Whole-day seminar

Above, you will find the date, time and place for our first whole-day seminar.
Below, you will find the preliminary program.
Information on student presentations will be published to this site on Thursday, Oct. 3rd.

1. I will give an hour's presentation, summarizing some themes that we have been through in the course up until now, and also briefly introducing the article by Andrew Lass, which we have not yet had time to discuss.

2. There will be student presentations. You can either choose a theme for your presentation yourself, or you can choose a theme that I will suggest (see below).

3. Finally, I will give a brief concluding talk.

Please prepare a 10-15 minute student presentation for the seminar. You may choose a theme for your presentation freely, or you may choose one of the three themes outlined below. It is recommended that you start to think about the theme for your course paper already now. If you have already found a theme for your paper, or if you think you have a theme that you would like to try out on an audience, this is your opportunity!

For all three themes suggested below: Use the Internet to get access to information. You will find a list of general search tools here. Look also at the course's link page, which has a number of addresses you can begin from.

NB! You can work in groups if you like, both with this presentation and with your course paper.

1. Choose a country or area within the region, and hunt up some information on one or a few extreme political movements there (ultra-nationalists, neo-nazis, fundamentalist religious movements, skinheads, Stalinists etc.). Use the Internet to find information. How may Shlapentokh's idea of "the privatization of Soviet society" cast light on the nature and character of the movement you are describing? How does it relate to the ideas of civil society discussed by Anderson, Hemment etc.?

2. Starting with Yampolsky's article on monuments, consider the monument with the two horn-blowers ("lur-blæsere") on Rådhuspladsen here in Copenhagen. Is this a "monument" in Yampolsky's sense? What kind of an effect does it have on a (Danish) onlooker? In what sense does this statue differ, e.g. from the statues of Lenin, described by Yampolsky? In what sense are the two statues similar? Does all of this teach us something about the difference between East and West Europe.... or does it not?

3. Scenario: A small, Western NGO, working to give aid to young, jobless people in a city in one of the East/Central European countries, approaches you for advice about how to establish themselves in that country. What kind of advice would you give them? (Please make the scenario more concrete than this: where do they want to work, what kind of work (precisely) do they want to do, who sponsors them, in what Western country is the NGO based, etc.?)