This page is updated continuously, so please check back frequently for additions and latest information about our events. Please also see our Film Series page. For prior events this year, please see our Fall 2007 page.

January 23

Wednesday, 5:00 pm, 211 Brownson Hall. The Notre Dame Writing Center will present a Grant Writing Workshop. Please reserve seating by calling 631-5123.

January 24

Thursday, 4:30 pm, 211 Brownson Hall. The Notre Dame Writing Center will present a Grant Writing Workshop. Please reserve seating by calling 631-5123.

January 25

Friday, 1:00 - 2:30 pm, 119 O'Shaughnessy Hall. Iranian thinker and French writer Chahdortt Djavann will give a lecture in French and English "Que signifie 'l'islamisme'? / What does 'Radical Islam' mean?" Abstract and biography can be found here.

January 31

Thursday, 7:00 and 10:00 pm, Browning Cinema, DPAC. Film: Im Juli/In July (Germany 2000). Part of the Nanovic Institute film series.

February 13

Wednesday, 7:00 - 9:00 pm, 211 Brownson Hall. Graduate Student Social. A chance for graduate students studying contemporary Europe to spend an evening enjoying European cuisine and conversation. RSVP to 631-51233 or nanovic@nd.edu by February 6th.

February 18

Monday, 4:00 pm, 124 DeBartolo Hall. Sarah Lindermann-Komarova, Founder of the Siberian Civic Initiatives Support Center and the Community School Movement in Russia, will give the lecture "Why Russians Like Putin: the Siberian Perpective". The lecture is sponsored by the Program in Russian and East European Studies with the Department of German and Russian Languages and Literatures, the Department of Political Science, the Kellogg Institute, and the Nanovic Institute for European Studies.

February 19

Tuesday, 7:00 pm, 211 Brownson Hall. The Russian Club will hold a monthly meeting in the Student Lounge.

February 21

Thursday, 7:00 and 10:00 pm, Browning Cinema, DPAC. Film: Tha to metaniossis (“Think it Over”). Introduced by Nanovic Faculty Fellow Vassiliki Tsitsopoulou from the Kaneb Center. Part of the Nanovic Institute film series.

February 29-March 9

Notre Dame students traveled to Poland, the Czech Republic, and Berlin to visit sites related to Jewish religion, culture, and life during the Holocaust as part of history course HS30408 with Father Kevin Spicer. Sponsored by ISLA and the Nanovic Institute for European Studies.

March 12

Wednesday, 4:00 - 5:30 pm, 220 Malloy Hall. Lecture: "The Neue Freie Presse Neurosis: Freud, Karl Kraus and the Newspaper as Daily Devotional". Presented by Leo Lensing, Professor of German and Film Studies, Wesleyan University.

March 14

Friday, 12:00 pm, Chicago Council of Global Affairs. Lecture: France Under President Sarkozy: Policies and Priorities for 2008 and Beyond. Presented by Pierre Vimont, Ambassador of France to the United States and the Chicago Council of Global Affairs. The Nanovic Institute for European Studies is sponsoring a group of ND students to attend this function.

March 20

Thursday, 7:00 and 10:00 pm, Browning Cinema, DPAC. Nanovic Institute Sponsored Film: Persepolis. Through the eyes of precocious and outspoken young woman, Marjane, we see a people's hopes dashed as fundamentalists take power during the Islamic Revolution- forcing the veil on women and imprisoning thousands. Marjane's courage and heart lead her on a unique journey as she determines where her future lies as an Iranian. Winner of the Best Animated Feature by the New York Film Critics Circle and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association.

March 26

Wednesday, 4:00 pm, 202 DeBartolo Hall. Lecture: Seeking a 'National Idea' Russian Cinema Today. Presented by Christine Engel from the University of Innsbruck. Sponsored by The Program in Russian and East European Studies in conjunction with the Office of International Studies, the College of Arts and Letters, Learning Beyond the Classroom Program, and the Nanovic Institute for European Studies.

Wednesday, 4:30 pm, 119 O'Shaughnessy Hall. Lecture: Theory-in-Motion: Media Blends in Vachel Lindsay's The Art of the Moving Picture (1915/22). Please join us as Professor Christian Quendler discusses "Theory in Motion," a lecture examining the pioneering American film theorist Vachel Lindsay's foundational role in the development of a theoretical framework for the study of film at the beginning of the twentieth century. Sponsored by the Department of American Studies and the Nanovic Institute for European Studies.

