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.…
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…
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. …
In commemoration of the fall of the Berlin Wall 32 years ago, the German Film Office is pleased to present the film Adam & Evelyn by Andreas Goldstein and Jakobine Motz. The film will be available to stream across the United States. Summer 1989, East Germany. Adam works as a tailor, Evelyn as a waitress. They are planning a vacation…
Deutsches Haus at NYU presents a conversation with Rebecca Donner and Atina Grossmann about Donner’s new book “All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days: The True Story of the American Woman at the Heart of the German Resistance to Hitler,” which tells the story of Mildred Harnack – Donner’s great-great-aunt – an American scholar in Berlin who headed an underground…
Please join the Njegos Endowment for Serbian Language and Culture at Columbia University’s East Central European Center and the Harriman Institute for a lecture by Sandra Davidovic, doctoral candidate in International and European Studies at the University of Belgrade, accompanied by esteemed professor Susan Woodward (CUNY) as a discussant. The process of privatizing socially owned enterprises in Kosovo, conducted under the auspices of the United…
On October 16, as part of a day-long Celebration of Louis Kahn 120 in New York presented with Archtober, learn about the celebrated Estonian-born architect’s work as an educator! In this lively conversation with Kahn’s student Charles E. Dagit Jr. hosted by award-winning journalist Neeme Raud, we’ll take a close look at the important role Louis Kahn had as a teacher,…
In this talk, Professor Nadieszda Kizenko will discuss her new book, Good for the Souls: A History of Confession in the Russian Empire, with Professor Anne Lounsbery. From the moment that Tsars as well as hierarchs realized that having their subjects go to confession could make them better citizens as well as better Christians, the sacrament of penance in the Russian…
Casa Italiana hosts this book club online on the Zoom platform to discuss contemporary Italian books in Italian. The Club is open to anyone and its purpose is to offer the possibility to practice the Italian language. Everybody is encouraged to speak. The group suggests the books, usually by contemporary Italian authors, that reflect the changes that have taken place with time in…
When we ask "what spaces are we fighting for," we mostly conjure ideas of existing spaces in our cities and societies. In this talk, Ilija Trojanow asks us to take a step into the imaginative and inspirational - in both fiction and politics, utopia is the most important space in our democracies. After all, what are we fighting for if we don't…
