CAS Book Talk. Between Armenian(s): A Conversation with Arakel Minassian
Arakel Minassian (U-M) and Michael Pifer (U-M)
Please join us for the re-launch of our graduate student Arakel Minassian’s co-written book Sahmanakhagh(kht): Hayerenn u hayerēně...
Can ‘Slavic’ Speak for Minorities? — Who Gets to Belong in Eastern Europe? - Talk 4
Global “Gypsy": Balkan Romani Music, Representation, and Appropriation / Carol Silverman
In the last four decades the popularity of Balkan "Gypsy" music has exploded, becoming a staple at world music festivals and dance...
WCEE Lecture. AI for National and International Security: Opportunities Without Losing Control
Driart Elshani, Weiser Professional Development Fellow, Fall 2025
Artificial Intelligence is rapidly reshaping how we understand and address conflict. This talk introduces emerging tools at the intersection...
CREES Noon Lecture. Poetic Voice from a Russian Prison: Zhenya Berkovich and her Striking Protest
Anna Narinskaya, Russian Journalist, playwright, art curator, and activist
On April 10, 2023, experimental director Zhenya Berkovich and playwright Svetlana Petrichuk were arrested in Russia on charges of...
Folk Democracy in Postwar Czechoslovakia
Mira Markham, University of Michigan
During the Second World War, Czechoslovakia’s political leaders rejected the liberal democratic system of the interwar period and sought...
WCEE Film Series on Ukraine. Erase the Nation (2023, 56 min)
Followed by Q&A with film director and war journalist Tomasz Grzywaczewski. Moderator, Joseph Sywenkyj, Howard R. Marsh Visiting Professor of Journalism, LSA, Communication and Media, U-M
"Erase the Nation" is a documentary war film that sheds light on the tragic chapter of Russian war crimes committed against...
WCEE Film Series on Ukraine. Soldiers of Song (2024, 90 min, dir. Ryan Smith)
Musicians unite a war-torn Ukraine through song, sharing stories of resilience and hope amid the Russian invasion. A tribute to courage and...
CREES Noon Lecture. Nonalignment and Decolonial Imagination: Yugoslav Literary Encounters with the Global South
Nataša Kovačević, Professor of English, Eastern Michigan University
Yugoslavia’s pivot away from the Eastern Bloc and toward decolonizing countries in the Global South, which resulted in the founding of the...
WCEE Film Series on Ukraine. Lina (2024, 30 min, dir. Mykola Nosok & Oleksiy Oliyar)
Panel discussion: Ambassador Craig L. Johnstone, Co-Founder of The Humanity Funds; Danielle Leavitt, WCEE Postdoctoral Fellow, 2025-27; and Nathaniel A. Raymond, Executive Director, Humanitarian Research Lab, Yale School of Public Health
This is the story of five-year-old Lina, the seventh child of a family of eight children, who is caught between the frontlines of free...
CCPS Lecture. The Trauma of Serfdom: The Psychological Legacy of Unfree Labor in Poland
Kacper Pobłocki, social anthropologist, writer, and associate professor at the University of Warsaw
Coerced labor was a defining feature of the early modern world. While Atlantic slavery has received most scholarly attention, Eastern...
CREES Noon Lecture. A Global Perspective on Campaigns for Reproductive Rights: Insights from Soviet and Contemporary Russia
Michele Rivkin-Fish, UNC-Chapel Hill
The first ever public campaign to defend access to legal abortion in Russia took place in 2011. Notably, Russian advocates avoided common...
CCPS Lecture. Poland’s Socialist Globalisation
Max Cegielski, journalist, writer and curator
Between the political thaw of 1955 and the collapse of the socialist project in 1989, the Polish People's Republic developed close,...
CREES Noon Lecture. The Information Age Behind the Iron Curtain: Bulgarian Computers and The Society They Tried to Build
Victor Petrov, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
How did a small Balkan state become a Cold War power in the electronic field during its socialist period? During the years of late...
CCPS Lecture. East of the Atlantic. Black and White (But Not Quite)
Oliwia Bosomtwe, author
Oliwia Bosomtwe, the author of Jak biały człowiek (2024) [Like a White Man], explores the stories of people of African descent...
CREES Noon Lecture. The Last Soviet Artist
Victoria Lomasko, artist and writer
The Last Soviet Artist (n+1, 2025), finished by Victoria Lomasko three weeks before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, is a collection of...