Professor Quendler is assistant professor of American Studies at the University of Innsbruck and comes to Notre Dame as part of the Innsbruck faculty exchange program. Professor Quendler is author of numerous essays on film and literature. His books include From Romantic Irony to Postmodernist Metafiction (2001) and Interfaces of Fiction: Initial Framings in the History of the American Novel (1790-1900). His current project–Blending Media: Film and the Other Arts in Vachel Lindsay’s The Art of the Moving Picture-- is an historical study of the critical and cultural efforts to establish film as a serious art form in the early twentieth century.

March 29

Saturday, 10:00 pm, DeBartolo Performing Arts Center. Nanovic Institute Supported Film: Omkara (2004). East brings new life to the Western tale of Othello as it is adapted for the screen by one of Bollywood's most promising filmmakers. The story traces one man's unrelenting jealousy and all-consuming obsession against the backdrop of political warfare in the interiors of Uttar Pradesh. Professor Jacqueline Vaught-Brogan will introduce the film which is part of the 2008 Asian and Asian American Film Festival and Conference.

April 1

Tuesday, 4:00 pm, 131 Decio Hall. Lecture: The Secularization of Political Identity
German Catholics from 1890 to 1918 presented by Marie-Emmanuelle Reytier from Centre Interuniversitaire d’Etudes Qubécoises Université Laval. Sponsored by the Nanovic Institute for European Studies and the Department of History.

Doctor Reytier received her Ph.D. from the University of Lyon (L’Université Jean Moulin – Lyon III), where she defended her dissertation, “Les catholiques allemands et la république de Weimar: Les Katholikentage 1919-1932” in 2005.  Doctor Reytier has been a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Mainz as well as the University of Laval, and has published a number of articles on the place of Catholicism in modern Germany.  Dr. Reytier will also give a presentation to Professor Thomas Kselman's upper-division history research seminar on “Religion, Politics, and Society in Modern Europe”.

April 2

Wednesday, 4:30 pm, 129 DeBartolo Hall, Lecture by Professor Irena Backus Reformation Scepticism Revisited: Faith and Reason in Erasmus and Castellio. Irena Backus is Professor of Reformation History and Ecclesiastical Latin at the University of Geneva (Institut d’histoire de la Réformation). Her most recent books are Reformation Readings of the Apocalypse: Geneva, Zurich, and Wittenberg (Oxford Studies in Historical Theology), and Historical Method and Confessional Identity in the Era of the Reformation (1378-1615 (Studies in Medieval and Reformation Traditions). Sponsored by the Department of Theology and the Nanovic Institute for European Studies.

April 6-7

Conference: Witnessing Genocide: Truth, Reconciliation and the Media. The conference will feature Juan Mendez, the former Special Adviser to the UN Secretary-General on the Prevention of Genocide and Thane Rosenbaum, writer, law professor, and human rights advocate. The conference will also feature Holocaust survivors, journalists, writers, and experts as Notre Dame takes a look on how genocide is witnessed and recoreded for posterity. Sponsored byt he Kurt and Tessye Simon Fund, Institute for Scholarship in Liberal Arts, Center for Civil & Human Rights, Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, Center for Social Concerns, Nanovic Institute for European Studies, College of Arts and Letters, Notre Dame Holocaust Project, and the Department of Theology.

April 7

Monday, 4:30 - 6:00 pm, 211 Brownson Hall. "Spain Today," an informative discussion between students and Nanovic Institute Faculty Fellow Professor Carlos Jerez-Farran.

April 9

Wednesday, 7:00 pm, Snite Museum of Art. Nanovic Institute Sponsored Film: Alexander Nevsky. To enhance audience understanding and enjoyment of the “Russian Saga,” South Bend Symphony Orchestra's Masterwork Concert Series on April 12th, the University of Notre Dame in presenting a screening of Alexander Nevsky. Three professors will provide commentary and discussion from the perspective of their respective disciplines. They are Alexander Martin, associate professor, Department of History; Alyssa Gillespie, associate professor, Department of German and Russian Languages; and Susan Ohmer, William T. and Helen Kuhn Carey Associate Professor of Modern Communication, Department of Film, Television and Theatre Literatures.

April 10

Thursday, 7:00 and 10:00 pm, Browning Cinema, DPAC. Film: Mrs. Ratcliffe's Revolution (UK 2007) . Producer Leslee Udwin will introduce the 7:00 pm screening. Part of the Nanovic Institute film series.

April 11

Friday, 5:00 pm, 119 O'Shaughnessy Hall. The University of Notre Dame Department of History presents the Vincent DeSantis Lecture Series. Professor Tara Zahra from the University of Chicago will give the lecture "The Minority Problem: Minority Rights and National Classification in the French and Czechoslovak Borderlands after World War I".

