2021-2022 Year in Review: 30th Anniversary Edition

YEAR IN REVIEW

TURNING HEARTS AND MINDS TO EUROPE

FROM

THIRTY YEARS OF MAKING EUROPE VISIBLE AND TANGIBLE

Turning Hearts and Minds to Europe

There is a well-known thought experiment in philosophy called “What Mary Did Not Know.” It tells the story of a girl who is kept in a black and white room and who has never been exposed to colors. However, Mary knows everything there is to know about colors. One day she is exposed to the real world with its many colors and learns something she had not known before: what it is like to see colors. This is a special kind of knowledge, based on experience and encounter.

The Nanovic Institute for European Studies was established, thanks to the generosity and vision of Robert and Elizabeth Nanovic, to make Europe visible and tangible, beyond the textbook and the classroom.

The Institute’s mission is to build bridges between Europe and Notre Dame, between Notre Dame and Europe. For thirty years, the Nanovic Institute has served “a second person perspective of Europe,” a perspective based on one person encountering or experiencing another. Many students, be they called Mary or Javier, Dara or Anthony, have learnt something important they did not know before.

Thirty years may not seem much when one thinks of the history of Christianity, the University of Bologna, or St. Peter’s Archabbey in Salzburg. We all know, though, that it is not the number of years, but the depth of moments that count. The Nanovic Institute for European Studies has seen and provided many of these moments – through experiences in and of Europe, through encounters with Europe and Europeans.

This anniversary year has been symbolic in many ways: the Russian invasion of Ukraine has positioned the Nanovic Institute as a platform to communicate and analyze, discuss and judge the atrocities caused by this unprovoked attack. Thanks to a well-established Catholic Universities Partnership with universities from Central and Eastern Europe, including the Ukrainian Catholic University, the Nanovic Institute has served as a channel of information and support for its friends in Ukraine and our broader community.

The past months have also allowed us to bring important voices to campus through the Nanovic Forum, one of our signature events: we hosted Ukrainian Soviet dissident Myroslav Marynovych, Lord Alton of Liverpool, and Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Anne Applebaum.

The celebration of thirty years of the Nanovic Institute for European Studies is a source of gratitude, hope, and a renewed commitment to the mission of serving meaningful experiences and encounters to our community.

30th Anniversary

PAGE 2

Foster

NEWS ROUNDUP 3

PROFILE: Moritz Graefrath 6 STORIES Scenes at Berlin Hauptbahnhof 8 Breaking Down Barriers in Barcelona 10

PAGE 12

Elevate

NEWS ROUNDUP 13

PROFILE: Karrie Koesel 16 STORIES Understanding 21st-Century Authoritarianism 18 Student Research 20

PAGE 32

Collaborate

NEWS ROUNDUP 33

PROFILE: A. James McAdams 36

STORIES

A Virtuous Cycle 38 Nanovic in Solidarity with Ukraine 40 Practicing Resilience 44

PAGE 46

Converse

NEWS ROUNDUP 47

PROFILE: Marko Gural ’25 and Christian McKernan ’23 50

STORIES

Graduate Fellows 52 Cultural and Intellectual Immersion 54

Director, Nanovic Institute for European Studies Professor of Social Ethics

The four sections of this publication were inspired by the goals of the Institute’s 2021-2026 Strategic Plan (see page 14).

FOSTERING THE EDUCATION AND FORMATION OF STUDENTS

NEWS ROUNDUP

“The last year has been one of tremendous growth for the Nanovic Institute’s student programs. As we continue to transition out of pandemic restrictions, the Institute has taken steps to expand and deepen our student programs, creating an academically enriching environment where students feel empowered to understand the many dimensions of European studies that shape our world.”

– Anna Dolezal

INTENTIONAL DEVELOPMENT OF CURRICULUM

Minors in European Studies, Class of 2022 (left to right): Kate Connolly, Marinella Stollenwerk Cavallaro, Max Chuma, Perry Abbe Mayr, Alexander Shyne, James Broderick, Celia Krohn, Joey Speicher, and Grace Ma.

In fall 2021, the Nanovic Institute launched a redesign of its signature minor in European studies. New curricular requirements introduce students to a variety of concepts and themes within European studies, while grounding their knowledge in the foundational ideas that

have shaped and will continue to shape Europe and its peoples. An essential component of this redesign is a compulsory foundational European studies course, taught by faculty fellows, on the most salient ideas and events that make Europe what it is. These changes were made with the goal of attracting and retaining

Student Engagement

with Nanovic Forum Visitors

Students in the Nanovic Institute are afforded special opportunities to meet with Nanovic Forum visitors.

In fall 2021, a select group of students from the Notre Dame Ukrainian Society met with the human rights activist Myroslav Marynovych and discussed the Ukrainian diaspora in the United States and the importance of the freedom of religion.

During the spring semester, undergraduate students shared breakfast with Lord Alton of Liverpool, unpacking everything from advocacy strategies and human rights to balancing family and career in politics.

During the last Forum event of the academic year, graduate and undergraduate students had coffee with Anne Applebaum. Fresh from her interview with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, students were able to gain invaluable insight into the war in Ukraine and the future of security in Europe.

a wide variety of students who would find an intellectual home at the Nanovic Institute. More than a year into the implementation of this new curriculum, the Institute now boasts the highest number of students enrolled in the minor in European studies in the program’s history.

Total number of Nanovic Institute graduates as of 2022:

EuroCup

Arguably the most fun Nanovic event of the year, the Eurocup Trivia competition pits dorms against one another in a friendly test of knowledge of all things European. How many coun tries border Germany? Which Italian composer of operas was a famous chef and gourmet? These questions get students thinking about the many facets

of European studies and present an opportunity for the Institute to share upcoming opportunities with new and returning students alike. This year, 65 students par ticipated in the third annual trivia competition and St. Edward’s Hall emerged as its champion for the second year in a row.

2,100+

Diplomacy Scholars and Brussels Initiatives

This year the Institute expanded a course formerly taught online, Deep Dive into Diplomacy, into a competitive academic and co-curricular program aimed at developing the skills necessary to be effective diplomats in the world today.

This program was offered in partnership with the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna and featured a campus visit from its Deputy Director, Dr. Susanne Keppler-Schlesinger. The course invited career and retired European diplomats and American foreign service officers to speak on skills such as negotiation, judgment and decision making, protocol, and writing. The class was supplemented with opportunities for students to practice these skills including a diplomatic dining experience where students learned about meal-time etiquette. The program culminated in a week-long diplomacy immersion in Vienna and Brussels in spring 2022 where students engaged with European practitioners of diplomacy in organizations including the Austrian foreign service, NATO, and Microsoft.

Total number of student grants for language training, service learning, and research in Europe as of 2022:

Since it was established, the Nanovic Institute has supported training in many European languages:

Albanian

Danish

French

German

Greek

Irish

Italian

Latin

Polish

Portugese

Russian

Spanish

Nanovic Field Notes

Launched during the summer of 2021, #NanovicFieldNotes is a social media campaign that shares images and stories from Nanovic grant recipients. During their fall, winter, and summer breaks, Nanovic-supported students research, serve, and learn “in the field.” For more, search #NanovicFieldNotes on Nanovic social media.

RIGHT: Daniel Glasgow, ND Architecture master’s student, was in L.A. studying Spanish Baroque architecture, when he encountered a cemetary gate at San Gabriel Mission in the classic curving baroque style.

BELOW: Carlos Garcia, in Staufen, Germany, studied German at the Goethe Institute in Freiburg, and picked up a new favorite word “Hilfsbereitschaft” meaning “readiness to help.”

RIGHT: For his senior thesis on post-traumatic coping mechanisms used by WWI soldiers, history major Thomas Filip conducted research in Belgium and England. Tommy is shown here visiting the Vimy Ridge memorial.

RIGHT: Sarah Nanjala, a Master of Global Affairs student, visited sites related to WWI while studying French in Brussels.

RIGHT: Studio art major Anastasia Matuszak worked on an online exhibit on Ukrainian icons & iconography at the Ukrainian Museum-Archives in Cleveland. This included work by Daria B. Kulchytsky, whose icon “Madonna in Black” incorporates traditional Byzantine and uniquely Ukrainian features.

RIGHT: Maggie Foster, a vocalist in the Master of Sacred Music Program was in Lyon, France where she coached operative repertoire, focusing on Francis Poulenc’s one-woman opera La Voix Humaine. On her commute, she reviewed her music against the backdrop of the Alps.

Moritz Graefrath is a doctoral candidate in the Depart ment of Political Science at Notre Dame, specializing in international relations. In 2022-23, he will be a predoctoral research fellow in the International Security Program at Harvard Universi ty’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

Training the Next Generation of Scholars

hen Moritz Graefrath arrived at the University of Notre Dame to begin his Ph.D. program in political science in August 2017, he knew that the key to his personal and professional growth would be finding a home away from home. By the end of his first year, Moritz, a native of Essen, Germany, was a regular attendee at Nanovic events and, as he progressed through his graduate studies, he found that the institute provided more opportunities for professionalization, interdisciplinary engagement, and a shared sense of purpose.

A graduate of the University of Bayreuth in Germany, Moritz was attracted to the Department of Politi cal Science’s strengths in the field of international relations. He especially wanted to work with Nanovic Faculty Fellow Sebastian Rosato, who is interested in the kinds of questions that Moritz wanted to pursue: big questions about how the world works, why states cooperate, compete, or go to war, and how scholars might identify the historical roots of these dynamics. Importantly, Moritz wanted to consider these ques tions within the context of the long and broad sweep of European history, from the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 to the power dynamics between European states from the Great War to the Cold War.

In the first semesters of his graduate studies, Moritz was drawn to the Nanovic Institute’s lectures, events, and other programs. Part of the attraction to a Euro pean studies institute was personal, but he was also conscious that he was one of few Europeanist students in his political science cohort. In Nanovic, he found a meeting point for people who were either from Europe or had a close connection to the continent in their lives and in their work. By the middle of his second year in 2019, the Institute inaugurated a fellowship cohort within which Moritz could forge and strengthen such connections: the Graduate Fellows Program.

The Institute has played an important role in prov ing to him the value and necessity of working across disciplines. As an undergraduate, he realized that while his research interests lay within political science and

Winternational relations, the scholarship, methods, and perspectives of other disciplines – particularly history and philosophy – would enhance his studies immea surably. Of interdisciplinarity, Moritz says that if he had not “seen it done, seen it work, and seen it excel at Nanovic,” he may not have explored its possibilities in his own research to the same degree. This includes a burgeoning research program with philosopher Marcel Jahn, a friend from Moritz’s time at Bayreuth, with whom he co-wrote his first peer-reviewed article “Con ceptualizing interstate cooperation” in International Theory, published in October 2021.

Nanovic has also helped Moritz develop his profes sional skills, providing opportunities to organize con ferences, present his research, develop online content, and teach his own classes. Along with Alec Hahus, his colleague in political science and the Nanovic Graduate Fellows program, Moritz initiated the Europe in the World project, facilitated by the Institute and launched in August 2021. The pair developed EITW (eitw. nd.edu) as a platform for scholars, at Notre Dame and beyond, to connect their research to issues of contem porary concern in ways that would be accessible to the general public. Moritz also acquired teaching experi ence first as part of a graduate fellows team teaching an introductory class on European studies and then teaching his own seminar on the international relations of interwar Europe. He is still in contact with many of the students who took his class and mentors several who are now pursuing graduate degrees in Europe.

One of the abiding memories that Moritz takes with him from his time at the Nanovic Institute relates to these students and was the result of serendipitous scheduling. In September 2021, he spoke to the institute’s advisory board at their annual meeting, an assignment that provided him with a welcome oppor tunity to reflect upon the part Nanovic had played in his career at Notre Dame. At the meeting, Moritz saw that he was presenting alongside some of his former students, undergraduates he had taught in recent semesters. He noted, with great satisfaction, “there is the next generation of scholars or practitioners or policymakers, who care about Europe with their head and with their heart.” For Moritz, hearing the students reflect on Nanovic’s role in their studies was deeply affirming. For Nanovic, it was a testament to the value of his contributions to the life of the Institute. ◆

CLOCKWISE: Max in his orange volunteer vest, displaying the Ukrainian flag. Refugees’ arrival floor at Berlin Hauptbahnhof. A van that had carried refugees from Ukraine to Berlin, marked in Russian for “children.”

“I would never have predicted that on the final day of our Berlin migration class trip I would see my grandparents’ tragic story repeat itself before my eyes.”

Max Chuma ’22, graduated with a major in business analytics and a supplementary major in global affairs, with a concentration in transnational European studies, and a minor in Italian. During spring break 2022, he traveled to Germany as part of a Nanovic Institute experiential learning course on the migration crisis, led by William Collins Donahue, Cavanaugh Professor of the Humanities. At the end of his week, Max went to Berlin’s central train station to help receive refugees fleeing the war in Ukraine.

Scenes at Berlin Hauptbahnhof

A Notre Dame Student’s Experience with Ukrainian Refugees in Germany

BY MAX CHUMA ’22

All four of my grandparents fled Ukraine to escape political and cultural persecution by Nazi Germany and the USSR. Their story has been at the core of my identity as a native Ukrainian speaker and proud Ukrainian American.

