During the French Revolution, all possessions of the church and former monarchy were declared to be the national property of the new French Republic. In order to deal with the influx of material, the government established storage dépôts in former monasteries and convents where the “objects of art and science” could be collected, sorted, and disseminated for public education. Under the direction of Alexandre Lenoir, the funerary monuments, sculpture, and architectural decoration stored at the Petits-Augustins dépôt evolved into the Musée des Monuments français. The artifacts were organized into a chronological sequence of “century rooms” representing the rise and fall of French arts and civilization. The symbolic memory of the monarchial and ecclesiastical past was embedded in the artifacts, and this material legacy needed to be reframed for the Revolutionary present. By prioritizing historical and temporal specificity rather than former purposes and contexts, Lenoir transformed the artifacts into “historic monuments” and organized them into a new symbolic history of France. For Lenoir, the chronological sequence was a layered political tool about the educational enlightenment of the individual, which he described as the “regeneration” of man. According to Lenoir, the overall “physiognomy” of each historical period was dominated by the ruling monarch, while the rise and decline of artistic development was indicated by the prevalence or lack of individual artistic achievements. The century room sequence was followed by the Élysée, a picturesque garden filled with tombs and monuments dedicated to great figures from French history. Within the chronological sequence of the century rooms, Lenoir created a container for the politically charged educational dissemination of the monarchial history of France. Enlightened by the rise and fall of individual accomplishment through the century rooms, the visitor left the monarchial past in the last century room and entered the atemporal Élysée, which represented the eternal Revolutionary present and which was dedicated to the timeless heroic deeds and intellectual accomplishments of exceptional historical figures. The Musée des Monuments français was an evocation of the progress of human agency.

*Part of the Jean Monnet Lecture Series on European Union Law*

Dr. Davor Babic was a visiting professor at the School of Law for the spring term 2012 (December 28, 2011-January 28, 2012). He taught European Private International Law (2 credits).

EU simulation on Turkish accession to the European Union.

In the Renaissance, studying nature meant (most of the time) encountering nature. But these encounters, as Peter Dear has indicated, tended to generate a discussion (in the period and in the historiography) between unmediated sensory experiences and experiences organized by prior conceptual categories. This paper focuses on anatomical encounters, when anatomists articulated that distinction with clarity, in order to reconsider the significance of ephemeral and permanent anatomy theaters.

The relationship between the two is usually described chronologically:
theaters were temporary before they were permanent. This has encouraged a second view, namely that temporary theaters initiated the study of anatomy through human and animal dissection (the encounter with nature), and permanent theaters further developed that study. This paper will argue against such a seamless transition. Even when the permanent anatomy theater was built and in use in Padua, temporary theaters continued to provide more immediate, sensory experiences for professors as well as students.

This talk is sponsored by the working group on Medicine, Philosophy, and the Scientific Revolution (http://www.pitt.edu/~pmd17/MPSR.html) and supported by the Center for Philosophy of Science. The event is free and open to the public.

On January 17th,2012, the European Union Center of Excellence/European Studies Center at the University of Pittsburgh will host an interactive videoconference devoted to the current European financial crisis. To be held from 12-1:30 p.m. in 211 David Lawrence Hall, the session is entitled “Is the Future of the Eurozone the Future of Europe?” This is the first in a series of “Conversations on Europe,” in which participants and audiences will be linked across several sites by video. This first session will feature some of the country’s top experts on the European Union, including Dr. Alberta Sbragia, Vice-Provost of Graduate Studies at the University of Pittsburgh; Dr. Christiane Lemke, Max Weber Chair in German and European Politics at New York University and Professor of Political Science at the Leibniz University of Hannover, Germany; and Larry Neal, Emeritus Professor of Economics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics. Audiences at all three sites will be able to ask questions of the experts. This event is open to the public.

Sarah Beckwith works on late medieval religious writing, medieval and early modern drama, and ordinary language philosophy. In this seminar, we will discuss chapter three of her most recent book, Shakespeare and the Grammar of Forgiveness (Cornell, 2011). Professor Beckwith is also the author of Signifying God: Social Relation and Symbolic Act in York's Play of Corpus Christi (Chicago, 2001), and Christ's Body: Identity, Religion and Society in Medieval English Writing (Routledge, 1993). She is currently working on a book about Shakespearean tragedy and about philosophy's love affair with the genre of tragedy.

Marianne Novy and Ryan McDermott will offer responses to the pre-circulated reading. Reply to this email in order to receive the reading attachment.

The text for discussion is “Repairs in the Dark: Measure for Measure and the End of Comedy.” If you have questions, please email Professor Jennifer Waldron (jwaldron@pitt.edu).

