on Scotland’s National Conversation (www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/a-national-conversation).

Description

Anders Åslund has been deeply engaged in Ukraine since 1985. He boldly predicted the fall of the Soviet communist system in his Gorbachev’s Struggle for Economic Reform (1989). He served as an economic adviser to the Ukrainian government from 1994 until 1997. He was one of the founders of the Kyiv School of Economics. In 2004 he cochaired a United Nations Blue Ribbon Commission for Ukraine, Proposals for the President: A New Wave of Reform. He is the author of nine books, including Russia’s Capitalist Revolution: Why Market Reform Succeeded and Democracy Failed (2007), which was named a Choice Outstanding Academic title for 2008, and How Capitalism Was Built: the Transformation of Central and Eastern Europe, Russia, and Central Asia (2007), which the Economist magazine named one of the best books of the year in 2007. He coedited Economic Reform in Ukraine: the Unfinished Agenda (2000) and Revolution in Orange (2006). Dr. Åslund joined the Peterson Institute for International Economics as senior fellow in 2006. He was the director of the Russian and Eurasian Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He was the founding director of the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics and professor at the Stockholm School of Economics. He earned his doctorate from the University of Oxford.. Dr. Aslund will be discussing his forthcoming book How Ukraine Became a Market Economy and Democracy, to be published by the Peterson Institute in March 2009 http://bookstore.petersoninstitute.org/book-store/4273.html

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Electoral support for the contemporary far right in Britain has risen markedly in recent years. The British National Party (BNP), which had no seats on British councils as recently as 2001, now holds 55 seats and is in second place in over a hundred more. The causes of this resurgence are still poorly understood. Socio-demographic predictors are likely to be important, but these have not been closely examined for nearly thirty years. As a result, we know little about who votes for, or becomes actively involved, in the contemporary BNP and why they do so. Drawing on new individual level data we examine support for the far right, comparing the BNP’s base of support with that of the earlier National Front (NF) in the 1970s. In doing so, we highlight important changes that are occurring within the social bases of support for the contemporary far right and note implications for both the wider academic literature and public policy.

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Ivo Šlosarčík is Jean Monnet Chair in EU law and associate professor of European Studies at Charles University and at Prague campus of New York University. He specializes in EU constitutional law, European cooperation in criminal law and transformation of national political and administrative structures in the context of the EU membership. Since 2007, he has been a member of the advisory body of the Minister for European Affairs for the priorities of Czech EU 2009 Presidency.

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Andreas Gailus is author of Passions of the Sign: Revolution and Language in Kant, Goethe, and Kleist (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006)

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What role are mass media and communications playing in the larger political, economic and social changes occurring in the post communist world? This round table explores the question by focusing the lens on one country, Ukraine. It looks at both the media themselves as well as the larger context in which they operate. The issues will be examined from a variety of disciplinary perspectives and vantage points, including political science, communications studies, law, and the NGO sector. The round table will bring together an international group of both scholars and practitioners who conduct research and work in various aspects of media, journalism and communications in Ukraine.

Participants in the conference will include: Ruslan Deynychenko, School of Journalism, University of the Kyiv Mohyla Academy, Ukraine, Marta Dyczok, University of Western Ontario, Yevhen Fedchenko, Dean, School of Journalism , University of the Kyiv Mohyla Academy, Marta Kolomayets, National Democratic Institute, Washington, DC, Serhii Kvit, President, University of the Kyiv Mohyla Academy, Tammy Lynch, Boston University, Nataliya Petrova, Media Law Expert, Ukraine, Mykola Riabchuk, Ukrainian Centre for Cultural Studies.

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Peter J. Potichnyj is professor emeritus at McMaster University.He received MA & PhD in Government & Politics from Columbia University, New York, USA. He also obtained Diploma in Soviet Studies from the Russian Institute, Columbia University.
He is author, co-author and editor of some 18 books on Soviet, Ukrainian and East European issues and Editor-in-Chief of “The Litopys UPA”, an ongoing documentary series of which 66 volumes have appeared to date. In 1945-47, he served in the UPA and during the Korean War in the United States Marine Corps.

Book Title: My Journey, (Language: English).
Annotation: A short biographical memoir of Peter J. Potichnyj from his birth to the time when as a young man, soldier of the UPA, he arrived in West Germany at the end of 1947.