What the 2019 Central European Talks Series Brings to the Table

The 2019 Central European Talks Series kicks off February 21st.

19 February 2019

If the walls of the Senate Chamber could talk, they would surely make for a lively discussion. A storied space that once functioned as the University of Alberta Senate's meeting location, the Chamber now hosts speakers, researchers, and experts from disparate fields all around the globe. From modernism to macroeconomics, discussions of visual culture and national identities, borders, boundaries, and bodies, you never know what discoveries, provoking ideas, or people you might encounter around the Chamber's large oval oak table.

It is here each spring that the five doctoral research fellows from across Central Europe, hosted by the Wirth Institute, deliver weekly talks under the expansive mantle of the Central European Talks series. This series gives these young scholars an opportunity to present their research in a unique academic setting - in a location vastly removed from their home countries - to connect with colleagues, potential mentors in the UAlberta Faculty, and local community members. It's an opportunity for the Wirth cohort to get to know each other's research on a more formal stage. Additionally, the series invites Wirth research associates and senior scholars to give their take on topics at the heart of Central European scholarship. The premiere talk welcomes Brigitte Hipfl, Professor in Media Studies at the Department of Media and Communication Studies at the University of Klagenfurt, Austria and co-editor of Messy Europe - Crisis, Race, and Nation-State in a Postcolonial World (Berghahn 2018).

These weekly lectures welcome listeners to a truly interdisciplinary, never predictable series of presentations, leaving it in the hands of the audience to elucidate a common thread and make connections. From the perspective of a young researcher in Central Europe, what are the topics that puzzle, provoke, motivate, incite, impassion, and engage individuals to pursue academic research? What are the questions that matter?

Join us Thursdays February 21st to April 4th at 3:00 pm in the Senate Chamber, Arts & Convocation Hall to find out.

Central European Talks 2019

February 21- "The impact of post-migrant film on the migrant debate in Austria and Beyond. Films by Arash and Arman T. Riahi, Martin Nguyen, and Ed Moschitz"

Dr. Brigitte Hipfl, Media and Communications, University of Klagenfurt, Austria

February 28 - "Snow White and the Seven Arts: the Journey of the Fairy Tale as an Illustration of the Postmodern Condition"

Alekszandra Rokvity, PhD Candidate in English and American Studies (Cultural Studies) at the University of Graz

March 7 - Central European Talk 3 TBD

March 14 - "Myth-Making and Iconic Port City - learning about complexity from the literary tradition of New Orleans"

Petra Sapun Kurtin, PhD Candidate in Literature at the University of Zagreb, Croatia

March 21 -"Memoria Aeterna: Death and Commemorative culture in the early-modern Bohemia"

Eva Jarošová, PhD candidate in History, Charles University in Prague, the Czech Republic

March 28 - "What happens when we build the walls? Migrant movement after the closure of the Western Balkan route in the South-Eastern Europe"

Robert Rydzewski, PhD candidate at the Department of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, Poland

April 4 - "Macroanalysis of folklore texts: Looking through the digital database of Hungarian verbal charms"

Emese Ilyefalvi, PhD Candidate, Eötvös Loránd University, Department of Folklore, Comparative and Hungarian Folkloristics Doctoral Program, Budapest, Hungary