Professor Mikolaj Kunicki will present an overview of church-state relations in contemporary Poland. By focusing on the lustration of the Catholic clergy, he will discuss the decline of the political power of the church and its impact on the renegotiation of nationalist-religious identity.

Mikolaj Kunicki joined the department of history at Notre Dame in 2006. He earned his Ph.D. at Stanford University (2004). He also holds M.A. degrees from the University of London (1996), Central European University in Budapest (1994), and Warsaw University (1993). He taught at Stanford University and UC Berkeley and was a Junior Research Fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna in 2005-2006.

Kunicki is a historian of twentieth century Poland and Eastern Europe. His work focuses primarily on the role of nationalism in Polish and Eastern European history and analyzes the complex entanglement of fascism, communism, and Catholicism. He is particularly interested in exploring nationalist-communist affinities as well as the ideological kinship between the radical right and the extreme left. By doing so, he reevaluates and challenges the way a history of communist Poland and Eastern Europe has been understood and presented. He is also interested in Eastern European film, and devoted especially to examining cinematic representations of the national past and the status of film vis-à-vis communist regimes. Kunicki published in East European Politics and Societies, European Review of History, Transit, and Canadian Slavonic Revue.

Jointly sponsored by the Forum on Contemporary Europe and the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies at Stanford University.

This lecture deals with the strategies of reconstructing the suppressed memory of traumatic events in Kosova, Afghanistan, and Bosnia and Herzegovina at the end of the 20th century. In this period of transitions and changes, history has become a key conflict arena in which identity and memory are being waged. Milica Tomic's work addresses these issues in an unconventional way that challenges traditional ‘representation’ (or lack of thereof) of the past events. By combining three of her exhibited projects xy-üngelost, container and Srebrenica – this talk attempts to investigate the ways in which we can engage with the past to confront the drives to forget. Thus re-constructed material and social network of events critically investigate the politics of rights to narrate traumatic events from the past. Proceeding from the fact that what we cannot remember tells us about that which we cannot forget, Milica Tomic interprets the syntagm “politics of memory” as a demand for a renewal of politics. Stated in the negative form, it goes: There is no memory without politics!/There is no oblivion without politics!

Milica Tomic works and lives in Belgrade as a visual artist, primarily video, film, photography, performance, action, light and sound installation, web projects, discussions etc. Tomic's work centers on issues of political violence, nationality and identity, with particular attention to the tensions between personal experience and media constructed images. Milica Tomic's has exhibited globally since 1998 and participated in numerous exhibitions including Venice Biennale in 2001 and 2003, Sao Paulo Biennale in1998, Istanbul Biennale in 2003 and Sidney Biennale in 2006, Prague Biennale in 2007, Gyumri Biennale in 2008. Tomic's work was exhibited in a wide international context including the Museum voor Moderne Kunst, Arnhem, Holland, Kunsthalle Wien, Austria, Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden, MUMOK- Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, Vienna, Austria, Fundacio Joan Miro, Barcelona, Spain, Ludwig Museum Budapest, Hungary, Malmo Konsthall, Malmo, Sweden, Palazzo Della Triennale Milano, Milan, Italy, Museum of Contamporary Art Belgrade, Serbia, GfZK- Galerie fur Zeitgenussische Kunst, Leipzig, Germany, State Museum of Contemporary Art Thessaloniki, Greece, Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel, Germany, Copenhagen Contemporary Art Center, Copenhagen, Denmark, Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York, USA, Freud Museum, London, UK, KIASMA Nykytaiteen Museo, Helsinki, Finland, Nasjonalmuseet for Kunst, Arkitektur og Design, Oslo, Norway, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Holland etc.

A founder and member of the Monument Group, Tomic is a organizer of numerous international art projects and workshops, as well as lecturer at international institutions of contemporary art, such as: NIFCA (Nordic Institute for Contemporary Art), Kuvataideakatemia / Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki, Finland, Piet Zwart Institut, Rotterdam, Holland, Akademie der bildenden Künste, Vienna, Austria and others.

Jointly sponsored by the Forum on Contemporary Europe, Archaeology Center, Department of Art and Art History, and Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies.

Antonis Balasopoulos, Assistant Professor in the Department of English Studies, University of Cyprus, is one of the most important younger scholars working in literary criticism and theory today. He has co-edited Comparative Literature and Global Studies: Histories and Trajectories; Conformism, Non-Conformism and Anti-Conformism in the Culture of the United States; and States of Theory: History and Geography of Critical Narratives.

He has held a Visiting Research Fellowship at Princeton University and has been appointed Institute Faculty at the Dartmouth Institute of American Studies, Dartmouth College. His research interests include Utopian fiction and nonfiction, 16th-19th centuries; Literature and Culture of US Empire, 1800-1900; literature, geography and the production of space; nationalism, colonialism and postcoloniality; critical theory, especially Marxism, genre theory, and theories of the political; visual culture, especially cinema.

Sponsored by the Division of Literatures, Cultures and Languages, the Department of Comparative Literature, the English Department, the Program in Modern Thought and Literature, German Studies, and the Forum on Contemporary Europe.