*Professor Beckwith will also give a lecture at Duquesne University on Thursday, January 12th at 4:00 in 324 Fisher Hall.*

Mr. Lionnet’s thesis explores sovereignty, hegemony, and human rights in EU-ACP (African, Caribbean, and Pacific Group of States) relations. His project seeks to get beyond the ideology of Eurafrica to better understand development policies in the 1950s and 1960s. For his research, Mr. Lionnet has come to the University of Pittsburgh to make use of the European Union Delegation Collection housed at the University Library. The Collection is a virtually complete assemblage of official European Community documents published since the early 1950s. In his work on development, Mr. Lionnet has had occasion to work in European archives in addition to this one. He has generously agreed to speak with Pitt grad students about his experiences in the University’s Depository Collection, how it compares to others, what he has found, and how it all informs his larger research project. Please join us then for Pizza & Politics…& Archives.

Randall Halle is the Klaus W. Jonas Professor of German Film and Cultural Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. He studied at the University of Wisconsin—Madison, the University of Freiburg, the University of Utrecht, and the Free University in Berlin. He received his PhD from Madison in 1995. Halle works primarily on film, visual culture, and social philosophy. He is currently pursuing two different projects tentatively entitled Interzone Europe: Social Philosophy and the Transnational Imagination as well as Visual Alterity: Seeing Difference. Halle has received numerous grants. Academic year 2004-2005 he was a Senior Fellow in the Berlin Program for Advanced German and European Studies at the Free University. In 2006 he was offered the honor of being the first occupant of the Jonas Chair at the University of Pittsburgh. Academic year 2009-2010 he was a Senior Fulbright Researcher in Berlin.

As the European Union confronts one of the deepest crises of its history, the frustration of a number of member states at the apparent hegemony of the “Franco-German couple" has become vocal and public. With elections approaching in 2012 in France and 2013 in Germany, it is worth considering what a transfer of power from the current governing parties to the major opposition parties, the Parti Socialiste (PS) and the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD), might harbor for the future of the European integration project. In this presentation, I examine how these parties handled past crises, both when in government and in opposition. I explore policy continuities and evolution over time through an examination of these parties’ roles in the Empty Chair Crisis, President Mitterand’s program for socialist transformation, German reunification, the proposal for a European constitution, and the current financial and debt crisis.

Cultural night out at Jozsa Hungarian restaurant for GSPIA graduate students.

Dr. Maloy (Econ) & Dr. Alexiadou (Political Science) will be giving their take on the economic and social/political implications of the new Greek debt deal and the debt crisis in Europe in general.

Internship panel for GSPIA Master's students looking for internships abroad.

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 21
Pizza & Politics: What’s Next For Italy? A Conversation with Alberta Sbragia
Dr. Alberta Sbragia, Vice Provost, University of Pittsburgh
12:00 PM, 4217 WWPH
Alberta Sbragia, former EUCE/ESC Director and current Vice-Provost for Graduate Studies, will host a round table discussion about the current economic and political crisis in Italy. Please join us for pizza and a lively discussion about the implications for the Euro and the future of the European Union. As a Mark A. Nordenberg University Chair and the Jean Monnet Professor ad personam in the Department of Political Science, Dr. Sbragia served as the Director of the European Union Center of Excellence/European Studies Center from 1984-2010, as chair of the European Union Studies Association, now headquartered at the University of Pittsburgh, and as President of the Conference Group on Italian Politics.
Sponsored by: European Union Center of Excellence/European Studies Center

A workshop with Dr. Eszter Zsofia Toth (Hungarian State Archive) and Professor Ulf Brunnbauer (University of Regensburg, Germany). Dr. Toth is one of the leading historians of the history of everyday life of Communist countries. Her work includes her much acclaimed oral history study of a women's brigade in a socialist factory in Budapest, her PhD project which investigated the profound problems of gender, class, and life-styles in the Kadar era. Professor Ulf Brummbauer has worked extensively on the problems of social history, nationalism, identity constructions and historiography in South Eastern Europe, especially Bosnia, Macedonia, Albania, and the Western Balkan countries.

The Annual Commemoration of Kristallnacht (The “Night of Broken Glass” on November 9-10, 1938)

Survivor’s Account by Ruth Drescher
Music by Susanne Ortner-Roberts (clarinetist)
Readings by Pitt Students

This program is made possible with the support of the Jack Sittsamer Holocaust Studies
Enrichment Fund in the Jewish Studies Program.

Over 75 papers will be delivered on topics from all fields (literature, history, political science, sociology, anthropology, law, religion, art, music, cultural studies, film studies, gender studies, etc.) that treat the question of the idea of France or Frenchness in any time period from the middle ages to the twenty-first century.

For a full version of the conference schedule, please visit the Web site.

Dr. Alberta Sbragia appearence on Bloomberg TV.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/pomboy-says-surge-in-italy-bond-y...

