Credit: Nick Romanenko

Second-graders from the Old Bridge school district sing French and Italian songs during a recent visit to the Center for European Studies.

What do American second graders and European intellectuals have in common? Plenty, according to Uri Eisenzweig, director of Rutgers’ Center for European Studies.

The center’s activities bring together ideas and perspectives from different disciplines and aim at a wide variety of audiences. It regularly hosts visits by second-graders from the area, during which the children play games with maps of Europe; watch Swiss, Belgian, and Russian movies; and sing French and Italian songs, accompanied by the accordion.

The center is housed in newly renovated buildings on the Douglass Campus. In the future, it will be joined by the Center for African Studies, the Center for South Asian Studies, and other units with a geographical focus, thus creating something akin to an international village on campus.

“Because the world is growing smaller in many ways, it’s important to think bigger as national interests are increasingly dwarfed by international concerns,” Eisenzweig said.

Other center activities:

• A monthly series that showcases the research of graduate students from various fields on topics ranging from African and Caribbean intellectuals in London to controlling pregnancies and women's sexuality in postwar France. The series provides an opportunity for intellectual exchanges between graduate students beyond traditional discipline boundaries.
• A recent conference, “Children in Europe, Children and Europe,” which explored how Europe is addressing many of the same problems that America confronts with respect to child welfare, juvenile justice, and child obesity. Academics, administrators, and policymakers from Ireland, Holland, Romania, and Hungary compared notes with Americans who had expertise in these issues. The conference capped the center's yearlong focus on childhood in Europe. 
• An annual theme, such as next year’s "The European Village." Working with the Rutgers Honors Program and Professor Steve Reinert, executive director of the Rutgers Study Abroad in New Brunswick, the center organizes visits by undergraduate honors students in selected villages in Spain, France, Italy, Switzerland, England, Slovenia, and Poland. Students will record their visits on video, with the footage being edited by other students into 20-minute DVDs, one DVD per village. These will be employed at multiple events throughout the year, including a “Teach Europe” event sponsored by the European Union and talks given by Rutgers faculty members from various disciplines.
• An exchange program with Kazan State University (KSU), in the city of Kazan, the capital of Tatarstan, a republic of the Russian Federation. KSU is one of the largest and oldest institutions of higher education in Russia (in November 2004 it celebrated its 200th anniversary). The two schools are working to foster discussion among faculty and graduate students through a multidisciplinary seminar about the interconnections among democratic transition, federalism, gender, and ethnic issues in Russia. The program also offers opportunities for professional development for advanced graduate students through teaching in Kazan. Rutgers participants are expected to share what they learn with New Jersey high school teachers through workshops and other activities.

To stay informed about the center and its many activities, contact the Center for European Studies, 102 Nichol Ave., New Brunswick, NJ  08901; 732-932-8551; or european@rci.rutgers.edu.