An international conference organized by the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies at Stanford University.

Participants:

Damir Arsenijević, Edina Bećirević, Boris Buden, Amila Buturović, Andrew Herscher, Norman Naimark, Zilka Spahić-Šiljak, Branimir Stojanović, Milica Tomić, and Sarah Wagner

Co-sponsored by Stanford Global Studies, The Europe Center, The Mediterranean Studies Forum, The Sohaib and Sara Abbasi Program in Ilamic Studies, the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Film and Media Studies Program in the Department of Art & Art History, Stanford Humanities Center, with funding from the US Department of Education Title VI National Resource Centers program.

Ernst Röhm (1887-1934) was an early member of the Nazi Party and Hitler’s closest friend.  As head of the Nazi SA (Sturmabteilung), Röhm was one of the most powerful men in the Third Reich, at least until his execution during the “Night of Long Knives” in the summer of 1934.  Röhm was also openly homosexual.   This talk considers Röhm’s rise, the disclosure of his homosexuality in 1931 in two widely-publicized trials (for violation of the anti-sodomy statute), his role in the consolidation of Nazi control, and his downfall.  The talk also considers how Hans Blüher’s theory of the Männerbund (male association) might help analyze not only Röhm and the Nazis but also contribute more broadly to the historical sociology of nationalist revolution.

Co-sponsored by the Department of History, The Europe Center and the Department of German Studies.

Abstract: Chevaline was the codename given to a highly-secret program begun in 1970 to improve the performance of the UK's force of Polaris submarine-launched ballistic missiles in order to give them the capability to overcome Soviet ABM defenses deployed around Moscow. After much technical difficulty, delays in project timescale and cost escalation the new system was finally introduced in 1982, but it had already attracted major criticism for the expenditure involved, claims of project mismanagement, the rationale that underpinned its development, and its concealment from proper parliamentary scrutiny. This lecture will explore the background to the program, why it ran into so many problems, and how it became one of the most controversial episodes in post-war British defense policy. An understanding of the problems confronted by the attempt to improve Polaris illuminates a number of key themes and issues that are of relevance to policymakers concerned with strategic weapons programs and project management.

About the Speaker: Matthew Jones’ current research focuses on British nuclear history during the Cold War. He has also written on many different aspects of US and British foreign and defense policy in the 20th century, and has a long-standing interest in empire and decolonization in South East Asia. Jones’ first book, Britain, the United States and the Mediterranean War, 1942-44 (Macmillan, 1996), examined strains in the Anglo-American relationship by strategic issues and command problems in the Mediterranean theater. His book, Conflict and Confrontation in South East Asia, 1961-1965: Britain, the United States, Indonesia, and the Creation of Malaysia (Cambridge University Press, 2002), looks at the federation of Malaysia during British decolonization in the early 1960s. After Hiroshima: The United States, Race, and Nuclear Weapons in Asia, 1945-1965 (Cambridge University Press, 2010) addresses US nuclear policies in Asia in the period of the Korean War, confrontation with China, and early engagement in Vietnam. His current project on UK nuclear policy encompasses the development of nuclear strategy within NATO, the Anglo-American nuclear relationship, and European responses to strategic arms control. In 2008, Jones was appointed by the Prime Minister to become the Cabinet Office official historian of the UK strategic nuclear deterrent and the Chevaline program, a commission that will lead to the publication of a two-volume official history exploring British nuclear policy between 1945 and 1982. Jones’s journal articles have appeared in Diplomatic History, Historical Journal, Journal of Cold War Studies, and English Historical Review. He gained his DPhil in Modern History at St. Antony’s College, Oxford, in 1992.

Karen Dawisha is the author of Putin’s Kleptocracy. Who Owns Russia? and the Walter E. Havighurst Professor of Political Science and Director of the Havighurst Center at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.

Co-sponsored by the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies, The Europe Center, and the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law.

This colloquium is the final event of the year-long working group on 'The Contemporary." The workshop examines the  “contemporary” with a focus on defining moments such as: 1945, 1973, 1989, and 2001. In recent years the concept of the contemporary has been taken up within limited disciplinary discourses and in the context of distinct geographical settings. The horizon of this workshop, however, is the global. We employ a comparative and interdisciplinary approach to the hybrid term “contemporary” as it intersects various fields and serves as a heuristic device to understand phenomena in politics, culture, and the arts. In this spirit, our colloquium brings together scholars from various fields and disciplines that all are grappling with questions such as 1. what is this thing we call "the contemporary," and how do traditional disciplinary methods need to adapt to new challenges faced by the unique cultural objects of the contemporary moment?

