In this month’s installment of our Conversations on Europe virtual roundtable series, a panel of experts and audiences from European Union Centers across the U.S. will engage in a discussion of the upcoming Scottish referendum on independence from Britain scheduled for September of this year and the possibility of a UK referendum on EU membership that could occur as early as 2016. How likely is Scottish independence? What would be the prospects of an independent Scotland in the European Union?

The Cold War “ended” with the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Almost 23 years later, the division between Russia and the West has returned to the forefront of U.S. national security concerns. Ukraine, a former Soviet Socialist Republic, is now a flashpoint for conflict. Russia threatens to invade Ukraine to protect the Russian population living there after pro-Western protestors overthrew the pro-Russian Yanukovych regime. Russia’s interests are driving Russian forces to take control of the Crimean peninsula where a Russian Navy base is located.

Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, Croatian folk culture has been and continues to be used as cultural legitimization for both a Croatian nation and the integration of that nation into empires. Using documentation of historical displays of Croatian folk art in Vienna and Zagreb, this research explores the early-20th century transition of these objects from Habsburg museums of applied art to newly founded ethnographic museums after World War I.

Prof. John Palka's lecture will be based on his book that, while historical in essence, is refreshingly contemporary in its account of the past that his ancestors helped to shape. It contains vivid portraits of courage and love of freedom and country that will resonate with modern Slovak-Americans, it will connect them with the boarder story of their ancestors.

The paper investigates the potential effects of euro adoption on the Polish economy. It analyses how a replacement of the national currency -zloty, and therefore an elimination of a real exchange rate, affects output fluctuations. In the paper, we develop a utility-based theoretical framework to provide a metric for judgment of alternative monetary policies; identify and estimate the sources of aggregate fluctuations; and calibrate the model's structural parameters to Polish economy.

The Undergraduate Research Symposium is an annual event since 2002 designed to provide undergraduate students, from the University of Pittsburgh and other colleges and universities, with advanced research experiences and opportunities to develop presentation skills. The event is open to undergraduates from all majors and institutions who have written a research paper from a social science, humanities, or business perspective focusing on the study of Eastern, Western, or Central Europe, the European Union, Russia, or other countries of the former Soviet Union.

Branislav Radeljic offers a fresh analysis of the role of the European Community in the disintegration of the Yugoslav state. He explores the economic, political and social aspects that eroded the relationship between the two parties.

They Odyssey has a dim or ironic view of epic glory. It holds up a mirror for an audience who has come to hear of such glory, and does so in moments that are virtuosic as scripts. We will perform a couple of these moments to better understand how they work on the stage, as opposed to the page. We will then turn to how Plato used one of them in his homage to the power of Homer, thinly disguised as a parody, in his Ion.