Russian Program
Russian and East European Events
REES Approved Events List>
Calendar Archive >
Upcoming Events
Past Events
Golosá Russian Folk Choir
Saturday, March 31, 2012 at 4:30 p.m.
Carey Auditorium, first floor Hesburgh Library
Free admission, open to the public
Monday, November 14
“What is in a Samovar? The Russian Crisis, the Soviet Adventure and the post-
Soviet Enterprise on Paintings Featuring an Innocuous Water Boiling Device,”
Dr. Gábor Tamás Rittersporn
Russian, Soviet and post-Soviet painters have been busy painting samovars since the early 1840s. At
the first sight nothing seems to be a more innocent exercise. Yet a closer look reveals that the object
was and is not a simple water boiling utensil for most of artists. So much so that they often neglected
and continue to neglect the forms and materiality of the samovar or the singular light effects it may
produce. Many a painter wanted and has the intention today as well to convey a message through
placing a samovar or two on pictures. But even samovars, which have not really been intended to
speak tell volumes about Russian, Soviet and post-Soviet history, culture, society and politics. Dr.
Rittersporn is the Director for Research and Senior Research Fellow at the Centre National de la
Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Paris. Sponsored by the Nanovic Institute for European Studies; cosponsored
by the program in Russian and East European Studies, College of Arts and Letters, and
Department of History. Admission is free! http://nanovic.nd.edu/events/
Tuesday, November 15
“Stalin in the Moscow Metro: Manifestations of a Dictator, Apparitions of a Ghost
and Elusive Futures in Soviet and post-Soviet Russia,” Dr. Gábor Tamás Rittersporn
The Moscow Metro is far more than a vulgar means of public transport. People who conceived, built
and decorated it wanted to astonish the world. They were quite successful. The architecture and
decoration of the Metro continue to impress post-Soviet citizens as well as foreign visitors.
Stations constructed between the mid-1930s and the mid-1950s are closely associated with Iosif V.
Stalin, if for nothing else then because the era is designated by the dictator's name. Many passengers
know that his effigies used to adorn subway stops. But hardly anyone can tell where and by what they
were replaced in the 1960s when the authorities believed they could exorcise Stalin's ghost through
simply removing his omnipresent portraits from public sight. Sculptures, mosaics and reliefs at
underground stops with the figure of the dictator suggested unintended messages already when Stalin
was still alive. Their substitutes are doing the same. The messages are about the Soviet project but
one may wonder if they do not tell something about post-Soviet Russia. Dr. Rittersporn is the Director
for Research and Senior Research Fellow at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
(CNRS), Paris. Sponsored by the Nanovic Institute for European Studies; co-sponsored by the
program in Russian and East European Studies, College of Arts and Letters, and Department of
History. Admission is free! http://nanovic.nd.edu/events/
Thursday, October 6
Lecture: 2011 Shannon Prize Lecture, Tara Zahra (University of Chicago)
Tara Zahra (University of Chicago) will present the 2011 Shannon Prize Lecture entitled The Battle for Children: Displacement, Humanitarianism, and Ethnic Cleansing in 20th Century Europe. Admission is free! http://nanovic.nd.edu/events/2011/10/06/6813-2011-shannon-prize-lecture/
Wednesday, October 5
Study Abroad Information: Presented by Office of International Studies
Tuesday, September 20
Lecture: “After Violence: Participation over Retaliation in Beslan,” Debra Javeline
Debra Javeline, Associate Professor of Political Science; Kellogg Institute Faculty Fellow, University of Notre Dame. Cosponsored by the Kellogg Institute for International Studies and the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. http://kellogg.nd.edu/events/calendar/fall2011.shtml#0920
Sunday, September 11
Welcome Back Picnic for Students
Thursday, March 24
Lecture: ‘Moscow, the Third Rome’ – ‘Kiev, the New Jerusalem’: Religious History and Political Mythology in Contemporary Russia and Ukraine”
Religious history for centuries provided a background for controversies between Ukrainian nationalism and Russian imperialism and was a source of political imagination. Today, religion remains one of the crucial flash points in relations between the two countries and peoples, given that Churches and their leaders are actively engaged in political discourse. Ongoing discussions about the “national idea” and “global positioning” of each of these countries between “East” and “West,” “Europe” and “Asia,” make massive use of and recourse to religious history. The lecture will explore some basic paradigms of this discourse. The clash between different ideological orientations will reveal itself as a clash between different understandings of Christianity, its history, and its message in the contemporary world. This lecture will be given by Yury Avvakumov, Assistant Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame. Prof. Avvakumov specializes in Russian and Ukrainian religious history and in the theology and history of the Byzantine rite Churches (Catholic and Orthodox) from their medieval beginnings to the present day.
