Kalendarium wystąpień gości w semestrze zimowym 2025:
Dr Irina Torcan (Universitatea Națională de Artă Teatrală și Cinematografică „I. L. Caragiale") - (22.10.2025)
“The Cinematic Advent of Democracy: Depictions of the 1989 Revolution in Romanian Films”
Abstract
From Harun Farocki and Andrei Ujică’s Videograms of a Revolution (1992) to Bogdan Mureșanu’s The New Year that Never Came (2024), the fall of the Ceaușescu regime in 1989 is a frequent topic for cinematic representation. It is a historical turning point – in that a mass movement ended a repressive regime – as well as a landmark of media history – given the broad, international circulation of the Ceaușescu couple’s summary trial and execution, the iconic performance of revolutionaries at the headquarters of the national television, and the opacity of recordings that purportedly document and explain the turmoil on the streets, calling into question the evidentiary status of audiovisual material. Plot and visibility are tenuous concepts with respect to this specific historical event. Paraphrasing the title of a closely related film (Corneliu Porumboiu’s 12.08 East of Bucharest, 2006, with its original title literally translated to Was it or wasn’t it?/Did it happen or not?), the epistemic conundrum of the Romanian Revolution haunts all historical films that try to recreate it. Some approaches extract tension and exhilaration from the least disputed aspects of the event (for instance Tudor Giurgiu’s suspenseful Freedom, 2023, or Cătălin Mitulescu’s coming-of-age How I Celebrated the End of the World, 2006). Others recreate the confusion in medias res – most successfully, Radu Muntean’s The Paper Will Be Blue, 2006. An alternative approach dispenses with plot altogether and relies on archive images for an elliptical evocation (such as Vlad Petri’s Between Revolutions, 2023). Typically, the historical reenactment of such a crucial event can be probed to equally reflect the present of its making – Romania’s recollections of the 1989 change of regime reflect its assessment of how “democracy”, “power”, “globalization” are valued or understood some decades later. Mythologized as the single necessary event to ensure Romania’s democratic and prosperous future, the Romanian Revolution of 1989 is often rewritten and reimagined in retrospect.
Bibliography
Alter, Nora. The Essay Film after Fact and Fiction. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2019.
Elsaesser, Thomas, ed. Harun Farocki : Working on the Sightlines. Amsterdam: Amsterdam Univ. Press, 2004.
Gorzo, Andrei. Videograme Dintr-o Revoluţie - Un Studiu Critic. Editura LiterNet, 2016. https://editura.liternet.ro/descarcare/328/pdf/Andrei-Gorzo/Videograme-dintr-o-revolutie-Un-studiu-critic.html.
Konrad Petrovszky, and Ovidiu Tichindeleanu. Romanian Revolution Televised: Contributions to the Cultural History of Media. Idea Design & Print, 2011.
László Strausz. Hesitant Histories on the Romanian Screen. Springer, 2017.
Rosenstone, Robert A. History on Film/Film on History. Longman Publishing Group, 2006.
Serban, Alexandru Leo. “Romanian Cinema: From Modernity to Neo-Realism.” Film Criticism 34, no. 2/3 (2010): 2–21. https://doi.org/10.2307/44019234.
Trocan, Irina, ed. Romanian Cinema inside out : Insights on Film Culture, Industry and Politics, 1912-2019. Bucureşti Romanian Culture Institute, 2020.
Dr Francesco Trupia (Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun) - (29.10.2025)
“When your community is (still) at war”: Islamophobia and Antisemitism from the Perspectives of Young Balkan Muslims”
Abstract
The dissolution of Yugoslavia coincided with the breakout of ethnic wars and genocidal violence against Muslims, among others. After being displaced and forced to migrate to different European countries, these former socialist citizens quickly developed institutions of sociability and enacted postulates of solidarity.
This presentation focuses on the generations of young Muslims born to former refugee families from the Balkans. It explores how the knowledge transfer of traumas and their afterlives occurs across generations in order to discuss the different ways young Muslims of Balkan origin recollect the history of the 1990s and how they position themselves vis-à-vis the current geopolitical upheavals in Ukraine and the Middle East. Drawing on qualitative data collected in Belgium, Germany, Poland, and Italy, this perspective turns a spotlight on the rise of Islamophobia and Antisemitism and how both phenomena are often contested and rejected by the groups under scrutiny when they liken today's injustice to their family histories from war-torn Yugoslavia and assimilation campaigns in nearby Bulgaria. Therefore, the main aim of the presentation is to understand how young Muslims of Balkan origin respond to Islamophobia, and how they reflect on the subtle forms of antisemitism “in the West”.
Central Question:
● How does the violence of the present and past converge and resurface among young Muslims of Balkan origin born and raised in the West?
● How does today’s geopolitical turmoil reopen old wounds and perpetuate the traumatic scars of past violence?
