Below is a full list of upcoming and ongoing Havighurst Center-related events. See menu on the left to view detailed schedules of our annual lectures and conferences.

SPRING 2023

February 6      
Robert Hayden, University of Pittsburgh
The Bridge to Nowhere and the Central Memorial at Žepa, an Island in a Bosnian Land Archipelago
Harrison Hall 313, 2:50 to 4:10pm

In 2016, the US Embassy in Sarajevo paid $62,000 to reinforce an Ottoman-era bridge in the tiny Bosnian village of Žepa. Because the bridge was the subject of a story by Nobel laureate Ivo Andric, the Embassy said that it was preserving Bosnian heritage and also supporting tourism. The latter claim was dubious, since the village is remote and the road to the bridge is unmarked. This talk discusses the foreign support for the symbol of the bridge, which is of little importance to the local population, while ignoring the memorial that is important to them, as emblematic of foreign involvement in Bosnia during and since the 1992-95 war.

February 20    
Elana Resnick, UC Santa Barbara
The Determined Indeterminacy of White Supremacy: Racial Disavowal and Strategic Deniability
Upham Hall 258, 2:50 to 4:10pm

This talk explores how systemic white supremacy takes hold through the widespread politics of racial disavowal. Rooted in ethnographic research in Sofia, Bulgaria, this article analyzes the appearance of Nazi signs on electoral ballots on the eve of Bulgaria's EU accession in 2007—and then more than a decade later, in 2019. Tracing the changing politics of racial disavowal within a long history of racial erasures in Bulgaria helps us understand how the strategic deniability of contemporary white supremacy takes shape and works to naturalize, transform, and fix longstanding racial hierarchies.

March 1          
Juozas Bulota, Lithuanian Journalist
Juozas Bulota’s Lithuanian empire of satire and humor and the Soviet state
Upham Hall 258, 2:50 to 4:10pm

How do you create and administer a widely popular humor journal in an authoritarian state? Journalist Juozas Bulota will tell a story about his father Juozas Bulota, the editor-in-chief of the only Soviet Lithuanian satire and humor journal "Broom," and, thus, in charge of the Lithuanian "empire of humor."

March 6 - May 1
Havighurst Center Colloquia Series: Populism in Eastern Europe and Beyond
Harrison Hall 109, 11:40am-1:00pm

April 3        CANCELED: Rescheduled for September 14    
Rima Praspaliauskiene, UC Berkeley
Enveloped Lives: Caring and Relating in Lithuanian Health Care
Upham Hall 258 , 2:50 to 4:10pm

Rima Praspaliauskiene will talk about the role of “white envelopes” in medical settings.  The figure of the envelope emerges as a concrete-abstraction and a way to explore complex doctor-patient interactions that go beyond notions of the gift or the bribe and the political economy of care in contemporary Lithuania. Handing envelopes containing money or gifts to doctors in public health care is often seen as a remnant of socialism, a corrupt and unethical practice that continues as an integral part of the Lithuanian health care system. However, these practices can be seen as emerging forms of care that impede neoliberal healthcare reforms in post-socialist contexts. 

April 25          
Barbara Junisbai, Pitzer College
The Pitfalls of Family Rule: Central Asia and Beyond
Harrison Hall 302, 11:40am-1:00pm

April 27
Nutsa Batiashvili, Free University of Tbilisi  
Anxiety on Russia's Frontier
Harrison Hall 302, 11:40am-1:00pm

Nutsa Batiashvili is a professor of anthropology and dean of the graduate school at the Free University of Tbilisi.  Her areas of expertise are history and culture and collective memory in post-Soviet Georgia.  In 2018 she published The Bivocal Nation:  Memory and Identity on the Edge of Empire which was based on her PhD dissertation.  Her forthcoming book is titled The Anthropology of Anxiety in a Small Country.  She currently has a Wenner-Gren grant to conduct research on 'the anthropology of anxiety'.