| A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Timestamp | Your Name | Your Email Address | Your Institutional Affiliation (If none, enter "Independent Scholar") | Your ASEEES Membership Status | If you are a student, select your current status (we do not accept undergrad presenters) | Select ONE category for your proposed panel or paper | If trying to organize a panel, enter the proposed panel title or a brief description | Select all that apply. I am looking for: | If you have a paper and would like to be part of a panel, enter your proposed paper topic or a brief description | If you would like to volunteer to serve as chair or discussant, select all that apply: | Describe topics of interest to you as chair or discussant: | ||||||
2 | 12/14/2023 12:25:17 | Danica Anderson | danicakolo@comcast.net | The Kolo:Women's Cross Cultural Collaboration | Current Member | Anthropology, Cultural Studies | Panel Title: "Oral Memory Traditions: Healing Transgenerational Trauma from Bosnia to Ukraine" Panel Description: Join us for a profound discussion rooted in two decades of Kolo Informed Trauma, Gender, and Cultural research. We'll delve into the profound impact of Slavic cultural oral memory traditions in healing transgenerational trauma. Our focus spans from the experiences of Bosnian Women War Crimes Survivors to the path ahead for Ukrainian Women War Crimes Survivors, a population that saw a staggering 98% of women refugees on the Balkan Route. Our panel will explore the dynamic evolution of Slavic Women's Oral Memory Traditions and their vital role not only in trauma healing but also in shaping humanitarian aid policies and influencing governmental entities. This conversation is grounded in the groundbreaking book, "South Slavic Women’s Transgenerational Trauma Healing through Oral Memory Practices: Women War Crimes and War Survivors," which serves as the cornerstone of this crucial dialogue. Discover how the remarkable resilience and strength exhibited by South Slavic women in the aftermath of war have not only transformed their communities and nations but have also enriched our global understanding of how culture and corresponding oral memory traditions heal trauma and evolve local communities from the ground up. Join us as we explore the enduring connections between the past and present, shedding light on the path toward healing and cultural recovery, with a particular feminist focus on the majority of civilian victims—women and children—who often bear the brunt of conflict's collateral damage. | Presenter(s), Discussant(s) | Yes. Tacit Knowledge Given the Balkan War (1991-1994) and the Ukrainian War (2022) the field in common is the Slavic culture threaded with matrilineal inheritance thus tacit knowledge it reveals the oral memory traditions (Anderson 2015b; Hubbs 1993;Goettner-Abendroth 2013; Wheeler 2006b). Slavic culture and corresponding oral memory traditions have tacit knowledge- a knowing without being taught since the knowledge is acquired from each person’s life experience that is intangible, intuitive. Tacit knowledge is difficult to express through language or images since each person’s experiences are a personal knowledge from lived experiences (Wheeler 2006b). Tacit knowledge essentially is cellular memory (Wheeler 2006b). Our cellular memory, like tacit knowledge, is “human knowledge by starting from the fact we can know more than we can tell” (Polanyi 1966, 4). Statements, usually from women “I know this,” face onslaught from male-dominated sciences and dualistic patriarchal ‘either or’ demands. The reductionistic- narrowed down to the smallest detail obscures the essence of the female biology found in the mitochondria dynamics (Perez 2021; Pert 1999). However, in my clinical trauma interactions with the Bosnian women war crimes and war survivors I immediately understood the cultural and oral memory transgenerational memory describing the nature of agency—that something can be acted upon- movement, in human consciousness- unconsciousness is evident in human -female biological systems. Women often are complaining about the fact cellular learning intelligence is absent from the sciences therefore, their realities in life. Countless variations of “I know this” from the Bosnian women war crimes and war survivors is epigenetics' cellular memory, which I call tacit knowledge. The women