Professor Michael Wintle (University of Amsterdam), 23 May, 4-6pm, Neill/Hoey Lecture Theatre - The Image of Europe: Visualizing a Continent
Professor Michael Wintle is Chair of Modern European History in the Department of European Studies at the University of Amsterdam, where he teaches on the degree programmes in European Studies. His research interests include the construction of European identity, visual representations of Europe, cartographies of Europe, and the cultural aspects of European integration. He has published widely on these subjects including articles, book chapters, edited volumes and monographs. His most recent publications include Ideas of Europe since 2012 (2002), Imagining Europe (2008), The Image of Europe (2009), and European Identity and the Second World War (2011).

European Studies Lecture Series

Tomasz Kamusella (University of St. Andrews), The Politics of Identity and Scripts in Modern Europe: From Many to Few, 5 March, 6.30, Neill/Hoey Lecture Theatre
The political and practical importance of multilingualism is common knowledge these days in Europe. However, since the rise of popular literacy across the continent, languages, as we know them, have been irrevocably twinned with writing. Writing, although de facto no part of language, in the popular mind it is seen as language itself. In light of this phenomenon, it is interesting to note that in Europe, thus far, little attention has been devoted to scripts (that is, writing systems) as markers of identity and instrument of politics. Nowadays, the EU has three official scripts, and across its eastern border most of the neighboring countries employ Cyrillic. The political and identificational uses of these scripts have been dramatically changing in Europe during the last two centuries. The continent (and the Union, too) has been for long as much multilingual as multiscriptural. The lecture delves into what multiscripturality was in the past and what it entails today.

Holly Case (Cornell University), Loaded Questions: The Link between Eastern Europe’s Borders and Western Europe’s Social Policy in the Nineteenth Century, 21 March, 6 pm, Long Room Hub, Neill/Hoey Lecture Theatre
The nineteenth century was the century of questions, but why? Why did certain people and places come into question in the nineteenth century? Why was there suddenly a woman question, a worker question, a Jewish question….or why was there an Eastern question or a Polish question? Furthermore, why were social questions (woman, worker) associated largely with the West, and geopolitical ones (Eastern, Polish) with the East? The presentation seeks to address these questions and to highlight some idiosyncrasies of the "century of questions."

Malte Rolf (Leibniz Universität Hannover), Imperial Biographies: Elite Careers and Mobility in the Habsburg and Russian Empires (1850-1918), 28 March, 5.30 pm, Long Room Hub, Neill/Hoey Lecture Theatre
In recent years the research of the large European and Asian Empires has witnessed a dynamic shift. Inspired by post-colonial studies, the new approaches have focused on the biographies of the colonial elites by placing their life stories in the social, political, and cultural imperial context. The paper on “imperial biographies” follows this research agenda with regard to the two multiethnic Empires that dominated the East-European and Eurasian territories in the long 19th century. It addresses imperial biographies of the Habsburg and Romanov Empires in the following three dimensions.
The lecture will deal with imperial biographies as a point of venture that allows a new understanding of how the historical subjects made sense of the Empires as a part of their personal biographical experiences, and how these expressions of subjectivity related to the underlying structural patterns of mobility, career and circulation. The talk will examine imperial biographies as a conjuncture of individual lives and the state-sponsored systems of the imperial careers. This methodological agenda will open new ways for research on the history and nature of multinational Empires in the long 19th century and will contribute to their trans-imperial comparison.