Jean Monnet Chair Activities

Professor Michael Herzfeld will present the 2018 Jean Monnet Distinguished Lecture at the University at Buffalo.

Title: Paradoxes and Paroxysms:  Nationalism, Migration, and the Dream of Cultural Identity – Reflections from the Southern Fringe
Time: 5:00--6:30pm
Location: 509 O’Brian Hall, The Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy
Date: Monday, April 2, 2018

Abstract: Professor Michael Herzfeld, who has done extensive fieldwork in Greece and Italy, will ask why, at a time when Grexit (Greece’s proposed exit from the European Union) never happened but Brexit may well take place, issues like the “Macedonian Question” and the autonomy of Catalonia and Scotland continue to render elusive the search for a common European identity.  He will argue that this search actually represents a political rhetoric that is inherently and demonstrably divisive.  Given the rapid erosion of clear geographical, cultural, and even genetic definitions of “Europe,” the “idea of Europe” looks increasingly parochial, a desperate attempt by countries formerly dominating the world to recreate their hegemony more locally, while the “fringe” countries that bear the brunt of this process are increasingly responding to such developments with populist versions of 19^th-century romantic nationalism and with attendant claims to magnificent histories as the bedrock of an idealized European identity.  By asking how these tensions play out in the intimate spaces studied by anthropologists, the speaker will argue that only by recognizing itself as fundamentally a bureaucratic rather than a “cultural” institution – and at the same time committing itself to the creation of a more inclusive, unrestrictive, and above all educationally activist politics – can the European Union realistically expect to avoid catastrophic implosion, repressive autocracy, or both.

Michael Herzfeld was educated at the Universities of Cambridge (B.A. in Archaeology and Anthropology, 1969), Athens (non-degree program in Greek Folklore, 1969-70), Birmingham (M.A., Modern Greek Studies, 1972; D.Litt., 1989); and Oxford (Social Anthropology, D.Phil., 1976). A past president of both the Modern Greek Studies Association and the Society for the Anthropology of Europe, he was editor of American Ethnologist during 1994-98 and is now Editor at Large with specific responsibility for the feature "Polyglot Perspectives" in Anthropological Quarterly; he serves on numerous other editorial boards and is currently co-editor of “New Anthropologies of Europe” (Indiana University Press).

In addition to numerous articles and reviews, he has authored the following books: Ours Once More: Folklore, Ideology, and the Making of Modern Greece (1982), The Poetics of Manhood: Contest and Identity in a Cretan Mountain Village, Anthropology through the Looking-Glass: Critical Ethnography in the Margins of Europe (1987), A Place in History: Social and Monumental Time in a Cretan Town (1991), The Social Production of Indifference: The Symbolic Roots of Western Bureaucracy (1992), Cultural Intimacy: Social Poetics in the Nation-State (1997; a second, revised edition has just been released [2005]), Portrait of a Greek Imagination: An Ethnographic Biography of Andreas Nenedakis (1997), Anthropology: Theoretical Practice in Culture and Society (2001), The Body Impolitic: Artisans and Artifice in the Global Hierarchy of Value (2004), and Evicted from Eternity: The Restructuring of Modern Rome (2009). Several of his books have appeared, or are scheduled to appear, in other languages (Greek, Italian, Portuguese, Serbian, Croatian, Polish, and Chinese; a chapter of another has appeared in Japanese). He also filmed and produced Monti Moments: Men's Memories in the Heart of Rome (2007).

Herzfeld's field research has been funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the American Philosophical Society, the Spencer Foundation, and the American Council of Learned Societies. He was a cowinner of the Chicago Folklore Prize for 1981. He has also been awarded the J.B. Donne Prize on the Anthropology of Art (1989) and the Rivers Memorial Medal (1994) (both by the Royal Anthropological Institute, London), and the J.I. Staley Prize (by the School of American Research, 1994). In 1997 Herzfeld was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

This talk is funded by the Erasmus+ Program of the European Commission and sponsored by the Jean Monnet Chair at the University at Buffalo. It is co-sponsored with The Center for European Studies (CEUS); the Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy; and the Department of Anthropology.

