2024-2025 calendar
Fall 2024
- September 24, 6:00 P.M. (Shouvlin 105 - Wittenberg University) - "Ukrainian Artists at War: History, Memory, Resistance" with Stephen Norris
Miami University historian Stephen Norris will talk about the Ukrainian artistic response to the 2022 Russian full-scale invasion. Ukrainian artists invoked the long history of Russian imperialism, the memories of previous historical traumas, and the violence of war. This talk will focus particularly on two artists who took to Instagram to spread their messages, ensuring they reached a worldwide audience. Igor Gusev's "World War III" series forces viewers to confront Russian imperialist practices while Ekaterina Lisovenko's works capture the stark brutalities of Russian aggression.
Spring 2025
- February 6, 6:00 P.M. (Gaier Room - Clark County Public Library) - "An Environmental History of Buda and Pest" with András Vadas
Hungarian historian András Vadas (Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest) will talk about the history of Budapest in relation to its environment. The Hungarian capital, Budapest recently celebrated the 150th anniversary of its unification. For well more than half a millennium, three cities, Buda, Pest, and Óbuda formed the largest urban conglomerate in the Kingdom of Hungary. Going back to the Middle Ages the cities relied on the Danube River for their survival. However, in the 19th century the city multiplied its population and its resource-use which necessitated a complete renegotiation of the relationship of the towns with the Danube and the broader waterscape. The presentation aims to take two snapshots, one at the Late Middle Ages, and one at last quarter of the nineteenth century to see how the city/cities changed their relationship with the Danube and the urban streams contributing to the birth a modern metropolis.
- March 18, 6:00 P.M. (Gaier Room - Clark County Public Library) - "From Umbrella to Apple: The Fall of Hong Kong" with Howard Choy
This March marks the anniversary of the implementation of the national security law in Hong Kong last year. The ordinance was forcibly introduced after the massive protests in 2014 and 2019. This talk critically reviews Hong Kongers’ struggles for freedom against communist China from the Umbrella Movement to the shutdown of the only local pro-democratic newspaper Apple Daily in the past decade. Prof. Choy will conclude with the profound impacts of the events on the fallen city and the current Sino-U.S. relationship