Nov. 9

• 3:00 p.m. CHOPIN, CHOPIN (2025, dir. Michał Kwieciński), 133 min.

Paris, 1835. Renowned composer Frédéric Chopin navigates high society, performing concerts, teaching for income while battling illness. He composes masterpieces, attends parties, pursues romance amid aristocratic and royal circles.

• 6:00 p.m. WHITE COURAGE (2024, dir. Marcin Koszałka), 116 min.

Two Highlander brothers, clash after their father’s death. Andrzej meets Wolfram, an anthropologist. War erupts, Andrzej seeks Highlanders’ cooperation with Germans, leading to a violent brotherly confrontation amidst wartime turmoil.

Sponsored by:

GNS+

The Lapinski Family Fund

CREECA

WUD

Polish Heritage Club of Madison

Co-Organizers: GNS+ & the Polish Student Association at UW-Madison

November 16: 

• 3:00 p.m. FRANZ (2025, dir. Agnieszka Holland), 127 min.

directed by Agnieszka Holland and written by Marek Epstein. Starring Idan Weiss as Franz Kafka, it follows the author’s life from his early teens in his hometown of Prague to his premature death in 1924.

• 6:00 p.m. SPARROW (2024, dir. Tomasz Gąssowski),106 min. 

Remek, a bachelor postman passionate about soccer and studying, unexpectedly meets his unknown grandfather and new neighbor Marzenka, upending his orderly life, forcing him to adapt to the changes. 

Sponsored by:

GNS+

The Lapinski Family Fund

CREECA

WUD

Polish Heritage Club of Madison

Co-Organizers: GNS+ & the Polish Student Association at UW-Madison

Washburn Observatory (1401 Observatory Drive)
November 11, 2025 @ 5:30 pm
RSVP form

Sustaining and Strengthening Less Commonly Taught Languages in the Big Ten in Precarious Times: A Grassroots Town Hall Meeting

12:00-1:15 pm PDT | 2:00-3:15 pm CDT | 3:00-4:15 pm EDT
Friday, October 10, 2025

Register here

About the town hall

Programs in less commonly taught languages are particularly vulnerable in this time of unprecedented uncertainty in U.S. higher education. This grassroots town hall meeting is for faculty, instructional staff, and administrators at Big Ten universities who teach, support, or advocate for programs in less commonly taught and Indigenous languages (LCTLs) to come together to share innovative program models, information about institutional strengths, and interests in forming new inter-institutional partnerships to strengthen LCTL programs. The goal of the meeting is to encourage new forms of collaboration across Big Ten universities to sustain–and even strengthen–LCTL education in very challenging times.

The meeting will include brief presentations about the Big Ten Academic Alliance CourseShare Program and other models for expanding access to LCTLs across institutions. These presentations will be followed by short, informal 3-minute “lightning talks” by faculty and staff at Big Ten universities who will share information about local strengths in LCTLs that might be leveraged in new partnerships with others in the Big Ten, examples of innovative models for expanding access to LCTLs, or exemplary LCTL projects that might be of interest to others. In addition to these presentations, there will be a way for all town hall participants to share information, resources, and contact information with other participants. See here and the flyer below for the full meeting agenda.

Sponsors: University of Wisconsin–Madison Language Institute and Michigan State University Center for Language Teaching Advancement

Contacts

Dianna Murphy, University of Wisconsin–Madison, diannamurphy@wisc.edu

Emily Heidrich Uebel, Michigan State University, heidric6@msu.edu

Felix Kronenberg, Michigan State University, kronenb6@msu.edu

Keynote: “Adapting Kafka: Promise, Practice, Problems”

Memorial Union – Old Madison

1:30-2:30 pm
Saturday, November 1, 2025

Sponsor: The German and Dutch Graduate Student Association

Dr. Sunny Yudkoff

Keynote: “Adapting Kafka: Promise, Practice, Problems”

Memorial Union – Old Madison

4:30-6:00 pm
Friday, October 31, 2025

Sponsor: The German and Dutch Graduate Student Association

Dr. Verena Kick (Georgetown University)

Dr. Carsten Strathausen (University of Missouri)

Joseph Sciorra, Director for Academic and Cultural Programs at the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute, Queens College, The City University of New York.

11:00 am-12:00 pm, 1418 Van Hise, October 16, 2025. Lunchtime reception following.

Sponsored by the Folklore Program (GNS+), Department of French and Italian, Department of Religious Studies, Department of Art History, European Studies Program, UW Lectures Committee

Joseph Sciorra, Director for Academic and Cultural Programs at the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute, Queens College, The City University of New York.

