The Theater of Public Life in the New Europe: Muffled Voices, Cries for Help & Other Challenges

press release: Please join us for the next in our Spring Lecture Series: Elzbieta Matynia's lecture, titled "The Theater of Public Life in the New Europe: Muffled Voices, Cries for Help, and Other Challenges." The talk, which will be both academic and personal, considers the current refugee crisis in Europe through a re-reading of Hannah Arendt. It discusses the public square, with its theater of public life, as an infrastructure for hope, in which otherness can be explored, and violence prevented.

The Speaker:

Elzbieta Matynia is Professor of Sociology and Liberal Studies and director of the Transregional Center for Democratic Studies at the New School for Social Research in New York. Her research in the sociology of politics and art focuses on democratic transformations In East and Central Europe, on the challenges faced by democracies emerging with a legacy of violence (South Africa), and more recently on the shrinking of democracy in these and regions and beyond.