Motivated by my family’s refugee history, I spent the summer after my freshman year at Notre Dame in the Center for Social Concerns’ Summer Service Learning Program at the U.S.-Mexico Border in El Paso. I left with a new perspective on the mass migrations that we are witnessing all over the globe today. To continue learning, I jumped on the opportunity to travel to Berlin with the spring 2022 Nanovic course on migration and Germany, with the expectation that I would be mainly learning about how Germany has accepted and integrated refugees from North Africa.

I would have never guessed that two weeks before our departure, Russia would invade my ancestral homeland of Ukraine and spark a new wave of refu gees, the pace and enormity of which has not been seen since the period when my grandparents fled Ukraine almost eighty years ago. I would also have never predicted that on the final day of our Berlin migration class trip I would see my grandparents’ tragic story repeat itself before my eyes.

This last day of the class trip had been reserved for us to experience Germany as tourists, but I knew that there was a great need at Berlin Hauptbahnhof, the central station: multiple evacuation trains from Poland were arriving each day in Berlin full of Ukrainian women and children. My sense of motivation to go to the central station was reinforced when I left the hotel and saw a blue Ukrainian van with “дети,” meaning “children” in Russian, in bold duct tape letters all around the sides, a plea to Russian troops not to attack during the escape. With my backpack filled with as much food and water as I could carry, I arrived alone, at the station. An entire floor was dedicated to Ukrainian refugees. After I donated my food, I joined a line to register as a volunteer.

The volunteers were separated into German/English speakers and then Ukrainian/Russian speakers. As a native Ukrainian speaker, I was given a special orange vest and told to display my name – which I did in the Cyrillic Mаксим – and the languages I spoke.

The volunteers ranged from local teenagers to retired couples and some had been there for several days. Sadly, I think many had an advantage over me in that they had become somewhat numb to the tragedy and trauma of the situation. I was shocked by how many

young innocent faces I saw coming into the reception area. I called my own mother in tears, telling her over and over again, “They are just kids Mama. There are so many scared little kids.” She told me they were safe, and that all I had to do was to show them love, and to think of those who helped my grandparents.

German groups had set up tents for medical care for mothers or disability support, but, from my perspective, there was no formal leadership. Volunteers would just go to where there was a need or simply stand in place and answer questions for the anxious refugees. Most of their requests were for needs that were immediate and simple, such as coffee in the morning or toiletries in the evening, and guidance as the refugees began to formulate plans for where they would be spending the night in Germany. I was pulled in nearly every direction, from explaining how to pur chase tickets to other European cities, to consoling an anxious grandmother, to handing out food, to carrying children to the train. I met a little boy who, stunned and emotionless, whispered that his name was “Sasha.” When I told him my name was Max his mother told me that was the name of his father, who I could only assume had been required to remain in Ukraine and defend the homeland. I worked for approximately five hours in total and the stream of women and children did not stop. In my last hour, the other Notre Dame students joined me and I helped them distribute fruit, candy, and toiletries we had purchased from the train station’s grocery store.

When I got tired or overwhelmed I kept returning because I wanted to be a source of good like those who had helped my grandparents, child refugees of the 1940s. I kept thinking about a story my grandfa ther told me about his first memory when he and his sister arrived by boat at the Ellis Island immigration processing center in New York. A stranger gave them an orange that they ate in secret. He had never tasted anything so sweet, and, to this day, it remains his first memory of the Western, free world.

As a full circle and to honor my grandparents’ bravery, even as small children, I bought oranges and passed them out to the Ukrainian children. I wanted the young, terrified faces before me to know they were welcome and that the evil they were fleeing would not find them in Berlin. As my cousin fights for his country’s freedom in Kyiv with the Ukrainian army, the least I can do is tell traumatized women and chil dren, waiting with uncertainty in a cold, foreign train station, that there is hope. ◆

Matt Kianpour ’24 is a science-computing major with minors in compassionate care in medicine, European studies, and poverty studies. Over spring break in 2022, he received a grant from the Nanovic Institute to conduct research in Barcelona for his capstone essay.

Breaking Down Barriers in Barcelona Studying

How Public Transit Brings Healthcare to Communities in Need

BY MATT KIANPOUR ’24

I love public transportation. Even in South Bend, a small midwestern city that could best be described as public transit-lite, I have the Transpo schedule memorized. On campus, I am known for boarding my entire friend group on bus number seven for excursions to the mall, coffee shops, and Mexican restaurants. While public transportation is my hobby, my professional interests lie firmly in the realm of healthcare. My career goal is to become a primary care physician, one whose philosophy aligns with the World Health Organization’s definition of health as “a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.”

I believe we must view healthcare as a sociological institution. For me to be an excellent primary care physician, I need to be aware of the discriminatory social forces that erect barriers and prevent certain people, particularly those at the margins of society, from accessing responsive and quality healthcare.

As a science-computing major, I am eager to apply quantitative analysis to qualitative issues, especially through the use of geographic information systems (GIS) technology, which can be used to portray a community’s experiences, narratives, and in particular, challenges, in code and on maps.

My research considers how public transportation can facilitate or present a barrier to healthcare. Researchers in the U.S. have observed that a lack of reliable transportation can act as a roadblock to accessing healthcare facilities, resulting in missed visits and rescheduled appointments, delaying adequate care for patients, especially those who are economically disadvantaged. My work aims to discover whether such barriers to healthcare exist in Barcelona, which, unlike cities in this country, has a universal healthcare system and a robust public transportation network. My research seeks to understand, in particular, how well Barcelona’s public transportation system makes healthcare accessible for the city’s low socioeconomic status populations.

Prior to my field research in Spain, I spent the fall 2021 semester working with the Navari Family Center for Digital Scholarship to complete a spatial analysis of Barcelona health care facilities using GIS software. I created a model to identify healthcare facilities that are located within a low-income region and within a walkable distance – 0.25 miles or less – from one of the Transports Metropolitans de Barcelona’s (TMB) 165

train stations. This model provided a sampling frame for phase two of my project: ethnographic research conducted in Barcelona.

When I arrived in Barcelona, I vowed to only travel by metro, no matter my destination. This gave me an opportunity to see and experience the full scope of the population served by the city’s main transit system. I rode the metro with school teachers, doctors, corporate workers, and even a group of FC Barcelona fútbol fans on their way to a match. I rode the train at 5 a.m. and took it home again at 5 p.m. after a day of visiting clinics, experiencing a train system that, with its modern technology and frequent service, certainly helps promote access to the city’s healthcare facilities.

Over the week, I conducted semi-structured interviews with patients at clinics that met my sampling criteria and asked them about how transportation affected their access to healthcare. One encounter has stayed with me: a man in his 60s who had a transfemoral (above the knee) amputation to his left leg due to diabetes. We discussed his quality of life and pain management, and he explained that he uses a walker, which he feels gives him better mobility than a wheelchair. His wife and family are unable to provide transportation to his appointments, so he relies on the metro system. His visits to the clinic are vital: pain management is a constant challenge and his diabetes puts him at risk of developing diabetic neuropathy, a type of nerve damage that could lead to the amputation of his other leg. Because of the TMB’s frequent service and disability-accessible trains and platforms, he can receive the care and monitoring he needs to protect his health and achieve a greater quality of life.

As an aspiring primary care physician, conversations like these excite me to build longitudinal relationships with my future patients. Conversations like these also underscore the ways we can learn in Europe and from Europe, and how, when we seek to enact change in our own communities, such as by improving public transportation services to provide greater access to healthcare, we should speak directly to the people those services would support. GIS is an important tool for understanding, though without conversation something may be lost in translation: that people are so much more than dots on a map. ◆

BARCELONA

ABOVE: Metro stop outside Barcelona’s Bascílica de la Sagrada Família.

LEFT: Barcelona Metro Rail system (red triangles) overlayed by city health facilities, indicated with blue, green, and brown dots.

“When I arrived in Barcelona, I vowed to only travel by metro, no matter my destination. This gave me an opportunity to see and experience the full scope of the population served by the city’s main transit system.”

NEWS ROUNDUP

“The Nanovic Institute for European Studies supports and facilitates research that contributes to a deeper understanding of Europe; we are especially interested in ‘the peripheries of Europe,’ human dignity, democracy, the transformation of Central and Eastern Europe, and the fundamental moral and political challenges of Europe as a whole.”

– Clemens Sedmak

100 YEARS OF U.S.-AUSTRIAN DIPLOMACY

In August 2021, the Institute held a symposium titled “The U.S.-Austria Peace Treaty at 100: Historical, Political, and Moral Perspectives.” A highlight of the symposium, which was made possible by the Botstiber

Institute for Austrian-American Studies, was a lecture on transatlantic relations from an Austrian perspective by the Ambassador of Austria to the U.S., Martin Weiss.

Laura Shannon Prize

The $10,000 Laura Shannon Prize, one of the preeminent prizes for European studies, is awarded each year to the best book that transcends a focus on any one country, state, or people to stimulate new ways of thinking about contemporary Europe as a whole.

In early February, the institute awarded the 2022 Laura Shannon Prize to Pamela L. Cheek, professor of French and comparative literature at the University of New Mexico, for her book Heroines and Local Girls: The Transnational Emer gence of Women’s Writing in the Long Eighteenth Century, published by the University of Pennsylvania Press. In awarding this top prize in the humanities cycle, the final jury praised Cheek’s work for its rigor, ambition, and craft, describing this “geographically and intellectually ambitious work” as “a ground-breaking contribution to the history of women’s writing and reading.” The 2022 final jury also awarded a Silver Medal to Susan Stewart, the Avalon Foundation University Professor in the Humanities and professor of English at Princeton University, for The Ruins Lesson: Meaning and Material in Western Culture (University of Chicago Press) and gave an Honorable Mention to Barbara Mennel, professor of film studies and German studies at the University of Florida, for Women at Work in Twenty-First-Century European Cinema (University of Illinois Press).

In a virtual award ceremony, Peter Gatrell, professor of economic history at the University of Manchester, accepted his 2021 prize in the history and social sciences cycle for The Unsettling of Europe: How Migration Reshaped a Continent (Basic Books). In his prize lecture, Gatrell developed some of the arguments advanced in his book, including the manifestation of migration as both ordeal and opportunity, and emphasized the importance and need for scholars to participate in public debates about issues of pressing contemporary concern.

The Institute launched its 2021-2026 strategic plan with a panel and reception in October 2021. The plan commits the Institute to transforming students’ lives and paying special attention to “the peripheries,” a term used by Pope Francis to describe the mission of the Church. Nanovic wants to support learning from the “non-centers,” through humble encounters and rich experiences. Titled “Engaging Big Questions and ‘Peripheries’ in Europe,” the plan sets out a vision for turning hearts and minds to Europe to create artisans of a new humanity.

To view the Nanovic Strategic Plan:

Faculty Fellows win NEH grants

This year, three Nanovic Institute faculty fellows have won competitive fellowships and grants from the Na tional Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).

John Deak, associate professor of history, won a three-year collab orative research grant to support a research project that seeks to reshape perspectives on how and why the Habsburg Empire collapsed after World War I.

Perin Gürel, associate professor of American studies, won an NEH Fellowship for Research in Turkey to support the completion of a book on the international history of comparisons made between Turkey and Iran.

Katie Jarvis, the Carl E. Koch Associate Professor in the Department of History, was awarded a fellowship to develop her second book, Democratizing Forgiveness in Revolutionary France, 1789-1799.

Faculty Fellows Recognized

A number of long-standing Nanovic Institute faculty fellows have been recognized by prestigious institutions and societies in both the U.S. and Europe over the past year.

Diane Desierto, professor of law and global affairs, was named chair-rapporteur of the United Nations’ Expert Group on the Right to Development, a role she assumed in January 2022.

Gallery of European Studies

To celebrate the research, scholarship, and creative achievements of fifty Nanovic faculty fellows, the Institute facilitated an outdoor exhibit at the close of the spring 2022 semester.

As part of the celebration, Nanovic awarded its third annual faculty fellow of the year award, in gratitude and recognition of extraordinary service and commitment to the Institute’s mission, to Alison Rice, professor of French and Francophone studies. Previous winners include Hildegund Müller, associate professor in the Department of Classics (2021), and John Deak, associate professor of history (2020).

Essaka Joshua, professor of English, was elected a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London, an international educational organization founded in 1707 that promotes understanding of the human past.

Patrick Griffin, the Madden-Hennebry Professor of History and Director of the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies, was elected to the American Antiquarian Society in recognition of his “contributions to the scholarship of American immigration and nationhood.”

Ingrid Rowland, professor in the School of Architecture, won an inaugural Grace Dudley Prize for Arts Writing, one of nine SilversDudley Prizes for writing made by the Robert B. Silvers Foundation.

Hildegund Müller receiving the faculty fellow of the year award in 2021 from Clemens Sedmak.

Faculty Fellow Book Awards

Keeley Vatican Lecture

Rev. Hans Zollner, S.J., delivered the 2022 Keeley Vatican Lecture in early April, titled “How Is the Catholic Church Safeguarding Children? A Perspective after the Recent Developments in Europe.” A native of Regensberg, Germany, Father Zollner is one of the Catholic Church’s leading experts on the safeguarding and protection of minors and vulnerable people from sexual abuse. A theologian, psychologist, and licensed psychotherapist, he works primarily through the Pontifical Gregorian University and has been a member of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors since his initial appointment by Pope Francis in 2014.