war crimes and war survivors are pointing to the dissonance, the “failure to pay attention to the ways in which our conceptual knowledge is the product of a disembodied mind” (Wheeler 2006b, 61). In fact, that cellular learning intelligence is absent from the sciences and their enworlded realities in life, and say, I know there is no science on this, but this is what I know/intuitively I feel is right- embodied. The women war crimes and war survivors with their tacit knowledge, enworlded realities are as a result the academics, the professionals of collective memory, transgenerational trauma memories. At this point, the women war survivors move toward flourishing and not remain stuck in survival mechanisms (Anderson 2015a). | Chair, Discussant | Cultural Studies, Slavic Studies | |||||||
3 | 12/22/2023 16:29:13 | Victoria Khiterer | victoria.khiterer@millersville.edu | Millersville University | Current Member | Jewish Studies | I would like to organize a panel “Let My People Go: the Refusenik Movement in the Soviet Union” for the 56th ASEEES in-person convention in Boston on November 21-24, 2024. The panel will discuss the Refusenik Movement in the Soviet Union, the reasons of its establishment, its goals, methods of struggle with the Soviet regime, its influence on the political situation in the country, support of the Refusenik movement from abroad, the achievements and failures of the movement. | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | Let My People Go: The Struggle of Kyivan Jews for Immigration to Israel | Chair | The History of Jews in the Soviet Union, Ukraine, the Holocaust in the Soviet Union | |||||||
4 | 1/8/2024 14:20:17 | Piotr Puchalski | piotr.puchalski@uken.krakow.pl | University of the National Education Commission, Krakow | Current Member | History: 1900-1945 | Liberation through Emigration: Eastern Europeans around the Globe (looking for original contributions about Eastern European emigration, with an emphasis on the broadly-defined 'liberating' aspect of the journey, stay, or activities of the people on the move) | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | Planning on presenting a paper on the relations with Africans in Polish refugee camps in British East Africa during World War II | Chair, Discussant | Modern Eastern Europe, especially global and colonial history | |||||||
5 | 1/9/2024 13:05:29 | Danica Anderson | danica@kolocollaboration.org | Independent Social Scientist | Current Member | Anthropology, Cultural Studies | South Slavic Women’s Transgenerational Trauma Healing Through Oral Memory Practices: Women War Crimes and War Survivors | Presenter(s), Discussant(s) | South Slavic Women’s Transgenerational Trauma Healing Through Oral Memory Practices: Women War Crimes and War Survivors South Slavic Women’s Transgenerational Trauma Healing through Oral Memory Practices: Women War Crimes and War Survivors explains that Kolo-Informed Trauma Treatment is a clinical, cultural, psychological, and neurobiological approach that draws upon the rich scientific UNESCO intangible cultural heritage and embodied practices of the South Slavic Kolo-circle movement format or somatic folk dance. The author argues that Slavic oral memory practices are not in fact worthless or outdated in healing trauma. The inclusion of the little-known or rarely researched women who have experienced war crimes and war trauma demonstrates the intrinsic depth and female indigenous resources aligning with many scientific interdisciplinary fields and women’s human rights. Central to the Kolo-Informed Trauma Treatment is the profound recognition of the importance of women’s cultural memory and somatic oral traditions to evolve towards communal healing. Women’s memory narrative enables the South Slavic people to have profound communal approaches to offer insights into the effects of war trauma, advocating paths towards thriving. Through a recalibration with the relationship of women as valued resources and prominence as creators of healing cultures, South Slavic women’s communal healing practices, if orchestrated on a planetary scale, elaborate inclusive dynamic homeostasis. | |||||||||
