Upcoming Events!

Please join us for a screening of two recent works by Monika Weiss and a conversation with the artist. Monika Weiss' interdisciplinary work investigates relationships between body and history, and evokes ancient rituals of lamentation. Her current projects consider aspects of collective memory and amnesia as reflected in the physical and political space of a city.

In Shrouds–Całuny (2012), Weiss choreographed and filmed from an airplane local women performing silent gestures of lamentation on the site of the forgotten concentration camp for Jewish women in Grünberg, Germany, now Zielona Góra in Poland. Two Laments (19 Cantos) (2015-ongoing) is a series of 19 film projections inspired by events in India, and juxtaposing two forms of global violence: the rape of women and the colonial subjugation of cities. Both projects employ lamentation as a form of postmemory, set in opposition to acts of conquest and power.

Born in Warsaw, Poland and based in New York City, Monika Weiss is currently Associate Professor at the Washington University in Saint Louis, MO. Known for her performances, installations, and public projects, she has exhibited in museums internationally. She is represented by Monika Fabijanska Contemporary Art in NYC. Co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of Europe, the Elie Wiesel Center for Jewish Studies, the Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program, and the Editorial Institute. [More info]

History knows Joan of Arc as a martyr and a saint. But do we really know her story? Join us for a performance of feminist playwright Carolyn Gage’s The Second Coming of Joan of Arc by Boston actor Julia Reddy. In this “queer, radical reclamation of identity,” Joan returns to share her story with contemporary women. She relates her experiences with the highest levels of church, state, and military, and unmasks the brutal misogyny behind male institutions.

The performance will be followed by a discussion, moderated by Irit Kleiman, Associate Professor of French and Director of the Interdisciplinary Program in Medieval Studies, and Shelly Rambo, Associate Professor of Theology.

Co-sponsored by the Boston University Arts Initiative, the School of Theology, the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program, the Interdisciplinary Program in Medieval Studies, and the Center for the Study of Europe. [More info]

Please join us for our third symposium on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership.

• Welcome by Consul General Nicola de Santis, Consulate of Italy, Boston, and Prof. Vivien Schmidt, Director, Center for the Study of Europe, Boston University.
• Mr. Jesus Zorrilla, Agricultural Counselor at the EU Delegation to the United States: "The trade dynamics in agriculture and food between the EU and the US”
• Prof. Mark Wu, Harvard University: “The common interests of the US and the EU in international trade”
• Dr. Gerry Catherine Alons, Center for the Study of Europe Visiting Fellow: “EU and US agriculture and food related regulations and trade: Two worlds apart?”
• Eataly Boston: “Barriers and facilitators of transatlantic trade in food and agriculture: Business perspective”

The event will be followed by a networking reception. Co-organized by the Consulate of Italy in Boston, the Delegation of the European Union to the United States and the Center for the Study of Europe at Boston University. [More info]

Written and directed by Judith Wechsler, Aby Warburg: Metamorphosis and Memory (2016; 60 min.) tells the story of this innovative and influential art historian. With interests that ranged from the Italian Renaissance to Hopi ritual dances, from frescoes to postage stamps, Warburg sought to combine the fields of art history, anthropology, and religion. He explored the afterlife of antiquity, the tensions between the Apollonian and the Dionysian, and the secular and religious in Renaissance paintings of Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands. Told largely through Warburg’s own words and interviews with leading Warburg scholars, this documentary traces the development of his ideas in the context of his life and times.

Following the screening, there will be a conversation between director Judith Wechsler and Peter Schwartz, Associate Professor of German.

Judith Wechsler is an art historian and filmmaker. She has written and directed 28 films, predominantly on art. Her film The Passages of Walter Benjamin (2014) was made with the cooperation of the Benjamin archives in Berlin and Jerusalem and the Bibliothèque nationale de France. She has served as the National Endowment for the Humanities Professor in Art History at Tufts University, taught for many years at MIT, and was a visiting professor at Harvard and the Ècole normale supérieure in Paris. Many of her films are distributed by the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and are archived at the Harvard Film Archive. [More info]