The "Other Europe" through the Archives

Join SHC "The Other Europe" workshop for their inaugural event with Norman Naimark [Distinguished Visiting Fellow, Hoover Institution; Robert and Florence McDonnell Professor of East European Studies; Senior Fellow, Freeman-Spogli Institute], Margarita Nafpaktitis [Curator for the Slavic and East European Collections, Stanford University Libraries], and Anatol Shmelev [Robert Conquest Curator for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia, Hoover Institution].

Central Europe has long been a place where empires, nations, and ideologies met, collided, and remade one another. Its histories of war, occupation, migration, dictatorship, and democratic hope continue to shape how we think about Europe and the wider world. How should we study and teach this "other Europe" today, and what can its past tell us about our present? To open this year's The Other Europe workshop, Norman Naimark joins Margarita Nafpaktitis and Anatol Shmelev for a conversation about the state of the field, its sources, and its futures. Drawing on decades of research and teaching, Naimark will reflect on how the study of the region has changed and where it is heading. Nafpaktitis and Shmelev will introduce Stanford's remarkable collections and show how they open up new questions for scholars and students alike. Guided by this year's theme, "Movement and Belonging," the speakers will consider the forces that have moved people, borders, and ideas across the region, and the struggles over who belongs. They will also reflect on the archive itself: what it preserves, what it leaves out, and how it shapes the histories we write. At a time of growing pressure on memory, archives, and the humanities, the conversation asks why this work matters, and what it might offer us now.

RSVP for lunch!