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April 3: Helena Goscilo (Russian topic)
Fade from Red: the Cold War Ex-Enemy on Screen (1990-2005)
MAIN TALK BY
Professor Helena Goscilo
University of Pittsburgh
FURMAN 114
THURSDAY, APRIL 3, 2008
4:10 p.m.
RECEPTION IMMEDIATELY AFTER IN FURMAN 123
SYNOPSIS
In 1985 the Geneva Summit outmoded Hollywood’s simplistic Cold War representation of Russians almost overnight, while Mikhail Gorbachev’s policy of perestroika and glasnost, followed by the collapse of the Soviet Union, transformed the United States from an arch-enemy into an ally. Both governments proclaimed a new era of cooperation and mutual support. Yet mainstream American and Russian movies of the 1990s and 2000s reveal more complex attitudes on both sides. My talk proposes that despite the rhetorical nature of the vaunted “partnership,” films during the two decades frequently revise rather than eliminate adversarial images familiar from the Cold War.
SECOND TALK
Professor Helena Goscilo
University of Pittsburgh
April 4, Friday, 11:00 a.m.
Buttrick 205
TATOOS AND TABOOS: BIOGRAPHY ON THE BODY
Helena Goscilo's examination of Soviet and post-Soviet criminal tattoos provides a broad cultural context to illustrate how Soviet prisoners transformed tattooing traditions for their own purposes. Copious visuals (via PowerPoint) accompany her presentation.
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April 4: Peter Demetz
PETER DEMETZ
Sterling Professor Emeritus of German and Comparative Literature
at Yale University will read from his forthcoming book
Prague in Danger
Culture, History and Memories:
The Years of German Occupation, 1939-1945
Friday, April 4
4:00-5:30 p.m.
BUTTRICK HALL 101
followed by a reception at
the Max Kade Center for European and German Studies
BUTTRICK HALL, 2nd floor
Sponsored by
Department of Germanic and Slavic, Department of History, Max Kade
Center for European and German Studies, Robert Penn Warren Center
for the Humanities and the University Lecture Committee
Peter Demetz, the Sterling Professor Emeritus of German and
Comparative Literature and former president of the Modern Language
Association, has written extensively on the literature and history
of the country where he was born in 1922 and that he left in 1948.
His more recent book, Prague in Black and Gold, is a history and
personal memoir of the city which was home and inspiration to many
towering figures of European civilization such as Kepler, Mozart,
Rabbi Judah Loew, Dvorak, Smetana, Rilke and Kafka. Other books by
Demetz include Marx, Engels and the Poets and After the Fires:
Writing in the Germanies, Austria and Switzerland. Previously
Demetz has won major awards for his outstanding contributions to
the study of German culture. In 1971 he received the Golden Goethe
Award of the Federal Republic of Germany, in 1984 he was given the
Commander's Cross of the Order of Merit by the German government
and in 2000 he received the Medal of Merit in the fields of
scholarship and culture from the Czech Republic. He is also an
important critic, writing often for the Frankfurter Allgemeine
Zeitung (Germany's equivalent of the New York Times) and appearing
often on television?in the Literary Quartet. Demetz earned his
first doctorate from Charles University in Prague in 1948. After
immigrating to the United States and earning a master's degree at
Columbia University, he went on to receive a Ph.D from Yale, where
he served on the faculty from 1956 until his retirement 1991.
Prof. Demetz will be presenting his new book Prague in Danger: The
Years of German Occupation, 1939-1945. Memories and History, Terror
and Resistance, Theater and Jazz, Film and Poetry, Politics and War
which will be appearing with Farrar, Straus and Giroux on April 15,
2008. With this successor book to Prague in Black and Gold, his
account of more than a thousand years of Central European history,
the great scholar Peter Demetz focuses on just six short years?a
tormented, tragic, and unforgettable time. He was living in Prague
then?a "first-degree half-Jew," according to the Nazis' terrible
categories?and here he joins his objective chronicle of the city
under German occupation with his personal memories of that period:
from the bitter morning of March 15, 1939, when Hitler arrived from
Berlin to set his seal on the Nazi takeover of the Czechoslovak
government, until the liberation of Bohemia in April 1945, after
long seasons of unimaginable suffering and pain.
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You are cordially invited:
Every Wednesday, the German department hosts the weekly Kaffeestunde. Please join us in Furman 123 to speak German and enjoy Kaffee und Kuchen (coffee & sweets). We look forward to welcoming you!
Wednesdays | 2:30-4 | Furman 123 |
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