Katie Jarvis

2020 Louis A. Gottschalk Prize from the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies for Politics in the Marketplace: Work, Gender, and Citizenship in Revolutionary France (Oxford University Press, 2019)

Society for Military History’s 2022 Distinguished Book Award for best first book for Faustian Bargain: The Soviet-German Partnership and the Origins of the Second World War (Oxford University Press, 2021)

In his lecture, Fr. Zollner explored his perspective on a “double crisis”: sex abuse by members of the clergy and its coverup by Church authorities. He also reflected on these crises in light of recent European developments including the January 2022 report on abuse and coverup in the Archdiocese of Munich and the war in Ukraine. Zollner delivered a message that called upon all of the Faithful — clergy and laity — to play a part in creating transparency and finding a path toward healing. Established in 2005 through the generous support of alumnus Terence R. Keeley, this annual lecture provides a way to deepen Notre Dame’s connection to the Holy See by bringing distinguished representatives from the Vatican to explore questions surrounding

Barrett Family Lecture

In March, Lord Patten of Barnes delivered the 2022 Barrett Family Lecture titled “Is There a New World Order?” at the Notre Dame London Global Gateway. Chancellor of the University of Oxford since 2003, Lord Patten has had a long career in politics, diplomacy, and foreign service, including serving as the last British governor of Hong Kong from 1992 to 1997, overseeing its transfer to China.

Junior Award from the European Academy of Religion and the 2020-2021 Laurence Wylie Prize in French Cultural Studies for Soldiers of God in a Secular World: Catholic Theology and TwentiethCentury French Politics (Harvard University Press, 2021)

Sophie White 8 major book awards, including the 2020 Frederick Douglass Book Prize and the James A. Rawley Prize from the American Historial Association for Voices of the Enslaved: Love, Labor, and Longing in French Louisiana (Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture and the University of North Carolina Press, 2019)

Lord Patten’s lecture took place one month after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a dramatic development in geopolitics that infused his topic with a new urgency. His discussion spanned the post-World War II creation of “a world order of rules and institutions which ensured, for most people, decades of peace and decades of increasing prosperity,” and the ways in which Russia and China became “holdouts” from what was happening elsewhere.

Highlighting the fractious nature of relations between those two world powers and much of the rest of the globe, Lord Patten urged diplomacy and courtesy in diplomatic relations but also stressed that “we should be very firm about what we believe in.” He ended his lecture with an appeal to younger generations — including the many Notre Dame study abroad students who attended the event — to take up their responsibility to forge a better road to peace and prosperity than that made by his own generation.

The Barrett Family Lecture Series was established through the generous support of R. Stephen and Ruth Barrett. The initiative brings prominent leaders in the areas of business, politics, and the arts to the University of Notre Dame’s Global Gateway facilities in Dublin and London to share their views on issues of major importance to the understanding of Europe with Notre Dame students and the wider community.

the University’s Catholic mission. Fr. Zollner was introduced by Kathleen Sprows Cummings, Rev. John A. O’Brien College Professor of American Studies and Nanovic Institute faculty fellow.

Ian Ona Johnson

Sarah Shortall

Karrie Koesel is associate professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame. She specializes in the study of contemporary Chinese and Russian politics, authoritarianism, and religion and politics. She is a fellow of the Nanovic, Kellogg, Liu, and Pulte Institutes, and the Institute for Educational Initiatives.

In Support of Good Ideas

hen Karrie Koesel, associate professor of political science, joined the Notre Dame faculty in 2015, she was already aware of the Nanovic Institute for European Studies. As a masters student in political science, she came to know the Institute as a great intellectual home and inclusive environment for people working on Europe broadly, and a wonderful space for graduate students to interact with peers and faculty members. Koesel didn’t anticipate then that two decades later, she would be among Nanovic’s most dedicated and integral faculty fellows.

Koesel has published widely in the area of contempo rary Chinese and Russian politics, including her first book, Religion and Authoritarianism: Cooperation, Conflict, and the Consequences (Cambridge University Press, 2014). Soon after she arrived at Notre Dame in 2015, Koesel met A. James McAdams, a political science colleague with whom she shared many research interests. McAdams, then director of the Nanovic Institute, suggested that she apply to the Faculty Fellows program as a way to make connections with faculty members from a variety of disciplines who shared a common interest in Europe.

Since becoming a faculty fellow in the autumn of 2015, Koesel says that these personal and professional connections with scholars in a wide variety of fields –from law to sacred music – have informed her research and enriched her engagement with the Notre Dame community. She has formed connections through encounters at Nanovic lectures and events and through serving on various Nanovic committees, assisting the Institute with the awarding of student grants and the Laura Shannon Prize. It is through the generosity of Nanovic, Koesel says, that this rich, interdisciplinary community can come together.

For Koesel, the Nanovic Institute elevates research and academic visibility by simply supporting good ideas. “If you have a good idea,” she says, “they want to help you see that to fruition, whether that’s moving something forward, or bringing a speaker to campus, or engaging with students.” In March 2017, Nanovic supported the “Citizens and the State in Authoritarian

WRegimes” workshop (co-sponsored with the Kellogg and Liu institutes, and the Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts). This workshop was part of a multistage conference that Koesel organized with Valerie J. Bunce and Jessica C. Weiss, two colleagues at Cornell University. The project was designed to reunite scholars of the Soviet Union and Sinologists, two groups that, since the end of the Cold War, had gone in different directions intellectually after many years of mutually beneficial intellectual exchange. During three meetings at Cornell and Notre Dame, some twenty scholars came together to workshop papers and explore such questions as how Putin’s Russia might help us under stand the politics of contemporary China. The project led to Citizens & the State in Authoritarian Regimes: Comparing China & Russia, published in 2021 and co-edited by Koesel, Bunce, and Weiss.

Koesel regards the conference as a high point in her recent scholarly endeavors: it established a model for how to think about Europe’s borders and Europe in connection with other regions and countries. Koesel says that the perspectives and discussions that first emerged at the 2017 conference continue to inform her own research on autocratic trends in contemporary Russia. The Nanovic Institute is also providing Koesel with research grant support as she works on her next book project, Learning to Be Loyal: Political Education in Authoritarian Regimes.

In addition to these scholarly outputs, Koesel regards the organization of the workshop as a model for how to execute events that bring academics together to explore new research questions and elevate their scholarship. For this, she credits the professionalism of the Nanovic staff – especially Operations Assistant Director Melanie Webb. The entire event, Koesel recalls, was welcoming, supportive, and extremely well run, from travel arrangements to catering, including a memorable dinner and walking tour at the Studebaker National Museum in downtown South Bend. As a relatively new faculty member, Koesel says she was especially appreciative of Nanovic’s support and guidance. For Nanovic, supporting such good ideas and elevating scholarly engagement and achievement are at the heart of its mission. ◆

In discussions that focused on religion in post-communist Europe, preventing and prosecuting genocide, and the threat of authoritarianism, the speakers called for vigilance, responsibility, and civic action.

CLOCKWISE: This year’s Nanovic Forum speakers: Myroslav Marynovych, Lord Alton of Liverpool, and Anne Applebaum (right) in discussion with Nanovic Faculty Fellow Diane Desierto (left).

Understanding 21st-Century Authoritarianism

Calls for Vigilance and Action at the Nanovic Forum

The Nanovic Forum is one of the Nanovic Institute’s longest running signature events. Originally established as the “Distinguished European Lecture” in 2004, the Forum is the particular gift of Robert and Elizabeth Nanovic. The Forum is an opportunity to bring Europe’s political, intellectual, and cultural leaders to Notre Dame to explore, discuss, and debate the most pressing questions facing Europe today, and to do so directly with the university’s students snd faculty.

Although typically an annual event, the atypical circumstances of pandemic warranted a double invita tion: Myroslav Marynovych, the Ukrainian social and political activist and vice-rector for university mission at the Ukrainian Catholic University, and Lord Alton of Liverpool, British parliamentarian and human rights campaigner. In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Institute issued a third invitation to Pulit zer Prize-winning historian and journalist Anne Apple baum in April. In discussions that focused on religion in post-communist Europe, preventing and prosecut ing genocide, and the threat of authoritarianism, the Forum speakers echoed each other with inspiring calls for vigilance, responsibility, and civic action.

The threat posed to the democratic world order by the growth of authoritarianism loomed large over Nanovic Institute events for much of the past year. Forum speakers unpacked what 20th and 21st century authoritarian regimes look like and how they gain and sustain their hold on power. Anne Applebaum’s conversation with Professor of Law and Nanovic Faculty Fellow Diane Desierto explored the lure of authoritarianism and, as she puts it in her latest book, the consequent “twilight of democracy.” Applebaum focused largely on Russia’s war on Ukraine but also discussed political polarization and the appeal of rightwing radicalism in the 21st century. She suggested that the roots of the extreme and destructive political radicalism – that of both leaders like Vladimir Putin and ordinary citizens – lie in an acute disappointment with the status quo and the pace of social change, and in a “restorative nostalgia” whereby they “remember or misremember a world they grew up in as better, calmer, quieter, or easier to understand than the present.”

The Forum speakers also discussed the ways in which the democratic world order, carefully construct ed in the decades following the Second World War, has been taken for granted by its beneficiaries and under mined by those who would gain from its destruction.

Lord Alton was particularly critical of the way in which

democratic nations, including the UK, had continued to play “a macabre game of pass-the-parcel” when it came to enforcing the UN Genocide Convention and acknowledging the genocidal nature of atrocities com mitted in Bosnia, Cambodia, China, Nigeria, Rwanda, Tigray, and other places. This political ambivalence, he insisted, has paved the way for authoritarian regimes to render useless the international structures put in place after the Holocaust to prevent or respond to genocide.

Lord Alton used the example of China’s membership on the UN Human Rights Council, despite ample evidence of the state’s brutal treatment of the Uyghur population in Xinjiang, and said “the watchdog and the burglar have assumed the same identity.”

All three speakers infused their discussions with calls to action that, despite their sobering subject matters, allowed them to leave their audiences on a hopeful note. Characteristically optimistic, Marynovych expressed his belief that there is a Christian answer to current global challenges. He quoted from “Longing for the Truth that Makes Us Free,” a document written jointly by an interdenominational group of Ukrainian Christians, which reads: “The spiritual weapon in this struggle … is Christ’s Word of Truth, man’s personal testimony and man’s readiness to sacrifice.” Lord Alton called on any students among his audience consider ing a career in policymaking to “return to the fray” by committing to vocal and dogged advocacy, while Applebaum called on her audience to get involved in politics, activism, and civic organization, and to vote. Perhaps the most dynamic element of the Nanovic Forum is the way in which it allows visiting leaders to connect the Notre Dame community to Europe through deep discussion, reflection, and conversation. For example, Lord Alton shared his expertise and inspi ration with law and Master of Global Affairs students in a class taught by Diane Desierto. Anne Applebaum engaged with Nanovic faculty fellows over lunch where she discussed Russia’s war on Ukrainian agriculture and the lure of authoritarianism. Each of the visitors had opportunities to engage with students over coffee and meals, creating memories, generating ideas, and inspiring action.

The Nanovic Institute also launched a suite of materials designed to share the Forum lectures with a wide audience, including event briefs, videos, and photo galleries. These are available on the Events page of the Nanovic Institute website. ◆

Student Research

Addressing Pressing and Complex Issues Facing Europe Today

Through the Nanovic Institute, Notre Dame undergraduate and graduate students have the opportunity to participate in research projects offered over the winter and summer break periods. These projects have covered a variety of topics related to Europe including “Belarus: Media Dissidences in the Face of Authoritarianism,” “Europe Responds to the 2020 U.S. Election,” and “The Road to Europe: Exploring European Union Candidacy in the Western Balkans.” This new style of guided group research began in the winter of 2020, as a result of the pandemic, in lieu of the independent research in Europe that the Institute traditionally supports. These projects have proven to be an effective way for students to gain valuable research skills in a supported environment. The Institute will continue to fund group research projects, bringing together like-minded students to examine and address some of the most pressing and complex issues facing Europe today.

Nora Murphy ’22 highlighted the importance of such projects: “Over the past two years, I have worked on three Nanovic Institute projects, researching topics as diverse as Spain’s reaction to the 2020 U.S. election, North Macedonia’s path to the European Union, and the consolidation of authoritarianism in Belarus. The first of these was particularly fascinating and rewarding because of the project’s timeliness. Writing and researching in the immediate wake of the election, our team explored a constantly evolving issue through primary sources and made original conclusions and predictions. We were also conducting our research in the context of the January 6th riots at the U.S. Capitol, and I watched events unfold on TV not just as a concerned American citizen but as a curious researcher, pulling up Spanish news sources to see how they were covering the event and its global implications.

The project helped me become a more responsible researcher as I learned how to conduct broad and thorough research that encompassed opinions from across the political spectrum, not just those echoed on major media platforms. Taking such a deep dive into Spanish media and government also taught me a great deal about Spain’s political landscape, which inspired me to research the Vox party as a case study for my senior thesis. As I make plans to move to Barcelona next year, these insights into contemporary Spanish politics will leave me better equipped to appreciate

the political and social reality of my host country. The Nanovic Institute research projects were among the highlights of my academic career at Notre Dame, inspiring in me a love for political research, a deeper understanding of European politics and society, and a desire to combine these passions as I move forward in my career.”