April 11-13

The 5th Great Lakes Ottomanist Workshop will take place at Notre Dame on April 11-13, 2008. This conference will include paper presentations on the Ottoman Empire as well as roundtable discussions with scholars from across the nation on "Who was an Ottoman?". All sessions on Saturday and Sunday are free and open to the public. This event was made possible with the support of the Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts, the Nanovic Institute for European Studies, and the Medieval Institute.

April 13-20

Professor Helder Macedo, novelist, poet, and Emeritus Professor of Portuguese at King's College, University of London will be at Notre Dame as Writer-in-Residence. Macedo will also deliver the keynote address at our international research conference, "Africa in Portuguese, the Portuguese in Africa". His address, “Nation Versus Empire,” is sponsored by the Instituto Camoes-Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Portugal. The Nanovic Institute for European Studies is helping to sponsor Macedo's visit.

April 15

Tuesday, 4:30 pm, Coleman-Morse Lounge. Nanovic Institute Faculty Fellows Spring Meeting. A short business meeting followed by a reception.

April 16

Wednesday, 5:15 pm, 119 O'Shaughnessy Hall. Lecture: Forme et responsabilité: Rhétorique et éthique de l’engagement littéraire contemporain presented by Professor Emmanuel Bouju, Département de Lettres, Université de Rennes 2, France. This lecture treats the dialectic of responsibility in works of authors such as Thomas Bernhard and Imre Kertész, and ponders the ethical dimension proper modern-day literary “engagement. Sponsored by the Nanovic Institute for European Studies, the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, and the Graduate School.

Note: The lecture will be in French. A description of the lecture can be found here in French and English.

Prof. Emmanuel Bouju is Professeur de Littérature Générale et Comparée at the Université de Rennes 2. He is author of La transcription de l’histoire : Essai sur le roman européen de la fin du vingtième siècle (Presses de l’Université de Rennes, 2006), and Réinventer la littérature: Démocratisation et modèles romanesques dans l’Espagne post-franquiste (Presses de l’Université de Toulouse, 2003). He has also edited two collective volumes on the intersection of politics and literature: Littératures sous contrat (2004) and L’Engagement littéraire (2005).

April 17

Thursday, 4:30 pm, 129 DeBartolo Hall. Lecture: "The European Unification of World War II Schemes from the East" presented by Holly Case from Cornell University. Hosted by the Program in Russian and East European Studies.

April 17

Tuesday, 7:00 pm. 211 Brownson Hall. Here is a way to improve your Russian! The Notre Dame Russian Club will hold their next meeting at the Nanovic Institute.

April 17

Thursday, 7:00 and 10:00 pm, Browning Cinema, DPAC. Film: Bride and Prejudice (UK 2004). Part of the Nanovic Institute film series.

April 18

Friday - Saturday, Hesburgh Center for International Studies. An International Research Conference: “Africa in Portuguese, the Portuguese in Africa”. Organized by Isabel Ferreira Gould and Pedro Schacht Pereira. Sponsored by the Kellog Institute for International Studies and the Nanovic Institute for European Studies.

Africa in Portuguese, the Portuguese in Africa provides new scholarly perspectives on the relations between Portugal and its former African colonies. The conference addresses connections and borrowings between Portugal and Lusophone Africa and is designed to generate a book co-edited by Isabel Ferreira Gould and Pedro Schacht Pereira. The initiative pursues two main lines of inquiry. First, it debates the roles played by the Portuguese-speaking African countries in the continuous elaboration of a new postcolonial Portuguese culture, as well as the roles played by Portugal in the formation and transformation of the cultures of the Lusophone African nations. Second, it examines the ways in which the ongoing critical and theoretical debate in Lusophone African studies can have a positive impact upon the broader discussions of African studies and postcolonial studies, that is, how a regional discipline can contribute to shaping and enriching concepts that are to be used by scholars working in diverse fields and disciplines.

April 18-20

Friday-Sunday,University of Notre Dame Academic Conference: Faust at Notre Dame. The conference will focus on the Faust theme in literature and the arts, and Faust, science, the Enlightenment, and the human condition. The following distinguished scholars have accepted invitations to participate in the conference:

David Bevington, University of Chicago
Nicholas Boyle, University of Cambridge
Inez Hedges, Northeastern University
David Kastan, Columbia University
Robert Norton, University of Notre Dame
Gino Segre, University of Pennsylvania

Faust at Notre Dame is a year-long-event in which College of Arts and Letters faculty teach Faustian themes across the curriculum. For more information about upcoming conference, seminars, and theatrical performances, visit their website at nd.edu/~faust.