Professor Willem Maas will present the 2016-7 Jean Monnet Distinguished Lecture at the University at Buffalo.

Title: “Multilevel Citizenship in the Age of Brexit and Trump”
Time: 3:00--4:30pm
Location: 509 O’Brian Hall, The Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy
Date: Tuesday, April 25^th, 2017

Abstract: The dominant view of the growth of citizenship accompanying the rise of sovereign states since Westphalia sanitizes a complex history and ignores important developments both ‘above’ and ‘below’ the state. For example, the rise of European Union citizenship inspires other regional integration efforts to develop common rights as a form of supranational ‘citizenship’ while many states, particularly federal ones, face growing demands for special regional or group-based statuses. Similarly, cities sometimes reassert what citizenship meant until current forms of statehood crowded out alternatives: a member of a city entitled to the privileges and rights of that city. If only sovereign states can confer citizenship, then cities, provinces, nations (to the extent they do not coincide with a state), or supranational entities like the European Union cannot do so. But this view of citizenship obscures historical and emerging forms of multilevel citizenship that span the world.

Willem Maas (PhD Yale), Jean Monnet Chair and Associate Professor of Political Science, Public & International Affairs, Social & Political Thought, and Socio-Legal Studies, chairs the Political Science department at Glendon College, York University (Toronto, Canada). He co-founded the Migration and Citizenship section of the American Political Science Association and was recently Marie Skłodowska-Curie International Fellow at the European University Institute. Professor Maas writes on EU and multilevel citizenship, politics in Europe and Canada, migration, and related issues and has just received a SSHRC grant to write a political history of Canadian citizenship and nationality law and policy. He co-edits a new book series on the Politics of Citizenship and Migration.

This talk is funded by the Erasmus+ Program of the European Commission and sponsored by the Jean Monnet Chair at the University at Buffalo. It is co-sponsored with The Center for European Studies (CEUS) and the Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy.

Professor Nancy Foner presented the Inaugural Jean Monnet Distinguished Lecture at the University at Buffalo, sponsored by the Jean Monnet Chair.

Title: “Fear, Anxiety, and Immigration: Barriers and Belonging in the United States and Western Europe”
Time: 3:00--4:30pm
Location: 509 O’Brian Hall, The Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy
Date: April 26, 2016

Abstract:

After more than fifty years of large-scale immigration, the U.S. and Western European countries have been dramatically transformed by the huge inflows that have altered the composition of their populations in profound ways and created remarkable --- new -- ethnic, racial, and religious diversity.  Why have fears and anxieties about immigrant origin populations and their incorporation taken different forms on the two sides of the Atlantic -- with the religious divide more central in Europe and race and legal status especially pronounced barriers in the U.S.?  How can we account for the fact that the U.S. frames national identities in a way that is more inclusive of immigrants and their children than Western European countries do?

Nancy Foner is Distinguished Professor of Sociology at Hunter College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She has written extensively on immigration issues, with her current work focusing on comparing immigrant minorities in the United States and Europe, the immigrant experience in various American gateway cities, and immigration today with earlier periods in the United States. The author or editor of eighteen books, the most recent are Strangers No More: Immigration and the Challenges of Integration in North America and Western Europe, co-authored with Richard Alba (Princeton University Press, 2015) and Fear, Anxiety, and National Identity: Immigration and Belonging in North America and Western Europe, edited with Patrick Simon (Russell Sage Foundation, 2015). Among her many honors, she received the 2010 Distinguished Career Award from the International Migration Section of the American Sociological Association and in 2011 was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

This talk was funded by the Erasmus+ Program of the European Commission. It was co-sponsored by the Jean Monnet Chair, The Center for European Studies (CEUS), and the Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy.

Deborah Reed-Danahay organized a panel discussion on Brexit at the University at Buffalo on April 10^th, 2017. The event was held at the Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy and co-sponsored with the Baldy Center and the Center for European Studies (CEUS).  The panelists drew from across disciplines, with speakers from departments of History, Economics, Political Science, Anthropology, and English. 

