BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

23/04/2009

University in Political Exile from Belarus Topic of April 30 Video Lecture

CORTLAND, NY (04/23/2009; 1046)(readMedia)-- Jon Rubin, an associate professor of film and new media at SUNY Purchase, will discuss his recent experiences with a university that was driven out of Belarus for political reasons, on Thursday, April 30, at SUNY Cortland.

Rubin has directed the SUNY Center for Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL), based at SUNY Purchase, since 2006. He will address "European Humanities University: The Strange Story of a University-in-Exile as Seen Through the Eyes and Videos of Students and a SUNY Faculty Member."

Presented by the College's Project on Eastern and Central Europe (PECE) with support by a grant from the Cortland Auxiliary Services Corporation, the lecture will begin at 4:30 p.m. in Sperry Center, Room 106. The talk is free and open to the public.

Rubin will offer his views on the problematic yet remarkable development of European Humanities University (EHU), formerly in Minsk, and will show videos made by Belarusan students often working in collaboration with SUNY students.

Since Belarus became an independent country in 1991 following the collapse of the Soviet Union, it has developed quite differently from many of the neighboring, post-Soviet states.

Rubin visited Belarus in 1993 seeking family roots. He was taken with the emotional warmth of the people and the sense of change in the air and made numerous visits over the following 12 years. He conducted a six-month Fulbright fellowship there in 1999.

For seven years, Rubin has been developing and teaching his Cross Cultural Video course in which SUNY students have co-produced videos with students in Turkey, Mexico, Belarus, Germany and Lithuania. He taught the course with EHU in Minsk until 2005, when that university was shut down by the government.

More recently, he has worked with EHU-in-Exile, based in Vilnius, Lithuania. He still strives to educate Belarusan university students and to bring them together, if only through on-line learning, with American students.

A film and new media artist based in Brooklyn, N.Y., Rubin created the Floating Cinema in 1980 and has presented it at many sites in the U.S. and Europe. He has received grants for his film and multimedia work from the Guggenheim, Ford and Jerome Foundations, the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York State Council on the Arts. His films have been shown at the Whitney Museum and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and at more than 50 other museums, galleries and media centers. He is a graduate of Yale University.

While at SUNY Cortland, Rubin also wishes to meet faculty interested in online international learning. With the participation of a number of SUNY Cortland colleagues, COIL has become a leading center for on-line teaching and learning along an international dimension. According to Rubin, the mission of COIL is to develop more on-line courses with an international dimension throughout SUNY.

For more information about COIL and Rubin's visit, contact Distinguished Service Professor Craig Little in the Sociology/Anthropology Department at (607) 753-2726. For more information about the PECE and the program, contact Distinguished Service Professor Henry Steck at (607) 753-4807 or henry.steck@cortland.edu.

Source:

http://readme.readmedia.com/news/show/University-in-Political-Exile-from-Belarus-Topic-of-April-30-Video-Lecture/562028

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