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…
NYU’s Center for European and Mediterranean Studies and Deutsches Haus at NYU present “Germany at the Polls: Between Authoritarian Populism and Progressive Politics,” with Sheri Berman (Barnard College), Thorsten Faas (Free University Berlin), Thomas Gschwend (University of Mannheim), and Constanze Stelzenmüller (Brookings). The conversation will be chaired by Stephen Gross (NYU) and Thomas Zittel (NYU/Goethe-University Frankfurt). The German Federal Elections on September 26, 2021…
Join us for a book talk on the new novel Awake with Danish author Harald Voetmann & translator Johanne Sorgenfri Ottosen, out in translation September 21 from New Directions! In a shuttered bedroom in ancient Italy, the sleepless Pliny the Elder lies in bed obsessively dictating new chapters of his Natural History to his slave Diocles. Fat, wheezing, imperious, and prone…
A conversation with Salvatore Pappalardo (Towson University) and David Do Paço (Sciences Po, Paris & Columbia University). Respondents: Franco Baldasso (Bard College), Konstantina Zanou (Columbia University). Coordinator: Konstantina Zanou This event puts together the story of a Muslim boy’s disappearance in late 18th century Trieste (David Do Paço) with that of the ideas of some 19th-century Triestine archeologists, antiquarians and…
Join us for a meeting of the New York-Russia Public Policy Series, co-hosted by the Harriman Institute at Columbia University and the New York University Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia. In this first event of the academic year, our panelists will discuss the results and importance of Russia’s Duma elections for parliament held on September 19, 2021. The ruling United Russia party is widely…
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…
Join us for another 19v seminar! Please note that this talk will be in Russian. Возникновение и работу «Общества для пособия нуждающимся литераторам и ученым» (Литературного фонда) традиционно рассматривают в аспекте благотворительности, как проявление и доказательства присущих русской литературе и отдельным ее представителям гуманности и милосердия. Полезным представляется, однако, и другой угол зрения на эту организацию: как на институт, возникший…
Please join the Ukrainian Film Club at Columbia University and the Ukrainian Studies Program at the Harriman Institute for discussion with Olena Solodovnikova, director of the feature documentary The War Syndrome. I’m Used to Killing (2020). Professor Yuri Shevchuk will moderate a discussion and Q&A. Attendees can watch the film on YouTube prior to the discussion. The event on September 29 will not include a screening of…
Author and journalist Julie Salamon (Wall Street Journal and NY Times) sits down with Gemma Birnbaum, the new Executive Director of AJHS. To kick off season 2 of our popular interview series, we thought it would be the perfect opportunity for our community to get to know Gemma! Join us to hear from her about growing up in Queens, her work at the The National WWII…
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, “empire” and “modernity” have been proposed as particularly useful frameworks for the comparatively oriented and globally relevant research on Russia and the Soviet Union. Surprisingly enough, there was little exchange and cross-traffic between these two major clusters of innovation in the field of Russian and Soviet studies. By introducing the concept of Soviet…
Please join the East Central European Center at the Harriman Institute for a roundtable discussion in celebration of National Translation Month. This year’s roundtable features four translators presenting current projects, all texts by exciting, contemporary, and up-and-coming East-Central European women writers. Topics will include issues of migration, exile, gender and sexuality, ethnicity, and feminism. The program will include literary readings from recently translated works, including Ivana…
Organized in the wake of World War Two by the victorious Allies, the Nuremberg Trials were intended to hold the Nazis to account for their crimes and to restore a sense of justice to a world devastated by violence. As Francine Hirsch reveals in her groundbreaking new book, a major piece of the Nuremberg story has routinely been left out:…
Originally intended to take place in April 2020, as a commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, this series focuses on the fragile moment between the end of WWII and the solidification of the Cold War, with 1945 as what we might call “Cinema Year Zero.” It examines how cinema was utilized to bear…