Virtual Book Talk: Dog Park by Sofi Oksanen

Online

On October 10, join us for a virtual book talk with acclaimed Finnish-Estonian author Sofi Oksanen on her new novel Dog Park. With moderator Bethanne Patrick, she’ll discuss the writing of the novel, an international bestseller out in translation by Owen Frederick Witesman from Knopf on September 21. A captivating story of intrigue, betrayal, and murder in the global fertility market from Oksanen, “an international publishing…

Book Talk: Muslims and the Making of Modern Europe by Emily Greble

Online

Please join us for a talk with Emily Greble (Vanderbilt University), author of Muslims and the Making of Modern Europe (Oxford University Press, October 2021), with discussant Elidor Mëhilli (Hunter College, CUNY) and moderator Tanya Domi (Harriman Institute). Muslims and the Making of Modern Europe shows that Muslims were citizens of modern Europe from its beginning and, in the process, rethinks Europe itself. Muslims are neither newcomers nor outsiders in Europe.…

On Tyranny: A Conversation with Timothy Snyder and Nora Krug

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About this event Deutsches Haus at NYU presents a conversation with the author Timothy Snyder and the author and illustrator Nora Krug about the graphic edition of Snyder’s book “On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century.” A bold connection between past and present, the book is a warning that the lesson of 20th century’s European shift to fascism, Nazism, and communism…

The Balkans on Tenterhooks

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Please join the Harriman Institute for a roundtable discussion on current events in the Balkans, moderated by professor Tanya Domi (SIPA/Harriman Institute). This discussion is situated at a momentous time of political strife that cuts across the Western Balkans region against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic. Front burner issues include a precarious Bosnia and Herzegovina that manages to muddle through one…

Panel Discussion: European Jews in the 21st Century

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What is the status of Jews in Europe in the 21st century? How do they maintain vital communities? Do they desire to remain in Europe? To remain Jewish? Where are the trendlines headed? A mere 0.1% of Europe's population is Jewish. Proportionally, this figure is at its lowest since the turn of the first millennium. European Jews' numbers have continued…

National Danish Book Club: The Employees by Olga Ravn

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Explore a selection of Danish literature in English translation with a new nationwide virtual book club! Organized as part of the new National Danish Book Club and Literary Event Series on October 12, we will discuss Olga Ravn’s The Employees (De anisette) translated by Martin Aitken. Structured as a series of witness statements compiled by a workplace commission, The Employees…

Book Talk: Reappraising the History of the Jews in the Netherlands

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About the Book The two decades since the last authoritative general history of Dutch Jews was published have seen such substantial developments in historical understanding that a new assessment has become an imperative. This volume offers an indispensable survey from a contemporary viewpoint that reflects the new preoccupations of European historiography and allows the history of Dutch Jewry to be…

Reading in 19th-Century Russia – A Presentation

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While scholars of Russian culture generally pay great attention to the study of authors and texts, they sometimes neglect readers. Our volume, Reading Russia. A History of Reading in Modern Russia (Milano, Ledizioni, 2020, vol. 2, open access), is the attempt of an international team of scholars to describe the history of the relationship between Russians and their favorite books.…

“Encounter: The Ukrainian-Jewish Literary Prize” and Other Recent Developments in Ukrainian Literature

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Please join the Ukrainian Studies Program at the Harriman Institute and the Ukrainian Jewish Encounter (UJE) for a discussion with writers Vasyl Makhno and Andrey Kurkov. Vasyl Makhno’s novel Vichnyi Kalendar (The Eternal Calendar, 2019) received the 2020 “Encounter: The Ukrainian-Jewish Literary Prize™”, which is sponsored by the Ukrainian Jewish Encounter with the support of the NGO Publishers Forum (Lviv, Ukraine). Makhno and fellow writer Andrey Kurkov…

Literature and Reality (with Robert Chandler)

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In Vasily Grossman’s case, the boundary between literature and reality is unusually thin.  The figure of Viktor Shtrum, the nuclear physicist hero of Grossman’s two Stalingrad novels, is based on that of Lev Shtrum, a Jewish-Ukrainian nuclear physicist executed during the Purges.  The fictional Viktor Shtrum in turn prefigures the real Andrey Sakharov, an equally creative and free-thinking nuclear physicist. …