Garrett Pacholl ’24 highlighted how this experience honed his research skills: “I had the privilege of working with the Nanovic Institute on their student research initiative ‘Belarus: Media Dissidences in the Face of Authoritarianism.’ This project looked into the role of the media in the development of modern-day Belarus, especially in the context of the controversial 2020 election of President Aleksandr Lukashenko. My role involved researching the collapse of the Soviet Union in Belarus and how it affected the development of the modern-day Belarusian state.

I am a history major and European studies minor, so I was fascinated by this topic. I did not know much about Belarusian history before working on this project but I am aware of Belarus’ complex political climate and was interested in finding out more. Over the span of six weeks, I researched factors leading to the formation of Soviet Belarus and the years surrounding its collapse. For me, the most surprising lesson was that nationalism did not play a significant role in the collapse of Soviet Belarus. This contrasts with the experience in many former Soviet states, such as Ukraine, where a leading factor in internal movements against the Soviet Union was nationalist sentiments – a desire for a polity that was representative of their own, unique national history, rather than being grouped under a collective Soviet identity.

This project challenged me to use different methods of finding source material to find substantial evidence and helped me practice concision, as I needed to present a significant amount of material in a limited number of words and in an infographic format. I am grateful to the Nanovic Institute for giving me an opportunity to learn and to develop my research and presentation skills.” ◆

Nora Murphy ’22

Garrett Pacholl ’24

“The research projects were among the highlights of my academic career at Notre Dame, inspiring in me a love for political research and a deeper understanding of European politics and society.”

— Nora Murphy

RIGHT: Crowds gather in Minsk to protest the Belarusian government and President Aleksandr Lukashenko, August 2020.

1992-2022

Ivy grows up the side of the courtyard gate of Brownson Hall, the Nanovic Institute’s home for 15 years. Inspired by the Brownson gate, the phrase “Your door to Europe” was used to encourage students and fac ulty to explore the opportuni ties offered over the years. After Brownson Hall was replaced by the new Remick Family Hall, the original iron gates were relocated to the Maine home of founding benefactors Robert and Elizabeth Nanovic.

Over the last three decades, an initiative that began as a lecture series has developed to become a vital, flourishing European studies institute within a new school for global affairs. The generosity, vision, and presence of its founding benefactors, Robert and Elizabeth Nanovic, have helped the Institute maintain consistency of purpose with a mission focused on the student experience and on building a vibrant home for European studies at the University of Notre Dame. The Nanovic community – comprising students, faculty, and European partners, as well as its directors and staff –has enriched the Institute’s founding goals with its commitment, creativity, and intellectual curiosity.

The Institute views Europe not as a fixed and unalterable fact or space, but as a region shaped by evolving ideas, cultures, beliefs, and institutions. In recent decades, this evolution has taken the form of such ruptures and processes as genocide in the Balkans, mass migration, the rise of populism, Brexit, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Since 1992, the Nanovic Institute has observed and discussed these transformations, striving to help its community develop a relationship with and a deeper understanding of Europe.

Becoming an Institute

During its first decade, Nanovic grew from a center to an institute under the leadership of its founding director J. Robert Wegs. Two goals defined Nanovic’s work during this period and remained at the heart of its mission over the next 30 years: providing an interdisciplinary home for European studies at Notre Dame, and keeping people – especially students – at the center of its activities. As a professor of modern European history, Wegs envisioned a center that would connect Notre Dame’s scholars of European studies across the liberal arts and humanities and, as he explained, “create a critical mass for European studies, building on the existing strengths in the Arts and Letters College.”

Nanovic’s earliest initiatives revolved around intellectual exchange and bringing European scholars to campus to engage with Notre Dame faculty and students. The first such event was a two-day conference on European unification in April 1993 involving faculty from Germany, Austria, and elsewhere in the U.S. Subsequent conferences and lecture series focused on such themes as post-war Europe and the expansion of the European Union.

In 1997, the Center became the Institute, thanks to Bob and Liz’s continued generosity, and student programming took

COUNTRIES STUDENTS VISITED

Albania Armenia Austria Belgium Bosnia & Herzegovina Bulgaria Croatia Cyprus Czechia Denmark Estonia Finland France Georgia Germany Greece

Hungary Iceland Ireland Italy Kazakhstan Kosovo Latvia Lituania Malta Moldova Monaco Montenegro Netherlands Norway

Poland Portugal Romania Russia Serbia Slovakia Slovenia Spain Sweden

Switzerland Turkey Ukraine The United Kingdom Vatican City (Holy See)

Since it was established, the Nanovic Institute has sent students to undertake research and/or training in almost

all European countries demonstrating the breadth of the interest in Europe that the institute has fostered.

1992

An initial gift of $25,000 from Robert and Elizabeth Nanovic helped create the Committee for European Studies within the Notre Dame College of Arts and Letters, with J. Robert Wegs, professor of history, as organizer.

1993

The Robert and Elizabeth Nanovic Center for European Studies is established with Wegs as director.

1996

Wegs organizes the first meeting of faculty members who would support the development of the Institute, paving the way for what later became the Faculty Fellows program.

1997

The Nanovic Center be comes the Nanovic Institute for European Studies thanks to additional finan cial gifts from the Nanovics. The Institute moves to a larger suite in the newly refurbished Flanner Hall.

1997

The Nanovic Scholars Program is initiated, building upon and expand ing existing programs for scholars from Italy, Poland, and Germany that had become part of the Institute’s portfolio.

TIMELINE: A HISTORY OF THE NANOVIC INSTITUTE

center stage. Director Wegs shared the Nanovics’ commitment to helping students know and understand Europe and initiated grants for students and faculty to travel and research in Europe. The first summer grants, awarded in 1998, helped six undergraduate and graduate students travel to Austria, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, and the UK to research such topics as the economics of EU social policy and forced labor in occupied France during World War II. In 2001, Nanovic established the first iteration of the minor in European studies, which Wegs proposed would promote both interdisciplinarity and Notre Dame’s drive to internationalize its activities.

Bringing Notre Dame to Europe and Europe to Notre Dame

The Nanovic Institute entered a remarkable period of growth in 2002 when A. James McAdams, the William M. Scholl Professor of International Affairs, began his 16-year term as director. McAdams expanded and diversified the Institute’s existing programming for students and faculty and cultivated new collaborations that reached across the university and across Europe. With McAdams at the helm, the Institute brought Notre Dame to Europe and Europe to Notre Dame. Undergraduates learned in and from Europe, graduate students had access to professionalization, and an interdisciplinary community of

Before the summer of 1987, when a tour of Central and Eastern Europe sparked the idea for a Notre Dame center for European studies, Robert and Elizabeth Nanovic were already great friends of the university. For a number of years, Bob (an investment counselor and graduate of the Class of ’54) and Liz (a graduate of Hofstra University) had made donations to the university in honor of his father Nicholas who, with his parents and siblings, emigrated to the U.S. in 1913 from near Bratislava in present-day Slovakia. Following his father’s sudden death, a teenage Nicholas became the family breadwinner and went on to support three of his brothers’ educations, all of whom graduated from Notre Dame.

The Nanovics wished to continue this family legacy of supporting education and opportunity, particularly for deserving students with fewer resources, and combine it with their deep curiosity and passion for European history, culture, traditions, and experiences. Bob Nanovic remembers that they wanted to do something that was more than just a name on a building. “I wanted to do something that would allow students to take a piece of it away with them,” he explained. “Buildings you leave behind, but the idea of a program that could grow, evolve, and have an impact on the lives of students appealed to me.” In May 1992, Bob and Liz Nanovic built upon their collaboration with Professor J. Robert Wegs and made the gift of $25,000 that created the Nanovic Center for European Studies.

1998

The institute awards its first grants for summer research in Europe to three undergraduates, three graduate students, and one faculty member.

2001

The Institute initiates the European Area Studies Minor with the first students graduating in 2003.

2002

A. James McAdams, William M. Scholl Professor of International Affairs, begins his 16-year term as director.

Over the past thirty years, the Nanovics have remained committed to and involved in the growth of the Institute that bears their name. As active members of its Advisory Board, Bob and Liz take an unfailing interest in the wide array of Institute programs and events. Their generosity and vision continue to shape the Nanovic Institute as it enters its fourth decade.

“The idea of a program that could grow, evolve, and have an impact on the lives of students appealed to me.”

Bob Nanovic

faculty fellows and visiting scholars engaged in the pursuit of truth, knowledge, and understanding.

Consistent with Nanovic’s origins and the vision of its benefactors, much of this growth focused on student programming. As McAdams explained, “we seek to infuse the entire university experience with well-integrated European content and interdisciplinary scholarship.” Opportunities for research and learning in Europe multiplied and became more tailored to immersing and professionalizing students in a European context. Students continued to receive support for self-directed research trips, but the Institute also funded language training, service learning, and seminars led by Nanovic’s dedicated faculty fellows. Thanks to these seminars, students stood beneath World War I monuments in Belgium and explored the site of a Transylvanian Saxon village in Romania.

The Institute also enriched its calendar of campus activities focused on bringing European culture, experience, and leadership to Notre Dame. The Nanovic Forum became the Institute’s marquee event, bringing to campus European political and cultural leaders like former President of Germany Horst Koehler and Ambassador of the European Union to the United States David O’Sullivan. Since its

2002

The first Nanovic film series runs with the theme of “The New Rebels in European Film.” Anthony Monta (above in 2008) and Don Crafton grew the film series during their time at Nanovic.

2003

The Institute convenes its inaugural Advisory Board meeting in April.

2003

The Institute and four Catholic universities in Central and Eastern Europe form the Catholic Universities Partnership.

2004

Archbishop Charles J. Brown, then a monsignor working under Cardinal Ratzinger (who would become Pope Benedict XVI), delivers the first Terrence R. Keeley Vatican Lecture at Notre Dame,

titled “Notre Dame, the Vatican, and the Papacy of John Paul II.” Brown, pictured above with Terry Keeley, returned to give a second Keeley Vatican Lecture in 2010.

inception, the Forum’s itinerary has included ample time for visitors to engage and converse directly and informally with Notre Dame students and faculty.

While Nanovic already had a history of bringing European cinema to campus, the Institute initiated its annual film series in 2002. From 2005, Nanovic partnered with the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center to bring films, actors, and directors to campus. Memorable screenings and visitors include the Polish film director Krzysztof Zanussi, German film director Margarethe von Trotta, and the father-son partnership of Martin Sheen and Emilio Estevez. The success of this annual series is largely owed to the creativity of former Nanovic Associate Director Anthony Monta and Professor of Film, Television, and Theatre Donald Crafton, a Nanovic faculty fellow who also served as interim director in 2012-13. Nanovic established an Advisory Board in 2003 and its members joined the Nanovic community with a generosity that funded new initiatives and grant opportunities and a dedication that extended far beyond annual meetings. Board member Terrence Keeley ’81 established the Keeley Vatican Lecture, the Tobin and Annese families created year-long fellowships for doctoral students, and Stephen ’75 and Ruth Barrett initiated the Barrett Family Grant for the best undergraduate

J. ROBERT WEGS

When J. Robert Wegs, a scholar of modern European social and economic history, met Bob and Liz Nanovic in 1987, he was already developing a program for European studies at Notre Dame. The native of Quincy, Illinois, was a prolific scholar and a sought-after lecturer who had joined the faculty at Notre Dame in 1977.

His wife, Dr. Joyce Wegs, recalls meeting the Nanovics during the cruise down the Danube River in the summer of 1987, during which her husband delivered lectures on the region’s history and culture. His audience of Notre Dame alumni included the Nanovics who befriended the Wegs early in the trip, forging a lifelong bond between the two families. Wegs explained Notre Dame’s great strengths and potential in the area of European studies and the Nanovics offered to make a gift, which would initially support campus visits by specialists in European studies.

As the Nanovic Center’s founding director, Wegs created a new minor in European studies for undergraduates, convened a series of academic conferences in history, economics, and political science, and laid the foundations for future programming.

2005

The Institute awards the first of its dissertation fellowships, which have been supported by the Tobin and Annese families. Paul Tobin is pictured above in 2007 with dissertation fellow James Helmer.

2010

The first Laura Shannon Prize in Contemporary European Studies is awarded to Roberto M. Dainotto for Europe in Theory (Duke University Press, 2007).

2010

The University celebrates the achievements of the Nanovic Institute and pays tribute to the generosity of Bob and Liz Nanovic with the unveiling of a new portrait, which now hangs at the entrance to Nanovic Hall.

Professor Wegs passed away in July 2010. In 2012, the institute presented the first annual J. Robert Wegs Prize for the best capstone essay written by a graduating minor in European studies. Each May, when the prize is awarded at a celebratory graduation breakfast, Joyce and their daughter Alison are warmly welcomed back to Nanovic to take part in the presentation.

In 2012, the institute presented the first annual J. Robert Wegs Prize for the best capstone essay.

research proposal and, later, the Barrett Family Lecture. In 2010, the Institute inaugurated the Laura Shannon Prize, now one of the preeminent book prizes in European studies, thanks to the benefaction of Laura Shannon and her husband Michael ’58. Perhaps the greatest legacy of McAdams’ service as director was the creation of the Catholic Universities Partnership (CUP) in 2003. This initiative grew at the intersection of the Institute’s long-standing interest in Central and Eastern Europe after the fall of the Soviet Union and its commitment to Notre Dame’s Catholic identity and mission. The CUP is now approaching two decades of fostering mutual support, elevation, and development of Catholic higher education and civil society in post-communist and post-Soviet Europe. It is a partnership firmly rooted in reciprocity, respect, faith, and friendship, one in which the Institute is privileged to participate. With the Russian invasion of Ukraine, this partnership has gained even more significance and has been the foundation of Notre Dame’s substantial support of the Ukrainian Catholic University.

