Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies
September 22: National Hispanic Heritage Month Celebration at UC Berkeley Library
Celebrate National Hispanic Heritage Month at the University of California-Berkeley’s Library!
The event will take place on Thursday, September 22 from 12 noon to 1:15 PDT/ 3 pm to 4:14 pm EDT.
The event is open and free to all with prior registration. Please first sign into your personal or institutional zoom accounts and then register.
http://ucberk.li/3sb
Speakers (in alphabetical order)
José Adrián Barragán-Álvarez
Curator, Latin Americana
The Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley
Lillian Castillo-Speed
Head Librarian at Ethnic Studies Library, UC Berkeley
José Montelongo
Maury A. Bromsen Curator of Latin American Books
John Carter Brown Library, Rhode Island
Moderator: Liladhar R. Pendse, Librarian for the Caribbean and Latin American Studies
In Memoriam: Mikhail Gorbachev- the former president of the USSR
Please excuse this long post! No one likes to read these long posts anymore! I remember the Moscow Putsch in August 1991, when Mikhail S. Gorbachev, then the president of the USSR, was placed under house arrest and deposed for a time. I remember how Ronald Reagan pronounced in Berlin words inviting him to tear down that wall and how the times have changed since then. Today, some leaders in our homeland have asked for a wall and some tariffs on goods from other countries. So much for the politics.
After all, some aspects of politics are what muddies the water! I remember Gorbachev’s controversial fight against Alcoholism in the Soviet Union and how the zealots from Stud-Soviets used to show up without an announcement to inspect our dormitory rooms for evidence such as empty bottles of Vodka or beers. Students were let go from academic institutions to find an empty bottles. I remember his rebuilding (perestroika) of the Soviet Union. Now we have our Build Back Better! Not that these are similar situations.
However, we have tons of books about the Soviet Union and works authored by president Gorbachev. In memoriam! Прощайте, Уважаемый Михайл Сергеевич Горбачёв!
I leave you with the clip about the Soviet legacies, in which former UC Berkeley professor and historian Yuri Slezkine speaks!
Economic Survey of Latin America and the Caribbean 2022: Trends and challenges of investing for a sustainable and inclusive recovery
The United Nation’s ECLAC has published a 2022 report on trends and challenges of investing for a sustainable recovery in Latin America and the Caribbean. Below is the self-description, “The 2022 edition of the Economic Survey of Latin America and the Caribbean consists of three parts. Part I outlines the region’s economic performance in 2021, analyses trends in the early months of 2022, and the outlook for growth for the year. It examines the external and domestic factors that have influenced the region’s economic performance in 2021, trends for 2022, and how these factors will affect economic growth in the coming years.
Part II of this edition presents some region’s main challenges in investing for sustainable and inclusive economic growth. It analyses the trends in total investment over the last 70 years and highlights the profound change brought about by the 1980s debt crisis, with a slowdown in investment from the 1990s onwards.
Part III of this publication may be accessed on the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (www.eclac.org). It contains the notes relating to the economic performance of Latin America and the Caribbean countries in 2021 and the first half of 2022, together with their respective statistical annexes. The date for updating this publication’s statistical information was 15 July 2022.”
Please click on the image to access this Open Access publication.
New book by faculty: Afro-Atlantic Catholics : America’s First Black Christians–by Professor Jeroen DeWulf
It is my great honor and privilege to introduce readers of this blog to a new book by Professor Jeroen DeWulf titled “Afro-Atlantic Catholics America’s First Black Christians.” The book will be out in early August. The book is long needed to provide a holistic view of the influence of African Catholics on the historical development of Black Christianity in America during the seventeenth century.
The publisher is the University of Notre Dame Press. The description reads, “Black Christianity in America has long been studied as a blend of indigenous African and Protestant elements. Jeroen Dewulf redirects the conversation by focusing on the enduring legacy of seventeenth-century Afro-Atlantic Catholics in the broader history of African American Christianity. With homelands in parts of Africa with historically strong Portuguese influence, such as the Cape Verde Islands, São Tomé, and Kongo, these Africans embraced variants of early modern Portuguese Catholicism that they would take with them to the Americas as part of the forced migration that was the transatlantic slave trade. Their impact on the development of Black religious, social, and political activity in North America would be felt from the southern states as far north as what would become New York.
Dewulf’s analysis focuses on the historical documentation of Afro-Atlantic Catholic rituals, devotions, and social structures. Of particular importance are brotherhood practices, which were critical in disseminating Afro-Atlantic Catholic culture among Black communities, a pre-Tridentine culture and wary of external influences. These fraternal Black mutual-aid and burial society structures were critically important to the development and resilience of Black Christianity in America through periods of changing social conditions. Afro-Atlantic Catholics show how a sizable minority of enslaved Africans actively transformed the American Christian landscape and would lay a distinctly Afro-Catholic foundation for African American religious traditions today. This book will appeal to scholars in the history of Christianity, African American and African diaspora studies, and Iberian studies.”
Professor Dewulf’s groundbreaking research on how one can reflect on early issues surrounding the conceptualization of diversity, faith, race, and belonging in the context of our continent today while not straying away from in-depth historiographical narrative serves as an archive of memory narrative.
New UN Archives Geneva Platform
The United Nations Library & Archives Geneva is pleased to announce the new UN Archives Geneva Platform launch. This new online platform makes it easier to navigate and search approximately ten linear kilometers of archives managed by the UN Library & Archives Geneva, including different fonds such as 19th-century peace movements, the League of Nations, UN Geneva, and additional UN entities based in Geneva.