For more information on this colloqium and to view videos of the presentations, please visit The Contemporary website

Co-sponsored by the Department of Literatures, Cultures and Language, Department of Literatures, Cultures and Language Research Units, The Europe Center, Stanford Humanities Center and Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity.

What does 20 years mean when we are dealing with traumas of war? How do people symbolize the war, what kind of imaginary do they create when they try to make sense of what happened to them and their country, and how do they come to terms with their losses?

In the last years, I have visited both Srebrenica and St. Louis in Missouri, home of the largest community of Bosnian refugees in the US. The way these two communities deal with trauma is radically different. However, they strangely find similar dilemmas when they search for the remains of their loved ones with the help of forensic analysis.

Trauma, however, has not surpassed also the observers - the Dutch soldiers who witnessed the genocide and did nothing to prevent it. But did the other observers - the international community - learn anything from Srebrenica? Did not the lack of reflection on failure of intervention in Srebrenica, paradoxically, allow other future failures to multiply?

Renata Salecl is a philosopher and sociologist. She is Senior Researcher at the Institute of  Criminology at the Faculty of Law in Ljubljana, Slovenia, professor at the School of Law, Birkbeck College, University of London and Recurring Visiting Professor at Cardozo School of Law in New York. Salecl is the author of The Spoils of Freedom (Routledge 1994), (Per)versions of Love and Hate (Verso, 1998), On Anxiety (Routledge 2004), Tyranny of Choice (Profile Books 2010).  Her books have been translated into more than 10 languages.  She also writes commentaries for the leading daily newspaper Delo in Ljubljana, Slovenia. In the last years, she has been named Slovenian Woman Scientist of the Year as well as Woman of the Year.

Co-sponsored by Stanford Global Studies, The Europe Center, The Mediterranean Studies Forum, The Sohaib and Sara Abbasi Program in Ilamic Studies, the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Film and Media Studies Program in the Department of Art & Art History, Stanford Humanities Center, with funding from the US Department of Education Title VI National Resource Centers program.

For more information on the conference, please visit here: Yugoslav Space Twenty Years After Srebrenica

To RSVP, please send email to luisrr@stanford.edu.  You may request a copy of the workshop paper at the same time.

On March 27, 1492, a few days before the Edict that expelled the Jews from Spain, the royal chronicler Alfonso de Palencia (1423-1492) published his Castilian translations of two works by the famous Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, The Jewish War and Against Apion.  Palencia’s volume, Guerra judaica con los libros contra Appion, thus exemplifies the tension between two facets of Josephus’s writing:  his fierce critique of Jewish sectarianism and stubborn resistance to Imperial order and his eloquent defence of their religious and cultural traditions. This paper explores the cultural and political significance of these Spanish translations in the light of the events leading up to 1492 and it considers whether Palencia appropriated this Romanized Jewish historian in order to open up a space for religious minorities in the new imperial order ushered in by the Catholic Monarchs. To do this, I read Palencia’s translations against other contemporary texts by and about Jews and conversos, and consider the marginalia of sixteenth-century readers found in extant copies of the 1492 edition.

The broader issues raised include: the ambivalent alignment between the ‘intellectual’ and the ‘State’ (both terms need to be historicised); anti-judaism as a ‘way of thinking’ (to borrow David Nirenberg’s term); the meaning and limits of early modern tolerance.

This talk is part of the Theoretical Perspectives of the Middle Ages workshop.

Co-sponsored by The Europe Center, Stanford Humanities Center, Iberian and Latin American Cultures and the Department of Religious Studies.

Abstract

Convened by Professor Joel Beinin and Professor Robert Crews, this one-day conference will explore the global history of the Middle East and North Africa. The conference is chronologically delimited by two New York-centered financial panics that had substantial consequences for the Middle East and North Africa. While the region has long been engaged in global circuits of commerce, culture, and migration, this choice of chronological frame highlights the renewed salience of political economy in several academic disciplines.

Conference Program

8:45 -9:00 Welcoming Remarks

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Co-sponsored by the Department of History and The Europe Center.

This event has been cancelled. We will update our website once the new date has been determined.