Upcoming Events!

Convener: Daniela Caruso, Boston University School of Law

Discussant: Jack Beerman, Boston University School of Law

Speakers:
Francesca Bignami, George Washington University Law School
Comparative Law and Regulation: Defining and Mapping the Field

Barbara Boschetti, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore di Milano (Political Science, Law)
The Structure of Administrative Proceedings in the EU and its Member States: Methods and Results of Empirical Analysis

Fernanda Nicola, American University, Washington College of Law
EU-US Regulatory Cooperation: The TTIP and the Perils of Cost-Benefit Analysis

Organized and funded by the Jean Monnet Chair in European Law. Lunch provided. RSVP to edamrien@bu.edu by noon on Thursday! 

Magdaléna Platzová is the author of six books, including two novels published in English: Aaron’s Leap, a Lidové Noviny Book of the Year Award finalist, and The Attempt, a Czech Book Award finalist. Alex Zucker is an award-winning translator of Czech literature. He also works in editing and nonprofit communications, and currently serves as co-chair of the PEN America Translation Committee.

Moderated by Veronika Tuckerova, a translator and scholar of Czech and German literature and a preceptor in Slavic languages at Harvard University. A reception and book-signing will follow. [More info].

Ananda Devi is a novelist and scholar born in Trois-Boutiques, Mauritius in 1957. She has lived in Ferney-Voltaire, France (near Geneva) since 1989, after having spent some years in Congo-Brazzaville. As an ethnologist—she holds a doctorate in social anthropology from the University of London—and a translator, Devi is sensitive to the interconnection between identites and languages. Choosing to write in French, her novels and short stories also incorporate Creole and Hindi. Her incisive, lyrical and shrewd style offers the French language new cultural and linguistic scope linked to her native island.

Moderated by Odile Cazenave, Professor of French and Chair of Romance Studies at Boston University. Co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of Europe, the African Studies Program, and the Department of Romance Studies. Refreshments will be available; a book-signing will follow the talk. [More info]

Join us for a lecture by cultural agitator, media activist and a transdisciplinary philosopher Franco "Bifo" Berardi. Berardi is an Italian Marxist theorist and activist in the autonomist tradition. His work mainly focuses on the role of the media and information technology within post-industrial capitalism. One of the founders of the notorious Radio Alice, a pirate radio station that became the voice of the autonomous youth movement of Bologna in the late 1970s, Bifo is the author of multiple works of political theory, including, among others, And: Phenomenology of the End, (Semiotext(e), 2015), Heroes: Mass Murder and Suicide (Verso, 2014), The Uprising: On Poetry and Finance (Semiotext(e), 2012), After the Future (AK Press, 2011), and The Soul at Work (Semiotext(e), 2010).

Moderated by Nicholas Knouf, Assistant Professor of Cinema and Media Studies, Wellesley College. A reception and booksigning will follow the lecture. [More info]

Joachim Fritz-Vannahme, director of the think tank Europe’s Future at the Bertelsmann Stiftung, discusses the future of Europe, what “Europe” means, and what its next steps ought to be. These are important matters also for Americans, given the interdependence of the global economy, the global nature of the challenges that confront us, and the different routes the world may take depending on the path Europe chooses.

Moderated by Vivien Schmidt, Professor of International Relations and Political Science at Boston University, and Founding Director of BU’s Center for the Study of Europe. Prof. Schmidt's research focuses on European political economy, institutions, democracy, and political theory. [More info]

Join us for a lunch discussion with Servaas Deroose, Deputy Director-General, Directorate-General Economics and Financial Affairs (ECFIN), European Commission. Servaas Deroose has been Deputy Director-General at the European Commission's Directorate-General for Economic and Financial Affairs since 2010. In this capacity, he co-ordinates the DG's work on EU governance, integrated macroeconomic surveillance, EU2020, competitiveness and fiscal policy. Mr. Deroose is currently the Commission's Mission Chief for Greece's economic adjustment programme. He has been a member of the Economic and Financial Committee since 2005.

Moderated by Vivien Schmidt, Jean Monnet Professor of European Integration and Director of the Center for the Study of Europe. Lunch provided. Open to BU community and others with a research interest in the topic. RSVP to edamrien@bu.edu. [More info]

Join us for a reading and conversation with Enrique Vila-Matas. Born in Barcelona in 1948, Vila-Matas is one of Spain’s most original and celebrated literary voices. He is the recipient of numerous international literary prizes, including the FIL Award in 2015, and been longlisted and shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. His works, which have been translated into thirty-seven languages, traverse the borders between fiction, essay, and biography. His most recent publications in English are Because She Never Asked and Illogic of Kassel. Vampire in Love, a collection of his short fiction, is forthcoming from New Directions this fall.

Moderated by Christopher Maurer, Professor of Spanish, Boston University. A reception and book-signing will follow the event. [More info]

Please join us for a reading and conversation with Austrian-Slovenian author Maja Haderlap and translator Tess Lewis. Haderlap will read from her recent novel, Angel of Oblivion (Archipelago Books, August, 2016), which is based on the experiences of her family and the Slovenian-speaking minority in southern Austria, many of whom fought as partisans against the Nazis during the Second World War. The story centers on the experiences of a young girl learning to navigate the terrain between two hostile communities and two extremely burdened languages: Slovenian, a language of heroic resistance and continued humiliation, and German, an escape from her stifling rural upbringing but also the language of the camps which her grandmother barely survived and many other family members didn’t.

A reception and book-signing will follow the event. [More info]