Welcome back!  I hope you all had stimulating and productive summers and that you are making a smooth transition into your fall semester.

I’m writing in the hopes that you’ll take a minute out of your busy schedules to look over the exciting programming that we have lined up at the Center for European Studies this fall.

We have an excellent list for the 2012-2013 academic year, with events in our on-going Conversations on Europe focusing on the current political and economic crisis in Europe.  The year kicks off on Sept. 20 with a lecture by Jim Adams of UM’s Economics Department entitled “How Fragile is the Euro?” UM’s Natalie Bakopoulos, will offer her take on the situation in Greece on Oct. 4. On Oct. 18 we will have a lecture on the Eurozone crisis seen from an Italian perspective delivered by Lucia Tajoli, professor of public policy in Milan, currently at the Ford School. On Nov.13, Graham Paul, Consul General of France and Christian Brecht, Consul General of Germany in Chicago, will offer their take on challenges facing Europe. Finally, on Dec. 6, Rebecca Spang of the University of Indiana’s History Department will place Europe’s financial crisis in historical perspective with a lecture based on her path-breaking research on France’s financial system in the eighteenth century; and we will close Fall semester with the CES traditional end of semester luncheon by taking stock of Europe’s crises on Dec 11. Other speakers include Morgane Labbé, of the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, who will speak on controversies surrounding population statistics and ethnic minorities in France; and Sakis Gekas, of York University will give a lecture on the colonial Mediterranean.

Many of you may have come to know of Arthur Goldhammer, a research affiliate at MIT and Harvard’s Center for European Studies, through his translations of over 100 books from French into English, including a new edition of Alexis de Tocqueville’s classic, Democracy in America.  Others may have encountered him through his fascinating blog, French Politics, which serves as a go-to source for those interested in France’s notoriously complicated political life. We are very pleased that he will be speaking at UM on Nov. 15 on his parallel roles as both a translator of texts and a translator of political culture. This event is part of the LSA Theme Semester on Translation.

These and other events are all listed in on our website.

You can also keep up with CES activities through our blog "Eyes on Europe", and our media outlets on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter @CES_Michigan

We also have our second EUI Post-doctoral Fellow this year, Thomas Cauvin, arriving in the Winter Semester, from the PhD program at the European University Institute in Florence. 

Finally, let me just remind you that the Center of European Studies now offers a Graduate Certificate in European and European Union Studies. Please refer any interested graduate students that you might have to our program.

I’m looking forward to seeing you all at our events.

Joshua Cole
Director, Center for European Studies
Associate Professor of History