CES Study Abroad Information Session

by Ena Barisic

The Center for European Studies held a summer study abroad informational session for students interested in visiting either Austria, Poland, Czech Republic, or Belgium. These programs can count for the required summer term, and as classes for Political Science, European Union Studies, Eastern-Central European Studies and International Studies. The purpose for the session was to informally give information regarding each individual program, with regards to important details such as costs, transportation, classes offered, housing, and entertainment. Each program’s advisor joined the group of students in order to further explain the program. The general gist of applying is similar to all four programs: send an application, letter(s) of recommendation, said college application, minimum of 2.0/2.5 GPA and a non-refundable fee. Scholarships are offered for students to apply in order to fund the costs.

Coffee with a Diplomat: Informal Session with Michael Thurston

by Ena Barisic

A room of interested students had the pleasure of engaging in an intimate discussion foreign affairs positions with Michael Thurston, Senior Foreign Service Officer (SFSO) of the U.S. Department of State. The event was arranged by the Center for European Studies at UF. Thurston has visited the University of Florida campus previously in Fall of 2014.  The purpose of this year’s informal session was to recruit and inform students about career options at the State Department, including jobs as a Foreign Service Officer (FSO). The Department seeks increased representation from the Southeast to bolster diversity and promote equal regional participation.

Thurston began the session with an account of his experiences, his service, and the impact of the State Department on his life.  Thurston served in Afghanistan as the advisor and senior civilian to the Special Operations Joint Task Force/NATO Special Operations Command and as the acting ambassador in Burma. His previous posts include Australia, Ethiopia, Iraq, Mexico, New Zealand, Rwanda, South Africa and Sri Lanka.

Thurston discussed the application process in detail. As an FSO, you represent the United States overseas, thereby playing a vital role in foreign affairs, a role that the U.S. Department of State does not take lightly. Applying for the FSO position consists of multiple rounds of pass/fail assessments: qualification/registration for the FSO test, passing the FSO test, submission of a personal narrative to the Qualifications Evaluation Panel (QEP), passing an oral test, and passing the medical and security clearance. Lastly, the QEP will do a final review of your file before offering acceptance. Once accepted, candidates must select one of five tracks: Consular, Economic, Management, Political, or Public Diplomacy. Thurston advised listeners to carefully consider this decision, because although it can be done, the process to switch tracks is highly complicated.

Thurston’s enthusiasm for the position allowed him to express the personal benefits of the job in an enticing way. When he applied, he was originally attracted to the prospect of travelling, while serving his country. As an experienced diplomat, he is now humbled by the relationship he makes with diverse groups around the globe. He says that this appreciation for people “can’t be taught in textbooks.”

This Czech and American Life: Community, Nature, and the Future

            Dobrý den! (Hello!) I’m Veronica Cinibulk (that’s the Americanized version, it’s really Cinibulková), and I am from the Czech Republic. *Fast Fact* The –ová (or –á) is used at the end of females’ surnames to indicate their gender, though a very small number of surnames don’t change, and are the same in masculine and feminine form. *Another Fast Fact* It’s the Czech Republic now, though people seem to have trouble letting go of the word “Czechoslovakia.” It’s alright, I understand. It was Czechoslovakia until January 1, 1993—just 22 years ago! I know. Crazy.

We’re two countries now! Though we still have joint TV shows…

            My family and I moved from the Czech Republic to America when I was three and a half years old, but we continue to go back each summer, sometimes for three or four months, and later for one or two. Just for fun, I decided to count how many times I have sat sleeplessly through the nine, twelve, or fifteen hour flights across the Atlantic, and the answer is…34. Thirty-four times. Yes, I love traveling, and I love airports. But I have grown quite a strong dislike for the actual flying aspect.

My doggy at the airport, ready to travel. She’s not too fond of the flights either…Fifteen hours in a bag can get tiresome, you know.

News from Polish Studies

The organization of the Center’s Polish Library and Reading Room is well under way! We have received tons of materials from the Kosciuszko Foundation (http://www.thekf.org/kf/), the Sembrich (http://www.thesembrich.org/), the Polish Library in Washington D.C. (http://www.polishlibrary.org/), The Polish Library “Millennium” in Los Angeles, The American Institute of Polish Culture in Miami (http://www.ampolinstitute.org/), and a private donor Thomas Anessi from Poznan, Poland. A very big thanks to all of these institutions!

I have begun labeling the books with call numbers and shelving them, as you can see in the pictures below:

Polish Studies Library, TUR 3326B

Just a note on the call number system I’m using: since it would be rather difficult to learn a decimal system like Dewey or Library of Congress on my own in a short time, I am relying on an “accession” numbering system. Basically, the first book I’ve put on the shelf was labelled “CES POL001”-- “CES” for Center for European Studies, “POL” for Polish, and then “001” for the first book. The books will eventually be electronically catalogued with appropriate information, including their donors and the call numbers. This catalogue will then be available online.

And still more boxes of books to add!

That’s all for now from Polish Studies! 

Na razie!!

- Jack J. Hutchens

Ece Erbay, CES Turkish Intern

The Center for European Studies is proud to host student interns visiting from Turkey. This past semester we housed J-1 Student Intern, Ece Erbay, who worked under Dr. Emrah Sahin, Director of the UF Turkish Studies program. Below, Ece writes to us of her duties as a UFCES Turkish Intern, her experiences at the University of Florida, and how these experiences have affected her course of study as a student of International Relations at the University of Economics and Technology in Turkey. Thanks so much for spending the semester with us, Ece!

