The Office of International Affairs announces the Interdisciplinary Lectures, Seminars, & Conferences on International Themes Spring 2006 Grant Digest.

Jewish Music, East and West: Towards the 21st Century
Daniel Frank, Melton Center for Jewish Studies; Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures
Jan Radzynski, School of Music

Folklore Archives and the State: Post-Socialist Negotiations
Dorothy Noyes, Department of English

Jewish Music, East And West: Towards the 21st Century

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATORS:
Daniel Frank, Melton Center for Jewish Studies, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures
Jan Radzynski, School of Music

PROJECT ABSTRACT:
The Melton Center for Jewish Studies, in collaboration with the Departments of Music, Near
Eastern Languages and Cultures, and Germanic Languages and Literatures proposes a
lecture and concert series entitled "Jewish Music, East and West: Towards the 21st Century"
to be held during the 2006-2007 year. Secular art music on Jewish themes was a child of the
early twentieth century. During the past seventy-five years, many Jewish composers have
struggled to express their multiple religious, cultural, and national identities through their
music. This series will explore the creative tensions between music, text, tradition, and
performance manifested by select compositions in a Jewish idiom.

The 2006-2007 program will continue an ongoing music and culture series, which has
enjoyed enormous popularity within the community and university. As part of me Melton
Center's thirtieth anniversary year, the 2006-2007 season will feature five concerts, to be
recorded live, and ultimately issued as an educational packet, The concerts will feature
internationally recognized performers as well as local musicians and OSU faculty. The
importance of the cross-cultural dimension of the proposed series, emerging at a time of
increasing intolerance on college campuses, should not be underestimated. This series will
explore the creative tensions between music, text, tradition, and performance manifested by
select compositions in a Jewish idiom. The concerts will include performances of music by
Osvaldo Golijov, a piano recital commemorating composers who perished in the Holocaust, a
popular concert of Hasidic and Mediterranean Jewish fusion music, a Yiddish song-cycle, and
a cello recital.

PROJECT TIMELINE: Academic Year 2006-2007
PROJECT SPONSORS:
Office of International Affairs
Melton Center for Jewish Studies
School of Music
Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures

Folklore Archives and the State: Post-Socialist Negotiations - An International Conference

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR:
Dorothy Noyes, Department of English, Center for Folklore Studies

PROJECT ABSTRACT:
The proposed three-day conference will focus on the political uses of cultural archives in the
socialist and post-socialist world. Large-scale folklore archives were created in the 19th and
early 20t centuries as resources for building national culture. In projects of political unification
or reform their collections were often censored and revised. At the same time, institutional
neglect could also foster the discreet preservation of cultural alternatives in dusty file cabinets
or behind false walls. Today folklore archives have become key sites for the reconstruction of
cultures and identities in transition.

The conference, to be held May 3-5 2007, assembles a new generation of folklore archivists
and policymakers from Eastern Europe and Asia, including high-level politicians from Afghanistan and Tajikistan, where cultural recovery is seen as an urgent priority for national
stability. In a two-day meeting, they will discuss their common challenges: the change from state support to a market economy; a national mandate versus the need for internal and international reconciliation; the desire to construct a satisfying local culture against both international pressures and a repudiated recent past; the unforeseen consequences of objectifying culture and its practitioners; and the tension between preservation and circulation. The third day will be devoted to a workshop on archival methods moderated by staff from the Archive of Folk Culture of the Library of Congress. Proceedings will be published online, with technical support from the American Folklore Society and other international folklore organizations.

PROJECT TIMELINE: May 3-5, 2007
PROJECT SPONSORS:
Office of International Affairs
Center for Folklore Studies
American Folklore Society
Center for Slavic and East European Studies
Department of Slavic and East European Languages and Literatures
CIRIT