To Promote, Inform, and Deepen International Understanding

With the advent of the new Keough School of Global Affairs in 2014, the Nanovic Institute deepened its commitment to the mission it had pursued since its earliest days. The creation

TIMELINE

2012

Kyle Collins ’12 is awarded the inaugural J. Robert Wegs Prize for the best capstone essay by a minor in European studies.

2014

Nanovic co-organizes and presents “The Digital Future of World Heritage,” the first major academic symposium at Notre Dame’s Rome Global Gateway.

2014

The Nanovic Institute becomes a unit within the new Keough School of Global Affairs.

SHARON KONOPKA

In September 1996, South Bend native Sharon Konopka responded to an ad for a part-time administrative role at a new center for European studies at Notre Dame. She could hardly have imagined then that she would spend 24 years at the Nanovic Institute. As administrative assistant to Director J. Robert Wegs, Konopka became Nanovic’s first and, to date, longest-serving employee. From two rooms in the basement of the Hesburgh Library to a suite in Nanovic Hall, Konopka says she has done it all.

Konopka says the mission of the Institute has always been to connect students to Europe and to bring Europe to Notre Dame, particularly those students who may not have been able to apply to the existing study abroad programs because of finances or class commitments. As a member of the staff, Nanovic gave Konopka opportunities to visit Europe, encounter European cinema, help scores of students travel to Europe, and welcome dozens of visiting scholars and guest speakers to Notre Dame.

Konopka retired in August 2019, a decision she describes as “incredibly tough.” She knew she would miss the Institute’s collegiality, within the broader Nanovic community of faculty, students, and visiting scholars but, in particular, among the staff. This camaraderie, Konopka says, was on display when the team came together to deal with delayed flights, tackle a huge mailing, or, memorably, bring donuts and coffee to the construction team building Nanovic Hall. She says that the fact that she and other staff — including Monica Caro, Jenn Lechtanski, and Melanie Webb — have remained at Nanovic for so long is a testament to the Institute’s strong spirit of collegiality. This is a spirit that Konopka — considered “the soul of the Institute’s hospitality” — played no small part in fostering. In recognition of her service to the institute, Bob and Liz Nanovic announced an endowment in Konopka’s name in 2019.

The fact that she and other staff remained at Nanovic for so long is a testament to the Institute’s strong spirit of collegiality.

TIMELINE

2015

The Barrett Family Lecture series is inaugurated at the Notre Dame Dublin Global Gateway with a lecture by Peter D. Sutherland on “European Integration and the Rise of Nationalism.”

2017

The Institute moves to the newly built Nanovic Hall.

2018

“Fighting for Freedom of Thought” video, focus ing on the work of Jim McAdams and the Catholic Universities Partnership, is screened at halftime during Notre Dame’s first home football game of the season.

JANE HEIDEN

Nanovic Advisory Board Chair Jane Heiden was introduced to the Institute through her kids. The founder and former CEO of Compulit recalls how Jim McAdams made a strong impression on her oldest son Sean when he took a history class with the then Nanovic director in 2013. The Heidens formed a friendship with McAdams and thus a connection to the Institute. In 2014, Jane Heiden was invited to join Nanovic’s Advisory Board and soon became its chair.

Heiden describes the Nanovic Institute, with its focus on both academic excellence and critical world affairs, as “essential.” This value, she says, has been on full display most recently in Nanovic’s response to the war in Ukraine, but also on many occasions in the past, including during one of her own favorite events from the last decade: the “Elite Athletes and the Cold War” symposium in December 2015. A lifelong hockey fan, Heiden recalls the athletes’ moving stories of their defection from the USSR, fleeing across fields or hidden in cars, and the fun and joy of the hockey game between the alumni of the Detroit Red Wings and Chicago Blackhawks. “It was at that symposium,” she says, “that I was most proud of my service to the Institute.”

Heiden is grateful to the members of the Advisory Board — especially long-standing members like Steve Barrett and Terry Keeley — who enthusiastically welcomed her as a colleague and who “do it all with their full hearts.” She is proud of the Institute’s relevance and transformative influence, and expresses her gratitude for an experience that “has just enriched me more than anything.”

Heiden describes Nanovic, with its focus on academic excellence and critical world affairs, as “essential.”

of the Keough School contributed to Notre Dame’s aspirations to be a global university while also serving the university’s mission to “place scholarship in service to the common good.” As a member unit within the Keough School, Nanovic continued to pursue its commitment to fostering student education and providing an interdisciplinary home for European studies at Notre Dame, but it also more explicitly positioned itself as an institute that would, as Jim McAdams explained, “bring its strengths in the humanities and arts to bear more directly on the study and practice of international affairs, to promote, inform, and deepen international understanding.”

With this vision in mind, the Institute has brought existing programs to a new maturation: strengthening and expanding collaborations, exploring new pedagogies, and continuing to build a vibrant, inclusive community. In 2018, William Collins Donahue, Cavanaugh Professor of the Humanities, became the Institute’s third director. Donahue initiated new EURO courses as part of the Institute’s concentration in transnational European studies, an important component of the Keough School’s supplementary major in global affairs, and created the Nanovic Graduate Fellows program.

In 2021, the Institute launched a new strategic plan, inspired and led by its fourth director, Clemens Sedmak. The plan

This mosaic, titled “Swords into Ploughshares” is installed at the doors to the Nanovic Institute in Nanovic Hall. It was designed and created by Conrad Schmidt Studios as a tribute of friendship between Robert and Elizabeth Nanovic and Rev. Timothy R. Scully, C.S.C.

2018

2019

Nanovic founds its Graduate Fellows Program with an inter disciplinary cohort of six doctoral students

2019

At a ceremony in Lviv, Ukraine, Notre Dame President Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., presents the Notre Dame Award to Archbishop and President of Ukrainian Catholic

William Collins Donahue, Rev. John J. Cavanaugh C.S.C. Professor of the Humanities, becomes the Institute’s third director.

University Borys Gudziak for his work for religious and academic freedom. The Institute launches the Faith and Freedom initiative following the ceremony.

The Institute launches the new Minor in European Studies curriculum.

reflects both Bob and Liz Nanovic’s original vision of a center that would support students to learn in and from Europe and Sedmak’s knowledge and insights as a scholar of social ethics. Entering its fourth decade, Nanovic views European issues as global, human issues, and asks big questions in a European context, mindful that these are also questions about the planet, our common home. Following Pope Francis’ call to pay special attention to “the peripheries,” the Institute is committed to enlarging the map, cultivating inclusiveness and a more diverse and nuanced understanding of what it means to be European. With intentionality, Sedmak has broadened Nanovic’s service learning offerings in partnership with Caritas Europe, integrated diplomacy scholarship into the European studies curriculum, and deepened research initiatives with the CUP, particularly through its Faith and Freedom project.

For thirty years, the Institute’s mission, animated by its research, scholarship, and creative works, has been transformative. Facing the future, the Nanovic Institute will continue to build bridges between Notre Dame and Europe, connecting the Notre Dame community, especially its students, with European people, places, art, policy, and scholarly works in ways that develop the whole person, enliven the University’s mission in the world, and create artisans of a new humanity. ◆

JENNIFER FLANAGAN

Jennifer Flanagan ’14 first encountered the Nanovic Institute in her sophomore year while researching language training opportunities to support the French concentration of her major in international economics. Flanagan still remembers receiving the email from the Institute that confirmed she had received a grant to spend six weeks learning French in Tours, and the ecstatic phone call to her mom to share the good news. This was Flanagan’s first experience traveling, living, and studying abroad independently. The experience provided her with new friends and proficiency in French, “but also an understanding of what cultural immersion meant: to live and be part of a new experience and understand the world, even briefly, from that perspective.”

When she returned, Flanagan knew she wanted to make Nanovic a pillar of her Notre Dame experience. She worked at the Institute as a student assistant during her junior and senior years, and secured Nanovic funding to undertake an internship in Dublin. Flanagan says that the skills, knowledge, resilience, and self-confidence that she gained through Nanovic programming have played a decisive role in the path she has followed since graduation. From her role as a consultant in the Strategic Innovation and National Security accounts at Booz Allen Hamilton to her policy work with Washington DC-based nonprofits to her sense of independence and lifelong curiosity for Europe, Flanagan credits the investment Nanovic made in her as an undergraduate.

2021

Clemens Sedmak, pro fessor of social ethics, is appointed the Nanovic Institute’s fourth director.

2021

Nanovic launches its 2021-26 Strategic Plan, “Engaging Big Questions and ‘Peripheries’ in Europe.”

2022

The Nanovic Institute staff is awarded the Presidential Team Irish Award, primarily in recognition of the team’s work with Ukraine and the Ukrainian Catholic University, which exemplified Notre Dame’s core values.

In 2021, Flanagan joined the Institute’s Advisory Board for a one-year term as its recent alumna representative, which was, she says, her way of giving back to Nanovic. “The Institute was the single most transformational element of my undergraduate experience, and to contribute in a small way to its governance, even for only a year, was a privilege.”

“The Institute was the single most transformational element of my undergraduate experience.”

NEWS ROUNDUP

“The last year has reminded us about the unity of Europe and about the human dignity, freedom, and democracy that lie at its core. We have learned that these values should never be taken for granted. The Nanovic Institute has collaborated with partners in Europe to help foster this unity and minimize internal divisions, exploring how solidarity, resilience, leadership, and religious commitments can be drivers of global social change for the common good.”

BUILDING

RESILIENCE

INTO LEADERSHIP: ROME

In May 2022, the Nanovic Institute convened a select group of academic administrators of Catholic universities in Central and Eastern Europe to focus on building resilience into leadership. This unique program, funded by generous external grants, combined practical lectures and lessons with a spiritual retreat and Masses that took advantage of the location in Rome. Presenters included Fr. Friedrich Bechina, FSO, undersecretary for the Congregation for Catholic Education, David Buckley, a member of the Institute’s advisory board, and Carolyn Woo, who served as dean of Mendoza College of Business from 1997 to 2011. Participants from Ukraine opened the proceedings and were followed by sessions that provided practical support, encouragement, and an opportunity to reinforce networks. In the words of one participant from Ukraine:

“This program was a real lifesaver for me. The war changed a lot in my work, in my relations with my colleagues, in my perception of my place in life and my family/community/country. At some point, after several weeks of working around the clock, I start ed to feel drained and devastated. This program and the people I met became a breath of fresh air for me. They became my support and belief that with joint efforts you can overcome everything and come out even stronger.”

ABOVE: Dr. Halyna Protsyk, director of international academic relations and a lecturer in the political science department at the Ukrainian Catholic University, presented at a session in Rome.

– Taras Dobko, Ukrainian Catholic University

ABOVE: The Ukrainian flag projected on the Colosseum in Rome in solidarity with Ukraine.

ABOVE: (Left to Right) Natalie Yakymets, Deputy Director for Research, Senior Lecturer of Philosophy, and Yaryna Boychuk, Director of the Business School, both from Ukrainian Catholic Univeristy.

RIGHT: Paul Perrin, Associate Professor of the Practice and Director of Evidence and Learning, Pulte Institute for Global Development, and Monica Caro, Senior Associate Director, Nanovic Institute.

CUP Conference in Tbilisi, Georgia on Recovery and Resilience

In May 2022, members of the Catholic Universities Partnership held their annual conference at SulkhanSaba Orbeliani University in Tbilisi, Georgia. “Resilience and Recovery: Challenges for Universities” was the first CUP conference to be hosted by the Georgian partner. The conference displayed the impressive achievement of establishing a new Catholic university in a country where only about one percent of the population is Catholic. Over the course of two days, participants discussed Catholic education in wartime, beginning with reflections on the recent Russian invasion of Ukraine and moving to post-war forgiveness and reconciliation in Croatia. The discussions involving the invasion were especially poignant not only because faculty members from the Ukrainian Catholic University were present, but also because of the physical proximity of the war (Ukraine is just across the Black Sea from Georgia), the many signs of solidarity with Ukraine visible on the streets of Tbilisi, and the fact that Georgia has itself suffered from Russian ag gression and the occupation of part of its territory. These experiences were discussed by many at the conference, including former President of Georgia Giorgi Margvel ashvili and the Most Reverend José Avelino Bettencourt ComC, OMRI, Apostolic Nuncio in Georgia and Armenia.

ABOVE: Vaja Vardidze, Rector of the Sulkhan-Saba Orbeliani University; Jim McAdams, William M. Scholl Professor of International Affairs, University of Notre Dame; Fr. Akaki Chelidze, who begins his term as rector of Sulkhan-Saba Orbeliani University in October 2022; and Michael Pippenger, Vice President and Associate Provost for Internationalization, University of Notre Dame.

New Collaborations:

Diplomatic Academy of Vienna and Caritas Europe

This year, the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna (DA) helped elevate the Nanovic Institute’s Diplomacy Scholars program to the next level. Deputy Director of the DA and Austrian diplomat Dr. Susanne Keppler-Schlesinger spent a week on campus with the Diplomacy Scholars cohort, sharing valuable insights about the diplomatic way of life. Students then spent a day with Dr. Keppler-Schlesinger’s colleagues at the DA and the Austrian foreign ministry during a diplomacy immersion visit to Vienna in May 2022.

