Historically as well as in the current moment, “Europe” has been mystified and contested in various ways. The question of contestation and its relationship to advancing a praxis of human liberation and solidarity is the central question of this conference. To what extent has contesting the imaginary of Europe furthered or hindered emancipatory politics – both “inside” and “outside” of Europe?
This interdisciplinary conference encourages critical contributions on “Europe” as a process of becoming that takes place amid contestations, negotiations, and competing identity claims. Problematizing “Europe” from both above and below is to bring in analyses of complex social relations of power. Our goal is to create a space for discourses challenging the predominant imaginary of Europe that underlies a top-down process of institution building, the creation of a common identity, and the economic integration at the level of the European Union (EU).

We aim to examine the conflicts and contradictions of “Europe” through a range of contributions that touch on questions such as: What does it mean to be “European” in a changing “Europe”? How have processes and dynamics of class, racialization, gendering, religion, etc. materialized and been contested in lived experiences? What is the legacy of European imperialism? What are the linkages between the consolidation of the “new Europe/an” and the neo-liberal paradigm? To what extent and in which ways has research on “Europe” reproduced, deconstructed, or challenged hegemonic views? Can comparative references to Europe foster progressive politics “outside” of Europe?

More details on this event are available at the conference website: http://www.yorku.ca/europe.

To contact conference organizers, please write: contestingeurope@gmail.com

CCGES is pleased to welcome Germany’s Ambassador to Canada, Mr. Matthias Hoepfner, to campus on Tuesday, February 10th for a talk entitled “A New Dynamic in Canada-EU Relations”.

Ambassador Matthias Hoepfner

Ambassador Hoepfner is an experienced diplomat who has held his current post since 2006. Prior to this station, he served in Indonesia and Libya. From 1996 to 2006 he held important posts in the German Foreign Office, the last being Deputy Director General of the Department for Economic Affairs and Sustainable Development.

This event is open to the public.

Location: York Lanes, Room 305
York Campus Map – click here

Please RSVP to ccges@yorku.ca

CCGES is currently accepting applications from faculty at all Canadian universities to the 1st German-Canadian Transatlantic Forum, the successor to the Centre’s highly successful, annual Fortbildungsseminar.

The inaugural forum will take place on February 27-28, 2009 at CCGES York and the topic of the event is “The Cultural Dimensions of Climate Change”.

For more information on the event as well as how to apply to participate, click here.

CCGES is pleased to announce that new issues of both Centre-housed journals, spacesofidentity and the German Law Journal.  Review of Developments in German, European and International Jurisprudence, are now available online.

www.spacesofidentity.net is an interdisciplinary, open-access journal about tradition, cultural boundaries, and identity formation in Central Europe (and beyond). After going “beyond” Central Europe in our summer issue, which with “the other East” on occasion of the Beijing Olympics, the latest issue returns to the multiple layers of identity formation processes in Central Europe.

Contributions to this issue include:

• Eva Bodnar’s exploration of the multifaceted loyalties in the cartographic mappings of pre-1848 Hungary
• Marcin Filipowicz on the concept of masculinity in 19th-century Czech literature
• Natalia Barykina’s discussion of architecture and spatial practices in post-Communist Minsk
• Inga Untkis introducing us to the unexpected presence of rock musician Frank Zappa in post-Soviet Lithuania

Meanwhile, the latest  issue of the German Law Journal, available at www.germanlawjournal.com, contains a small Symposium dedicated to the English translation of the volume ‘Der Gespaltene Westen’ (Frankfurt, 2004; transl. 2006) by Jürgen Habermas. The greatly intriguing and thought provoking essays found in this volume, along with the approach of Habermas’ 80th birthday this coming June,  inspired the editors to invite a number of experts on the work of Habermas and on international law to share their views on this important phase in Habermas’ scholarship, the results of which are found in the journal’s latest issue.