We’re happy to announce this Spring’s LCWA World Affairs Colloquium’s

Special lecturer Andrei S. Markovits is an Arthur Thurnau Professor and the Karl W. Deutsch Collegiate Professor at the University of Michigan.

On March 2nd he will be presenting his talk, “Vile Nature of Fandom.” This will be at 6:30pm in Addlestone Library, room 227.
Virtually no weekend passes in which we do not read of yet another blatantly racist incident on one of Europe’s football grounds be they in England, Italy or pretty much anywhere in Europe. Why is this the case? This lecture will highlight how virtually all fandom encapsulates the potential for such counter-cosmopolitan behavior, but why its most ugly manifestation has become so ensconced in the world of Association Football, aka soccer.

On March 3rd he will presenting his talk, “Women’s Soccer: International-Cultural Phenomenon.” This will be at 6:00pm at the Charleston Library Society.
Women in North American soccer entered a field that was more open for them, since men were busy covering multiple playing fields and cultural spaces: baseball, football (American and Canadian), basketball, and ice hockey. Their European counterparts were forced to contest what has arguably been the most male-dominated field/space in European public life. Both of these roads harbored immense obstacles. Both entailed challenges of their own that these pioneering women had to overcome. Come, learn more about their struggle and victory, and how it has changed the international scene.