● Are the rampant phenomena of Islamophobia and Antisemitism the two faces of the same coin, or do they conversely differ in their cultural manifestations among the Balkan diaspora?
● What do the phenomena of Islamophobia and Antisemitism tell us about Europe’s historical traumas and the current solidarity campaigns in support of Ukraine, Israel, and/or Gaza?
Main bibliography
Ali, N., El-Sherif, L. and Mire, H. (2023) Islamophobia and Proximities to Whiteness: Organising Outside of the Brown Muslim Subject. ReOrient, 8 (1), pp. 78–100. https://doi.org/10.13169/reorient.8.1.0078
Barna, I., et al (2018) ‘Contemporary Forms of the Oldest Hatred: Modern Antisemitism in the Visegrád Countries’, in A. Bíró and K. Lantos Swett (eds.) The Noble Banner of Human Rights. Essays in Memory of Tom Lantos. Leiden: Brill Nijhoff, pp. 303–338. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004376960_009
Bobako, M. (2017) The Palestinian Knot: The ‘New Anti-Semitism’, Islamophobia and the Question of Postcolonial Europe. Theory, Culture and Society, 35 (3), pp. 99–120. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276417708859
Canan, C. and Foroutan, N. (2016) The Paradox of Equal Belonging of Muslims. Islamophobia Studies Journal, 3 (2), pp. 160–176. http://dx.doi.org/10.18452/22484
D’Haenens, L. and Mekki-Berrada, A. (eds.) Islamophobia as a Form of Radicalisation. Perspectives on Media, Academia and Socio-political Scapes from Europe and Canada. Leuven:
Leuven University Press.
Law, I., Easat-Daas, A., Merali, A. and Sayyid, S. (2019) Countering Islamophobia in Europe. Cham, Switzerland: Springer.
Müller, D. (2009) Orientalism and Nation: Jews and Muslims as Alterity in Southeastern Europe in the Age of Nation-States, 1878–1941. East Central Europe, 36 (1), pp. 63–99. https://doi.org/10.1163/187633009X411485
Najib, K. and Teeple Hopkins, C. (2020) Geographies of Islamophobia. Social & Cultural Geography, 21 (4), pp. 449–457. https://doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2019.1705993
Nijab, K. (2022) Spatialised Islamophobia. London: Routledge.
Pickel, G. and Öztürk, C. (2018) Islamophobia Without Muslims? The “Contact Hypothesis” as an Explanation for Anti-Muslim Attitudes – Eastern European Societies in a Comparative Perspective. Journal of Nationalism, Memory & Language Politics, 12 (2), pp. 162–191. https://doi.org/10.2478/jnmlp-2018-0009
Rexhepi, P. (2015) Mainstreaming Islamophobia: The Politics of European Enlargement and the Balkan Crime-Terror Nexus, East European Quarterly, 43 (2–3), pp. 189–214. Available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2706058
Dr Bogdan Trifunović (Research Fellow, Centre for South East European Studies, University of Graz) - 13.11.2025
“The Past as a Bag of Choices: Constructing Wanted and Unwanted Traditions in Western Balkan”
Central Question: "Can the canon be shaped completely arbitrarily, or are there limits within cultural paradigms?"
Discussion Points:
● The role of authenticity vs. construction in heritage preservation
● Limits of institutional power in shaping collective memory
● The persistence of "unwanted" traditions despite official marginalization
● European integration as cultural homogenization vs. diversity preservation
Contemporary Parallels
● How do these mechanisms operate in other post-conflict societies?
● What can the Western Balkans case teach us about memory politics more broadly?
The role of digital preservation in democratizing or controlling heritage narrativess Heritage”
Primary Sources (to be distributed in advance):
Policy Documents:
o Excerpts from EU digitization guidelines vs. national heritage policies
o Official statements on heritage preservation from WB institutions
20th Century Heritage Materials:
o Europeana 1914-1918 presentation of Balkan WWI heritage vs. national museum materials
o WWII resistance narratives from institutional archives
o Yugoslav Wars testimonies: examples of preserved vs. marginalized materials
Theoretical Framework:
o Aleida Assmann: "Canon and Archive" (selected passages)
o Pierre Nora: "Between Memory and History" (excerpts)
Secondary Literature:
● Tornquist-Plewa, B. "Beyond the History of Ethnic Cleansing" (introduction)
● Capurro, C. et al. "Digital heritage infrastructures as cultural policy instruments"
Prof. dr hab. Ewa Domańska (Uniwersytet Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu- University of Stanford) - 26.11.2025
“On the Anticipatory Role of the Humanities”
Abstract
This talk explores anticipatory history as a form of future-oriented knowledge building that aims not only to understand the past, but also to support adaptive capacities, resilience building, and long-term thinking in the face of global challenges. Drawing on the concept of anticipation understood not merely as expectation, but as proactive preparation, I examine whether historical knowledge can contribute to preventing future catastrophes and support human and planetary survival.
