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Events & Programs
The Weiser Center for Emerging Democracies sponsors and co-sponsors lectures, conferences, symposia, briefings, and other events. Our multimedia page includes audio and video files from recent events.
Click here to see a complete calendar of Fall 2009 events of WCED and its Weiser Center affiliates.
Upcoming Events
November 24, 2009
2:30 PM - 4:00 PM, 1636 International Institute/SSWB, 1080 S. University
Film. Song from the Southern Seas.
Further Information:
Description:
Marat Sarulu, director. A darkly comic feud is ignited when a Russian man suspects that his son is the result of an affair between his wife and a Kazakh neighbor. Russian with English subtitles (80 min., 2008). Free and open to the public.
December 04, 2009
9:00 AM - 5:00 PM, Henderson Room, Michigan League
9s Conference. “The Nines: Brinks, Cusps, and Perceptions of Possibility—from 1789–2009”
Further Information:
The 20th anniversary of 1989 stimulates reflections on the momentous events from Germany to China that promised change in the world. But the end of other decades—1979 in Iran and Afghanistan, the financial crisis in 1929, and in exemplary ways, 1789 in France—inspire similar commemorative reconsiderations. These and other “nines” include moments of transition and change, possibility and crisis. While the promise of democracy might frame our reflections on 1989, it is not enough to help us appreciate how other radical transformations were conceived or experienced, and indeed, what the iconic “1989” also embodied beyond democracy’s extension. We need to better understand how world-historic events shape the imagination, and how visions of the world and its perceived trajectories can shape the course of events.
In Fall 2009, the Weiser Center for Europe and Eurasia, together with other partnering units at the University of Michigan, will present programs addressing the relationship between world-historic events and alternative visions of the world embedded in these times. This series will explore 1989 alongside historical transformations of the many other iconic “nines” of the modern era and the alternative futures they inspired.
Description:
Conveners: Dario Gaggio, CES-EUC director; Mary Gallagher, CCS director; Michael D. Kennedy, CREES research associate and Howard R. Swearer Director, Watson Institute for International Studies, Brown University; and Douglas Northrop, CREES director.
December 05, 2009
9:30 AM - 12:30 PM, Henderson Room, Michigan League
9s Conference. “The Nines: Brinks, Cusps, and Perceptions of Possibility—from 1789–2009”
Further Information:
The 20th anniversary of 1989 stimulates reflections on the momentous events from Germany to China that promised change in the world. But the end of other decades—1979 in Iran and Afghanistan, the financial crisis in 1929, and in exemplary ways, 1789 in France—inspire similar commemorative reconsiderations. These and other “nines” include moments of transition and change, possibility and crisis. While the promise of democracy might frame our reflections on 1989, it is not enough to help us appreciate how other radical transformations were conceived or experienced, and indeed, what the iconic “1989” also embodied beyond democracy’s extension. We need to better understand how world-historic events shape the imagination, and how visions of the world and its perceived trajectories can shape the course of events.
In Fall 2009, the Weiser Center for Europe and Eurasia, together with other partnering units at the University of Michigan, will present programs addressing the relationship between world-historic events and alternative visions of the world embedded in these times. This series will explore 1989 alongside historical transformations of the many other iconic “nines” of the modern era and the alternative futures they inspired.
Description:
Conveners: Dario Gaggio, CES-EUC director; Mary Gallagher, CCS director; Michael D. Kennedy, CREES research associate and Howard R. Swearer Director, Watson Institute for International Studies, Brown University; and Douglas Northrop, CREES director.
December 10, 2009
4:00PM - 5:30PM, 1636 International Institute/SSWB
Further Information:
This lecture assesses Romania's transformation in the two decades since the dramatic events of December 1989. In particular, it tries to address the seeming paradox between the country's significant post-communist achievements, including the January 2007 EU accession, and the pervasive sense of cynicism and disappointment with the country's trajectory among Romanian elites and ordinary citizens. I argue that much of the frustration is due to the gap between unrealistic expectations – fueled by the hopes of a moral renaissance in the wake of the 1989 revolution and the growing salience of Western comparisons – and the much more mundane reality of a fledgling democracy that still bears noticeable traces of the country's difficult communist and pre-communist legacies.
Grigore Pop-Eleches is the author of From Economic Crisis to Reform: IMF Programs in Latin America and Eastern Europe (Princeton University Press 2009). He has published a number of journal articles about the role of historical legacies and international factors, including EU enlargement, in shaping post-communist political transformations in Eastern Europe. He is interested in the dynamics of political liberalization and deliberalizations in the post-Cold War era, and in the role of elections in triggering these changes. He is currently working on a book manuscript about the mechanisms through which the communist past affects post-communist political behavior, and is involved in a series of public opinion surveys in Romania, Moldova, and Bulgaria, which probe several distinctive features of post-communist politics, including the prevalence of protest voting and widespread distrust in political leaders and institutions.
Part of “The Nines: Brinks, Cusps, and Perceptions of Possibility—from 1789–2009”
Description:
Grigore Pop-Eleches, assistant professor of politics and public and international affairs, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University. Sponsors: CES-EUC, CREES, WCED.
December 15, 2009
2:30 PM - 4:00 PM, 1636 International Institute/SSWB, 1080 S. University
Film. Song from the Southern Seas.
Further Information:
Description:
Marat Sarulu, director. A darkly comic feud is ignited when a Russian man suspects that his son is the result of an affair between his wife and a Kazakh neighbor. Russian with English subtitles (80 min., 2008). Free and open to the public.