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May 15-17, 1998 |
| Introduction |
| Schedule |
Introduction
Before his untimely death in July of 1997, François Furet proposed that the Olin Center hold a conference on "The European-American Connection," which he would take the lead in organizing. To honor him, we have decided to conduct such a conference ourselves: Furet's life and thought expressed a deeply held conviction of the political and intellectual importance of the European-American connection. Like his master Tocqueville, he believed that Europeans could learn from a society that was born democratic, and that Americans could learn from the birthplace of their civilization. Like the architects of the North Atlantic Alliance, Furet also believed that a world in which the United States and Europe had strong political ties was a safer and more humane one. He detected, however, a growing estrangement in the always complex relation between America and Europe, occasioned by the very success of the North Atlantic Alliance in winning the cold war, but fed by longstanding differences (such as America's lack of Europe's experience with both pre-democratic and post-democratic regimes) and deepened by recent changes in thought, such as American "multiculturalism." Multiculturalism, in Furet's analysis, seems to offer the United States, which has always struggled with its simultaneous rejection of and need for Europe, the opportunity to reject the claim to universality of European civilization. Such a rejection may be expressed as angry denunciation within the academy, but within the society at large the mood today rather seems to be that of cool indifference to Europe, in which Europe retains its charm as a possible vacation spot, but is no longer a place of spiritual or intellectual pilgrimage, necessary to the completion of life.
The conference will have sessions on four topics: 1) the European-American connection in the literary imagination; 2) the image of Europe in the American self-understanding; 3) the image of America in the European self-understanding; and 4) the meaning of the political-military alliance of Europe and America today. We will include both American and European perspectives on both the historical context of European-American relations and how things stand today.
Friday, May 15
1:00 p.m.
| The Strange Case of the Displaced Detective: Transplanting a Genre between an Old World and a New One | Glenn Most, Committee on Social Thought, University of Chicago |
| Modern Poetry and the Euro-American Connection | Helen Vendler , Dept. of English, Harvard University |
Saturday, May 16
10:00 a.m.
| The Symbolic America in "High" European Thought | James Ceaser, Dept. of Government and Foreign Affairs, University of Virginia |
| America in the New Europe | G.M. Tamás, The Institute of Philosophy, Central European University |
| America in Europe: The Bright Shadow | George Walden, diplomat, politician, writer, United Kingdom |
2:30 p.m.
| Lincoln's Republican Argument Against Popular Sovereignty | David Bromwich, Dept.of English, Yale University |
| On Pasta Salad, or the Limits of American Flight from Europe | Charles Fairbanks, Foreign Policy Institute, Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University |
| Europe in America: The Old and the New | Wilson Carey McWilliams,
Dept. of Political Science, Rutgers University |
Sunday, May 17
10:00 a.m.
| The European-American Connection | Pierre Hassner, Foundation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, Centre d'Études et de Recherches Internationales, Paris |
| The Future of the American Military Commitment to Europe | John Mearsheimer, Dept. of Political Science, University of Chicago |
OTHER PARTICIPANTS
Daniel Gordon, Dept. of History, University of Massachussetts at Amherst
Ran Halevi, Centre Raymond Aron, Paris
Ralph Lerner, Committee on Social Thought, University of Chicago
Alan Levine, School of Public Affairs, American University
Azar Nafisi, Foreign Policy Institute, Johns Hopkins University
William Thomson, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP
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