The Institute forged a new connection with Caritas Europe in August 2021 to offer a unique service learning internship pro gram. Three Caritas branches hosted Notre Dame students this past summer: Caritas Ambrosiana (Italy), Caritas Sofia (Bulgaria), and Caritas Armenia. The Institute looks forward to strengthening these partnerships going forward.

Faith & Freedom

In 2019, to mark the bestowal of the Notre Dame Award on Ukrainian Metropolitan-Archbishop and President of Ukrainian Catholic University Borys Gudziak, UCU and the Nanovic Institute co-convened a symposium titled “Faith and Freedom: Religions and Civil Society in Central and Eastern Europe.” Since that time, the Faith and Freedom initiative has developed into a longer-term research collaboration between scholars within the Catholic Universities Partnership.

The current project seeks to explore the role of faith-based actors, especially the Catholic Church, in creating and sustaining economic, political, and religious freedoms in Central and Eastern Europe after 1989. Faith and Freedom asks questions about the role of religious faith in resisting the restrictions on freedoms through communist regimes, in shaping the transition from communism to a free market system, and in developing sustainable entrepreneurship in three post-communist countries. The research includes dozens of interviews, primarily conducted by students and scholars within the CUP, and a review of relevant literature and media analysis.

Undergraduate research assistants, including Garrett Pacholl ’24, have also had an opportunity to work on this project at the Nanovic Institute:

“I worked as a student research assistant on the Faith and Freedom project to study the role of religion, primarily Catholicism, in democratic processes in post-Soviet Eastern Europe. I focused particularly on sources from Croatia, Georgia, Poland, Slovakia, and Ukraine by reading firsthand accounts of those who experienced these events. The project helped widen my perspective when it came to the variety of sources I could use. I was reminded that religion is influential in both politics and the lives of everyday people and that we must understand the specific historical context of a region to fully appreciate the part played by religion or religious institutions in establishing and protecting democracy.”

Anna Romandash, an award-winning journalist from Ukraine and a Master of Global Affairs student in the Keough School of Global Affairs, led a number of interviews as part of the Faith and Freedom project. In October 2021, she published an article that was based on one such interview: “Struggle and Revival: How Greek Catholics Re-emerged in Independent Ukraine.” Her subject, Sonya Hlutkowsky-Soutus, was the Greek Catholic Church’s first press officer, a position she held from 1988 to 1994.

Hlutokowsky-Soutus was at the forefront of dramatic changes that swept Ukraine during the collapse of the USSR in 1989.

The interview that inspired this story, and many others from the Faith and Freedom project, will ultimately live in an online repository to educate scholars and students interested in understanding the trauma of communism, and the role of the Church in Central and Eastern Europe in the years leading up to and following the collapse of the USSR.

ABOVE: University of Notre Dame President Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C. with Ukrainian Catholic University President Archbishop Borys Gudziak on the UCU campus in Lviv, Ukraine in 2019.

LEFT: His Beatitude Myroslav Ivan Cardinal Liubachivskyi with Locum Tenens Archbishop Volodymyr Sterniuk, Lviv, 1991. Courtesy of the Institute of Church History, UCU.

A. James McAdams is the William M. Scholl Professor of International Affairs in Notre Dame’s Department of Political Science. He has written widely on European affairs, especially on Central Europe, as well as global communism. For 16 years, he served as Director of the Nanovic Institute for European Studies.

A Legacy of Collaboration

Few people have shaped the Nanovic Institute as much as Jim McAdams. Director of the Institute for sixteen years, the William M. Scholl Professor of International Affairs established and cultivated the ethos of collaboration –between faculty members, students, and friends of the Institute, within and beyond Notre Dame – that is integral to Nanovic’s mission.

McAdams is a widely respected scholar of the history of communism, particularly in Germany and Central and Eastern Europe. Before he joined the Notre Dame faculty in 1992, he held teaching and research appoint ments at universities and institutes in the U.S. and in both East and West Germany prior to reunification.

As the Director of the Nanovic Institute, McAdams says he recognized that the overarching goal of Notre Dame’s home for European studies should be to bring Notre Dame to Europe and Europe to Notre Dame. To give shape to this broad vision, he created a framework that continues to guide the Institute’s work: bringing Europe to Notre Dame in ways that would allow “stu dents, faculty, [and] others [to] engage in the pursuit of truth, knowledge, understanding”; providing students with truly immersive research and learning experiences in Europe beyond the existing study abroad programs; professionalizing graduate students; encouraging inter disciplinary engagement between faculty and students; and, contributing to Notre Dame’s Catholic identity.

For McAdams, these ideas required commitment to an ethos of engagement that is truly collaborative. Nanovic’s mission, Jim believes, is an engagement with European studies and Europe that is “not just passive studying, but a real understanding of what Euorpe has meant for world history, American history, and an understanding for how and what Europe can teach us.”

It was this version of collaboration – an exchange that is respectful and mutually beneficial – that led the Institute, under McAdams’ direction, to expand the Faculty Fellows program that had been initiated by his predecessor and inaugurate signature events that brought distinguished visitors to campus to engage with Notre

Dame students and faculty. Collaboration has been evi dent in research projects and scholarly initiatives such as the international conference “1968 in Europe and Latin America,” which took place at Notre Dame in April 2018, and in some of McAdams’ favorite memories of his time at Nanovic, including a lunch that accompa nied a screening of The Way (2010) when its star and director – Martin Sheen and son Emilio Estevez –shared a meal with Notre Dame community members who had themselves walked el Camino de Santiago de Compostela, the pilgrimage depicted in the film.

In 2003, mindful of Nanovic’s commitment to contribute to Notre Dame’s Catholic identity and equipped with a deep understanding of Central and Eastern Europe, McAdams embarked on the initia tive that would become the Catholic Universities Partnership (CUP). It seemed natural, he says, that Notre Dame should form a relationship with Catholic institutions in nations where, even by the early 21st century, Soviet influence was still strong and democra cy and freedom of thought were vulnerable. He also re alized that many of these revived or nascent universities would benefit from stronger connections between each other. It is imperative, McAdams says, that the part nerships are truly collaborative, and that Notre Dame faculty, students, and university leaders realize that they have as much, and perhaps more, to learn from their peers in Eastern Europe as the other way around.

McAdams’ work, particularly in cultivating the CUP, has been widely recognized. He is the recipient of honorary doctorates from Ukrainian Catholic Uni versity (UCU) and John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Poland, and a Gold Medal from the Catholic University in Ružomberok, Slovakia. In his address at Notre Dame’s 2022 commencement ceremony, Archbishop Borys Gudziak, president of UCU, singled out McAdams and the Nanovic Institute for particular praise. In 2019, the Institute received a significant new endowment from Robert and Elizabeth Nanovic to honor their friend Jim’s significant contributions.

Now entering its fourth decade, the Nanovic Institute follows a path largely hewn by McAdams. Nanovic’s leaders and staff are grateful to Jim for this legacy and for his generous friendship that has contin ued beyond his many years as director. ◆

TOP: Taras Dobko wears his traditional vyshyvanky during a Ukrainian event at the Nanovic Institute.

CENTER : The Ukrainian flag on the campus of the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv, Ukraine

BELOW: The flag painted on Josh Zhang ’23 before a student-led gathering outside Notre Dame’s Main Building to show solidarity and support for the people of Ukraine.

A Game Changer for Catholic Higher Education

The Catholic Universities Partnership (CUP) is a network uniting the University of Notre Dame and six Catholic universities from Croatia, Georgia, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, and Ukraine. One of the major projects realized by the Nanovic Institute within the CUP framework is a visiting scholars program. In total, 163 scholars have participated in the program to date, including 22 scholars from UCU. These include five current vice-rectors, two academic deans and a dean of student affairs, three heads of school, and two chairs of academic departments. Most of these people have been promoted into their positions of responsibility with their time spent at the Nanovic Institute playing a decisive role in their professional growth.

The relationship has also developed beyond the tenure of these visiting fellowships, resulting in new bilateral projects led by UCU faculty like the Faith and Freedom project and the Legal Challenges Posed by the Large-Scale Russian Invasion of Ukraine project. UCU has been encouraged by the dynamic and courageous developments in the CUP network like the creation of the School of Medicine in Zagreb and the Law School in Tbilisi. It is a rewarding experience to see how Catholic higher education in Eastern and Central Europe has increasingly become a game changer and an academic home for more and more young people ready to contribute to and serve their societies.

There is no greater happiness than to see how a young person develops, matures, and flourishes as a human being.

A Virtuous Cycle Collaboration, Hospitality, and Friendship

BY TARAS DOBKO

One of the messages I keep conveying to new students and employees at my university in Lviv is an appreciation of what has happened with Ukrainian Catholic University (UCU) over the 30 years since its return from exile to independent Ukraine. In the early 1990s, we started from scratch with no resources except the arresting idea of establishing the first Catholic university in the former Soviet Union and a few dedicated and daring people who were young enough to dream big. Today UCU is one of the best universities in Ukraine attracting the country’s top students and driving many reforms in higher education, society, and the Church. My message is that we should not take all of this for granted. Our relative success has been so dependent on the generosity of so many people that we cannot boast being self-made. It is the love and support of others that has brought UCU into being and made us what we are today.

The early 1990s also saw the launch of another institution across the Atlantic Ocean, one that would play a pivotal role in empowering UCU and other Catholic universities in Central and Eastern Europe: the Nanovic Institute for European Studies at the University of Notre Dame.

Communication between the Nanovic Institute and UCU started with A. James McAdams, the Institute’s director from 2002 to 2018. Jim’s intimate knowledge of global communism and its devastating influence on society and the mindset of peoples in Eastern Europe made him sensitive to the transfor mation of post-communist, post-authoritarian, and post-colonial society in Ukraine. Jim did not simply remain a friendly spectator but deployed his creden tials and power to help UCU and other emerging academic institutions in Eastern Europe develop and to build the capacity of their best people.

In 2003-2004, the Nanovic Institute brought together Catholic universities in Central and Eastern Europe in the Catholic Universities Partnership (CUP). It was timely and prophetic. It helped us all discover our neighbors and transcend the divisions of a difficult past and the prejudices of the present, and our Catholicity became more tangible and valuable. The Nanovic Institute anticipated a call by Pope Francis in his 2018 apostolic constitution Veritatis Gaudium for closer and more intense collaboration between Cath olic academic institutions. The Holy Father called for these collaborations in order to acquire a better understanding of the complexity of the contemporary world and to develop more cogent responses to the urgent needs of our societies.

The success of running a Catholic university very much depends on acquiring a better understanding of how exciting an enterprise it is and how big a difference it can make in people’s lives. There is no greater happiness than to see how a young person develops, matures, and flourishes as a human being. The CUP helps to refresh this understanding and develop close academic friendships, which become the foundation for building a robust Catholic academic culture and for coping with institutional challenges.

In working with the Nanovic Institute, we have learned that partnership can become a way of life when you work for the common good. We have learned how important hospitality is in academic life. We have witnessed how a virtuous cycle can be generated through partnership – a creation of added value and superabundance of the good. To quote Jesus’ teaching (Luke 13:18-19): “What is the kingdom of God like, and to what shall I compare it? It is like a mustard seed, which a man took and threw into his own garden; and it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air nested in its branches.” In its 30 years, the Nanovic Institute has cultivated an abundant harvest and catapulted many academics from Central and Eastern European countries in their scholarly or administrative careers.

In the context of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Nanovic Institute has stood shoulder to shoulder with its partners who were forced into adverse circumstances. It has built a solid platform for Notre Dame’s interest in Ukraine. The Institute’s long friendship with Ukraine made Notre Dame’s response to the war in Ukraine unmatched in solidarity and action. Notre Dame has proposed a comprehensive plan for partnership with UCU that would empower the university in its response to the challenges posed by the war and its aftermath. This plan encompasses student and faculty exchange, opportunities for administrators to share their experiences and expertise, and research grants to pursue potential new topics of intellectual and academic inquiry that would have a positive impact on civil society in post-war Ukraine.

A famous saying goes: “A friend in need is a friend indeed.” For many years, we at UCU have been blessed by the Nanovic Institute’s commitment, trust, and friendship. We keep remembering our modest beginnings – and we will always be grateful to the Nanovic Institute for its partnership, hospitality, and friendship during our university’s journey. ◆

Nanovic in Solidarity with Ukraine

Students from the Ukraine Society of Notre Dame listen to Rev. Fr. Andrij Hlabse, S.J. during a prayer vigil for peace in Ukraine at the Basilica of the Sacred Heart, University of Notre Dame.

OPPOSITE PAGE:

Archbishop Gudziak giving his address at Notre Dame’s 2022 commencement ceremony. Graduating students waved Ukrainian flags.

For the Nanovic Institute, Ukraine has a human face. As a member of the Catholic Universities Partnership since 2003, the Ukrainian Catholic University (UCU) in Lviv has emerged as one of the Nanovic Institute’s, and indeed the University of Notre Dame’s, firmest friends in Central and Eastern Europe. Since 2006, Nanovic has hosted 22 visiting scholars from UCU, including 18 university leaders who have completed the Catholic Leadership Program, held in collaboration with the Mendoza College of Business. These Ukrainians are the Institute’s colleagues and friends. When the Russian army invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, the Nanovic Institute responded to this violation of the lives and sovereignty of the Ukrainian people with solidarity and a commitment to providing a platform for substantive dialogue and the sharing of reliable information. In the context of Russia’s growing threat against its southern neighbor and the opportunities for virtual conferencing that the pandemic era has afforded, the Institute had organized flash panels on the crisis before late February. On the very day of the invasion, Nanovic organized an urgent virtual flash panel of experts, tapping into the deep pool of Russian, international relations, and political science scholars that work at Notre Dame. The panel gave immediate responses to the outbreak of war reaching an international audience of several hundred.