Tuesday, April 5
Lecture: Brian Boyd, Distinguished Professor of English, University of Auckland (New Zealand), “Nabokov as Psychologist: Routes for Exploration”
Nabokov once responded to Robbe-Grillet’s claims that his fiction eliminated psychology by calling them “preposterous. . . . the shifts of levels, the interpenetration of successive impressions and so forth belong of course to psychology—psychology at its best.” Reminded of this in another interview and asked “Are you a psychological novelist?” he answered: “All novelists of any worth are psychological novelists.”Perhaps it is time to expand our sense of Nabokov, and of the psychology of fiction, by considering him as a passionate (and of course a playful) psychologist. To what extent does he replicate or anticipate findings in abnormal, clinical, personality and social psychology, in the psychology of perception, attention, emotion, memory, and imagination? What precursors in fictional psychology (Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Proust, Joyce?) does he emulate or challenge? What can we learn from both the psychology implicit and explicit in the characters of his fiction, and from the psychology implicit in his relation to his readers?
Wednesday, April 6
Public Lecture: Brian Boyd, "The Story Mind"
Why do we love fiction? How did evolution shape our minds to see the world in narrative terms, and to crave even stories we know to be untrue? Does fiction love us back: does it offer us benefits, or only distraction?
Thursday, April 14
Film: Karamazovi
A film that examines the relationships between lives on both sides of the proscenium, Czech director Petr Zelenka’s Karamazovi finds a Prague-based theatrical ensemble arriving in Krakow, Poland, where its members prepare to mount a stage production of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s novel The Brothers Karamazov. The central catch behind this unusual production is the locale: the play will be conducted at the local steelworks. Zelenka’s central narrative crisscrosses two spheres of reality—the documentary-like sphere of the actors playing the characters, and the more traditional cinematic narrative involving the characters in the play itself. Soon, distinct, haunting parallels between the two begin to emerge. Then, an unexpected tragedy arrives from out of left field that brutally impacts one of the spectators of the play, and further echoes the structure and preoccupations of the tale in the original novel. Throughout, Zelenka explores one central theme: that of intellectuals and their moral accountability to a world that has lost both spiritual faith and a bedrock of ethos. (Synopsis by Nathan Southern, Rovi) The 7:00 p.m. screening will be introduced by director Petr Zelenka! http://nanovic.nd.edu/news-events/film-series/
Thursday, January 27
Film: Katyn
Directed by the famed Polish director Andrzej Wajda, Katyn is about the murder of 15,000 Polish officers by the Soviet Secret Police during World War II. Among them was Wajda’s own father. Katyn uses stories from authentic diaries and letters to tell the fate of four fictional officers and their families. The truth was denied by the Soviet government until nearly sixty years after the massacre. The screening will be introduced by Mikolaj Kunicki, assistant professor of history and Nanovic Institute Faculty Fellow. http://nanovic.nd.edu/events/2011/01/27/4818-film-series-katyn/
Tuesday, November 30
Lecture: Monika Nalepa, Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Ntore Dame
"Skeletons in the Closet: Transitional Justice in Post-Communist Europe"
A lecture by Assistant Professor of Political Science Monika Nalepa, University of Notre Dame. The speaker tackles three puzzles of transitions to democracy: (1) Why do autocrats ever step down from power peacefully if they know they may be held accountable for their involvement in the regime?(2) When does the opposition refrain from meting out punishment to the former autocrats once the transition is complete?(3) Why, in some countries, does transitional justice get adopted when successors of former communists hold parliamentary majorities? She argues that transitional justice can be impeded when collaborators of the authoritarian regime infiltrate the opposition. She supports her theory using a combination of interviews, archival evidence, and statistical analysis of survey experiments in Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic.
Thursday, November 18
Film: The Man from London, directed by Béla Tarr (Hungary)
A man whose lonely life at the edge of the sea has become as predictable as the tide witnesses a murder that sends him on an existential journey the likes of which he could never have anticipated in director Béla Tarr's philosophical drama. Maloin had reached a point in life where he was content to embrace loneliness while turning a blind eye to the inevitable decay that surrounded him. Upon bearing witness to a shocking murder, however, the man who once lived a life of quiet solitude is forced to wrestle with such profound issues as punishment, mortality, and the sin of complicity in a crime he didn't even commit. Now, despite Maloin's simple wish to be free and happy, he must journey deep within his inner-self to confront emotions that he never once fathomed in his long yet uneventful existence.
