INTRODUCTION: Tivadar Soros: Writer, Survivor, Internationalist, by Humphrey Tonkin As an officer in the Austro-Hungarian army, Tivadar Soros spent most of World War I in prison camp in Siberia. As a Hungarian Jew he spent World War II working to assure the survival of his family. He wrote about these experiences …
Speaker: Michael Gordin Max Talmey was one of the most persistent artificers of "model languages" in the early twentieth century, fashioning his final creation, "Gloro", in part to enable better comprehension of Albert Einstein's physics. The linkages between Einstein and Talmey illuminate surprising aspects of the revolutions in physics and …
Speaker: Brigid O’Keeffe In the 1920s, the Soviet Union welcomed foreign Esperantists to visit the socialist future-in-the-making. As grateful tourists, these guests were expected to spread the good word about Soviet socialism in Esperanto and their national languages. This lecture explores the triumphs and disappointments of this Soviet experiment in Esperantist …
Speaker: Ulrich Lins As speakers of a 'dangerous language', the adepts of Esperanto were harassed and persecuted. The fate of Esperanto can be seen as a barometer to measure the degree to which regimes tolerate the desire for direct person-to-person international communication. After the fall of Fascism and Stalinism, conditions were …
Speaker: Nico Israel A discussion of passages addressing Esperanto in James Joyce's novels Ulysses and Finnegans Wake, as approached by a non-Esperantist literary scholar. At issue are Joyce's positions on art, language and gesture in an age of war. Nico Israel is Professor of English at the CUNY Graduate Center …
Speaker: Ulrich Becker Throughout the history of Esperanto, its proponents have been confronted with the criticism that they are promoting a language that cannot develop a sustainable culture, because its speakers are not an ethnically or culturally definable entity or based in a geographically unified area. The actual cultural achievements …