This panel was the first of five previously unplanned panels (and a total of 13 events) that were organized or co-sponsored by Nanovic over the course of the spring semester and dealt with various dimensions of the crisis in Ukraine including the problem of Russian propaganda, global perspectives on the war, and the future of Russian and Eastern European studies. In April, the institute brought the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and journalist, Polish-American Anne Applebaum to campus for a special Nanovic Forum (see p.18). The Institute also created an information and resources page on its website as a platform for the perspectives and information shared by colleagues and

former visiting scholars from UCU.

The Nanovic Institute has been central to the broader Notre Dame response to the war in Ukraine, on campus and beyond. Nanovic has helped to amplify on-campus events and programs focused on under standing the crisis and showing solidarity, including those organized by the Notre Dame Ukraine Society student club. Nanovic leadership also helped craft the expansion of Notre Dame’s existing partnership with UCU, a new agreement that builds upon the Memo randum of Understanding signed by both universities in 2019 and which significantly expands this existing academic, religious, and cultural partnership.

The war in Ukraine has remained central to much of the Institute’s programming over the summer months. Discussion and dialogue at both the CUP 2022 summer conference hosted by Sulkhan-Saba Orbeliani University in Tbilisi, Georgia and the leadership program at the Notre Dame Rome Global Gateway focused on resilience and recovery in higher education, with particular attention to the evolving situation in Ukraine. The Institute also worked with the Catholic University of Croatia, a core CUP member, to bring students from UCU and other CUP institutions to the beautiful Adriatic city of Dubrovnik for a summer school titled “Practicing Resilience, Preparing for Recovery.”

In his address at Notre Dame’s 2022 commence ment ceremony, Ukrainian Metropolitan-Archbishop and President of UCU Borys Gudziak said “Notre Dame has offered a singular response to the Russian invasion and devastation of Ukraine. My presence reflects your heartfelt solidarity. It is a sign of your capacity to love generously, to embrace, to serve, and save the suffering, to bless the cursed and lift up the downtrodden and trampled. A friendship launched by the Nanovic Institute for European Studies and Jim McAdams 18 years ago is being continued by the present director of the Nanovic Institute Clemens Sedmak and his wonderful team.” As the war continues, the Nanovic Institute remains committed to showing solidarity for its friends in Ukraine, highlighting their suffering and struggle for freedom, and helping to forge a path toward peace and rebuilding. ◆

Shoulder-to-Shoulder with Our Friends in Lviv

“Notre Dame has offered a singular response to the Russian invasion and devastation of Ukraine. It is a sign of your capacity to love generously, to embrace, to serve, and save the suffering.”

— Borys Gudziak, Ukrainian Metropolitan-Archbishop and President of UCU

CLOCKWISE FROM ABOVE : The Hesburgh Library Word of Life Mural is lit in the colors of the Ukrainian flag in solidarity with the people of Ukraine; Notre Dame community members and exchange students from Ukraine walk to the Grotto during Ukrainian Independence Day celebrations on August 24;

Father Andrij Hlabse, S.J., a theology Ph.D. candidate and Ukrainian Byzantine Catholic priest, presides at the prayer vigil for peace in Ukraine in the Basilica of the Sacred Heart on February 28; Maryna Chuma ’23 speaks at the studentorganized gathering outside the Notre Dame Main Building on March 3.

The Nanovic Institute has been central to the broader Notre Dame response to the war in Ukraine, on campus and beyond.

Students from Ukraine and other CUP universities fostered relationships as they walked the ancient city walls of Dubrovnik on the Adriatic coast, led by Fr. Željko Tanjić (above).

“We are incredibly grateful for the Nanovic Institute and the cup partnership. The summer school can be another way to keep our partnership connected and alive.”

— Rev. Željko Tanji ć , Rector of the Catholic University of Croatia

Practicing Resilience Preparing for Recovery in Dubrovnik

Over a two-week period in June and July 2022, the Nanovic Institute partnered with the Catholic University of Croatia to host a summer school titled “Practicing Resilience, Preparing for Recovery” in Dubrovnik, Croatia. The school brought together Ukrainian students from the Ukrainian Catholic University with students from the other CUP institutions in Croatia, Georgia, Poland, and Slovakia, building new relationships and networks of support, and creating opportunities to discuss the war in Ukraine and Europe more broadly.

The students spent two weeks in Dubrovnik –attending lectures, workshops, and social excursions in the city.

The Nanovic Institute extends its deepest gratitude to our partners in Croatia and Ukraine and to the Congregation of the Sisters of the Servants of Mercy, who graciously hosted the summer school participants at their monastery. The summer school was also cosponsored by Notre Dame International, the Diocese of Dubrovnik, and the Eparchy of Križevci, and made possible through a generous grant that the Nanovic Institute received from an external foundation. ◆

“The summer school is a very important collaborative project. A project created by the CUP based on an idea that originated during a conversation on how the network could help the Ukrainian Catholic University. How could we express solidarity and friendship to our friends at UCU?

The goal of this project was to give the students from UCU an opportunity to deal with trauma and difficulties they are experiencing and to bring them together with other students and exchange ideas and experiences. To go through these difficulties together with people who care about them, their communities, UCU, and Ukraine. Dubrovnik was a good place to host the summer school because of its beauty and cultural heritage, but also because Dubrovnik lived through a similar experience of aggression, trauma, reconciliation, and resilience 30 years ago. The process is still ongoing, there are still open wounds between different ethnic groups. This process will finish and hopefully Ukraine can learn from our experience.

Our hope is that this will help the students when they go back to their respective countries, not only those from UCU, but other students from Slovakia, Poland, Georgia, and Croatia. We want them to go back to their universities and feel empowered and show their communities how to live resiliently. This is an import ant part of the Catholic mission. I hope we are going to continue with the summer school in the future, among different projects organized by the Nanovic Institute. We are incredibly grateful for the institute and the CUP partnership. The summer school can be another way to keep our partnership connected and alive.”

Rev. Željko Tanjić

Rector, Catholic University of Croatia

“Whoever walked around Dubrovnik could not remain indifferent to its beauty and rich history. Some rightly call it ‘heaven on earth.’ Can you imagine that only thirty years ago this city was ‘hell on earth’? We were isolated from all sides, without electricity and water, and our only night light was grenades and faith and hope in the intercession of Our Lady of Porat and St. Vlah. Life has its laws and always finds a way: fer tile ground, an open heart, and new ideas. And here we are, we survived. We wake up in an even more beautiful city, richer for another experience.”

Sr. Marijana Puljić Director, Sisters of Mercy Monastery, Dubrovnik

“Croatia went through a similar experience 30 years ago and understands what the Ukrainian people are going through. This was a great opportunity for learning and sharing, and exploring the true meaning of what it means to build peace, create solidarity, and make friendships.”

Natalie Yakymets Deputy Director for Research and Senior Lecturer of Philosophy, Ukrainian Catholic University

NEWS ROUNDUP

“

Talking about Europe is key to understanding its history, culture, and challenges past and present. The Nanovic Institute engages faculty and students in serious conversations, invites experts to share their insights, and facilitates communications across and beyond campus. For Nanovic, hospitality and openness to the respectful exchange of ideas are not just ethical imperatives, they are approaches to problem-solving and furthering knowledge.”

– Hildegund Müller

MIDWEST MODEL EU

This past spring, Nanovic sent two “delegations” to the annual Midwest Model EU competition, hosted by Indiana University Bloomington. Students spent the first half of the semester drafting policy proposals and learning the political

positions of their countries, Ireland and Poland, in preparation for the weekend of simulated EU policy making. Students in both delegations received awards for their negotiation skills and the Polish delegation came in second place overall.

An Exploratory Workshop on “Peripheries”

In March 2022, the Nanovic Institute held an exploratory session in London with Europe-based colleagues to consider the meaning of “peripheries” in the context of European studies. The workshop aimed to support the Institute in the fulfillment of its 2021-2026 strategic plan – “Engaging Big Questions and ‘Peripheries’ in Europe” – particularly the goal of focusing on the margins and marginalized people, topics, regions, languages, and cultures. Workshop participants will work with the Institute to explore the potential for a future book series on “peripheries.”

Studying Religion, Identity, and Peacebuilding in Sarajevo

In May, a group of Notre Dame and Bosnian students visited Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina to study “Religion, Identity, and Peace and the Periphery of Europe.” Away from the “centers” of Europe where they might typically travel, students learned from local Bosnian peacebuilders and social scientists about the country’s rich history of peacebuilding, competing ethno-religious narratives, trauma and cycles of conflict, and issues of identity.

New Platforms

In summer 2021, the Institute launched three new platforms for Nanovic voices, spaces for sharing the stories, collaboration, and commentary of our students, faculty, and broader community.

Nanovic Navigator is the home for stories told by students about their experiences exploring Europe and European studies through the support of the Nanovic Institute.

Crossing the Square is a forum for collaborative research and the voices of scholars and leaders from within the Catholic Universities Partnership, particularly its leadership program.

Initiated by Nanovic’s Graduate fellows, Europe in the World is a platform for analyses and commentary on Europe’s political, social, and economic relations with the rest of the globe.

They also visited a number of historic sites, including some that figured prominently in the 1992-1995 Bosnia War such as the rebuilt Stari Most (Old Bridge) in Mostar, and Srebrenica, the town where more than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys were massacred in an act of genocide in 1995. The trip was facilitated by Mahan Mirza, executive director of the Ansari Institute for Global Engagement with Religion, through a partnership with Peace Catalyst International. The visit was possible through principal support from the Nanovic Institute with additional support from the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies and the Ansari Institute.

New Faculty Fellows

This past year, the Institute welcomed 12 new faculty fellows. More than 150 fellows invested in European studies, spanning more than two dozen departments and every college and school at Notre Dame, call the Institute home.

Tatiana Botero, Teaching Professor of Spanish, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures

Katlyn Carter, Assistant Professor of History

David Gura, Curator, Ancient and Medieval Manuscripts in Hesburgh Libraries

Berthold Hoeckner, Keough-Hesburgh Professor of Music History and Chair, Department of Music

Eva Hoeckner, Assistant Teaching Professor of German, Department of German and Russian Languages and Literatures and the Center for the Study of Languages and Cultures

Elena Mangione-Lora, Teaching Professor of Spanish, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures

Brian Ó Conchubhair, Associate Professor of Irish Language and Literature

John Onyango, Associate Professor in the School of Architecture

Emma Planinc, Assistant Professor in the Program of Liberal Studies

Gretchen Reydams-Schils, Professor in the Program of Liberal Studies

David O’Connor, Professor of Philosophy, Departments of Philosophy and Classics

Paolo Vitti, Associate Professor of the Practice (Rome) in the School of Architecture

The John Lukacs Collection

After his death in 2019, the family of John Lukacs, the Hungarianborn historian of modern Europe, donated his personal library of almost 20,000 titles to the University of Notre Dame. The Nanovic Institute, in collaboration with the Hesburgh Libraries, is now home to a selection of those titles. Read more in the online article “An Age of Books” about the John Lukacs Collection (go.nd.edu/lukacs), which offers a chance to “break bread” with a scholar who chronicled the past and agitated assumptions.

Beyond the Classroom Women in European Cinema with Barbara Mennel

The theme of the spring Nanovic Film Series, “Women at Work in European Cinema,” explored portraits of women in the workforce from the 18th to 21st centuries from France to Kosovo. Held in partnership with the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center, the highlight of the film series was the screening of Populaire directed by Regis Roinsard. Populaire was introduced by Barbara Mennel whose book, “Women at Work In Twenty-

First-Century Cinema” served as the inspiration for the spring series and received the 2022 Laura Shannon Prize Honorable Mention.

Marko Gural ’25 is a political science major with a minor in European studies. Christian McKernan ’23 is a finance major in the Mendoza College of Business with minors in European studies and constitutional studies. In early summer 2022, they undertook service learning, with grant support from the Nanovic Institute, at the Office for Refugee Support at University Ignatianum in Kraków.

‘ We Have Friends Everywhere’

In April 2022, during a conversation with their friend Max Chuma ’22, Marko Gural ’25 and Christian McKernan ’23 were inspired to undertake service learning in Europe, helping with the herculean task of receiving refugees from the war in Ukraine. Max, Marko, and Christian are all members of the Ukraine Society of Notre Dame and minors in European studies. During a spring break seminar in Berlin, sponsored by the Nanovic Institute, Max spent a day helping with the volunteer effort to receive Ukrainian refugees arriving at the city’s central train station (see p.8). Upon his return, he related his experience to his friends in the Ukraine Society. Marko and Christian decided that during their upcoming summer break, they would follow Max’s example.

