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Vanished Kingdoms of Eastern Europe: Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth with Dr. Asya Pereltsvaig

Vanished Kingdoms of Eastern Europe: Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth with Dr. Asya Pereltsvaig


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Can't make this time? A video recording will be sent to all participants after the seminar.

Do you ever wonder about the European landscape before major, modern nation-states such as France, Spain, Germany, and Russia dominated the map?

Join us as we learn more about several states which have since vanished into the mists of history. The five nations we discover will provide the necessary background for studying Eastern European history. Our curriculum has been designed to be enjoyed as individual seminars or as a series of live-taught, interactive conversations.

During our third conversation, we will venture into the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which emerged in the second half of the 16th century. At this juncture, the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania were joined into one state. They disappeared from the map in the late 1700s when the territory was partitioned between the Russian, Prussian, and Austrian empires.

The Polish name for the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Rzeczpospolita, means simply a “republic.” Yet, it had a series of kings from Ukraine, Sweden, and Hungary–rather than Poland or Lithuania. Most interestingly, it was one of the most progressive countries in its days: at the time of the French Wars of Religion in the west and the repressive reign of Ivan the Terrible in the east, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth proclaimed equal citizen rights to men of all religious and ethnic backgrounds, including Jews, Muslims, and others.

Led by an expert on linguistics and history, Asya Pereltsvaig, Ph.D., this conversation will explore the history of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Designed to inform curiosity and future travels, participants will come away with an increased understanding of this fascinating region and a desire to explore it first-hand.

Asya Pereltsvaig received a PhD in Linguistics from McGill University and has taught at Yale, Cornell and Stanford, as well as in several U.S. and European universities. Her expertise is in language and history, and the relationship between them. Her most recent books, Languages of the World: An Introduction, 3rd edition (2020) and The Indo-European Controversy: Facts and Fallacies in Historical Linguistics (2015) were published by Cambridge University Press.

This conversation is suitable for all ages.

90 minutes, including a 30 minute Q&A.

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Wonderful Presentation

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Customer Reviews

Based on 1 review
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T
T.G. (Delavan, US)
Wonderful Presentation

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