News & Events

Find out what Germany, Belarus, Brazil, China, and other countries are saying about the U.S. presidential elections...

U.S. Elections 2008: The World is Watching Featuring Professors Diana Carlin and Burdett Loomis 7:30 p.m., Monday, October 20, 2008 Dole Institute of Politics.

The speakers will discuss the world's perceptions of the U.S. presidential election. Diana Carlin, professor of communications studies, and Burdett Loomis, professor of political science, have recently traveled to Germany, Belarus, Indonesia, Brazil, Argentina and China on behalf of the U.S. State Department to present information on American politics and elections. Three Fulbright Scholars in journalism--Soleak Seang, Cambodia; Rauf Arif, Pakistan; Uyanga Bazaa, Mongolia--and International Ford Foundation Fellow Denzyl Janneker, South Africa will also offer brief reflections on the state of thinking in their respective countries

Seventh Annual French Film Festival Starts October 22nd!!!

The complete viewing schedule at the Kansas Union is below:

Organized by KU Dept. of French and Italian (contact: vkelly@ku.edu)
22 OCTOBER - 17 NOVEMBER 2008
All films are subtitled in English.
Showplace: Woodruff Auditorium, Kansas Union, Level 5
Showtime: 7:30 PM

Admission will be $2 per film at the Hawk Shop Convenience Store (4th Floor Kansas Union), tickets available the day of the show.  TO AVOID THE RUSH, PLEASE BUY YOUR TICKETS AS EARLY IN THE DAY AS POSSIBLE.

***Wednesday, 22 October***

La moustache (The moustache)

Wednesday 29 October, Lili et le baobob (Lili and the Baobob Tree)
Tuesday 4 November, Persépolis (Persepolis)
Wednesday 12 November Rêvesde poussière (Dreams of Dust)
Monday 17 November, Paris je t'aime (Paris, I love you)

The Tournées festival is made possible with the support of the Cultural Services of the French Embassy and the French Ministry of Culture (CNC). Thanks to The Florence Gould Foundation, the Grand Marnier Foundation, highbrow entertainment, agnès b.and the Franco-American Cultural Fund. Further sponsors are the African Studies Center, KU Department of Theatre and Film, Department of History, KU Honors Program, and the Kansas Memorial Unions.

Twelve students participate in summer Berlin course

This summer, twelve KU students arrived in Berlin on June 21st for the second course in the European Cultural Studies program.  Their days were filled with excursions and site visits related to the readings for the course, and it was a wonderful opportunity for all of us to get acquainted with one of Europe's great capitals and its extraordinary 20th-century history - as the center of Empire, the Weimar Republic, and the Third Reich, the Divided City of the Cold War, and the vibrant, restored capital of one of the world's most prosperous democracies.

Among the highlights of our two weeks were a walking tour of Unter den Linden ending with a visit to the Deutsches Museum; a day in Potsdam that included a tour of Frederick the Great's Palace of Sans Souci; a tour of the dome of the Reichstag with its panoramic views of the city; visits to the Pergamon and Altes Museums, the Jewish Museum, the Bauhaus-Archiv, and the Käthe Kollwitz Museum; the Holocaust Memorial; Olympia Stadium; the Topography of Terror tour of the building that housed the Nazi Office of State Security, Gestapo, and SS; a visit to Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp; a tour of the Stasi Museum, former headquarters of the East German surveillance system; and a tour of Prenzlauer Berg.  In our "leisure time," we all became engrossed in the semi-finals and finals of the Europe Cup soccer competition, enjoying the excitement of Berliners as they cheered on the German team.  For all of us it was a very rich and memorable experience.
                                                                                                  -Professor Jim Woelfel

European Studies Instructor Researches in Paris

James Quinn, a GTA in Humanities & Western Civilization Program, is shown reading at a cafe in Paris before beginning the fall semester teaching EURS 302- European Culture & Society 1945-present, in Florence and Paris as part of the HWC Semester Abroad program.

James is a Ph.D. student in History and uses his time in Paris for research. He reports that he was invited to take part in the annual homage to World War II prisoners of war and also shares a photo of the parade at the Arc de Triomphe.

European Studies Senior to Intern in Brussels, Belgium!!

KU senior, Clarissa Unger, will be returning to Brussels spring semester 2009 to begin an internship at the U.S. Mission to the European Union. Impressed by her visit to the Mission during a KU study abroad program in summer 2007, Clarissa set her mind on finding a way back to the EU capital in order to further her studies in European affairs. Congratulations Clarissa!   

Congratulations to May 2008 graduating senior, Sarah Garvin!

Double major in History and European Studies with a minor in German, Garvin will soon head for the U.K. where she begins graduate work at the London School of Economics. Garvin said choosing her graduate school was "a tough call" since she was also admitted to the School of Advanced International Studies at the Johns Hopkins University, among others. Those are the "tough" decisions one doesn't mind having to make! During her undergraduate study at KU, Garvin spent a summer and semester in study abroad programs in Holzkirchen, Germany and Cork, Ireland.

KU Jazz Ensemble I keeps its cool this summer by joining the 42nd Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland, July 15-16, 2008.

The invitation to this festival is presented to only a few colllegiate jazz ensembles in the world annually. KU Director of Jazz Studies, Dan Gailey, is particularly excited about the group's sharing the Montreux stage at this year's festival, which celebrates the 75th anniversary of Quincy Jones. They join other renowned artists such as Herbie Hancock, Tower of Power, Roberta Flack, Chaka Khan, Al Jarreau, David Sanborn, Paul Simon, Gilberto Gil, and many, many others. The Jazz Ensemble I will also play a tour in Germany after the festival. For complete festival info visit: www.montreuxjazz.com/.

New Faculty Hires in European Field Coming to KU!

• Humanities and Western Civilization has welcomed its first Jack & Shirley Howard Teaching Professor of Humanities & Western Civilization, Christopher Forth (Ph.D., SUNY at Buffalo) whose fields are European intellectual history, cultural history of gender, sexuality and the body, and modern France. His research is thoroughly interdisciplinary, combining the insights of cultural history, social theory and literary criticism with contemporary cultural theory and art history. Among his many publications are: Masculinity in the Modern West: Gender, Civilization and the Body (forthcoming); Sexuality at the Fin de Siècle: The Makings of a "Central Problem"; and The Dreyfus Affair and the Crisis of French Manhood.
• French & Italian welcomes Crystal Hall who joins the department in August 2008 as a new tenure-track Assistant Professor of Italian Studies. Hall is a graduate of Cornell University and the University of Pennsylvania, where she received her Ph.D. in Italian with a specialization in seventeenth-century studies. Her most recent work explores the interdependency of Galileo's language of science with Venetian and Florentine epic poetry of the period.
• The History department has announced a new addition to the modern European history field, Roberta Pergher (Ph.D., University of Michigan), tenure-track Assistant Professor of History. Pergher's work uses postcolonial theory to examine the Italian Fascist state's efforts to transform and integrate two border regions, the German-speaking Tyrol region and coastal Libya. She will join KU in August 2009.
• Internationally acclaimed scholar with expertise in the European Union, Robert Rohrschneider, will be joining KU's Political Science department as the first Sir Robert Worcester Distinguished Professor in Public Opinion and Survey Research. Author of the award-winning book, Learning Democracy: Democratic and Economic Values in Unified Germany, Rohrschneider has received research funding from the Social Science Research Council and the German Marshall Fund. Dr. Rohrschneider will spend AY 2008-2009 at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies before joining his KU colleagues in Lawrence.