IES Annual Report 2002-2003

The Center for British Studies officially opened on September 15, 2003, thanks to a generous endowment from the Robert Kirk Underhill Trust. It provides a platform for one of the largest and most distinguished group of scholars studying Britain -- spread across the arts, humanities, social sciences and professional schools -- in the United States. The Center has three objectives:

To strengthen Berkeley's intellectual and institutional ties to Britain.
To develop new interdisciplinary and transnational research agendas for the study of Britain.
To support graduate and undergraduate research in British Studies.

During the spring semester of 2003, the Center staged a number of talks, workshops and conferences. In addition to building a program for 2003-4 the Center also developed its mailing list and website at ies.berkeley.edu/cbs/main.html

In 1990, the government of the Federal Republic of Germany chose the University of California as one of the original three Centers of Excellence in the United States, along with Harvard and Georgetown. The mission of these centers is to encourage activities that will increase American understanding of contemporary developments in Europe, and particularly in Germany. The establishment of the University of California Center for German and European Studies (CGES) was accompanied by a generous ten-year grant from the German government. In the year 2000, CGES became part of the Institute of European Studies. CGES continues as a focus of the Institute's research activities; the multi-campus CGES, with IES, also maintains the synergy that the multi-campus Center established in German and European Studies, by bringing together scholars from the nine campuses to join together in collaborative research projects. This synergy made CGES the only regional resource center in California for European Studies in the 1990s. Indeed, CGES has already won international recognition for excellence in the field of European Studies through its research programs: The Political Economy of European Integration; Comparative Immigration and Integration; The State After Statism; The European Union's Transregional Trade Relations; Supranational Governance in the EU; Globalization and Governance in the European Union; European Security; and The Political Economy of Ethnic Conflict.

The Finnish Studies Program (FSP) was founded in recognition of the importance of Finland and Finnish-American culture in the Bay Area, California, and the international community. The Finnish-American community's history in Berkeley includes pioneering contributions such as the co-op movement and the establishment of local halls and churches. With a distinguished Scandinavian department, many faculty in a broad range of disciplines with research interests touching on Finland, and sizable library holdings, UC Berkeley launched FSP following a joint agreement in 1995 with the Finnish government. Its goal is to promote scholarly exchanges between Finnish academic institutions and UC Berkeley as well as the study of the language, culture and society of Finland. The Centre for International Mobility (CIMO), a Finnish government organization, provides partial funding that allows the instruction of Finnish, the only EU language that was not previously taught on a permanent basis in California. In the past, the Institute provided seed money using a grant from the Department of Education's National Resource Center Title VI funds. Today, CIMO and the University, and specifically the College of Letters and Science and the Scandinavian Department, support the teaching of Finnish. In addition, FSP sponsors a variety of lectures and conferences. In the AY 2003-03, the Finnish Studies Program engaged in the projects listed below:

The France-Berkeley Fund (FBF) was established in 1993 by UC Berkeley and the French Ministère des Affaires Etrangères in order to support scientific and scholarly exchanges, and collaboration, between Berkeley and research and higher education institutions in France. Applications are accepted in all fields: the humanities, social sciences, exact sciences, engineering and the applied sciences, and the professional schools. The Fund considers projects jointly submitted by a tenured or tenure-track professor at UC Berkeley, UC Davis or UC Santa Cruz, and a professor or researcher with a permanent affiliation with a French public research institution or institution of higher learning.

This year the FBF received 47 grant applications. The majority of the applications came from the exact and applied sciences. Last year the call for projects specifically emphasized the humanities and social sciences in an attempt to generate from those in these fields more interest in the activities of the FBF. In spite of the fact that that emphasis was not repeated this year, FBF still attracted a number of applications from the social sciences (9 versus 12 for last year). In contrast, the number of applications from the humanities dropped sharply. For the fourth year in a row, scholars from UC Davis and UC Santa Cruz participated in the program on a cost-sharing basis. This year, FBF received twice the number of applications from those two campuses compared to last year, and were able to fund three of the proposals: one from Davis and two from Santa Cruz. The accord between the evaluations of the French and the Berkeley committees was relatively strong this year: FBF was able to fund all those projects given the highest ranking by either Paris or Berkeley. Two thirds of those projects funded were among those ranked in the top 21 by the French committee.