2:25-3:15, 1310 Sterling, October 16, 2025.

Sponsored by the Folklore Program (GNS+), Department of French and Italian, Department of Religious Studies, Department of Art History, European Studies Program, UW Lectures Committee

What: The Danish Universal Child Care Model: Child Care for Every Child!

Who: Kathy Pomer, M.A. President & CEO GatherRound; Kate MacCrimmon, Ph.D. CEO & Founder Early Educators Exchange; Corrine Hendrickson Co-Founder, Wisconsin Early Childhood Action Needed

Where: 1418 Van Hise

When: Tuesday, October 28, 2025 at 6:00pm–7:30pm

Sponsors: Nordic (from GNS), European Studies, GatherRound, Mother Forward, Wisconsin Early Childhood Action Needed, National Association for Family Child Care

This event is free and open to the public.

Wolff Fellowship Panel

The Year We Roamed the World – Stories from Wolff Fellows

You are invited to attend the Wolff Fellowship Panel at the DeLuca Forum in the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery Building on Thursday, November 6, 2025, from 4:00 – 5:30 p.m.

Hear from current and previous Wolff Fellows , who will share reflections on their adventures around the globe post-graduation:

Claire James, ’22 (Japan, South Korea, Malawi, India)
Juliet Chang, ’23 (France, Canada, Vietnam, Thailand, Australia)
Max Koenig, ’24 (The Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Cuba, Grenada, Colombia, Brazil)
Cat Carroll, ’25 (Costa Rica, Spain, U.S.-Mexico border; future travel includes Morocco, Jordan, Turkey and Germany)

This panel is moderated by Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen, Merle Curti and Vilas-Borghesi Distinguished Achievement Professor of History. Light refreshments will be served.

Please submit a RSVP by Monday, November 3rd in order to receive reminders leading up to this event.

“Migration and Memory in Contemporary Europe” (Workshop)

313 Pyle Center

November 14th, 9am (all-day event)

Click here to view program

This cross-disciplinary one-day workshop brings together six invited scholars and experts (alongside the three organizers) to examine the interlinkages of migration policies and European discourses over historical memory. We interrogate how competing historical narratives (of World War II-era genocide and expulsion, postwar labor migrations, Communism, decolonization, and/or EU expansion) shaped elite and popular attitudes toward migration policy in Europe. How do current anxieties surrounding migration to Europe mirror or depart from cycles of anti-immigrant and anti-refugee backlash since 1945? Crucially, how do recent immigrants to Europe engage with, adapt, and resist dominant historical narratives in their countries of residence? The workshop invites scholarship that links migration controversies in Europe with colonial legacies and with the study of race, gender, and sexuality from an interdisciplinary focus.

Speakers:

Brandon Bloch [UW-Madison, History]

Michelle Khan [University of Richmond, History]

Liina-Ly Roos [UW-Madison, GNS+]

Benjamin Mier-Cruz [UW-Madison, Nordic Studies]

Chris Molnar [University of Michigan-Flint, History]

Nana Osei-Kofi [Oregon State University, Nordic Studies]

Ayşe Parla [Boston University, Anthropology]

Leonie Schulte [UW-Madison, Anthropology]

Phi H. Su [Williams College, Sociology]

Schedule to be announced soon

Please register here

This event is co-sponsored by: Center for German and European Studies, Department of German, Nordic, and Slavic+, Department of History, Department of Anthropology

Scandinavian Day at UW-Madison

Celebrating 150 Years of Scandinavian Studies

November 14th, 2025

For more information and registration, please go to:

150^th Anniversary Celebration

Join us for a day of seminars, tours, and performances celebrating the Nordic Unit
at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, followed by a festive Scandinavian-inspired buffet dinner in the Fluno Center.

Scandinavian Day is open to anyone with an interest in Scandinavian culture, including community members, representatives of the Nordic countries, and alumni of the UW-Madison Scandinavian Studies Department.

MORNING ACTIVITIES

A free class visit, open house and UW-Madison campus tour.

8:50  am – Audit a lecture in the Hans Christian Andersen course being taught by Professor Claus E. Andersen in the William H. Sewell Social Sciences Building
10:00 – Noon Open House in the Madsen Reading Room, Nordic Unit of the German, Nordic and Slavic+ Department, 13th floor of Van Hise Hall
11:00 am Campus Walking Tour

REGISTRATION

11:30-1:00 Registration at the Fluno Center, 601 University Ave, Madison, WI

Lunch on your own in the Memorial Union or nearby restaurants.

