The Culture and History of East Central Europe Working Group, or “Kroužek,” is a discussion group that hosts scholars from throughout the Bay Area, the United States, and Europe, enriching the Berkeley academic community and enhancing the university’s reputation as a leader in regional studies. Its purpose is to provide an interdisciplinary forum for scholars who study lands and cultures that are frequently overlooked or have in the past existed on the periphery of larger working groups. Professors and graduate students hold a bi-weekly forum to learn from and critique each other’s unpublished work in an informal and small-group setting, constituting a “third place” between the traditional settings of the classroom and the conference. In collaboration with BPS (Berkeley Program in Eurasian and East European Studies) director Edward Walker and history professor John Connelly, Ph.D. candidate Michael Dean founded the Kroužek in 2005. While many of the Kroužek regular attendees come primarily from the Department of History, our current group consists of graduate students and professors in political science, Slavic studies, anthropology, and American history, among others.
Coordinators:
Michael Dean, mwd@berkeley.edu
William Jenkins, wjenkins@berkeley.edu