The French Studies Program (FRSP) organizes lectures, scholarly visits, and conferences involving France and the French traditions across the disciplines of the Humanities and the Social Sciences. In addition to the French Department, Berkeley has significant concentrations of faculty engaged in work on France in the departments of History, History of Art, Music, Comparative Literature, Anthropology, and Political Science. These scholars maintain a long and distinguished Berkeley tradition of interdisciplinary study of things French. They provide an important pedagogical and scholarly resource at both the graduate and the undergraduate levels for students working on France and Francophonie. Beyond the UC Berkeley campus, FBF helps coordinate programs and activities for faculty and graduate students, and for members of the Bay Area community, committed to the investigation of French society, culture, literature, science, and the arts.

The French Studies Program aims to coordinate scholarly work on France that is conceived from both a European and Francophone perspective. The French Studies Program has a long and distinguished history: active throughout the 1980s and 1990s, it was the sponsor of major international conferences that led to highly successful publications on such topics as "Libraries of the Future."

In its current incarnation, it is made up of a steering committee of Berkeley faculty and graduate students throughout the humanities and social sciences, and a broader community of scholars and other interested members of the Bay Area community. The French Studies Program supports speakers, conferences, and study groups, and aims to foster the informal sharing of work among members of the Bay Area community.

In the academic year 2002-03, FRSP was engaged in an active re-organization of its Executive Committee, as well as in the hosting of a variety of high-profile events and lectures. There were three highlights:

The "Homage to Pierre Bourdieu," which was presided over by Chancellor Robert Berdahl and had an attendance of approximately 700 people.
The two-week visit of Pierre Rosanvallon.
The spring conference on "Race Across Time" co-sponsored with the French Department.

The Italian Studies Program has continued to develop two major projects over the past year in association with the Department of Italian Studies.

One project involves intercampus collaboration, interdisciplinary connections, and public outreach that have found a base in the California Consortium of Interdisciplinary Italian Studies (CICIS). Berkeley has played a major coordinating role in the formation and growth of an institution that represents Italianists from at least seven disciplines, all the UC campuses and several CSU and private college or university campuses. The second annual CICIS conference was held on March 8, 2003 at UCLA; its agenda was largely defined by the ISP and members of the Italian Studies Department under the rubric "Visualizing Italian Modernities." Twelve papers on topics ranging from urban planning to film, art history, and historical representations of the crowd were presented to an engaged audience of more than ninety faculty, graduate students, and independent scholars from northern and southern California. Details will be forthcoming in report from John Marino.

The second project is thematic, a series of seminars and lectures at Berkeley on the theme of Italian Modernities, with the focus shifting from early modernities during the fall 2002 to late modernities and modernist movements during the spring of 2003. In fall 2002, Albert R. Ascoli and Randolph Starn jointly taught a seminar on "Early Modernities: Italian Cases and Comparisons," and the ISP co-organized, coordinated, and co-sponsored ten lectures in conjunction with the Ascoli-Starn seminar in the fall and spring. Follow-up seminars on a second day were held in most cases.

Besides these major initiatives, the Program has redesigned its website on the IES server practically from the ground up. It is now fully operational.

ISP also co-sponsored several additional events: the visit and lecture of former Italy premier Massimo D'Alema (6/12); the conference "Italy Germany, and Africa between Colonialism and Fascism: A Comparative Workshop" (9/13-14); a lecture-demonstration by Maurizio Forte (Centro Nazionale della Ricercha) on "Virtual Archaeology: Recreating Ancient Worlds" (3/3); and a lecture by Richard Samuel (MIT), "Machiavelli's Children: Leadership and Historical Choices in Italy and Japan" (3/26).

The Portuguese Studies Program (PSP) was established in 1994 through an agreement with the Fundação Luso-Americana para o Desenvolvimento (FLAD) of Lisbon, and is housed under the Institute of European Studies. The program's goals are various and interlocking: to support intellectual work, clarifying the complicated and powerful role played by Portugal on the world stage and in Europe; to promote the understanding of contemporary social, economic, environmental, political and cultural developments within Portuguese borders; to foster collaboration between Portuguese and American researchers in their work on various technical, economic, cultural and environmental problems; to spotlight the crucial and complex, but often overlooked, experience and contributions of the Portuguese-American community; and to improve the Cal educational experience for students of Portuguese heritage. To strengthen scientific, academic and cultural ties between northern California and Portugal, PSP works with Portugal and its representatives in the U.S, various California institutions of higher learning, and a number of Portuguese-American institutions. It provides grants to Berkeley professors for research involving Portugal or Portuguese communities; organizes campus lectures, conferences and workshops involving international scholars whose research pertains to Portugal; offers fellowships to doctoral students embarking on dissertations focused on Portugal or the Portuguese-American community; and administers scholarships and fellowships for students of Portuguese descent and for Portuguese students studying at Berkeley.