For Marko and Christian, Russia’s invasion of the country of their heritage on February 24, 2022, was both heart-breaking and transformative. “I’ve been a Ukrainian longer than I’ve been an American,” explains Marko. Born in New York City to parents who emigrated from western Ukraine in the 1990s, he spoke only Ukrainian until he entered preschool. Christian is the grandchild of Ukrainian refugees: as young children, his maternal grandparents fled their homeland during the Soviet offensive of World War II. For both, the impulse to do something, to help their homeland and fellow Ukrainians, was impossi ble to ignore.

Immediately after the invasion, the Ukraine Soci ety escalated its activities, organizing a vigil outside of Notre Dame’s Main Building, facilitating zoom meetings between students from Notre Dame and the Ukrainian Catholic University, and, crucially, fundraising for organizations such as Caritas Ukraine and Catholic Relief Services.

After their conversation with Max, Marko and Christian worked with Taras Dobko, senior vice rector of UCU and visiting scholar at the Nanovic Institute, who helped them secure an invitation to work with the Office for Refugee Support at the University Ignatianum in Kraków, Poland. Within the first six weeks following the invasion, Kraków had received 150,000 Ukrainian refugees, a figure

that increased the city’s population by 20 percent. By early June, around the time of Marko and Christian’s arrival, 50,000 remained in the city and their needs were both urgent and complex.

A typical day for Marko and Christian involved spending the morning helping with forward-planning initiatives run by University Ignatianum’s Office for Refugee Support. This included volunteering at the university’s new Education Hub, an initiative providing foreign language training – in English, Polish, or French, for example – to Ukrainian teenagers. Marko and Christian conversed with Polish and Ukrainian volun teer teachers, helping them to improve their English skills in preparation for working with young people.

In the afternoon, the students helped at a pantry near the city center where volunteers worked to meet the immediate and basic needs of a long line of refugees that sometimes stretched to the end of the block. Again using their dual language skills, Marko and Christian helped newcomers register and find what they needed from among the available food, drinks, and other essentials, such as toiletries, diapers, and washing detergent. They worked alongside Polish and Ukrainian volunteers, some of whom were themselves refugees, as well as Australians, Canadians, and Americans. The volunteers, according to Marko, were “the greatest humans imaginable, working solely to help others in that pantry.”

At the close of a service learning experience that had started with a conversation at Notre Dame, Marko and Christian’s most abiding memories revolved around conversations they had in Kraków with volunteers and refugees, including children and seniors, such as a refugee-volunteer from Odesa who had lost her home, an apartment she had worked for years to purchase, and a traumatized eight-year-old boy from Mariupol, one of Ukraine’s most heavily besieged cities. As upsetting and difficult as these en counters were, for Marko and Christian, meeting and befriending these individuals made them optimistic for Ukraine’s future and the support its people will continue to receive from friends across the globe. The experience proved to them that the Ukrainian people are not alone. As Christian explains, “now I can say for sure: we have friends everywhere.” ◆

“The Graduate Fellows program fosters an environment that cultivates genuine friendship based on intellectual curiosity and academic rigor.”

LEFT TO RIGHT: Alec Hahus, Moritz Graefrath, Clare O’Hare, Dong Hwan (Alex) Chun, with Associate Professor of Classics Hildegund Müller, senior liaison for research and curricular affairs.

— D ong Hwan (Alex) Chun Ph. D. candidate in English and Graduate Fellow of the Nanovic Institute

The 2019-20 graduate fellow cohort (left to right): Anna Vincenzi, Alec Hahus, Moritz Graefrath, Jacob Coen, Shinjini Chattopadhyay, and Clare O’Hare.

Creating an Intellectual Community for Graduate Fellows Across Disciplines

BY HILDEGUND MÜLLER

Graduate students have been part of the Nanovic family for many years. Since the late 1990s, graduate students have had access to research funding and, since 2005, select opportunities for Dissertation Fellowships that allow Ph.D. candidates in their final stage to focus entirely on writing for a full year. Specific programs to facilitate graduate students’ participation in the Institute’s work and scholarly community have only recently been established.

Established in 2019, the Nanovic Graduate Fellows program aims at building human connections in an interdisciplinary field, bringing together students who share a common interest in European studies but who otherwise might never have come together in an intellectual community. Nanovic Graduate Fellows are typically Ph.D. students whose research interests focus on European politics, history, or culture. They come from such diverse fields as political science, medieval and modern history, European languages and literatures, theology, law, and philosophy. The group has also included students from the Master of Global Affairs program housed at the Keough School of Global Affairs.

The program provides its fellows, first and foremost, with an intellectual community, a group of peers in European studies as well as access to the wider community of faculty fellows and visiting scholars engaged with Nanovic. The small cohort of roughly a dozen students annually, at a variety of stages of their post-graduate programs, meet regularly and mostly do what graduate students are best at: embark on lively discussions, peer-review each other relentlessly, and scrutinize the state of the field of European studies and the methodical and ethical questions it engenders. According to Graduate Fellow Dong Hwan (Alex) Chun, “the Graduate Fellows program fosters an environment that cultivates genuine friendship based on intellectual curiosity and academic rigor. It provides an interdisciplinary space where scholars are encouraged to freely share and discuss their reading of the past, present, and future.”

Fortunately, this intense intellectual exchange happens in an atmosphere of good cheer and mutual benevolence; fellows also enjoy each others’ company over a beer at the Crooked Ewe or at a backyard cook out. During the darkest times of the pandemic, when in-person meetings were impossible, we organized winter walks around the lakes on campus, enjoying the sunshine and tempering the icy winter air with hot coffees and chocolates.

The Graduate Fellows program places great impor tance on professionalization, in ways that bring stu dents into a community of intellectual peers and men tors. The students introduce and facilitate the popular lunchtime faculty fellow lecture series, socialize with invited speakers, and present their own research in a public setting. The program also facilitates opportuni ties for teaching in the European studies curriculum, which is indispensable to a graduate student’s resume as they prepare to enter a competitive job market and allows them to, in turn, become intellectual mentors to undergraduates.

These activities are just some of the ways in which graduate students enrich and benefit from Nanovic’s intellectual community, and the Institute welcomes their creative input. Their interests span from political theory, security, and international relations to the arts, from Milton and Cervantes to Joyce and the cinematic oeuvre of Fellini: anything is welcome that provides for interesting experiences for young scholars and adds new facets to Nanovic’s research and teaching profile.

Samuel Roberts, a Ph.D. student in history, summarizes his experience: “The Graduate Fellows program has allowed me to meet and learn from fellow scholars whom I might not have known other wise. Our fellowship has not only better informed me about contemporary European issues, but also given me new ways to think about my research.” ◆

Cultural and Intellectual Immersion in Postcolonial Paris

BY ALISON RICE AND OLIVIER MOREL

The Nanovic Institute provided generous support that enabled students from Notre Dame who participated in a 2022 summer program in Paris to benefit from an impressive number of cultural opportunities in the French capital. These outings inspired the intellectual growth of students who were enrolled in two inten sive six-week courses taught by Alison Rice and Oliv ier Morel, Notre Dame professors and faculty fellows of the Nanovic Institute. Support from the Nanovic Institute made the summer program a truly unforget table experience. Without it, the program would have consisted of some meaningful classroom interaction and guided tours of the city. These components would have constituted a valuable abroad experience, but not an immersive and involved cultural and intellectual adventure. The grant from the Nanovic Institute was indeed transformative, making possible outings to the ballet, the opera, and a classical music concert in the heart of the city, a daylong excursion to the Palace of Versailles, and subsidizing a wide variety of significant culinary outings to diverse locations throughout the capital alongside visits to special mu seums. The grant also provided support for the visits of authors, filmmakers, and producers to enhance and expand the classroom experience.

Alison Rice, professor of French and Francophone studies, taught “Postcolonial Paris: Contemporary French Cultures in Literature and the Arts,” a course that concentrates on the way “French” cultures are reconsidered and redefined by writers and artists from outside France. The assigned readings illuminated the ways in which Paris is truly a “postcolonial” capital city, containing a mixture of ethnicities, beliefs, and customs that lead to an increasingly complicated na tional identity. Defining what it means to be “French” is a particularly complex task at present, in a period of a changing European Union and a dynamic nation that is heavily influenced by globalization and migra tion. Invited speakers included writers Bessora, the accomplished author of a number of books, including a beautifully conceived graphic novel titled Alpha: Ab idjan to Paris, and Leïla Sebbar, a particularly prolific writer whose publications include a moving tribute to a monumental moment in Parisian history, The Seine Was Red: Paris, October 1961. These two works of literature came alive as the authors engaged students

in conversation and fielded questions regarding the details of their composition. Other special events specifically related to “Postcolonial Paris” included a culinary outing to enjoy falafels in the Marais, often referred to as the Jewish Quarter, and hot mint tea at the Grand Mosque of Paris.

Olivier Morel, associate professor of film, television, and theatre, taught “Paris: Visual Capital,” a study of “cinema, photography, and the media” that explores “how Paris was invented by its images.” Special outings for this course – made possible by Nanovic support –included a visit to the Carnavalet Museum devoted to the history of Paris, a cruise of the Canal Saint-Martin and the Seine River highlighting sites that have become synonymous with great cinematic moments, an on-site discussion with filmmaker and author Ruth Zylberman at the location of her award-winning documentary film, a visit to the special interactive Musé des arts forains that concentrates on Circus and Fairground Arts, and the Cinémathèque Museum that focuses on creator Georges Méliès and the history of cinema.

There were a number of spectacular outings included in the program that had connections to both courses and contributed in special ways to the creation of a vibrant, energetic intellectual community during the summer program. These included a ballet performance choreographed by Mats Ek (including music from Georges Bizet’s Carmen as well as Maurice Ravel’s Bolero), a new staging of Charles Gounod’s opera Faust, a stunning musical and visual homage to the Cathedral of Notre Dame in the Châtelet Theater (including images and scents – as well as the sound of the bells ringing – from the great Gothic cathedral, both before and after the tragic fire of 2019), and culinary outings to Angelina, a tea salon once frequented by literary greats such as Proust and Colette, and the Procope, a café dating back to 1686 and frequented by the likes of Voltaire, Diderot, and Benjamin Franklin.

Stimulating conversation and fine dining have always gone together in establishments like these in the City of Light, and the Nanovic Institute made rich exchanges possible on so many levels for the students in the 2022 Notre Dame Summer Program in Paris. ◆

Students outside of the Panthéon in Paris, the final resting place of over 70 illustrious figures that have shaped the history of France.

Support from the Nanovic Institute made the summer program a truly unforgettable experience...an immersive and involved cultural and intellectual adventure.

Opening Eyes to Europe Through Encounters and Experiences

One of the most important books in the history of humanity is, undoubt edly, The Little Prince. Written by the French pilot and writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, this story was published in early 1943, about 50 years before the founding of the Nanovic Institute for European Studies. Just like the Nanovic Institute, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry was a bridge builder between the United States and Europe.

The Nanovic Institute is an academic unit and part of a great university that is deeply committed to teaching. The Little Prince could inspire us in this regard. Let us imagine a simple scene: The little Prince encountered a teacher. “I am about to teach a class,” she explains to him. “What does that mean – ‘to teach?’” asked the little Prince. He had never seen a school from the inside. What he knew, he knew because of life itself. “Teaching means stretching a person’s imagination to see the world differently,” said the teacher who may have thought about this. “Stretching a person’s imagination to see the world differently,” repeated the little Prince. He could not really follow. “What does it mean to stretch a person’s imagination?” he asked.

“Well, it means to open your eyes to something you have not seen before,” said the teacher. “And then you cannot deny that it is there and it will be important. And then you see the world differently. And your life will never be the same.” “But I like the world and the way it is,” said the little Prince and thought about the fox and the rose and maybe even the drawing of the sheep. It was a good world, full of good planets. And it was a good life, too, but sometimes challenging and difficult.

The Nanovic Institute wants to stretch the imagination of the people we work with – through encounters and experiences. We want to serve the idea of creating artisans of a new humanity committed to the common good of all, and touched in their hearts since, as Saint-Exupéry wrote, “it is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

– Clemens Sedmak

STAFF

Clemens Sedmak Director and Professor of Social Ethics

Monica Caro Senior Associate Director

Bruna Celic Research Program Coordinator

Anna Dolezal Student Programs Assistant Director

Jennifer Lechtanski Graphic Designer

Gráinne McEvoy Writer and Editorial Program Manager Hildegund Müller

Senior Liaison for Research and Curricular Affairs, and Associate Professor of Classics Grant Osborn Associate Director

Rebecca Prince Events Coordinator

Melanie Webb Operations Assistant Director

FACULTY COMMITTEE 2021-22 Meredith Chesson, Anthropology John Deak, History

Ulrich Lehner, Theology Olivier Morel, Film, Television, and Theatre Alison Rice, Romance Languages and Literatures Yasmin Solomonescu, English

ADVISORY BOARD

Robert and Elizabeth Nanovic Founding Benefactors

Jane Heiden Chair

Dominica Annese R. Stephen Barrett

Paul Black

David Buckley

Jennifer Flanagan

Recent Alumna Representative Terrence Keeley

Claire Shannon Kelly Paul L. Mahoney

Susan Mahoney Hatfield

Patrick Moran

Susan Nanovic Flannery Sean M. Reilly Peter Šťastný

Nanovic Institute for European Studies

Keough School of Global Affairs

1060 Jenkins Nanovic Halls Notre Dame, Indiana 46556-7000

Telephone: 574-631-5253

Email: nanovic@nd.edu Website: nanovic.nd.edu