U-M Faculty and international experts will discuss the results of parliamentary elections in Spain, Slovakia, Poland, and the Netherlands, and their implications.

This lecture will be offered both in-person and via Zoom. Register for the Zoom webinar at https://myumi.ch/y2Wk8

Panelists: Julián Casanova, professor of contemporary history, University of Zaragoza, and visiting professor, Central European University, Budapest/Vienna; Brian Porter-Szűcs, Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of History, U-M; Peter Terem, professor of international relations, Matej Bel University, Banská Bystrica; Annemarie Toebosch, lecturer of Germanic languages and literatures.

Moderator: Geneviève Zubrzycki, William H. Sewell Jr. Collegiate Professor of Sociology, WCEE Director, U-M.

Julián Casanova is professor of contemporary history at the University of Zaragoza and visiting professor at the Central European University of Budapest/Vienna. Casanova is one of Spain’s foremost historians of the 20th century and one of the world’s greatest historians of the Spanish Civil War. His many books have been published in both Spanish and English and some have been translated into other languages. In April 2021 the Government of Aragon (Spain) awarded him the “Premio de las Letras Aragonesas” 2020 for "his long career, the scientific quality of his texts, the vigor and agility of his essay style, his ability and willingness to communicate, and the social commitment of his work." Casanova has been a visiting professor at a number of prestigious universities in Europe and the Americas: Queen Mary College, London, Harvard University, the New School for Social Research, and FLACSO (Quito, Ecuador). In 2018-19, he was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. In 2022-23, he was a Distinguished Fellow at the Weiser Center for Europe and Eurasia at the University of Michigan.

Peter Terem is professor and head of international relations and diplomacy at Matej Bel University in Banská Bystrica, Slovak Republic. His background combines academic research and project management with over 27 years of professional experience in scholarly research, teaching, research supervision, and team-leading. His research focuses on the foreign policy of the Slovak Republic, the role of powers in world politics, the use of the concept of soft power in the strategies of small states, and the external relations of the European Union. He has served on the Slovak National Convention on the EU, an expert’s board for the Slovak Ministry of Defense, and as a senior fellow of the GLOBSEC Academy Centre. He was a Fulbright Research Fellow at Boston College in 2015 and received the Outstanding Pedagogue Award from the SPP Foundation in 2008. He has written several books, contributes to international relations journals, and is a political commentator for RTVS (Radio and Television of Slovakia). In 2019 Terem was a Weiser Professional Development Fellow at WCEE, U-M.

Brian Porter-Szűcs is Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of History at the University of Michigan, where he has taught since 1994. He served as director of the Copernicus Endowment from 2000-10. His work includes Całkiem zwyczajny kraj: Historia Polski bez martyrologii (Wydawnictwo Filtry, 2021), which is a revised and expanded version of his earlier English work, Poland and the Modern World: Beyond Martyrdom (Wiley Blackwell, 2014). He is also the author of Faith and Fatherland: Catholicism, Modernity, and Poland (Oxford University Press, 2011), which has appeared in Polish as Wiara i Ojczyzna: Katolicyzm, Nowoczesność, i Polska (Wydawnictwo Filtry, 2022), as well as When Nationalism Began to Hate: Imagining Modern Politics in 19th Century Poland (Oxford University Press, 2000), which was translated into Polish as Gdy nacjonalizm zaczął nienawidzić: Wyobrażenia nowoczesnej polityki w dziewiętnastowiecznej Polsce (Pogranicze, 2011).

Annemarie Toebosch is a Chomskyan linguist at the University of Michigan who works within a Chomskyan-inspired model of political and academic activism that challenges colonial power structures in the Dutch-speaking world and beyond. As director of Dutch studies and affiliate faculty in Judaic studies, she takes her students on a journey toward a decolonial language program, the first of its kind on our campus and a model for other language programs. In her language classroom, students build the communication skills to translate minoritized and racialized voices and contrast colonial versus decolonial texts. Her culture courses focus on comparative Holocaust education, analyzing the story of Anne Frank in the context of Dutch colonial genocide in Indonesia, Africa, and the Americas. Her writing on Dutch politics has been published in The Conversation, Newsweek, and Truthout.

Geneviève Zubrzycki is William H. Sewell Jr. Collegiate Professor of Sociology and director of the Weiser Center for Europe and Eurasia at the University of Michigan. She has published widely on nationalism and religion, the politics of memory, and the Holocaust and Poland’s Jewish revival. Her work has been translated into French, Polish, and Russian.

If there is anything we can do to make this event accessible to you, please contact weisercenter@umich.edu. Please be aware that advance notice is necessary as some accommodations may require more time for the university to arrange.