Lecture

Dr. Taras Filenko is newly returned from Ukraine and the surrounding region, where Ukrainian refugees have sought shelter from the Russian Federation’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24th, 2022. Come hear an in-person eyewitness account from someone with a lifelong network of family, friends, and colleagues, many who are displaced from their homes to locations inside Ukraine and abroad.

What hope is there for victory? Is US support waning? What kinds of help are most valuable at this moment? What is the life of students during war?

Sasha Senderovich will discuss his new book, "How the Soviet Jew Was Made", which offers a close reading of postrevolutionary Yiddish and Russian-language literature and film that recasts the Soviet Jew as a novel cultural figure: an ambivalent character navigating between the Jewish past and Bolshevik modernity. Senderovich urges us to see the Soviet Jew anew, as not only a member of a minority group, but also a particular kind of liminal being.

Andrei Muraru was appointed as Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Romania to the United States on July 7, 2021. Ambassador Muraru has held positions at the Institute for the Investigation of Communist Crimes and the Memory of the Romanian Exile (IICCMER); the Chancellery of the Prime Minister of Romania and was also personal advisor to the General Director of the National Archives of Romania (CNSAS). Ambassaro Muraru was a member of the Administrative Board of the Romanian Television.

Dr. Kseniia Minakova is an Associate Professor of Physics, Leader Researcher in Optics & Photonics Laboratory and Deputy Chair of the Admissions Committee at the National Technical University “Kharkiv Polytechnic Institute”. In 2023 she was named Optica Ambassador. Dr. Minakova received her Ph.D in Solid State Physics from the Institute of Electrophysics & Radiation Technologies National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, and the Master’s degree in Theoretical Physics from the V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University.

This lecture considers the problem of the cultural value of political mystifications, forgeries, and appropriations. In doing so, I will focus on the historical and ideological contexts (in particular, the role of the Communist International in Moscow) of one of the most popular “songs of protest,” which was published by the American folklorist and pro-Communist activist from a Jewish-Hungarian family Lawrence Gellert’s (1898-1979) in his influential collection of African-American political songs (1936).

Kapka Kassabova's writing eschews a narrow register of academic writing and explores different chronotypes of nourishment, from the "Red Riviera" of the Black Sea coast to the interconnected lakes Ohrid and Prespa and the valley of the river Mesta, abundant with local practices of healing. Join us for a discussion about situated, in-depth histories of well-being, care, and nourishment as we collectively contemplate the potential of the Balkans as a space of nourishment.

On Wednesday, September 13 at 12pm, Professor Marian Zulean Professor of Sociology at the University of Bucharest (Romania) will discuss identity and security in the Black Sea Region. The talk will be held in 3911 Posvar Hall and will also be streamed on Zoom.

How did Jewish children conceal their presence during the Holocaust and what effect did hiding have on child survivors? This talk will expand the story of Krakow Jews as told in the film "Schindler's List" by zooming in on Jewish children's experiences and what that conveys about the German occupation of Krakow, Poland.

Professor Jochen Hellbeck of Rutgers University will give the third and final presentation of the Socialist Studies Seminar series, presenting on a chapter from his book-in-progress, "A War Like No Other?"

Part of a forthcoming monograph devoted to the decades-long stand-off between Nazi antibolshevism and Soviet antifascism, this chapter traces the Red Army’s incursion into Germany in 1944 and 1945 as it focuses on the interpretive lenses that propagandists, soldiers, and civilians on both sides of the front applied to the final stage of the Second World War in Europe.

Professor Gennady Estraikh of New York University will give the second lecture of the Socialist Studies Seminar series.