Deborah Reed-Danahay was invited to participate in the Jean Monnet Seminar “The Future of Europe: A Commitment for You(th)” in Rome, Italy 23-24 March, 2017 organized by the European Commission.  She was asked also to serve as Rapporteur for Working Group 3 at the seminar, "Communicating Europe: how to reach the 'hard-to–reach,'" which was moderated by Paul Reiderman, Director for Media and Communication at Council of the European Union. She reported on this at the plenary session.  While in Rome, Deborah Reed-Danahay attended the Citizens Dialogue on the 60^th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome hosted by HRVP Federica Mogherini with the Prime Minister of Malta Joseph Muscat.  She also participated in the March for Europe in Rome on May 25^th.  

December 2016: Deborah Reed-Danahay participated in the second meeting of the EU Jean Monnet Network in the US held in Washington, DC on December 8 and 9, 2016.

January 2016: Deborah Reed-Danahay participated in the EU Jean Monnet Network in the US meetings in Washington, DC on January 28 and 29, 2016.

August 2018: Deborah Reed-Danahay presented a paper titled “Leave/remain: emotions and the pacing of mobility practices among the French in London post-Brexit” at the conference of the European Association of Social Anthropologists in Stockholm, Sweden, on August 14^th, 2018.  This was part of the panel “Pacing Mobilities: A Consideration of Shifts in the Timing, Intensity, Tempo, and Duration of Mobility, organized by Noel Salazar and Vered Amit.

• Paper Abstract: The Brexit Referendum prompted many French settlers in London to express resentment – the feeling of being rejected and no longer “at home.” This paper sheds light on the role of emotions in the pacing of mobility through a case study of relatively privileged migrants facing an uncertain future.

March 2018:  Deborah Reed-Danahay was invited to serve as Discussant the conference “Digesting Difference: Modes of Social Incorporation in Europe,” held at Princeton University, March 3, 2018. This was organized by John Borneman and Kelly McGovern.

December 2017: Deborah Reed-Danahay presented a paper titled “EU Mobility, Brexit, and the Liminal: “Incertitude” among French Citizens in London” at the American Anthropological Association Meetings in Washington, D.C. on December 2^nd, 2017.  This paper was presented in the panel “Brexit Matters: Transformations in Regional, National and European Integration” organized by Thomas Wilson. 

May 2017: Deborah Reed-Danahay attended the European Union Studies Association (EUSA) meetings in Miami, FL from May 4-7^th. She participated in the panel “Jean Monnet Program: Sharing Best Practices.”

May 2016: Deborah Reed-Danahay attended the European Union in International Affairs conference in Brussels from 11 to 13 May 2016.  She presented a paper entitled “Teaching Europe to First-Year Students with ePortfolios.”

April 2016: Deborah Reed-Danahay attended the 23 International Conference of Europeanists in Philadelphia (4/13-4/20). She presented a paper entitled “EU Citizens, Migration, and National Social Space.” She also participated in that conference as a member of the Executive Committee of CES.

November 2015: Deborah Reed-Danahay attended the 2015 American Anthropological Association Meetings in Denver (11/18 -11/22).  She presented a paper entitled “Bourdieu and the Anthropology of Social Space and Migration.”

Deborah Reed-Danahay presented a talk on “The EU and Brexit” on April 3, 2017 at Tapestry High School in Buffalo, NY.  This was part of the Great Decisions series sponsored by the Foreign Policy Association, coordinated by the International Institute in Buffalo.

Deborah Reed-Danahay presented a talk on “International Migration: The View from Calais” on March 7, 2016 at Tapestry High School in Buffalo, NY. This was part of the “Great Decisions” series sponsored by the Foreign Policy Association, coordinated by the International Institute in Buffalo.

Deborah Reed-Danahay presented a talk on “The Syrian Refugee Crisis: The View from Europe” in the symposium “Syrian Refugees: Buffalo Responds” held on March 31, 2016 at the Buffalo and Erie County Public Library in Downtown Buffalo.  Sponsored by the UB School of Social Work and co-sponsored by the UB Asian Studies Program.