International Conference
Sixty-Five Years After: World War II and its Legacy for Contemporary Europe
This year marks the sixty-fifth anniversary of the end of World War II and twenty years since the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe, two events that each in their own way radically transformed the landscape of contemporary Europe and Russia. This fall thus offers a timely occasion to step back and reflect upon the legacy of World War II for the politics, society, and cultures of Europe and Russia.
With this in mind, the Institute of European, Russian and Eurasian Studies; the Centre for European Studies, the Department of History, the Department of Political Science, and the Max and Tessie Zelikovitz Centre for Jewish Studies have organized an international conference “Sixty-Five Years After: World War II and its Legacies for Contemporary Europe and Russia” to be held at Carleton University on November 11, 2010, from 8:30 am -4:30 pm. The conference aims to bring together an interdisciplinary group of scholars to reflect upon these momentous events in the recent European past and to discuss their continuing relevance for us today.
The conference will consist of three panels:
• The First Panel “Confronting War and Genocide” will focus on the experience of the war and the impact of encounters with violence and genocide for contemporaries.
• The Second Panel “Justice and Remembrance” will explore the interrelationship between memory and the pursuit of justice in the aftermath of the war with an eye towards its contemporary relevance to post-Communist societies and cultures.
• The Third Panel “Lessons Learned?” will address the fact that the end of World War II and the end of the Cold War did not bring an end to war, violence and genocide. The panel will reflect on contemporary areas of conflict in the region and around the world and what lessons might be
learned from past experiences.
Support for this event has been provided by a generous donation from the Kinross Gold Corporation.
For more information and a preliminary program, please visit the conference website http://carleton.ca/eurus/events/sixty-five-years-after