"Rereading Václav Havel's 'Power of the Powerless'"
David S. Danaher
Professor of Slavic Languages and Literature, UW-Madison
Date and Time: February 2 at 4:00 PM
Location: 206 Ingraham Hall
Sponsor: Center for Russia, East Europe, and Central Asia
About the speaker: Professor Danaher has taught a monograph course on the writings of Václav Havel for the past decade (http://havelcourse.tumblr.com/). His publications on Havel have appeared in the Czech scholarly journals Slovo a slovesnost and Slovo a smysl / Word and meaning as well as in volumes devoted to Slavic literatures and linguistic approaches to literary analysis. He is currently at work on a book entitled Reading Václav Havel.
About the lecture: Power of the Powerless is arguably Havel’s most well-known text: it is required reading in many courses in History and Political Science as one of the most influential “dissident” essays ever written. As such, it is read primarily as an essay about a specific socio-historical context. Limiting the essay’s import to one time and place – to one historical -ism – represents a fundamental misreading of it. A reading that primarily historicizes cannot situate the essay comfortably within Havel’s oeuvre as a whole, nor is it how Havel asks that Power be read. While the essay is grounded in a specific socio-historical context, its meaning – as Havel makes clear – is not reducible to that particular context. Power is, in this rereading, much less about politics in totalitarian Czechoslovakia than it is about human identity in the modern world.
Cinematheque Film
"Crime and Punishment"
(United States, 1935, 35mm, 89 minutes, English subtitles)
Date and time: February 4th at 7:00 P.M.
Location: 4070 Vilas Hall, 821 University Ave., Madison, WI 53706
Sponsor: Cinematheque
Director: Josef von Sternberg
About the film:Sternberg’s adaptation of Dostoevsky’s canonized novel features Lorre in the pivotal role of Raskolnikov, guilt-ridden thief and killer of a pawnshop proprietor, and Arnold as the sly police inspector Porfiry. Saddled with a limited budget after his more lavish Paramount productions, Sternberg turned toward Columbia Pictures to make this scaled-down - but frequently stunning and evocative - movie.
For more about this film, check out Cinematheque's Web site at cinema.wisc.edu.
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Russian Flagship Screening of "Brother 2"
All are invited to a screening of Брат 2 sponsored by the UW-Madison Russian Flagship Center:
Брат 2 (2000)
6:00pm, Tuesday, February 7, 2012
254 Van Hise Hall, 1220 Linden Drive
Брат 2 (2000) - продолжение российского культового фильма режиссера Алексея Балабанова. На этот раз Данила вместе с братом отправляется в Америку разбираться с Чикагской мафией, угрожающей брату его боевого товарища. Свою философию он противопоставляет Западному укладу жизни в попытких найти ответ на простой вопрос "В чем сила, брат?". Великолепная подборка музыки к фильму (Би-2, Земфира, Чичерина) является, пожалуй, самой сильной стороной фильма.
Brother 2 (2000) is the continuation of the Russian cult film Brother by director Aleksey Balabanov. This time Danila goes to America with his brother to sort things out with the Chicago mafia, which is threatening his brother’s friend. Danila contrasts his own philosophy with the Western way of life in attempt to find the answer to the simple question “where is power, brother?” Music by such groups as Би-2, Zemfira, and Chicherina make up the magnificent soundtrack, perhaps the greatest strength of the film.
Film will be shown in Russian with English subtitles. Introductory remarks in Russian by Snezhana Zheltoukhova. For further information, please contact Snezhana:
zheltoukhova@wisc.edu
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"Land Use Change and Biodiversity after the Collapse of the Soviet Union"
Volker Radeloff
Associate Professor of Forest and Wildlife Ecology, UW-Madison
Date and Time: February 9 at 4:00 PM
Location: 206 Ingraham Hall
Sponsor: Center for Russia, East Europe, and Central Asia
About the speaker: Coming Soon!