6 | 1/9/2024 16:52:50 | Brian Davies | tambov53@earthlink.net | University of Texas at San Antonio | Current Member | Early Slavic Studies | Panel, subject: Russian relations with Persia and Transcaspian polities, 17th-18th centuries | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | Description: Scientific and commercial motives for Aleksandr Bekovich-Cherkasskii's 1717 expedition to the Khiva Khanate and the surge of European and Russian interest in Persia and the Transcaspian region in the 17th-18th centuries. | |||||||||
7 | 1/9/2024 20:49:57 | Anastassia Zabrodskaja | anastassia.zabrodskaja@tlu.ee | Tallinn University (Estonia) | Current Member | Linguistics, Language Pedagogy, Translation | Shifting Linguistic Landscapes: Language Dynamics in Post-Soviet Countries, with Focus on Official Language, Russian, and English within the Framework of the European Union/Eurasian Economic Union and Globalization | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | A Study of Family Language Policy and Intercultural Communication in Estonian-Russian Mixed Households | Chair, Discussant | (family) language policy, intercultural communication, sociolinguistics. Region: Estonia, Baltic countries | |||||||
8 | 1/18/2024 5:33:45 | Tamara Kusimova | tkusimova@gmail.com | Independent Scholar | Current Member | PhD Candidate (ABD status) | Anthropology, Cultural Studies | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | How can we write about social mobility and success in an era of major political transformations? Notes on uspekh (success) in Russia OR War and glamour in contemporary Moscow. The case of Moskvichka magazine | Chair, Discussant | Social Mobility, Social Class, Consumption, Banal Nationalism, Life Trajectories, Russia, Middle-class | |||||||
9 | 1/16/2024 9:29:58 | Yacov Zohn | yzohn@wisc.edu | University of Wisconsin-Madison | Current Member | PhD Candidate (ABD status) | History: 1945-1990 | This paper analyzes politics and nationalism in Soviet soccer. In this work, I trace Moscow’s last hurrah at the vanguard of the Soviet National Soccer Team (Sbornaia) at the end of the Khrushchev era (1961-1964). In 1961, for the first time since the inception of the Soviet League in 1936, a non-Muscovite club, Dinamo Kyiv, won the USSR’s first division (Klass A). Instead of accepting defeat in a “gentlemanly manner” and striving to regain their crown on the pitch, Moscow tried to battle sporting decline outside the field of play through the efforts of journalists, players, and bureaucrats. Officials and sport experts strove to starve non-Muscovite regions of recognition for their soccer achievements, redesign the Soviet League to favor Moscow hegemony, and force regional teams to “donate” their best players, especially Sbornaia members, to Moscow clubs. These efforts alienated the regions and republics, whose players became increasingly excluded from the Sbornaia. However, this strengthening of Moscow in the Sbornaia came to an unforeseen end when a defeat against Spain, in the presence of the Spanish dictator, General Franco, squashed the Sbornaia’s “Muscovization” drive. After this match, the final of the 1964 European Championship, Khrushchev intervened to dispose of the Sbornaia’s coach, Konstantin Beskov, which inadvertently brought the curtain down on Moscow players primacy in the Sbornaia and signaled the end of Muscovite supremacy in Soviet soccer. | Nationalism; Empire; Politics; Institutions; Sports | |||||||||
10 | 1/17/2024 2:12:02 | Alexey Kotelvas | alexeykotelvas@ufl.edu | University of Florida | Current Member | PhD Student | History: 1945-1990 | Sounds from the West: American and European Music in Late Soviet Culture | Presenter(s) | |||||||||
11 | 1/17/2024 12:01:03 | Oleksandra Visych | oleksandra.visych@oa.edu.ua | National University of Ostroh Academy | Current Member | PhD Candidate (ABD status) | Literature: 21st Century | Discussant(s) | Multicultural Space of Crimea in Ukrainian Literature: 21th-Century Perspective | |||||||||
12 | 1/18/2024 8:57:35 | Ksenia Un | kp489@cornell.edu | Cornell University | Current Member | PhD Candidate (ABD status) | Arts I: Visual Culture, Material Culture, Applied and Fine Arts | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | Reading late imperial visual culture through Mikhail Bakhtin's writing on chronotopy. This paper also engages with the history of photography and Russia's colonization of Turkestan. | Chair, Discussant | Art history, visual culture, photography, Russian Empire, critical race theory | |||||||
