AMIAS Public Lectures

"The Left Side of History: World War II and Re-emergent Nationalisms in Contemporary Eastern Europe" Kristen Ghodsee, Professor and Director of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies at Bowdoin College, former Member (2006–07) in the School of Social Science, and President of the Association of Members of the Institute for Advanced Study Kristen Ghodsee will investigate the contemporary European memory projects about World War II and the Cold War. Since the global financial crisis in 2008, countries once locked behind the Iron Curtain have increasingly drifted to the far right, vilifying their state socialist pasts to exonerate nationalist heroes once condemned for their collaboration with Nazi Germany. Politicians and scholars strategically deploy historical knowledge as a tool to quash growing domestic opposition to the economic upheavals and insecurities of the post-socialist era. Using the individual tales of Frank Thompson, a British Special Operations Executive Officer who parachuted into Axis-occupied Yugoslavia in January 1944, and Elena Lagadinova, the youngest female partisan fighting in Bulgaria during the Second World War, Ghodsee will ethnographically explore the experience, perception and remembrance of 20th century communism and the widespread disillusionment with the dreams of democracy and free markets after 1989. "Nessun Dorma: From Night Stories to a History of the Night in the Greek World" Angelos Chaniotis, Professor in the School of Historical Studies Angelos Chaniotis will discuss the night, whose definition as the period between sunset and sunrise is consistent and unalterable, regardless of culture and time. However, the perception of the night and its economic, social and cultural roles are subject to change. Which parameters determine these changes? What can we learn by studying them about the specific character of a culture? Why do people experience the night in different ways in different historical periods and how did this affect their lives? How do references to nocturnal activities in historical sources (works of art, narratives) reveal what the artists/authors wish to communicate to their audiences? Can the night be a meaningful subject of historical and archaeological enquiry? Chaniotis will explore these questions through a study of source material in the Greek world (ca. 400 B.C.–ca. A.D. 400), which shows a continuous effort to colonize the night with activities of the day, to make the night safer, more productive, rational and efficient. He will demonstrate that the main motors for this change were social developments and religion, not technology and pose the question: Do we have nightlife because of technology? Or do we create technology in order to have nightlife?