Sunday, November 7
Moscow State Symphony with pianist Jeremy Denk
Acclaimed as one of the greatest orchestras from a cultural tradition rich with extraordinary symphonic ensembles, the planned repertoire featuring pianist Jeremy Denk includes Tchaikovsky’s Capriccio Italien, Op. 45; Greig’s Piano Concerto in A Minor, Op.16; Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto in G Minor, Op. 16, No. 2, and Pictures at an Exhibition by Mussorgsky and Ravel.
Saturday, October 23 and Sunday, October 31
Mussorsky's opera Boris Godunov (Live from the Metropolitan Opera broadcast in HD)
René Pape takes on one of the greatest bass roles in a production by renowned theater and opera director Peter Stein, in his Met debut. Valery Gergiev conducts Mussorgsky’s epic spectacle that captures the suffering and ambition of a nation. “Boris Godunov is a masterpiece,” Stein says. “The challenge is to transmit the enormous emotional depth of the whole thing. Boris is the czar, but he is expressing a problem we all have: the consequences of human actions.” Aleksandr Antonenko, Vladimir Ognovenko, and Ekaterina Semenchuk lead the huge cast.
Thursday, October 14
Lecture: Alyssa Gillespie, Associate Professor of Russian, University of Notre Dame. "Boris Godunov and Dmitry the Pretender: History, Poetry, Opera, Theater".
A lecture on Russian poet Alexander Pushkin’s interpretation of Russia’s “Time of Troubles” (late 16th-early 17th centuries) in his playBoris Godunov, and the play’s later artistic transformations, with a focus on the work as a meditation on the morality of art. Come learn about Pushkin's play and Mussorgsky's opera prior to the Live from the Met HD broadcast.
Thursday, April 1
Lecture: Willard Sunderland, University of Cincinnati. “The Russian Cortés? Yermak and the Problem of Conquest in Russian History”.
March 18, 2010
Picturing Rachmaninoff: A synergistic display of music, art, and poetry.
Pianist Stephen B. Cook performs Sergei Rachmaninoff's Etudes-Tableaux Op. 39 accompanied by projected images of paintings (mostly Russian) and readings of Russian poetry translated by Notre Dame Professor of Russian Alyssa Gillespie. In the Carey Auditorium. Stephen Cook, piano performing Picturing Rachmaninoff: Music, Poetry, and Painting in Concert: http://www.stephenbcook.com/artistic_projects.html
February 25, 2010
Jehanne Gheith, Duke University: “‘I had to take my son and my mother into exile: Experiences of parents and children in the Gulag”.
February 10-13, 2010
Caryl Emerson, A. Watson Armour III,University Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Princeton University,
Provost’s Distinguished Woman Lecturer at the University of Notre Dame.
Wednesday, February 10
Lecture: Brothers Karamazov the Opera: Turning a “polyphonic” novel into redemptive religious art.
Wednesday, February 10
Lecture: Russian Classics on the Stalinist Stage: The Case of Boris Godunov, 1936.
(Pushkin, Meyerhold, Prokofiev)
Thursday, February 11
Lecture: The State of the Humanities: A Discussion.
Thursday, February 11
Lecture: Tolstoy and Shakespeare.
Centennial comments on a very famous feud, with a sideways glance at Bernard Shaw.
Friday, February 12
Seminar: Tools for Teaching the Post-Boom Bakhtin: A Workshop and Practicum.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Lecture: Conor O'Dwyer, Assistant Professor of Political Science and European Studies, University of Florida. "The Advantages of Underdevelopment? The Politics of Second-Generation Economic Reform in 'New' Europe".
Monday, April 20, 2009
Professor William Brumfield, Russian Studies and Architecture, Tulane University. "Pushkin's Boldino: National Myth and Provincial Reality in Contemporary Russia".
Thursday, January 29, 2009
The Films of Yuri Norstein: An Animator's Journey.
Animated shorts by Russian director Yuri Norstein (a presentation by Clare Kitson, author of Yuri Norstein and Tale of Tales: An Animator's Journey, preceded the first screening).