13 | 1/19/2024 8:35:15 | Janine Holc | jholc@loyola.edu | Loyola University Maryland | Current Member | Gender/LGBTQ Studies | Gendered Experiences of Forced Labor in the Territory of the Reich during the Nazi Regime | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | Obstetric and Reproductive Violence in Polish Forced Labor during World War II: Exploitation and Resistance | Chair, Discussant | ||||||||
14 | 1/19/2024 12:30:13 | Julia Mead | juliamead@uchicago.edu | University of Chicago | Current Member | PhD Candidate (ABD status) | History: 1945-1990 | I'd like to organize a panel on energy studies in Eastern Europe. My research is on masculinity and coal mining in socialist Czechoslovakia and the relationship between cheap energy and everyday life. I can envision a panel that takes up the question of the relationships between energy, extraction, "the good life," toxicity, the body, and state legitimacy in the region--from many disciplines and time periods! Think nuclear labor, wartime blackouts, pipeline politics, histories of home heating, and so on. | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | "The Not-So-Velvet Divorce: Late Socialist Mining Masculinity and Its Management." This chapter of my dissertation examines the relationship between economic change and private life Czechoslovakia's hard coal regions in the 1980s and early 1990s. This chapter uses records from a state-run marriage counseling center in Ostrava to show how clinicians tolerated domestic violence in mining families as an unfortunate consequence of the very masculinity that made miners effective at their jobs. | Chair, Discussant | Gender history, masculinities, environmental history, most confidently from 1945-1990 | ||||||
15 | 1/19/2024 13:50:14 | Heather Bailey | hbail2@uis.edu | University of Illinois Springfield | Current Member | History: 1800-1900 | Some possible panel themes: Franco-Polish or Polish-Russian Relations; Polish emigration; Political violence; the revolutionary international | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | My paper would be on Polish responses to Anton Berezowski's attempt to assassinate Alexander II. | Chair, Discussant | Franco-Russian relations, Russian Orthodoxy, Orthodox-Catholic relations, political violence | |||||||
16 | 1/19/2024 16:40:57 | Nelly Shulman | nashulmans@gmail.com | Hebrew University of Jerusalem | Current Member | PhD Student | Literature: 19th Century | Conversion as Liberation. Jewish Apostasy in the Russian Literature | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | "Construction of Jewish femininity in the works of Rachel Khin." | Discussant | Literature, History, Jewish Studies | ||||||
17 | 1/20/2024 7:16:25 | Susan Rupp | rupp@wfu.edu | Wake Forest University | Current Member | History: 1900-1945 | Mikhoels and Fefer's trip to the United States in 1943 as representatives of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (part of a broader study of the JAFC, its activities and ultimate fate) | Chair, Discussant | Russian/Soviet history | |||||||||
18 | 1/20/2024 14:10:45 | Daniel Rhea | d.m.rhea@att.net | Independent Scholar | Current Member | History: Since 1990 | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | Genocide Consolidated; Memorialization, Denial, Ethnic Gerrymandering and Secession in eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina. Utilizing original research and lived experience in Bosnia, and building on the path breaking genocide studies of Edina Becirevic, David Pettigrew and others, I will explore how Bosnian Serb officials at the Republika Srpska and local levels have worked, alas successfully so far, to make permanent the results of the ethnic cleansing and genocide operations that occurred in eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina 1992-1995. Thank you.... | ||||||||||
19 | 1/20/2024 15:47:16 | Václav Zheng | vaclav.zheng@jhu.edu | Johns Hopkins University | Current Member | PhD Candidate (ABD status) | Early Slavic Studies | Fear and Angst in Early Modern East Central Europe Emotional (re)interpretations of assorted historical crises and their responses in East Central European cultures between 1400 and 1800. Potential paper themes include climate, plague, fire, death, wildlife, peasant/estates’ rebellion, territorial loss, social control, religious/ethnic persecution, moral degeneration, Protestantism, Interregnum, the Turkish threat, the Ottoman rule, the Cossack revolt, as well as relevant reception and historiography. This panel aims to promote the study and visibility of this extremely marginalized field (premodern east-central Europe) at ASEEES. (for Boston) | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | “Poland is Falling: Stanisław Orzechowski and his Utopian Anxiety.” | Chair, Discussant | Early Slavic, East Central Europe, Renaissance, Utopian Studies, History of Emotions | ||||||