AFTERNOON PROGRAMS

These informative, informal sessions will be held in the Fluno Center, Chazen Museum of Art and the Memorial Union. There is a $40 fee to attend one or all of the afternoon seminars. (You’ll be able to pick one per time slot when you register.)

SESSION 1SeSS

1:00-2:00

• Dealing with Disney: Ensuring Quality Representation of Sámi Culture in Disney’s Frozen II.Thomas A. DuBois. Thomas A. DuBois is the head of the Folklore Unit and a professor of Folklore and Scandinavian Studies.
• How Thor Got His Hammer – An introduction to Nordic Mythology.Scott A. Mellor. Scott Mellor is a teaching professor in the Nordic Unit who has been at the University of Wisconsin-Madison since September 1989.
• Scandinavian Art in the Chazen Museum of Art.Berit Ness. The collection at UW’s Chazen Museum of Art includes light-sensitive Scandinavian works on paper not currently on view by artists such as Edvard Munch and Olle Baertling.  A small selection of works from these works will be made accessible in a pop-up viewing in the Chazen’s object study room. A Chazen staff member will be on hand to engage with attendees and answer questions. Limited to 20 people.

2:30-3:30

• My Viking longship journey: singing in Nordic languages.  Mimmi Fulmer. Join Mimmi Fulmer as she shares her “voyage home” to her Nordic heritage through songs and discuss resources for pronunciation of Finnish, Swedish, Norwegian and Danish.  Mimmi Fulmer is Professor of Voice and Opera at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
• Swedish Pancakes for Breakfast?”Marcus Cederstrom. This talk explores what the foods we eat can tell us about immigration and Nordic-American life in the Upper Midwest.  Marcus Cederstrom is the Community Curator of Nordic-American Folklore at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
• Norwegian 101. Ida Moen Johnson. Come and refresh—or begin!—your Norwegian language study in this fun session. Ida Moen Johnson is a Teaching Assistant Professor in the Department of German, Nordic and Slavic+, where she teaches courses in Norwegian language and Nordic literature and culture.

4:00-5:00

• Hygge, Health, and Happiness. Claus E. Andersen. Professor Andersen will introduce the Danish concept of hygge, explain how it relates to the Scandinavian way of life, and show what Americans can learn from it. Claus E. Andersen is the head of the Nordic Unit and the Birgit Baldwin and Paul and Renate Madsen Professor of Scandinavian Studies.
• Rasmus B. Anderson and the First U.S. Scandinavian Studies Department. Susan Brantley.  Learn more about the man who founded the Scan Studies Department 150 years ago – but who also was an author, editor, businessman and diplomat who brought to popular attention the fact that the Vikings were the first Europeans to arrive in the New World.  Professor Susan Brantly is a specialist in Swedish language and literature who served as the editor of the journal Scandinavian Studies for over a decade.
• The Teacher’s Revolt against Nazism in Occupied Norway.  Dean Krouk. Professor Krouk explains the inspiring story of resistance to the Nazification of schools and teaching in occupied Norway, which led to the arrest and imprisonment of hundreds of teachers in 1942.  Dean Krouk is a professor in the Nordic Unit whose specialties include Nordic literature and the cultural and political history of Scandinavia.

 RECEPTION AND BUFFET DINNER 

There is a $60 fee for the cocktail hour and dinner, with a special price of $40 for students. Sponsored tables of 8 are available for $500.

5:00 – 6:30 A cocktail reception in the lobby of the Fluno Center, with light hors d’oeuvres and a cash bar.

6:30 Scandinavian-inspired buffet dinner in the Oros Executive Dining Room of the Fluno Center, followed by a program honoring the past, present and future of the oldest Scandinavian Studies program in the world.

AFTER PARTY

Location to be announced

Parking and hotel rooms

Information about parking, including some in the Fluno Center,  will be sent to all registrants. Overnight accommodations are available in the Fluno Center and the Wisconsin Memorial Union on a first-come basis.