The presentation discusses the educational and formative role of the humanities in fostering “anticipatory competencies,” such as the ability to analyze long-term trends, detect early signals of change, and cultivate values like critical hope, responsibility, and trust. Using the example of the Adam Mickiewicz University Time Capsule (2019–2119), the talk reflects on unconventional historical artifacts, such as tardigrades, meteorite fragments, seeds, coal as both traces of our present and speculative markers of possible futures. Finally, the paper considers anticipation as a trans-species cognitive and evolutionary capacity, offering a post-anthropocentric perspective on survival strategies in times of crisis.
Bibliography
▪ DeSilvey Caitlin & Simon Naylor, “Introduction,” in: Anticipatory History, eds. Caitlin DeSilvey, Simon Naylor, and Colin Sackett. Uniformbooks, 2011.
▪ Domańska Ewa, Wiedza historyczna jako wiedza antycypacyjna, w: RAT (Resilience Academic Team), Humanistyka prewencyjna, koordynacja prac redakcyjnych: Ewa Domańska, Piotr Słodkowski, Monika Stobiecka. Warszawa-Poznań: Muzeum Sztuki Nowoczesnej; Poznańskie Centrum Dziedzictwa, 2022.
▪ Poli Roberto, “Introduction,” in his, Introduction to Anticipation Studies. Springer 2017.
▪ Zuboff Shoshana, “The Right to the Future Tense,” in her, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. New York: Public Affairs, 2018.
Francesc Feliu (Universitat de Girona – Institut d’Estudis Catalans) - (3.12.2025)
“On the role of language in the political aspirations of Catalans. Advantages and disadvantages of an eminently cultural nationalism in a globalized society”
Abstract:
The lecture will analyze the role that has historically been given to the Catalan language in the foundation of contemporary Catalan nationalism, and will examine how this has affected the latest episodes of demanding the political independence of Catalonia (2012-2017), a stage in which attempts were made to leave the issue of language in the background.
It will be explained how today the claim for the language —inevitably connected, in Catalonia, with the national claim— has become more difficult than ever, given the current demographic composition of the country and the damage, perhaps irreparable, that can be caused to other linguistic territories not involved in Catalonia's political aspirations. However, a political independence that entailed renouncing the plenitude of the language —in the Irish way, so to speak— provokes an absolutely general rejection among Catalans, for the reasons previously explained, and does not seem to be a wanted goal for anyone.
Bibliography
Argenté, J.A. & Jens Lüdke, eds. (2020) Manual of Catalan linguistics. De Gruyter (Manuals of Romance linguistics, 25).
Conselleria de Política Lingüística – Generalitat de Catalunya (2025) Pacte nacional per la llengua. [https://llengua.gencat.cat/web/.content/temes/
pacte-nacional-per-la-llengua/pacte-nacional-per-la-llengua.pdf]
Duran Solà, Lluís (2017) Història del catalanisme. Barcelona: Publicacions de l’Abadia de Montserrat.
Feliu, Francesc, ed. (2023) Desired Language. Languages as objects of national ideology. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing.
Lamuela, Xavier & Josep Murgades (1984) Teoria de la llengua literaria segons Fabra. Barcelona: Edicions dels Quaderns Crema.
Pradilla, Miquel Àngel (2015) La catalanofonia: Una comunitat del segle xxi a la recerca de la normalitat lingüística. Barcelona: Institut d’Estudis Catalans.
Riquer, Borja de, dir. (2025) La mem
Prof. dr Vanni D'Alessio (Department of Social Sciences, University of Naples Federico II) - 10.12.2025
“The National integrations and Symbolic Representations of a Borderland and Multilingual Space: The Slavic-Romance Northern Adriatic in the 20th century”
Abstract
This talk explores the long 20 th century history of the contested and borderland area of the northern Adriatic, at the intersection between Central Europe, the Balkans and the Mediterranean, and ruled throughout the century by different political regimes: The Austrian and the Hungarian parts of the Habsburg Monarchy, the kingdoms and later the republics of Italy and of Yugoslavia, Slovenia and Croatia.
I will discuss their various nationalization processes which took place in this area and how the political transitions and the policies of these different states influenced the representation of the public space and the socio-cultural development of the population, who spoke different languages and dialects, mainly Romance and Slavic. I will focus on the phenomena of ethnic and national identifications along and across the provincial and linguistic boundaries and how they were influenced by different political and ideological frameworks in this ethnic and state borderland area.