20 | 1/22/2024 18:12:22 | Marie Alice L'Heureux | malheur@ku.edu | University of Kansas | Current Member | Geography, Urban Studies, Built Environments | Politics in the built environment --who decides what is built, where and how | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | The Politics of Commemorating the Estonian War of Freedom 1920-2009 | Discussant | The politics of creating the built/cultural landscape at any scale in any context or period-- | |||||||
21 | 1/24/2024 12:34:06 | Oleg Manaev | manaev.oleg@gmail.com | University of Tennessee | Current Member | International Relations, Security Studies, Foreign Policy | RUSSIAN PROPAGANDA/DISINFORMATION CAMPAIGNS IN FSU: FROM MONITORING THE CONTENT AND MEASURING THE EFFECTIVENESS TO THE EVENTS’S PROBABLISTIC PREDICTION To paraphrase the widely used expression “event-driven data”, based on the comparison of the results of our research with the subsequent events we can talk about data that, with a certain probability, allows to predict or, more precisely, to expect the occurrence of certain events. The dynamics of some elements of media content can be considered as signs or signals of probable events. In our case of our project Monitoring the Content and Measuring the Effectiveness of Russian Propaganda/Disinformation Campaigns – with some degree of probability to predict/expect the dynamics of military-political actions that military-political actions that pose the ultimate form of domination of a foreign power – using completely open and accessible sources and a sound methodology: Triangulation Analysis of Media and its Audience. | |||||||||||
22 | 1/24/2024 16:56:06 | Jonathan Brunstedt | brunstedt@tamu.edu | Texas A&M University | Current Member | History: 1945-1990 | Quagmires in Russian and Soviet History (pre-Soviet, Soviet, post-Soviet eras) | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | ||||||||||
23 | 2/20/2024 11:27:54 | Tamara Polyakova | tpolyakova@wisc.edu | University of Wisconsin-Madison/University of Eastern Finland | Current Member | PhD Candidate (ABD status) | History: 1900-1945 | All participants have been found! | Chair | Chair | ||||||||
24 | 1/26/2024 11:10:19 | Sierra Nota | snota@stanford.edu | Stanford University | Current Member | PhD Candidate (ABD status) | History: 1945-1990 | Between States and Nations: Contesting Sovereignty in the Era of Collapse, 1980s-1990s. Together, these papers provide a comprehensive exploration of how sovereignty was contested and expressed in non-traditional venues during the collapse of state socialism in Eastern Europe in the last decades of the twentieth century. Papers focus on state diplomatic venues in Ukraine, Soccer stadiums in former Yugoslavia, and KGB interference Polish protest and the use of force. | Chair, Discussant(s) | |||||||||
25 | 1/26/2024 13:31:44 | Tila de Almeida Mendonça | tila.de.almeida.mendonca@uni-jena.de | University of Regensburg (Germany) | Current Member | PhD Student | History: 1900-1945 | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | The Clandestine Medical Faculty in Warsaw Ghetto, 1941-1942 In this paper, I will discuss the flow of information about the clandestine school inside the Ghetto as well as the circulation of knowledge and collaboration on medical research and education between the Warsaw Ghetto and the so-called "Aryan Side". | Discussant | Holocaust History; Warsaw Ghetto; Everyday History; Second World War; History of Medicine; History of Sciences; Knowledge Production and Circulation; | |||||||
26 | 1/26/2024 20:50:00 | Maria Hristova | hristova@lclark.edu | Lewis & Clark College | Current Member | Literature: 21st Century | Postsecular Themes in (Post)socialist/(Post)Soviet Literature/Culture | Presenter(s), Discussant(s) | Looking for additional presenters. We have two papers so far. 1) The first presenter explores Latvian writer Elena Katishonok’s engagement with Old Believers 2) The second presenter offers a comparative study of how women writers from different ethnic backgrounds in Russia imagine Islam. | |||||||||
