Drawing on extensive original research, including interviews with the last surviving members, author and historian Leah Garrett, Professor and Director of Jewish Studies at Hunter College, follows this unique band of brothers of Jewish refugees from Germany to England and back again, with stops at British internment camps, the beaches of Normandy, the battlefields of Italy and Holland, and the…
In September, the Albertine Book Club will discuss Albertine Sarrazin’s Astragal, translated from the French by Patsy Southgateand and published by New Directions. As if the reader were riding shotgun, this intensely vivid novel captures a life on the lam. “L’Astragale” is the French word for the ankle bone Albertine Sarrazin’s heroine Anne breaks as she leaps from her jail cell to…
This September, join us for a virtual book talk on The Viking Heart: How Scandinavians Conquered the World with Arthur Herman, out on August 3 from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. For millennia Norwegians, Danes, Finns, and Swedes lived a remote and rugged existence among the fjords and peaks of the land of the midnight sun. But when they finally left their homeland in search of opportunity, these wanderers…
Join the Jordan Center for the first 19v seminar of the new academic year! What defines Russia’s 19th century in the history of empire? And what relevance might this periodization have for analyses of cultural and literary production? In this talk, building from my research into the history of communication in the Russian empire, 1500-1900, I will try to think…
Join us for a panel discussion on the current prospects of architecture and design learning in K-12 education and hear compelling case examples from Finland and the U.S. How do you build a better world? How can your creativity improve your community? What does it take to bring bold ideas to life? These are just a few of the questions…
How can an architectural or infrastructural project be “fake”? How, in particular, does the (un)reality of architecture play out in Putin-era Russia, a society which critics (both scholars and commentators) frequently caricature as suffused with “post-truth” artifice and devoid of substantive foundations? This article explores the above questions with primary reference to Zaryadye Park – nicknamed “Putin’s Paradise” by its…
In Scandinavian folklore, the forests are full of trolls and little gnomes, and in Norwegian puppeteer and sculptor Marte Ekhougen a.k.a. Doctor Superhelga’s home in Norway, they abound in puppet and marionette form! In this online workshop for families and adults, we’ll learn how to make whimsical expressionistic troll “stuffies” using found and recycled materials. Follow along with Marte and…
Please join the Ukrainian Studies Program at the Harriman Institute for a talk with Yuri Shevchuk, author of the Ukrainian-English Collocation Dictionary (Hippocrene Books, 2021). The Ukrainian-English Collocation Dictionary describes the core Ukrainian lexicon and how it is used in contemporary speech. It has no precedents in Slavic lexicography and combines elements of six types of dictionaries: translation, collocation, learner’s, thesaurus, phraseological and encyclopedic dictionaries. It…
As book lovers, ardent feminists, and philosophers alike rejoice over the US release of Simone de Beauvoir’s never-before-published Inseparable (trans. by Sandra Smith, ed. Ecco), the latest installment of Ideas and Ideals: Strong Female Voices explores the question of female submission with philosophers and de Beauvoir experts Manon Garcia and Skye Cleary. Manon Garcia is the author of We Are Not Born Submissive: How Patriarchy…
Join us for a panel discussion featuring Gary Indiana, Donald Nicholson-Smith, Luc Sante, and Alyson Waters, as we celebrate the publication of The N’Gustro Affair, by genre-redefining French crime novelist Jean-Patrick Manchette. This program is presented in partnership with our friends at New York Review Books and Community Bookstore, and it will take place on Zoom. Please RSVP here. The N’Gustro Affair is a thinly…
