Legacies of Empires: Power and Diversity in Rome, Vienna, Budapest, and Prague

The goal of this program is to reveal how our world of nation states is a very recent and fragile historical phenomenon. For many centuries, vast empires ruled and determined the lives and destinies of diverse peoples. Many of the ideas, ideals, ideologies and policies of the Roman, Byzantine, Hapsburg and Ottoman Empires are still relevant to understanding the often contradictory and unresolved issues of today’s world. This program will allow students to investigate these ideas and relationships in the sites where they once flourished.

As we examine the roots of contemporary issues of religious and cultural tolerance and intolerance, the program will also incorporate a forum for discussion and reflection on the ways in which we imagine and define our own identities - individually and collectively. We will connect with Roma populations – commonly and pejoratively known as 'Gypsies' – who comprise Europe’s largest minority. We will consider the ways in which minority identity is constructed within the power apparatus of society and state, examining the patterns of longstanding systematic discrimination. We will consider what it means to say “we”, and how the circle of the “we” is implicitly or explicitly exclusionary. How do notions of “identity” and “culture” further marginalize Roma populations? We will reflect on the rise of neo-fascism in Europe and we will explore the ways in which Romani people are pushing back against this discourse, especially through art activism.