27 | 1/27/2024 16:27:59 | Susan Baker | sjsb40@gmail.com | Independent Scholar | Current Member | History: 1800-1900 | Liberation Movements in the Balkans | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | The Herzegovinia Uprising in 1875-1876 and the Eastern Question | Chair, Discussant | 19th century peasant revolts; 19th century Pan-Slavism and its implementation | |||||||
28 | 1/28/2024 11:45:16 | Marta Starostina | starostina.marta@gmail.com | University of Birmingham | Current Member | PhD Student | History: 1945-1990 | I am proposing a panel - Epistemic Injustice and Marginalized Perspectives. This panel is highly relevant to a conference centered on the theme of Liberation, especially following the previous theme of decolonization. Here's why: Addressing Historical and Systemic Injustices: The concept of liberation, as described in the conference theme, encompasses the idea of being set free from various forms of oppression and marginalization. A panel on epistemic injustice directly addresses this by focusing on how certain groups or perspectives have been historically silenced or marginalized within knowledge systems. This aligns with the broader goal of liberation from oppressive narratives and the quest for a more inclusive understanding of history and society. Overcoming Stereotypes and Social Power Dynamics: The panel can explore how overcoming stereotypes and challenging dominant narratives contributes to intellectual and societal liberation. By examining cases where certain perspectives have been stereotyped or undervalued, the panel aligns with the conference's focus on liberation from social stereotyping and the achievement of equal rights and status. Engaging with Critical Epistemology: The conference's emphasis on critical epistemology and the recognition of gaps in collective interpretive resources is directly addressed in discussions of epistemic injustice. The panel can contribute to the understanding of how knowledge systems can perpetuate marginalization and how they can be reformed or challenged to achieve a more liberated epistemic climate. Counteracting Epistemic Violence: The theme of liberation is particularly pertinent in the context of authoritarian regimes and neocolonial wars, where epistemic violence—such as cultural destruction and the imposition of unfreedom—is prevalent. The panel's focus on marginalized perspectives in historical and contemporary contexts can shed light on these forms of epistemic violence and contribute to the broader discussion of intellectual liberation as a counteractive measure. Inclusive and Diverse Research Agendas: By engaging with the silenced and marginalized perspectives, the panel contributes to the conference's goal of reexamining history, challenging systemic imbalances, and formulating a more inclusive and equality-minded research agenda in Slavic, Eurasian, and East European Studies. Exploring Liberation Across Disciplines and Periods: The panel's focus on epistemic injustice is a versatile topic that can encompass a wide range of disciplines and historical periods, fitting well with the conference's invitation for diverse thematic explorations. In summary, the panel on "Epistemic Injustice and Marginalized Perspectives" not only complements but deeply enriches the theme of Liberation at the conference. It offers a critical examination of how knowledge and power dynamics have historically contributed to various forms of oppression and marginalization, and how addressing these issues is integral to achieving liberation in its fullest sense. | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | I propose the paper "Silenced Voices, Highlighted Narratives: Unveiling 'Intourist's' Role in Epistemic Injustice and the Marginalization of Soviet and Baltic Perspectives" for the panel "Epistemic Injustice and Marginalized Perspectives". The "Intourist" agency's role in silencing or marginalizing certain aspects of Soviet life, while emphasizing others, aligns with the conference's focus on epistemic injustice. Analyzing "Intourist" provides an opportunity to examine how knowledge and narratives were controlled and manipulated for ideological purposes, and how this may have contributed to the marginalization of certain perspectives within the Soviet Union and its Baltic republics. | Chair | Soviet history, tourism, ideology, periphery studies | ||||||
