TCDS Democracy & Diversity Institute, Wroclaw, Poland – July 2010

10/12/2009

The Transregional Center for Democratic Studies of The New School for Social Research is pleased to announce the 19th Democracy & Diversity Graduate Summer Institute, to be held in Wroclaw, Poland, from July 10-26, 2010. We will again welcome a diverse cohort of forty junior scholars from The New School, Europe, and other parts of the world for an intensive program of study in society, culture and politics, this year centered around the theme "Citizens without Borders." As the strong ties of citizens to a specific territory have been loosening for some time already, we will explore the emergence of new aspirations, movements, and institutions that reflect this process of de-territorialization, and new practices that reshape identities and traditional notions of citizenship.

Our Wroclaw Institute is designed to facilitate intellectual and experiential insights into a momentous experiment now under way: the peaceful construction of a transnational Europe. Located between Berlin, Prague and Warsaw, Wroclaw, a once vibrant German metropolis called Breslau, was almost totally annihilated during World War II. Repopulated and rebuilt by Poles, now – twenty years after the collapse of Communism – it exhibits a complex, multi-layered European identity. We will draw from its culture of the borderlands, and from the hybridity of a place where west meets east and where the past is revealed, in order to enter into a dialogue with new identities in transition.

Known as an intimate international forum for lively but rigorous debate on critical issues of democratic life, the D&D Institute brings an interdisciplinary, comparative, and highly interactive approach to the social, political, and cultural challenges facing today’s world. Core faculty from The New School for Social Research will be joined by other distinguished American and international scholars and guest-speakers.

A full description of courses and Institute faculty, as well as information on how to apply, will be available in early February 2010.

 For more information please contact Amy Sodaro ([email protected] or 212-229-5580 x3136) or visit our Web site at

www.newschool.edu/tcds.