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Thursday, January 30

JMEUCE Lecture: Caught Between 1945 and 1989 - Memory, Democracy, and the Future of Europe
Time:
12:30 pm to 2:00 pm
Presenter:
Peter Verovsek, University of Sheffield
Location:
4130 Posvar Hall
Sponsored by:
European Studies Center and European Union Center of Excellence

As part of our Year of Memory and Politics Series, the ESC is pleased to welcome Peter J. Verovšek as a Jean MonnetCenter of Excellence speaker. Thirty years after 1989 - and15 years since the first postcommunist states joined the EU - European memory is still divided by the faultlines of the Cold War. Whereas the West’s historical imaginary is based on the traumas of Nazism associated with 1945, Central Europe’s is dominated by the legacy of communism signified by 1989. These differing understandings of the past have resulted in divergent conceptions of democracy. The future of the EU depends on its ability to create a common historical narrative that incorporates the lessons of the traumas of 1945 and 1989.