Central European University A Program for University Teachers, Advanced Ph.D. Students, Researchers and Professionals in the Social Sciences and Humanities Summer University

Course Director:  János Ladányi (Budapest University of Economic Sciences)

Resource Persons: 

Thomas Acton (University of Greenwich, Great Britain)
David Crowe
György Csepeli (ELTE , Hungary)
Nicholae Gheorghe (University of Bucharest)
Ian Hancock (University of Greenwich)
Zdenka Jarab (Czech Republic)
Dimitrina Petrova (European Roma Rights Center)
Michael Stewart  (Oxford University, Great Britain)
András Surányi (Film director)
Iván Szelényi (UCLA)
Péter Szuhay (Budapest Ethnographic Museum)
 

As an area in the world with the largest percentage of Roma Community, Central and Eastern Europe poses as a testing ground for understanding this often misunderstood culture and for designing ideas that may help this community productively interact with the majority populations within each of the countries that they inhabit. For years as well as today, Roma have faced prejudice, impoverishment, and forced assimilation. These conditions have been a result as well as a direct cause for their continual marginalization.

A program on the Roma community has therefore been developed in order to assess the current situation in Central and Eastern Europe through an interdisciplinary scheme and a variety of experts, especially those from the region itself. The audience of such a program would then be academics involved in Roma research, teachers and government officials, all of whom would benefit from the five blocks that the program includes. These five blocks are listed below. In a three week program, the content of these five blocks can be adequately discussed, debated in such an interdisciplinary program which will meet the criteria for all audiences.  The five blocks will take place during the following weeks:

 Week 1:  Introduction and History/Views of the Majority
 Week 2:  Self-Identity & Views of the Majority
               Roma as a Minority Status
 Week 3:  Ethnic Conflict Resolution/Sociology

Purpose of the Course
The purpose of the Roma program is to bring together those in the region and beyond who will coordinate efforts to work on Roma issues in the near future, whether they be academics, government officials, local reporters, ethnographists, sociologists, etc.  Thus this germane issue will be examined with the knowledge of experts, analysis of field work, insight of Roma perception in the media and film industry, and through many facets of today’s society.

Course Description
As per this announcement, the courses offered include the following: Roma Identity and Allegiance: Compromise for the Future, Roma in the World, The Eastern European Underclass, Minorities and the State, Roma Human Rights, Roma within Structures, Roma Issues in Teacher Training in the Czech Republic, as well as film nights conceptualizing the perception of Roma via cinema and in the eyes of the majority population in various communities. These courses and others fit the above blocks.