Local and central governments tried to influence the local society and its linguistic balance in many ways. The language of the administration and of public schools were a primary concern. In transitional periods central and local policy makers were also eager to make changes in the toponymy and place marks on the territory, such as monuments, plaques, flags and emblems of the municipalities. Local society played an important role in the dissemination and reception of material symbols of national affiliations which intersected in the visual landscape. The different colors and the symbols, such as the communist red star or the fascist bundle of rods (fascio), the stone monuments and drawings or other figurative representations of the Habsburg or Roman eagle, of the Venetian lion, up to the Istrian goat and bull, have been all elements of a symbolic competition in the public arena, with the crucial participation of local associations, clubs, organizations and formal or informal political groups. This aspect of the nationalization of the public space will be discussed in the first part of the talk, while the problem of language use will be discussed in the second part, in which I will address the school policies in different geographical micro-areas, time spans, and political frameworks.
One of the case studies which will be discussed in depth will be the school situation in Fiume/Rijeka and how it changed along the whole century. I will elaborate on the mechanisms through which the Hungarian, Italian, Yugoslav and Croatian governments elaborated and conducted their policies of national integration dealing with pupils of different cultural and linguistic backgrounds. The situation in Rijeka will be compared to other cases in Trieste and Istria, with their own specificities but also sharing similar trends, from the models of Austrian and Hungarian partial “pillarization” to the interwar Italian national assimilation de-nationalization efforts, and to the post-World War II Yugoslav and Italian tolerant but also controversial promotion of schools for the linguistic minorities. The opening and closing of public schools, the support for or the obstacles and pressures against teachers of linguistic minorities reveal the extent of social and economic constraints to which people were exposed. Nonetheless, school choices, when possible, have been also one of the ways through which local populations have expressed their agenda and linguistic preferences, along and across ethno-national divides.
Bibliography
Abram, Marco, ‘Integrating Rijeka into Socialist Yugoslavia: The Politics of National Identity and the New City’s Image (1947-1955)’, Nationalities Papers Nationalities Papers, 46.1 (2017), pp. 69–85.
——, ‘Socialist Yugoslavism and National Minorities in a Contested Borderland: Rijeka 1953–1961’, Europe-Asia Studies, 74.6 (2022), pp. 897–918.
Apih, Elio., Italia, fascismo e antifascismo nella Venezia Giulia (1918-1943): ricerche storiche (Laterza, 1966).
Ara, Angelo, and Claudio Magris, Trieste: un’identità di fontiera (Einaudi, 1982).
Ballinger, Pamela, History in Exile: Memory and Identity at the Borders of the Balkans (Princeton University Press, 2003).
Cattaruzza, Marina, Nazionalismi di Frontiera: Identità contrapposte sull’Adriatico Nord-Orientale: 1850-1950, (Rubbettino, 2003)
Čermelj, Lavo, Life-and-Death Struggle of a National Minority (the Jugoslavs in Italy), (Yugoslav union of League of nations societies, Ljubljana, 1936)
Čop, Milivoj, Riječko Školstvo: (1848-1918) (Izdavački centar Rijeka, 1988)
D’Alessio, Vanni, ‘Istrians, Identifications and The Habsburg Legacy. Perspectives on Identities in Istria’, Acta Histriae, 14.1 (2006), pp. 15–39
——, ‘Divided Legacies, Iconoclasm and Shared Cultures in Contested Rijeka/Fiume’, in Borderlands of Memory. Adriatic and Central European Perspectives, edited by Borut Klabjan (Oxford, Bern et al.: 2018), 89-117.
Fried, Ilona, Fiume città della memoria: 1868-1945 (Del Bianco, 2005)
van Hout, Milou, ‘Rediscovering cityness in the Adriatic borderland: imagining cultural citizenship in Rijeka and Trieste across the long twentieth century’ (Universiteit van Amsterdam, 2020)
Ivetic, Egidio., Un confine nel Mediterraneo: l’Adriatico orientale tra Italia e Slavia (1300-1900) (Viella, 2014)
Jeličić, Ivan, ‘Redefining Fiumians: Flag Usage and the Ambiguities of the Nation-Building Process in the Former Habsburg-Hungarian Corpus Separatum, 1914–1924’, Contemporary European History, 2022, pp. 1–20
Orlić, Mila, Identità di confine: storia dell’istria e degli istriani dal 1943 a oggi (Viella, 2023)
Reill, Dominique Kirchner., Nationalists Who Feared the Nation: Adriatic Multi-Nationalism in Habsburg Dalmatia, Trieste, and Venice (Stanford University Press, 2012)
——, The Fiume Crisis: Life in the Wake of the Habsburg Empire (Belknap - Harvard University Press, 2020)
Rolandi, Francesca, ‘Those Who Left and Those Who Arrived: Population Movements from and to Post-Second World War Rijeka’, History in Flux (Pula), 3.3 (2021), pp. 107–29
Wörsdörfer, Rolf., Krisenherd Adria 1915-1955 : Konstruktion und Artikulation des Nationalen im italienisch-jugoslawischen Grenzraum (Schöningh, 2004)