Nov. 9 (Bloomberg) -- In response to recent developments in the European Debt Crisis, Stephanie Pomboy, president of MacroMavens LLC, Irene Finel-Honigman, adjunct professor of international and public affairs at Columbia University, Alberta Sbragia, a professor at University of Pittsburgh, and Stephen Wood, chief market strategist at Russell Investments, talked about Europe's sovereign debt crisis and its implications for the U.S. Treasuries. They spoke with Pimm Fox on Bloomberg Television's "Taking Stock."

Matteo Galli, who teaches at the University of Ferrara, is one of the foremost German Studies scholars in Italy and is also an expert on German cinema. He has published books on Elias Canetti, Thomas Mann, and E. T. A Hoffmann, and he has translated works by Jens Sparschuh and Uwe Timm, among others. He is also the editor of a major volume on the history of German cinema, Da Caligari a Good Bye, Lenin! (2004).

Erik Bleich is a Professor of Political Science at Middlebury College and will give a talk based on his book on this subject published this year by Oxford University Press.

Historian Elina Gertsman will present a lecture entitled "Holy Anatomy, Animate Substance: the Shrine Madonna as a Performing Object" on October 27, 2011. Elina's work combines more traditional methods of art historical scholarship with an interest in performance studies and cognitive science (or "embodied cognition"). She is the author of *The Dance of Death in the Middle Ages: Image, Text, Performance* (2010) and has also published several articles and edited the collection, *Visualizing Medieval Performance: Perspectives, Histories, Contexts* (2008).

Foreign Visiting Professor Dr. Bernhard Schloh will present the first of this year’s two annual Jean Monnet lectures on European Union Law. The lecture is titled “The Present Situation of the European Union: Legal and Political Reflections.” Professor Dr. Bernhard Schloh is a former member of the Legal Service of the Council of Ministers of the European Union and is Professor Emeritus at Vrije Universiteit Brussel in Belgium.

The French Immersion Institute, Directed by Bonnie Adair-Hauk, Ph.D., organized this workshop for middle and high school teachers to broaden their cultural understanding of current events and international studies regarding French-speaking countries, to strengthen their French listening and speaking skills, and to share strategies for teaching of French language and culture.

A professional ACTFL trainer will present this four-day workshop on administering and rating Oral Proficiency Interviews to assess students' foreign language proficiency. Following the workshop, participants will be prepared to complete the ACTFL certification process for OPI testers. Please note that this event is open to invited language instructors only.

In this talk, Toker lays out the problem of understanding seven especially perplexing tombs out of the 130 graves he excavated when directing the archaeological campaign below the Cathedral of Florence.

In his remarkable career as a journalist, Werner Sonne has reported on some of the most significant changes in our world. As radio and TV correspondent for the German channel ARD, he covered German chancellors Willy Brandt, Helmut Schmidt, Helmut Kohl, Gerhard Schroder and Angela Merkel. He followed, from close up, Germany’s emergence from a divided country in the Cold War, traumatized by a terrible, self-inflicted past, unsure of its future, through the process of re-unification to the current position as strongest partner in the European Union, still struggling to find its place in the world. He saw the world from the perspective of a foreign correspondent for 11 years, on both sides of the then still-existing Iron Curtain. In recent years he has covered the Middle East conflict and German involvement in the Afghanistan war.

Over a period of more than twenty years, while residing mostly in England, the Italian writer, literary critic, and lexicographer Giuseppe Baretti (1719-1789) kept a personal reading and writing log. Surveying this 270-page zibaldone has helped to map out the cultural itinerary followed by this eighteenth-century intellectual immigrant, and has led into the exploration of such topics as the psychology of authorship, the role of memory in literature and in second language learning, the practice of translation and its uses and purposes.

Dr Anthony R. Zito, Reader in Politics and Joint Editor of Environmental Politics, Co-Director of the Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence at Newcastle University will present a lecture entitled “Can Environmental Agencies Manage their Environment”.

http://www.ucis.pitt.edu/pils/strminfo/zito_2011l.mov

Helmut Berghoff, CEO of the German Historical Institute, will present a lecture entitled "Persistence or Demise of the Classic 'Mittlestand'? Small and Medium-sized Family Firms in the Federal Republic of Germany" on September 21, 2011 at 12pm in 101 Mervis Hall.

The EUCE/ESC would like to welcome students, faculty, and friends of the Center to the start of a new year. Please join us for refreshments and conversation on Wednesday September 14 at 4:00pm in 4130 Wesley W. Posvar Hall

Harvard Economist Dani Rodrik described how "Unconditional convergence is alive and well, but that we need to look for it within manufacturing industries rather than the economy as a whole. Industries that start at lower levels of labor productivity grow faster, regardless of the quality of policies or institutions in their home economies." For more, see Professor Rodrik's blog: http://rodrik.typepad.com/dani_rodriks_weblog/2011/09/unconditional-conv....

European Union simulation on dealing with the Greek sovereign debt crisis. Students will debate the issue from the point of view of their respective nations and attempt to reach an agreement on how the EU should respond to the crisis.