29 | 1/28/2024 20:43:29 | Raina Bhagat | rainabhagat2024@u.northwestern.edu | Northwestern University | Current Member | PhD Candidate (ABD status) | Literature: 21st Century | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | In my proposed paper, I will investigate the ways nuclear (infra)structures in Russian science fiction produce and trouble racial categories. My main texts of focus are Dmitry Glukhovsky's Metro trilogy, in which a worldwide nuclear war makes Earth’s surface uninhabitable, leading Muscovites make for underground metro stations, seeking refuge from deadly radiation. Already besieged by social collapse from interstation wars, life for metro residents becomes further jeopardized by increasing attacks from irradiated surface creatures, known only as the “Dark Ones,” or чёрных (chyornix). The Metro universe is home to a rich cross-section of social hierarchies, ruined infrastructure, and a wasteland of a city that nevertheless prove that the nuclear age is far from over, even though the bombs have long passed. In this paper, I will investigate how this literary universe reconfigures existing structures of racial oppression, as new racial hierarchies emerge based on which bodies can survive during and after a nuclear holocaust. | Discussant | ||||||||
30 | 1/31/2024 13:48:13 | Chutong Liu | chutongl@uoregon.edu | University of Oregon | Current Member | PhD Student | Literature: 19th Century | Chair, Discussant(s) | Identifying Ovidian Themes in Pushkin’s Tatiana: Language, Epistles, and the Muse Abstract From “To Ovid” (K Ovidiiu, 1821) to Eugene Onegin (Evgenii Onegin, 1833), Pushkin makes distinct references to Ovid in his poetic works during the years of exile. Such identification with Ovid, though thoroughly analyzed and studied by Pushkin scholars, is mainly interpreted only through the lens of their commonality as exiled poets. However, as Stephanie Sandler points out, Pushkin’s self-image is a poet with something other than exile in common with Ovid. This paper intends to look closer at the more implicit, metapoetic resonance of the two poets manifested in the epistolary expression of Ovid’s Sappho and Pushkin’s Tatiana. Through a comparison of Sappho’s letter to Phaon in Heroides and Tatiana’s letter to Onegin, I hope to explore Pushkin’s “metamorphoses” of an Ovidian motif, that is, the discovery, actualization, and emancipation of a subjective “self” through poetic letters of love, and thence provide a novel viewpoint on the shared artistic spaces for these two poets. Focusing on the love letters of Sappho and Tatiana, I will demonstrate how Pushkin speaks to Ovid not only from his identification with the latter’s politically desolated circumstance but also through a shared tendency to transform and broaden the self-referentiality of a poet’s narcissistic use of language. | |||||||||
31 | 1/30/2024 11:57:49 | Nicholas Herrud | nherrud@nd.edu | University of Notre Dame | Current Member | PhD Student | History: 1900-1945 | Chair, Discussant(s) | Interwar Poland's ethnic policy towards Ukrainian nationalism and Soviet propaganda | Discussant | 20th and 19th century Central and eastern Europe. Empires, and nation states. Nationalism and Communism. Multi-ethnic states, and national self-determination. | |||||||
32 | 1/31/2024 13:18:57 | Chana Toth-Sewell | chanas@uchicago.edu | The University of Chicago | Current Member | PhD Student | Literature: 19th Century | A Semiotic Reading of Class, Performance, and Agency in Pushkin, Turgenev, and Tur This essay offers a semiotic reading of three cases of class passing and class performance: Liza in Alexander Pushkin’s “Baryshnya krest’yanka” (1831), Antonina in Evgeniya Tur’s Antonina (1851), and Yelena in Ivan Turgenev’s Nakanune (1860). Studying these examples together through a semiotic lens offers a vocabulary for understanding not only how the women in these texts articulate their positionality in relation to class, but also what their participation in such performances reveals about the schisms in the distinct political and economic contexts that they inhabit. Additionally, how these characters perform class and understand its sign