Kulyk’s talk at Stanford will focus on popular preferences regarding language policy of the Ukrainian state as revealed by a comprehensive survey conducted in December 2006, the first such survey ever conducted in Ukraine. He will analyze the respondents’ views of actual and desirable language use in different practices, legal statuses of languages, and evolution of the language situation in the country, both on the aggregate level and broken down by ethnic, linguistic, regional, generational and other categories. He will thus demonstrate both diversity and ambivalence of popular attitudes and discuss how they influenced the state policy by constraining a compromise between the adherents of opposing political courses and, at the same time, enabling the government and major parties to alternate between emphasizing and downplaying the language issue in their political rhetoric and practice.

Volodymyr Kulyk is a senior research fellow at the Institute of Political and Ethnic Studies, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, in Kyiv, from which he received his Ph.D. in 1999. Currently, he is a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. His research fields include politics of language and ethnicity in contemporary Ukraine and other multilingual societies, language ideologies, and media discourse. Kulyk is the author of two published books and numerous articles and book chapters on these topics in Ukrainian, English and other languages. His last published text is “Language Policies and Language Attitudes in Post-Orange Ukraine”, in Juliane Besters-Dilger (ed.), Language policy and language situation in Ukraine. Analysis and recommendations (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2008). His new book, Dyskurs ukraïns’kykh medii: Identychnosti, ideolohiï, vladni stosunky (Ukrainian Media Discourse: Identities, Ideologies, Power Relations) will be published in Kyiv later this year. He guest-edited a special issue of the International Journal of the Sociology of Language on “Languages and Language Ideologies in Ukraine”, to appear in early 2010. As a Wilson Center Fellow, Kulyk works on a project titled “Language, Identity and Democracy in Post-Soviet Ukraine”, which will result in an English-language book.

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

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.

During the Cold War, the United States and the former Soviet Union relied on nuclear deterrence to navigate successfully through those perilous years. In today's world, with the accelerating spread of nuclear material, know--how, and weapons, we are facing an increasing danger that nuclear weapons, the deadliest weapons ever invented, may be acquired by ruthless national leaders or suicidal terrorists. Under these circumstances, relying on thousands of nuclear weapons for deterrence is becoming increasingly hazardous and decreasingly effective.

What will it take to rekindle the vision of a world free of nuclear weapons that President Reagan and General Secretary Gorbachev brought to their remarkable summit at Reykjavik in 1986? Can a world-wide consensus be forged on a series of practical steps to escape the nuclear deterrence trap?

Amandeep Singh Gill is a visiting fellow at CISAC. He is a member of the Indian Foreign Service and has served in the Indian Mission to the United Nations in Geneva, the Indian Embassy in Tehran and the High Commission of India in Colombo. At headquarters in New Delhi, he has served twice in the Disarmament and International Security Affairs Division of the Ministry of External Affairs from 1998 to 2001 and again from 2006 to 2008 at critical junctures in India’s nuclear diplomacy. He was a member of the Indian delegation to the Conference on Disarmament during the negotiations on the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. He has also served as an expert on the UN Secretary General’s panels of experts on Small Arms and Light Weapons and on Missiles.

His research priorities include disarmament, arms control and non proliferation, Asian regional security and human security issues.  He is currently working on the interaction of nuclear policies of major states, particularly in Asia.

Before joining the Indian Foreign Service, Amandeep Gill worked as a telecommunications engineer. He retains an abiding interest in the interaction of science, security and politics. He is founder of a non-profit called Farmers First Foundation that seeks to reclaim agriculture for the farmers and demonstrate the viability of integrated agriculture in harmony with nature.

David Holloway is the Raymond A. Spruance Professor of International History, a professor of political science, and an FSI senior fellow. He was co-director of CISAC from 1991 to 1997, and director of FSI from 1998 to 2003. His research focuses on the international history of nuclear weapons, on science and technology in the Soviet Union, and on the relationship between international history and international relations theory. His book Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy, 1939-1956 (Yale University Press, 1994) was chosen by the New York Times Book Review as one of the 11 best books of 1994, and it won the Vucinich and Shulman prizes of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies. It has been translated into six languages, most recently into Czech in 2008. Holloway also wrote The Soviet Union and the Arms Race (1983) and co-authored The Reagan Strategic Defense Initiative: Technical, Political and Arms Control Assessment (1984). He has contributed to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Foreign Affairs, and other scholarly journals.

Since joining the Stanford faculty in 1986 -- first as a professor of political science and later (in 1996) as a professor of history as well -- Holloway has served as chair and co-chair of the International Relations Program (1989-1991), and as associate dean in the School of Humanities and Sciences (1997-1998). Before coming to Stanford, he taught at the University of Lancaster (1967-1970) and the University of Edinburgh (1970-1986). Born in Dublin, Ireland, he received his undergraduate degree in modern languages and literature, and his PhD in social and political sciences, both from Cambridge University.

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