About the lecture: Twenty years ago, the Soviet Union collapsed causing a massive socioeconomic shock and rapid institutional changes.Land use responded at a grand scale: about a third of all farmland in Eastern Europe and Russia was abandoned.Satellite data shows that forests are regrowing on many former farmfields in the northern forest belt, and these regions are rewilding.However, in the southern grassland the socioeconomic collapse led to decreasing grazing pressure, increasing grassy fuels, and rapid increases in wildfires that are destroying native Artemisia shrublands.The land use changes in turn are affecting wildlife populations: brown bears in the North are increasing due to better habitat and less human disturbance, but saiga populations in the South have plummeted due to poaching and shrubland loss.The fate of the former Soviet Union thus highlights the cascading effects of socioeconomic disturbances on land use, disturbance processes, and biodiversity, and the challenges involved in predicting the future given “black swan” events.
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Russian Flagship Screening of "The Russian Concept" with Director Igor Sopronenko
Filmmaker Igor Sopronenko will be visiting
Madison early next week in connection with the Russian Flagship. We've asked him to do a special screening and discussion
of his recent documentary film on Russian non-conformist art. Please see below for more information!
Please join us for a film screening and discussion!
Film Screening: "The Russian Concept," with an introduction and discussion by Igor Sopronenko, director.
Monday, February 13, 2012
7:00-8:30 pm
Union South, Industry A Room
This 2010 documentary explores non-conformist Russian art and features
several Russian artists whose works are considered great masterpieces and
classic examples of world conceptual art.
http://www.landmarkmedia.com/videos_Detail.asp?videokey=1550
The documentary runs for 57 minutes. Igor Sopronenko
will lead a question-and-answer session immediately following the film.
For more information: events@creeca.wisc.edu
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"The Ethics of Witnessing the Holocaust: Polish Writers' Diaries from Occupied Warsaw 1939-1945"
Rachel Brenner, Max and Frieda Weinstein-Bascom Professor of Jewish Studies, Department of Hebrew and Semitic Studies, UW-Madison
Date and Time: February 16 at 4:00 PM
Location: 206 Ingraham Hall
Sponsor: Center for Russia, East Europe, and Central Asia; Mosse-Weinstein Center for Jewish Studies
About the speaker: Rachel Feldhay Brenner is Professor of Modern Hebrew Literature in the Department of Hebrew and Semitic Studies, and Max and Frieda Weinstein-Bascom Professor of Jewish Studies. Her research focuses on Jewish Diaspora Literature, Israeli literature, and on the representations of the Holocaust in literature and in autobiographical writings. She is the author of Assimilation and Assertion: The Response to the Holocaust in Mordecai Richler's Writing (1989), and A.M. Klein, The Father of Canadian Jewish Literature: Essays in the Poetics of Humanistic Passion (1990), which won the prize of the Jewish Federation of Greater Toronto Literary Scholarship Award, Writing as Resistance: Four Women Confronting the Holocaust: Edith Stein, Simone Weil, Anne Frank, and Etty Hillesum (1997), which was translated into Spanish, Inextricably Bonded: Israeli Jewish and Arab Writers Re-Visioning Culture (2003), and The Freedom to Write: The Woman-Artist and the World in Ruth Almog's Fiction (2008) [in Hebrew]. Brenner (Hebrew University (B.A), Tel Aviv University (M.A.) York University, Toronto (Ph.D)) has received Canada Research Fellowship (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada), Skirball Visiting Fellowship, Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, NEH Fellowship, Research Award, Hadassah International Research Institute on Jewish Women, Brandeis University, the George Mosse Faculty Exchange Award to Hebrew University, Sosland Family Fellowship, the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, United States Holocaust Museum. In March 2011, she received the Kellett Mid-Career Award at UW-Madison.