Thanks to the LONTAD project, the platform provides access to over 10 million digitized pages of the League of Nations archives. By 2022, the entirety of the archives of the League of Nations will be available online (including photographs and maps).
The launch of the platform enables researchers to search exceptional primary sources. It also opens new ways of conducting research in the archives. More information is available here.
With the new platform, we are now offering free tailored online presentations and trainings for researchers and students to explain the structure of the UN archives in Geneva, how the platform works, the material available online and the documents which are still not digitized but available for consultation in site. These presentations can be provided for faculty meetings, seminars and courses, or whatever setting is desirable. Catering to your needs, our specialists can present the wealth of archival documents – digitized and physical – available at the UN Library & Archives Geneva, explain how to use the platform, and show the work of the Institutional Memory Section. For further information, do not hesitate to contact us: https://ask.unog.ch/archives
Contact Info:
Pierre-Etienne Bourneuf, UN Library & Archives Geneva
Palais des Nations, 8-14 Avenue de la Paix, 1211 Genève
Source: Email-Guy Burak-Mela-NYU 04/22/2022
Voices from Ukraine: Ukrainian librarians in the struggle against Russian invasion!
We invite you to join us for a Zoom-based event where librarians across Ukraine will speak to us about their daily lives, work, and heroic efforts to preserve their collections and provide services during the war. Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine is a tragedy of cultural and humanitarian dimensions. The organizing committee members think it is vital to hear from our brave colleagues in Ukraine.
Date: April 6, 2022
Time: 9 am PST/ 10 am MST/ 11 am CST/ 12 noon EST/ 7 pm Kyiv
Duration: 90 minutes
Registration Link: http://ucberk.li/3o9
Organizers: The Coalition of Slavic Librarians for Peace (CSLP): Olha Alkesic (Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University), Ksenya Kiebuzinski (University of Toronto), Liladhar R. Pendse (University of California-Berkeley) and George Andrew Spencer (University of Wisconsin-Madison)
Ukraine: Language, Literature & Religion Virtual Event @UC Berkeley Library
Ukraine: Language, Literature & Religion
When: Thursday, April 14, 2022
Time is shown below:
12:30 pm to 2 pm PST
2:30 pm to 4 pm CST
3:30 pm to 5 pm EST
Registration: http://ucberk.li/3nX
First, log in to your institutional or personal zoom accounts and then register for the event.
This event is a non-political event, and all are welcome to attend with prior registration.
“Stand with Ukraine” – Community Prayer Service and Fundraiser-March 5, 2022
War is not an answer: Ukraine 2022
In the face of unfolding horrendous tragedy in Ukraine, I was remembering my “families and friends” in Kyiv, Minsk, and Moscow. There was this Soviet saying- Znanie Sila (Knowledge is power). In face of this tragedy, as a librarian, I was thinking of doing my part by presenting the readers of this blog with some choices on information sources.
I have been thinking about presenting some items from UC Berkeley Library’s collections that speak to Ukraine’s rich yet nuanced history. All histories are nuanced, and I am trying to avoid my implicit biases and opinions about the current tragedy unfolding in Ukraine. Ukraine was never a state until the Bolsheviks created the Ukrainian SSR is as problematic as cutting the long-standing intertwining of Russo-Ukrainian histories. However, the post-Soviet Ukraine is an independent modern European nation-state whose sovereignty and freedom to chart its destiny matter to humanity.
I remember today Gogol‘s Cтрашная месть or A Terrible Vengeance. This story is a part of a larger collection with the title: Vechera na khutori︠e︡ bliz Dikanʹki Mirgorod
Please think a minute about Ivane and Petro! And I refrain from discussing the modern-day Oligarchs from both sides.
History of Ukraine–Rus‘
Hrushevsʹkyĭ, Mykhaĭlo, 1866-1934, author.; Грушевський, Михайло, 1866-1934, author.; Pasicznyk, Uliana M., editor.; Poppe, Andrzej, editor.; Sysyn, Frank E., editor.; Frost, Robert, editor.; Fedoruk, I︠A︡roslav, editor.; Raffensperger, Christian, editor.; Skorupsky, Marta, translator.; Wynnyckyj, Andriy, translator.; Press, Ian, 1947- translator.
1997-2021
Below are some subject-based links that will allow you to browse our catalog for additional resources on Ukraine.
Here is an article about some classics of Ukrainian Literature that might provide some cursory information about the rich literary tradition of Ukraine. Have you read Lesya Ukrainka‘s works or Serhii Plokhii’s contemporary works? War is not an answer!
Black History Month Celebration at UC Berkeley Library!
Please join us for a virtual Black History Month Celebration at UC Berkeley Library! The event is planned for Wednesday, February 23, 2022, from 11:30 am until 1 pm PST / 2:30 pm to 4 pm EST on Zoom.
Webinar Registration: ucberk.li/black-history-month-2022-event
Free and Open to all with prior registration. Please remember to authenticate by signing into your institutional or individual zoom accounts first before trying to register for the event.
I want to thank our Vice Chancellor for the Division of Equity & Inclusion, Dania Matos, who found time out of her hectic schedule to provide the opening remarks. We look forward to welcoming everyone. Please be so kind as to share information about this event with your respective communities of practice.
