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Letter from the Director

Letter from the Director

Fall 2009

It is my pleasure as the director of the Center for European and Eurasian Studies to welcome you to what promises to be a lively calendar of events for academic year 2009-10. In recognition of the twentieth anniversary of the collapse of communism in central and eastern Europe in 1989, CEES is pleased to host or co-sponsor a range of book talks, conferences, films, and lectures addressing different aspects of that momentous period and its aftermath. On November 6th, a symposium will assess the effects of the collapse of communism over the last twenty years, focusing on topics such as political and economic transformations, NATO and EU expansion, migration, and changing gender roles. Kenneth Jowitt (Pres and Maurine Hotchkis Senior Fellow, the Hoover Institution and Robson Professor of Political Science, UC Berkeley), will be the symposium’s keynote speaker, joined by other distinguished colleagues such as Professor Ivan Berend (History, UCLA), General Wesley Clark (former NATO Supreme Allied Commander, Europe; Senior Fellow, the Burkle Center for International Relations, UCLA), Adrian Favell (Sociology, UCLA and Aarhus), Eva Fodor (Gender Studies, CEU), and Jan Zielonka (European Politics, Oxford University, and Ralf Dahrendorf Fellow, St. Antony’s College).
 
In addition to this symposium, during the fall and winter quarters, CEES will take a closer look at postsocialist developments either in country-specific or comparative frameworks through book talks, lectures, and films. Among the year’s highlights will be a Regents’ Lecturer, Adam Michnik, the acclaimed Polish intellectual, former dissident, and editor-in-chief of Gazeta Wyborcza (Poland’s largest daily newspaper). Other speakers include Istvan Deak (History, Columbia University; NYRB), Radu Ioanid (Director, International Archival Program, the Holocaust Museum), Stephen Kotkin (History, Princeton University), Vladimir Tismaneanu (Government, University of Maryland), and visiting scholar Pasquale Tridico (Economics, University of Rome). CEES will also host a double-header book discussion with faculty members Ivan Berend and Perry Anderson. Several public sessions will take up aspects of corruption in the region, starting with a book talk on the Siege of Sarajevo, with author Peter Andreas (Political Science, Brown University) and Aleksandra Milicevic (Sociology, University of North Florida) as discussant.
 
We will kick off our fall program on September 29th with a public forum at the Hammer Museum, initiated by the Wende Museum and supported by CEES, on “Escape Routes: Experiencing the Opening of the Wall and the End of an Era.” This is followed by a co-sponsored international conference at UCLA and the Villa Aurora on “Germans’ Things: Material Culture and Daily Life in East and West, 1949-2009,” and a co-sponsored public lecture by German author Daniela Dahn, “Twenty Years after the Fall of the Wall.” We will further commemorate the fall of the Wall at the Goethe Institute with a co-sponsored film, “The German Gambit,” on November 9th, along with two others on November 2nd (The Tunnel) and 16th (Long Live Our GDR). Another film, “The Power of the Powerless,” revisits Czechoslovakia’s Velvet Revolution and developments following that period of great hope.
 
While we will place emphasis on Central and Eastern Europe this year in honor of the twentieth anniversary of 1989’s dramatic changes that transformed not only the region but global geopolitics as well. We are also excited about the other events we are hosting. We begin our book series’ discussions this year with Mabel Berezin’s timely study, Illiberal Politics: Culture, Security and Populism in the New Europe, and John Agnew (Geography, UCLA) as discussant. In the spring, we are pleased to co-sponsor a stimulating interdisciplinary lecture series organized by Caroline Ford (History) on “France’s New Museums in a Postcolonial Age.”
 
Each year, CEES co-sponsors more events than we can list here, and we are proud to continue to expand our collaborative offerings with other departments, professional schools, and centers at UCLA, as well as with local cultural institutions and consulates, to be able to bring to the university community and public a rich and diverse program. We also contribute to conferences and ongoing workshops initiated by UCLA faculty and graduate students, and will again participate in the International Institute’s Human Rights Film Series, co-sponsor several films at the 2009 AFI International Film Festival, and continue our support for the Southeast European Film Festival in May. We invite you to check the calendar section of our website for the dates, times, and locations of these and other of our events.
 
Many of CEES’ activities point to another important aspect of our role as a Department of Education Title VI National Resource Center, namely, outreach to the business, consular, media and K-12 education communities as well as to the broader interested public of greater Los Angeles. In addition to the various events mentioned above, we will continue the “teachers as scholars” lecture series and co-sponsor several talks of interest to high school teachers. As part of our business outreach we will cosponsor the International Conference on Innovation for Social Change together with the Anderson School and Business Innovation LA. And we will continue to co-host a conference for the entertainment industry on doing business in Eastern Europe as part of the Southeast European Film Festival.
 
One of the fundamental pillars of higher education is preparing future generations of experts for academia, the private sector, and public service. With our DoEd Title VI grant, CEES takes an active role in promoting these educational aims through innovative teaching. We are proud to be part of a multi-campus effort to ensure the teaching of lesser-taught languages between UC campuses, which the latest video conferencing techniques make possible. In 2009-10 for example, beginning and intermediate Danish will be sent from UC Berkeley to UCLA, elementary Czech will be sent from UCLA to UC Santa Barbara, and elementary Old Norse will be sent from UCLA to Berkeley. Together with the UCLA Center for World Languages, we are sponsoring an exciting new heritage language initiative that enables Los Angeles-area high school students to study the natal languages of their parents for high school and university extension credit. More information about this new program can be found on the UCLA Center for World Languages’ website.
 
The backbone of teaching and research at UCLA is the faculty, and an important indicator of the continuing strength of European and Eurasian scholarship is the recognition—here and abroad—of our affiliated faculty’s achievements in teaching and research. Recently Professor Rogers Brubaker (Sociology), was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and Marina Goldovskaya received the Scholarship and Preservation Award from the International Documentary Association. CEE is proud to congratulate our affiliated faculty for their academic accomplishments. We are equally pleased to congratulate the academic achievements of our affiliated graduate students.  Susanna Lam (Archaeology) received a fellowship at the Smithsonian Institution, Lindsay Morgan Stone (Geography) received an award for her honors thesis in International Affairs, and Thomas Puleo (Geography) was recently hired by the Arizona State University School of Global Studies. A list of graduate students who have been awarded pre- and dissertation research fellowships, language study, and conference travel grants can be found on the funding link of our website.
 
As the new year begins, let me introduce our CEES team whose work and commitment to the center’s mission are our good fortune. Our daily operations are in the excellent hands of our Assistant Director, Jim Robbins, and our Outreach Coordinator, Liana Grancea. John Agnew (Geography) is Chair of the Faculty Advisory Committee and Ivan Berend (History) is Chair of the European Studies Interdepartmental major. Jim, Liana, and I are pleased that Sanja Lacan, a graduate student in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures who works on 19th Century Russian literature, will be helping us prepare the Center’s 2010-14 Title VI proposal.
 
We are gratified to be able to offer the variety of public events, courses, and funding opportunities that we do. We also greatly appreciate your interest in and support of CEES. Needless to say, in this challenging budgetary climate, we welcome your donations, as they will enable us to continue to offer the quality and diversity of programming aimed at fostering knowledge in an ever interdependent and complex world. Please visit the “support us” link on our website to make a contribution and join the friends of CEES.
 
2009-10 promises to be an exciting year and we look forward to seeing you often. Please check our calendar on our website for an updated listing of events throughout the course of the year.
 
Welcome! - Gail Kligman, Director

Date Posted: 9/22/2009