About the lecture: In the spring of 1943, at the time of the Ghetto Uprising, Czesław Miłosz wrote a poem, “A Poor Christian Looks at the Ghetto.” What did Polish eyewitnesses see when they looked at the burning Ghetto in the midst of their city? Much has been said about the Poles’ indifference toward Jewish suffering and their acquiescence Hitler's Final Solution. This presentation, however, focuses on wartime diaries of several noted Polish writers who saw in the Holocaust an apocalyptic breakdown of civilization. These writers, all of whom were actively engaged in rescuing Jews, recorded in their diaries their attempts to grasp the impact of the genocidal reality on the ethics of human existence. The intensity of their focus on the Jewish tragedy reflects their compassionate disposition towards the victims as well as their courageous resistance of the oppressor, but it also implies an overriding goal. The diarists’ involvement with a group of human beings who had been excluded from human society under the edict of the Final Solution also reflects their need to validate the power of humanist ethics in a time of terror. Their “look at the Ghetto” confronted these writers-diarists with the universal implications of Jewish victimization, putting the moral constitution of the witnessing world to the test. The diarists’ struggles to preserve their faith in humanism in circumstances which abolished all ethical norms expose moral complexities which defy easy solutions and evasive generalizations.
To view our events poster for this lecture, please click here
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Lithuanian Independence Celebration
When:Friday, February 17, 2012, 6:00-8:00 pm
Where: Capital Lakes Retirement Community, 333 W. Main St., Madison, WI Great Hall & Encore Room (there is a parking lot in front of the retirement community building)
Sponsors: Madison Vilnius Sister Cities Board
About the event: During the celebration, Lithuanian styled snacks will be provided, and guests will be able to witness the film "Lietuva. Statusas-Nepriklausoma" or "Lithuania. Status: Independent" courtesy of the Consulate General of the Republic of Lithuania in Chicago.
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“Czechoslovak Hygiene Services and the Struggle for Comprehensive Environmental Health under Communism.”
Bradley Matthys Moore, UW-Madison
When:Friday, February 17, 2012, 3:00-4:30 pm
Where: Union South (Check Today in the Union for the room location)
Sponsors: The History of Science / Medical History and Bioethics Colloquium Series "Science and the Citizen"
About the speaker: Bradley Matthys Moore is part of the Joint PhD Program in History and the History of Science, Medicine, and Technology. His dissertation focuses on the effects of Soviet-inspired communism on approaches to public health and hygiene in the former Czechoslovakia, especially the manner dialectical-materialism and “Pavlovian medicine” became tools of both continuity and change within established medical traditions. The working title of the project is “Healthy Comrades: Hygiene and the Pursuit of a Communist Modernity in Czechoslovakia, 1948-1968.”
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"Baba Yaga"
by Kanopy Dance Company
When: Fri, Feb 17 - Sun, Feb 19
Where: Promenade Hall
Price: $14 - $24
About the show: The masterful take on the Russian Fairy Tale returns to Madison. Baba Yaga, a dark and fanciful dance-drama featuring costumes by NYC’s David Quinn, masks, puppets, and sets of artist Heidi Cooper, along with inspired choreography from Artistic Directors Lisa Thurrell and Robert E. Cleary, Kanopy's Kerry Parker, and guests Elise Snyder and Kiro Kopulos. In traditional Russian tales, Baba Yaga is portrayed as a hag who lives in a hut atop a pair of dancing chicken legs; the fence outside is made with bones with skulls. Young Vasilissa is sent by her nasty stepsisters on an errand to Baba Yaga and is captured for the witch’s evening meal. To win her freedom, Vasilissa must perform three impossible tasks. Her magic doll given to her by her mother awakens to help her on her journey. “…Both Thurrell and co-director Robert Cleary have a Midas touch...” –S. Kepecs, Daily Page
On Saturday, February 18, Jennifer Tishler, CREECA's associate director, will speak on Baba Yaga in Russian folktales before the 7 p.m. performance. Jennifer's introduction will run from 6:30-7:00 in Promenade Hall.