Karpat Talks: Supporting Children with Incarcerated Parents in Educational Settings

Orhan Kaya

Memorial Union
October 3, 2025 @ 1:00 pm CST

Politics, Society, and Culture Workshop

Judging Antisemitism? Hannah Arendt and the Banality of Evil, Then and Now

Dr. Anne Rethmann

Room 8108, Sewell Social Sciences Building
October 3, 2025 @ 1:00 pm CST
Click here to join via Zoom.
Meeting ID: 964 5142 0275 Passcode: 165604

About the Lecture: Hannah Arendt’s reports on the Eichmann trial and her reflections on the first Frankfurt Auschwitz trial remain central to ongoing debates. Misreadings of her concept of the “banality of evil”—often interpreted as a trivialization of antisemitism—show how contested her legacy continues to be, both in academic debate and in broader public discourse. At the same time, her famous notion has increasingly been appropriated in an overgeneralizing way, erasing precisely the specificity of National Socialism that Arendt insisted upon. My aim is not simply to revisit these controversies but to trace how Arendt’s notion of the banality of evil developed between Jerusalem and Frankfurt, and how it should be read not as a departure from her earlier concept of “radical evil” in The Origins of Totalitarianism but as a shift toward questions of law, judgment, and individual responsibility. What follows is therefore a historical-philosophical reconstruction, attentive both to the trials as legal events and to Arendt’s theoretical interventions, with implications extending beyond their immediate historical moment. I will unfold the argument in three steps: first, by addressing persistent misreadings of Eichmann in Jerusalem; second, by analyzing the legal-philosophical frameworks of judgment in Jerusalem and Frankfurt; and finally, by reconsidering the implications for questions of perpetrator responsibility. At stake is a problem that remains pressing today: What—or whom—should and can be judged in a trial? And closely related: can antisemitism itself be judged in court?

PCS meets on Tuesdays at 12:30–2:00 PM in Room 8108, Sewell Social Sciences Building.

University Committee Town Hall

Office of the Secretary of the Faculty

Wisconsin Idea Room, Education Building
October 20, 2025 @ 3:30 pm CST

About the Lecture: The University Committee invites faculty from across campus to a town hall about shared governance on Monday, October 20, 2025, at 3:30pm, in the Wisconsin Idea Room (room 159) of the Education Building.

The town hall will provide the opportunity for faculty to share their priorities with members of the University Committee, build community together and learn how shared governance functions at the campus level. Vice Chancellor for Finance and Administration Rob Cramer will join the second half of the session to listen to comments and answer questions as well.

We kindly request your RSVP by Wednesday, October 15, 2025, to help us plan, but feel free to join even if you decide last minute. RSVP at https://go.wisc.edu/q3qci3.

If you have any questions, please contact the Office of the Secretary of the Faculty at admin@secfac.wisc.edu.

Borderline: Richard of Saint Victor and Beatrice of Nazareth, Lovesick for Christ

Amy Hollywood

Workshop:
Hagen Room 150, Elvehjem
October 24, 2025 @ 2:00 pm CST

Public Talk:
L140, Elvehjem
October 24, 2025 @ 5:00 pm CST

About the Lecture: Richard of Saint Victor’s “Four Degrees of Violent Love” draws a very fine line between lovesickness as a sinful disease–a form of narcissistic melancholia that leads body and soul suicidally to waste away—and as the heights of a sanctified and fruitful union with the divine. Beatrice of Nazareth’s “Seven Manners of Love” follows Richard and simultaneously subverts the very boundary he attempts to create, describing herself as dying for love, desiring to be dissolved body and soul, in a way her hagiographer refuses to follow. The soul as lovesick for Christ; Christ as lovesick for humanity. These images are everywhere in the late Middle Ages. So, I will ask, how does a disease, a sinful disease, become the mark of the highest perfection?

About the Speaker: Amy Hollywood is Elizabeth H. Monrad Professor of Christian Studies at Harvard Divinity School. She is the author of The Soul as Virgin Wife: Mechthild of Magdeburg, Marguerite Porete, and Meister Eckhart (University of Notre Dame Press, 1995), which received the Otto Grundler Prize for the best book in medieval studies from the International Congress of Medieval Studies; Sensible Ecstasy: Mysticism, Sexual Difference, and the Demands of History (University of Chicago Press, 2002); and Acute Melancholia and Other Essays (Columbia University Press, 2016). She is also the co-editor, with Patricia Beckman, of The Cambridge Companion to Christian Mysticism (2012) and, with Eleanor Craig, Niklaus Largier, and Kris Trujillo, of a special issue of Representations, “The Poetics of Prayer and Devotion to Literature” (2021). Devotion: Three Inquires on Religion, Literature, and Political Imagination,” co-authored with Constance Furey and Sarah Hammerschlag, appeared in 2021. She has a number of other projects in the overlapping fields of philosophy of religion, religion and literature, and feminist and gender studies in progress.