A Chat with Tomislav Longinovic

Photographer Susan Meiselas has spent decades making history visible. Meiselas doesn’t look–she sees–and her photographs remind us of the importance and power of bearing witness to our world. Documenting strippers in New England carnivals, conflict in Nicaragua and El Salvador, and the plight of the Kurds in the Middle East, her visually stunning work has been the subject of exhibitions at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Meiselas has been widely acclaimed for her ethical approach to photographing social and political turmoil, displaced peoples, and the strength of the human spirit. Meiselas received her BA from Sarah Lawrence College, New York, and her MA in visual education from Harvard University.

Alexandra Cuesta’s work combines experimental film traditions and documentary practices. She commences from the public sphere and explores poetic and subjective representations of reality. Social structures, instances of displacement, and cultural diasporas, are some of the recurring concerning present in her work. For her visit to OSU, she will present a selection of her short films. Her work has previously screened at venues including the New York Film Festival, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Viennale International Film Festival, Centre Pompidou, Palacio Nacional de Bellas Artes in Mexico City, FIDMarseille, Bienal de Cuenca, Habana Film Festival, and BFI Film Festival, London.

Tomislav Longinovic is professor of Slavic, Comparative Literature and Visual Culture at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and published fiction writer in both English and his native Serbo-Croatian. He is currently a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Research in the Humanities, and his academic books include Borderline Culture (1993) and Vampire Nation (2011). He is currently completing a book manuscript entitled The Secret of Translation: Emerging Border Cultures. At OSU, he is giving a talk on “The Balkan Route: Space, Translation, Imagination”

On Tuesday, January 24, 2017, Dr. Theodora Dragostinova sat down with Dr. Peter Gatrell, Professor of History at Manchester University, to have a chat about migration, immigration, and repatriation in Europe. In the discussion, Dr. Gatrell discusses the value that arts and humanities can have in discussing and understanding migration, as well as what happens when citizens relocate because of war or economic reasons and then return to their home country.

Global mobility is a defining issue for the 21st century. Our project integrates the expertise of five faculty members - Vera Brunner-Sung, Jeffrey Cohen, Theodora Dragostinova, Yana Hashamova, and Robin Judd - working on global mobility from the perspectives of anthropology, history, literature, film/media studies, and filmmaking. In this episode, Dr. Theodora Dragostinova interviews Dr. Ulf Brunnbauer, Professor of History of Southeast and Eastern Europe at the University of Regensburg, about the Other Side of the Migration Debate, emigration and immigration in Europe. To engage this topic, our three key questions are: 1. What is the role of the humanities and arts in addressing this global challenge?", "There are complex reasons why people are on the move – from war and violence to economic insecurity to environmental change. 2. Based on your research, why do people leave home and what does it mean to leave home? 3. The influx of refugees and immigrants in Europe and the USA has caused much debate in recent year, even though the largest number of newcomers worldwide is not in the West. Based on your work on the social history of the Balkans in the 19th and 20th centuries with a special emphasis in the historical genealogy and migration history, how do communities accept newcomers? What are some of the requirements for a successful integration of the newcomers in the host society?

Global mobility is a defining issue for the 21st century. Our project integrates the expertise of five faculty members - Vera Brunner-Sung, Jeffrey Cohen, Theodora Dragostinova, Yana Hashamova, and Robin Judd - working on global mobility from the perspectives of anthropology, history, literature, film/media studies, and filmmaking. In this episode, Dr. Jeffrey Cohen interviews Dr. Ibrahim Sirkeci, Director of the Center for Transnational Studies at Regent’s University London, about Turkey’s Refugees and Refugees from Turkey. To engage this topic, our three key questions are: 1. What is the role of the humanities and arts in addressing this global challenge?", "There are complex reasons why people are on the move – from war and violence to economic insecurity to environmental change. 2. Based on your research, why do people leave home and what does it mean to leave home? 3. The influx of refugees and immigrants in Europe and the USA has caused much debate in recent year, even though the largest number of newcomers worldwide is not in the West. Based on your work […among refugees in Turkey?], how do communities accept newcomers? What are some of the requirements for a successful integration of the newcomers in the host society?