April 24

Thursday, 4:15 pm, Room C-103, Hesburgh Center for International Studies. Lecture: "The Diffusion of Electoral Change in Postcommunist Europe and Eurasia, 1996–2005." Presented by Valerie Bunce, an Aaron Binkenkorb Professor of International Studies, a Professor of Government and the Chair of the Government Department at Cornell University. Co-sponsored by the Kellogg Institute for International Studies and the Nanovic Institute for European Studies.

Abstract: From 1996–2005, eight countries in the post-communist region served as sites for elections that led to the defeat of dictators and the victory of the liberal opposition. The wave of electoral change reflected three influences: powerful and positive precedents in the neighborhood, similarities between "exporting" and "adopting" countries, and the spread of transnational networks supporting electoral change. Central to this dynamic, however, was the electoral model of democratization—a model that was invented elsewhere, but that was highly amenable to implementation in the post-communist region.

April 24

Thursday, 4:30 - 5:30 pm, 131 Decio Faculty Hall. Lecture: Beyond Anthropomorphism presented by Devin Fore, Assistant Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures at Princeton University. Sponsored by the Department of Language and Literature and the Nanovic Institute for European Studies.

April 24

Thursday, 5:30 pm, 136 DeBartolo Hall, The Philosophy and Literature Minor invites you to attend the 2007/08 Philosophy and Literature Lecture “Literature, Narrativity, and the Self” presented by Professor Joshua Landy, Department of French and Italian, Stanford University.

Can literature contribute to the project of becoming a unified self? The lecture will take up two literary models of self-fashioning, through lyric poetry and through the novel. No scholarly work of the last decade has made a more striking and profound contribution to the integration of philosophy and literary studies than Professor Landy’s 2004 Philosophy As Fiction: Self, Deception, and Knowledge in Proust, a Nietzschean study of the multiple self in Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time.

Sponsored by the Department of Philosophy and the Nanovic Institute of European Studies.

April 28

Monday, 3:00-4:15 pm, 119 O'Shaughnessy. Lecture: The Use and Abuse of Holocaust Photography presented by Professor Susan Crane, a German historian from the University of Arizona. ponsored by the Learning Beyond the Classroom, the Nanovic Institute for European Studies, the Notre Dame Holocaust Project, and the Department of Art, Art History, and Design.

May 2

Friday, 12:00 - 4:00 pm, The 1st Annual Notre Dame Undergraduate Scholars ConferenceWith over 200 entries, students from every college and a multitude of disciplines will be represented. The Nanovic Institute for European Studies is well represented by our Faculty Fellows who played an important role in mentoring student research as well as grant recipients who submitted research supported by our Institute.

Several BFA exhibitors will be giving gallery talks in the O'Shaughnessy Galleries of the Snite Museum of Art, students in the General Session of the conference will present their artistic work in the Annenberg Auditorium, as well as conference presentations at DeBartolo Hall and Jordan Hall of Science.

Please join us in supporting this inaugural event. Conference information and schedule is available at the UR@ND website.

May 9 -11

Friday - Sunday, DeBartolo Performing Arts Center, 2008 Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition, the largest competition for chamber musicians in the United States takes place at Notre Dame next weekend. This year, the Nanovic Institute is helping to bring juror Massimo Mercelli, a concert flautist and President of the Emilia Romagna Festival, Italy, to this prestigious competition. For an overview of the Fischoff, and to see the Notre Dame students who will be playing in the competition, visit ND's You Tube website.

May 16

Friday morning. Reception for Nanovic Institute Graduating Minors, Familes, and Faculty Advisors. By invitation.

May 23-July 5, 2008

Notre Dame's Vienna 2008 Summer Session taught by Albert K. Wimmer, Nanovic Institute Faculty Fellow and Director of Undergraduate Studies. The Nanovic Institute is helping to sponor this class of students as they spendan interactive summer learning about 1,000 years of European and Austrian history on site in Vienna with side trips to Budapest, Prague/Theresienstadt, and Wachau/Danube. The course fulfills University Literature and History requirements, as well as the History major and German major requirements.

"Constitutional Success and Failure," an academic conference in honor of Don Kommers.

October 9-11, 2008

A Graduate Student Conference From Res Publica to the Republic of Letters: The Common Good in Transition and Translation. Held at the University of Notre Dame. Sponsored by the Nanovic Institute for European Studies, the Univeristy of Notre Dame Graduate School, and the Kellogg Institute for International Studies.

Academic conference in London.

Return Home