Tuesday, January 13 - Friday, January 16, 2009
Seminar: Igor Pilshchikov, Leading Researcher, Institute of World Culture, Moscow State University.
Nanovic Institute Visiting European Scholar Seminar. For more information and the seminar poster, including a complete list of lectures and events, click here.
Friday, January 9 - Sunday, January 11, 2009
Alexander Pushkin and Russian National Identity: Taboo Texts, Topics, Interpretations.
Saturday, November 22, 2008
Lecture: Charles Barber, Professor of Art History, University of Notre Dame."Before and Beyond Modernism: Icons as Art".
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Film: Alice
Film by Czech director Jan Svankmajer (a presentation by Malynne Sternstein, Associate Professor of Slavic Studies at the University of Chicago, preceded the first screening).
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Lecture: David Gasperetti, Associate Professor of Russian, University of Notre Dame. "And Now, Ladies and Gentleman, Introducing The Brothers Karamazov: or, Loosening Up Tied Ends".
Tuesday, October 7 and Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Play: Patrick Dewane, The Mushroom Picker.
One-man play about a Czech-American soldier fighting in his ancestral homeland during World War II.
August 31-November 23, 2008
Exhibit: Maxim Kantor, Selections from the Wasteland and Metropolis Print Suites.
Milly and Fritz Kaeser Mestrovic Studio Gallery, Snite Museum of Art.
Wasteland principally revolves around Kantor's characteristic Russian themes: the repression and squalor of the late Soviet era, and the chaotic, crime-ridden, gangster-plagued birth of a new Russian State. But in Metropolis he has created a vast compendium of images inspired by ancient and modern art, newspapers and photography, on the lines of a medieval "Universal History" updated for our age, embracing geography, history, mythologies, stories pagan, biblical and Christian, illustrating societies, their hierarchies and power politics.
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Lecture: Holly Case, Assistant Professor of History, Cornell University. "The European Unification of World War II: Schemes from the East".
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Film: Alexander Nevsky.
Directed by Sergei Eisenstein with musical score by Sergei Prokofiev (the screening was preceded by brief presentations by three Notre Dame faculty members: Alexander Martin, Department of History, Alyssa Gillespie, Department of German and Russian, and Susan Ohmer, Department of Film, Television, and Theatre).
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Lecture: Christine Engel, University of Innsbruck. "Seeking a National Idea: Russian Cinema Today".
Monday, February 18, 2008
Lecture: Sarah Lindemann-Komarova, Founder of the Siberian Civic Initiatives Support Center and the Community School Movement in Russia. "Why Russians Like Putin: the Siberian Perspective".
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Lecture: Oleg Proskurin, Fellow, Institute of Russian Literature, Russian Academy of Sciences (St. Petersburg) and Affiliated Faculty, Emory University. "Politics, Sex, and Literature in Eighteenth-Century Russia: The Institution of Favoritism in the Mirror of Mock Poetry".
Monday, November 12, 2007
Presentation: Oxana Semenyuk, exchange student at Penn High School.
Presentation about Ukraine, Ukrainian culture, and Oxana's hometown of Ivano-Frankivsk
Saturday, February 24, 2007
Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin from the Metropolitan Opera in New York.
Live HD telecast of the Met production, with Dmitri Hvorostovsky and Renee Fleming in the leads; sung in Russian with English subtitles.
Saturday, January 27, 2007
Moscow Festival Ballet performs Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake."
Sponsored by ND Presents.
Monday, November 13, 2006
Lecture: Professor Thomas Goltz, Visiting Scholar at the University of Montana at Missoula. "The Chechen National Disaster and Other Conflicts in the Post-Soviet Caucasus".
Saturday, September 23, 2006
PAC Classic Film Series: Screening of "The Battleship Potemkin".
Directed by Sergei Eisenstein.
Thursday, September 21, 2006
Nanovic Film Series: Screening of "The Rider Named Death".
Directed by Karen Shakhnazarov (Russia 2005), introduced by Elena Monastireva-Ansdell, Visiting Assistant Professor of Russian, Bowdoin College.
Tuesday, September 5, 2006
Lecture: Georgi Derluguian, Associate Professor of Sociology, Northwestern University."The Dilemmas of Russian De-Democratization".
Tuesday, March 21, 2006
Lecture: William Craft Brumfield, Professor of Slavic Studies and Lecturer in Architecture, Tulane University. "Church and Identity in Russia: The Tikhvin-Dormition Monastery and the Return of the Tikhvin Icon of the Theotokos".