Click Here for more information
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"Women's Rights and Opportunities
in Contemporary Turkey”
by Jenny White, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Boston University
When: Tuesday, February 21st, 4:00 pm
Where: Room 309, Pyle Center
Sponsors: The Center for Turkish Studies, Madison Association of Turkish Students
About the speaker:Dr. Jenny White is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Boston University. She is the author of three historical novels
set in 19th century Istanbul. She is also the author of Muslim
Nationalism and the New Turks (forthcoming 2012, Princeton University Press) and Islamist Mobilization in Turkey: A Study
in Vernacular Politics (2002) (winner of 2003 Douglass Prize
for the best book in Europeanist anthropology). Dr. White has
been following events in Turkey since the mid-1970s.
Click Here for an event poster
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Information Session: Undergraduate Russian Flagship Program
4:00-5:00pm, Tuesday, February 21, 2012
1418 Van Hise Hall, 1220 Linden Drive
The UW-Madison Russian Flagship Program is an innovative undergraduate program to offer highly-motivated students in any major the opportunity to reach a professional level of competence (ACTFL Superior/ILR 3) in Russian. Scholarships are available to support overseas and intensive summer study. For more information: www.russianflagship.wisc.edu
Students who are interested in applying to the program, or would just like to learn about it, are invited to attend the information session, or to contact Karen Evans-Romaine, Russian Flagship director (evansromaine@wisc.edu) or Dianna Murphy, Russian Flagship associate director(diannamurphy@wisc.edu).
Upcoming application deadlines:
March 15, 2012 (Fall 2012 admission)
October 15, 2012 (Spring 2013 admission)
The UW-Madison Russian Flagship is a collaborative initiative of the UW-Madison Department of Slavic Languages and Literature and the Language Institute, with the Center for Russia, East Europe, and Central Asia, and the Doctoral Program in Second Language Acquisition. The program is supported by the Language Flagship of the Defense Language and National Security Education Office (DLNSEO) in the U.S. Department of Defense.
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"Uncommon Blood: Vampire and Nation in the Modern Age"
Tomislav Longinovic
Professor of Slavic and Comparative Literature at UW-Madison
Date and Time: February 23 at 4:00 PM
Location: 206 Ingraham Hall
Sponsor: Center for Russia, East Europe, and Central Asia
About the speaker:
Tomislav Longinović is a Professor of Slavic and Comparative Literature at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His books include Borderline Culture (1993), Vampires Like Us (2005), a co-edited and co-translated volume, with Daniel Weissbort: Red Knight: Serbian Women Songs (1992), and an edited volume: David Albahari, Words are Something Else (1996). He is also the author of several books of fiction, both in Serbian (Sama Amerika, 1995) and English (Moment of Silence, 1990). His Vampire Nation: Violence as Cultural Imaginary was published by Duke University Press in 2011. His research interests include South Slavic literatures and cultures; Serbo-Croatian language; literary theory; Central and East European literary history; comparative Slavic studies; translation studies; cultural studies.
About the lecture: Professor Longinović will present on his latest book, Vampire Nation, recently published by Duke University Press. Vampire Nation analyzes the cultural and political rhetoric framing ‘the serbs’ as metaphorical vampires in the last decades of the twentieth century, as well as the cultural imaginaries and rhetorical mechanisms that inform nationalist discourses more broadly. Longinović points to the Gothic associations of violence, blood, and soil in the writings of many intellectuals and politicians during the 1990s, especially in portrayals by the U.S.-led Western media of ‘the serbs’ as a vampire nation, a bloodsucking parasite on the edge of European civilization.
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"Madison's Russian
Educational Association's 5th Annual Maslenitsa Celebration."
When: February 26th, 11:00 am - 3:00 pm
Where: Eagle School, Fitchburg
New for this year:
Puppet-show performance "The Rabbit and the Fox" Folk ensemble and Russian musicians performance (supported by DCCAC grant)
In-door games for children (in a close, but separate Gym room)
Chair-massage by Hot Stone and Seven Heaven Massage, Raffle (please visit the website for the list of items)
As well as traditional pancakes, tea from samovar, Russian backed goods, outdoor games with prizes and more.
Click Here for more information
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