Founded in 1996 as an outgrowth of the Iberian Studies Group, the Spanish Studies Program (SSP) promotes the interdisciplinary study of the countries and cultures of the Iberian Peninsula, primarily by sponsoring lectures, conferences, performances, and other events on the UC Berkeley campus. SSP's other aims are to:

Foster better contacts between the University and other universities and research institutions in Spain.
Sponsor visiting scholars from the Iberian Peninsula and provide a forum for the presentation of research.
Reach out to the members of the Bay Area community with an interest in Spanish studies.
Coordinate its activities on the Berkeley campus with those of analogous groups throughout the University of California.

The Spanish Studies Program sponsored three major activities during the academic year 2002-2003:

On February 11, 2003, the SSP hosted a luncheon for Camilo Barcia García-Villamil, the new Consul-General of Spain in San Francisco. After the luncheon, Consul-General Barcia addressed the gathering on "Relations between Spain and the European Union." A number of members of the Berkeley community who have academic or personal interest in Spain and Europe attended the luncheon.

On March 5, 2003, SSP co-sponsored a colloquium with the Department of History and the Department of Spanish and Portuguese. The lecture was given by Professor Clara Núñez of the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (Spanish National Open University). Her subject was "Some Neglected Effects of the Spanish Civil War: Education and Human Capital in Twentieth-Century Spain." The audience included faculty and students of the two disciplines, who participated in an active discussion after her talk.

On May 2-3, 2003, as its major activity of the year, the SSP joined with the Department of Near Eastern Studies, the Department of Comparative Literature and the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, to host a two-day conference on "Arabic, Hebrew & Spanish Literature in the Iberian peninsula: A symposium in Memory of Américo Castro (1885-1972)." Funding was also provided by the Humanities Research Institute of UC Irvine, the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, and the Jewish Studies Program.

The European Union Center at UC Berkeley is co-hosted by the Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy (BRIE), the Institute of European Studies (IES), and the Institute of International Studies (IIS). It is directed by an interdisciplinary committee of senior senate faculty whose members have worked together for many years.

Director
Steven Weber, Political Science

Executive Director
Harry Kreisler, Institute of International Studies

Executive Committee
Barry Eichengreen, Economics; Stephen Cohen, City and Regional Planning; J. Bradford De Long, Economics, Political Economy of Industrial Societies; Gerald D. Feldman, History; David Leonard, Dean, International and Area Studies; and John Zysman, Political Science.

The UC Berkeley European Union Center is organized thematically around EU-US interactions over issues raised by Europe's changing geography and new economy. In 2002-2003, the Center concentrated its resources on three tools to enhance understanding and links between academics, practitioners, students, and civil society in the US and Europe: conferences and workshops, publications and outreach, and academic teaching and research. These activities help to create the framework for a new generation of academic and applied work on transatlantic concerns.

Its activities focus in part on the emerging information society technologies and the questions that are posed for governments, enterprise, and citizens in a knowledge-based economy. Europe's emerging information society is unfolding against another set of sweeping changes brought by EU enlargement. The research explicitly examines Europe's changing political, social, and economic geography. It also looks at how Europe's changing geography affects, and is affected by, technological developments. Research will also, in this era of strain on European-American relations, carefully consider the political security domain.

In addition to reports on research contained in the IES Working Paper Series and the BRIE working paper series, publications on European affairs include many interviews in the Institute of International Studies' acclaimed "Conversations with History" video interview series. Interviews on European affairs, as well as transcribed speeches, can be accessed through the Europe Research Gallery at globetrotter.berkeley.edu/EuroUnion

The U.S. Department of Education administers a program of grants to National Resource Centers and Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowships. This program promotes, develops, and improves instruction in modern foreign languages and area and international studies critical to national needs by supporting, establishing, strengthening, and operating comprehensive and undergraduate national resource centers at colleges and universities.

The Institute of European Studies (IES) is the Title VI National Resource Center for Britain, Germany, Finland, France, Italy, Portugal, and Spain, at UC Berkeley.

Regional and Area Studies Programs