The German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) has generously offered to support the Nanovic Institute's upcoming conference, entitled 1989: Reconsidering the Nation and its Alternatives in Central & Eastern Europe. The conference will convene from November 8-10, 2019.
This interdisciplinary conference, held on the thirtieth anniversary of the opening of the Berlin Wall, will bring together preeminent scholars to examine how “nations”, “national identity”, and alternative modes of political mobilization shaped, and have been shaped by, the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and European politics in the subsequent thirty years.
"We are ecstatic that the DAAD has extended their support to this conference," said Mark T. Kettler, a postdoctoral research associate at the Nanovic Institute and co-director of the conference. “Their support will advance our larger aim of seriously interrogating themes of contemporary European political identity, at a time when these questions of national belonging and European cohesion are particularly urgent.”
The Nanovic Institute for European Studies, created in 1992, is a teaching and research institute of the Keough School of Global Affairs. It serves as an integrated, interdisciplinary home for students and faculty to explore the evolving ideas, cultures, beliefs and institutions that shape Europe today.
Playing a key role in the internationalization of Notre Dame, the institute sponsors the scholarly and professional work of more than 100 undergraduates and graduate students every year and administers an undergraduate minor in European studies.
Photo (top): 40,000 people gathered in front of Plauen's town hall on 30 October 1989, many having traveled from other districts to push for quick solutions to the immediate political problems. Source: Wikimedia.