I cannot forget those moments on August 23rd, the day I arrived in Gainesville. I looked out of the airplane window at the beauty of the town’s all-green landscape—so different than the all-yellow Ankara, the city I come from. My internship at the University of Florida’s Center for European Studies (UFCES) officially began at the American Embassy of Ankara, but my physical encounter with Gainesville some time later, coupled with the jetlag of my overseas flight, made my arrival surreal. I was scared, excited, and enthusiastic all at once.

I am a junior majoring in the International Relations program at the University of Economics and Technology in Turkey. This program should have already “internationalized” my perspective but, no offense to the program, the internship at UFCES gave me a concrete opportunity to work in an international setting. During my four-month internship at UFCES, the first-day excitement and enthusiasm remained while the initial scare transformed into an insatiable drive to explore the land and contribute to the Turkish Studies program at CES.

The University of Florida is an amazing university where students never stop communicating with each other. Social events are held on campus throughout the week, which CES plays no small part in. Throughout my internship I had the pleasure (and privilege, really) of working with the CES team, a team that is incomparable to any other when it comes to loving the job, staying loyal to it, and smiling all the time despite the job's stresses. Their offices are designed to welcome and treat you nicely: see the CES lobby for proof. As a CES Intern, I held conversation classes with American students taking Turkish as a second language, helped prepare reading materials for Dr. Sahin’s Islam and Turkey class, organized Mediterranean Movie Nights, and attended English classes through the International Friendship Program at the local Baptist Church. I even found time to travel across the state of Florida.

My internship at UFCES was a great experience. It not only fulfilled the internship requirement at my home university but it also increased my sense of accomplishment and open-mindedness, the latter of which I will definitely use in my encounters with foreign cultures and people and in my future endeavors in the field of international relations.

Anna Weissman, PhD student in political science, received a CES travel grant for pre-dissertation research in Poland this past summer. Anna's dissertation explores the self-identified political identities of women and LGBT individuals in Eastern European/post-communist contexts. Read more about it below!

May 1980. Photograph: Jean Louis Atlan/Sygma/Corbis Jean Louis Atlan/ J.L. Atlan/Sygma/CORBIS

My pre-dissertation fieldwork in Warsaw and Gdansk this past summer was spent fact-gathering, interviewing Polish feminists, and visiting sites that were important in Polish history, namely the Gdansk shipyard where the Solidarity movement began—which would eventually grow to 10-million strong and topple Communism in Eastern Europe. My aim was to make contacts that could help me in my next fieldwork trip, this time for my dissertation work. As a PhD student in political science, my research interests center on identity politics and feminist theory, specifically in Poland and broadly within the rest of Central and Eastern Europe. My training in comparative political analysis, feminist theory, and political theory has equipped me to analyze through a gender lens the processes of democratization and regime transition and the constructions of civic culture and identity. For my dissertation, I plan on analyzing minority political self-identity construction throughout the processes of democratization in post-communist Poland, demonstrating how the inheritance of a specific gendered religious nationalism has affected the development of civic identity, specifically for women and individuals who identify as LGBT(IAQ).

As a first-generation Polish American, my family emigrated to the United States in the 1970s from communist Poland, this subject is not only informed by my academic interests, but has personal significance for me as well. Poland has a history marked by years of foreign occupation and fluid borders. The robust, ancient Catholicism that has defined and protected Polishness through these occupations also has a political nature—the Church has a strong influence in the policies that are enacted (for example, the abortion ban in 1993) and in the country’s general conservative directionality since 1989. I saw this marriage of the political and the religious firsthand on my trip, witnessing the “March for Life and Family” (Marsz dla Życia i Rodziny), which is an annual march sponsored by several conservative Catholic pro-life organizations. This was a huge march that drew several hundred people as they walked down the ulica Krakowskie Przedmieście–-the Royal Avenue—down the center of Warsaw. The majority of the participants were families with children in tow, but there were also nationalist and neo-fascist groups and people with “No Gender” banners. It was a fascinating mix of parents and children holding balloons and flowers, accompanied by a cheerful musical float, priests and clergy members, and people passing out pamphlets that equated homosexuality to pedophilia. “Gender” was seen as the culprit.

Prior to the beginning of the march, there was a brief speech that encouraged the marchers to “keep it non-political,” to simply walk to “promote family life in Poland.” Several people were actually pulled out of the crowd and told they were unable to participate, that their homemade signs were “too political” and outside of the mission of the march. I spoke to one such man as he stood dejected on the sidewalk, asking me how they could consider any of this apolitical. This experience demonstrates the kind of work I am looking to do in Poland, to uncover the differing conceptions of the political and how this leads to differing political self-identities. How can a large, annual march for pro-life legislation, with several extreme-right groups and nationalist Polish families together, be considered apolitical? How is the political defined (and embodied) in Poland, and how does this affect political membership and participation?

 My short 3-week trip this summer was a fantastic introduction to the work I intend to do in my dissertation. Without CES’s Travel Grant, I would have been unable to afford the trip and would have had to forego it. I am grateful for the Center and for the support of the people that helped make it happen.

Photos from Berlin

Cecilia Greco, UF alumna and CES office manager, spent two winters ago in Berlin, Germany. She went to Berlin for four days, traveled the European continent, and returned for two weeks. Here are the photos she took from her arrival, departure, and her first few days traversing the Berlin streets.

Click below to see more!