systems exposes the kinds of agency that are possible for women in the distinct contexts that each author operates in. In Pushkin’s text, Liza inherits the performance mechanisms that predominate across her family and the nobility and repeats them herself as an imagined peasant. What is at stake for Liza is not the development of subjectivity, but rather the question of whether she – and the others in her milieu – can envision and participate in authentic relationships even as they operate in relation to imaginary and imported cultural models. Tur’s Antonina, unlike Liza, gains a capacity for analysis that informs her understanding of the limitations of class performance. In this way, she learns that the idealized and literary vision of love that Liza pursues generations earlier cannot withstand the pressures of her contemporary reality. Turning to Turgenev, Yelena’s interest in peasant identity as a potential pathway to political ideals, especially as embodied by her childhood friend Katya, both guides and complicates her ideological growth throughout the novel. | ||||||||||
33 | 2/2/2024 11:32:45 | Anna Smelova | as4412@georgetown.edu | Georgetown University | Current Member | PhD Candidate (ABD status) | History: 1800-1900 | My PhD project explores the role of exiled Populist (Narodnik) ethnographers in scientific exploration and colonization of Siberia. By tackling the issue of the “conceptual conquest” of the region in the late imperial and early Soviet eras, the dissertation sheds light on the process of knowledge production outside the metropolis and discusses how marginalized and displaced scholars did not always wittingly contribute to the orientalization of the Indigenous population. For the 2024 Convention, I plan to present a part of my research and will most likely focus on the role of the wives of exiled Narodniks in acquiring knowledge about the Indigenous women of Eastern Siberia at the turn of the 20th century. | ||||||||||
34 | 2/2/2024 15:11:26 | Elena Petrova | epetrova@usc.edu | University of Southern California | Current Member | PhD Student | Literature: 19th Century | I am co-organizing a panel with independent scholar Daria Solodkaia, the title of the panel would be "Petr Viazemskii and his circle". | Presenter(s) | Chair | ||||||||
35 | 2/3/2024 19:49:03 | Janis Ozolins | janis.ozolins@lma.lv | Art Academy of Latvia | Current Member | Gender/LGBTQ Studies | Russian-Soviet-East European representations of masculinity in arts? | Presenter(s), Chair | "Performing Working-Class Masculinity in Soviet Western Borderlands: The Case of Latvian "Tough Style" Paintings." It will address the established canon of masculinity in Soviet Latvian painting in the late 1950s and 1960s that represented the working class people (usually men) in their hard work as well as the later departure from that style that opened new patterns of more diverse representation of men, sometimes even approaching flamboyance. | Chair | Gender studies, especially queer and masculinities studies in Baltic, East and Central Europe; history of Soviet cinema and visual art, Baltic literature. | |||||||
36 | 2/4/2024 11:25:58 | Emma George | eg9407@princeton.edu | Princeton University | Current Member | PhD Student | Literature: 19th Century | I'm organizing a panel focusing on Russian historical fiction; we currently have three panelists (presenting on works by Karamzin, Pushkin, and Tynianov), and are currently looking for a fourth presenter and a discussant. | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | |||||||||
37 | 2/4/2024 12:18:03 | Maija Burima | maija.burima@gmail.com evita.badina@du.lv | Daugavpils University | Current Member | Literature: 20th Century | Mapping Literary Experiences of Oppression and Liberation in the Baltic States under the Soviets The panel aims to dissect “the complex interplay” (Annus: 2018) of the Baltic States' perception in the USSR and its post-Soviet reception. The discussion will also focus on narratives of multiple genres dealing with self-identification of the Baltic States in the frameworks: “a Soviet West (Risch: 2015) and the rest” and “the Baltic feelings of superiority” (Annus: 2018). Another framework actualising geopolitical positionality of the Baltics in the Soviet era is the term 'Pribaltika' serving as a colonial marker. The panel contributes to case studies of the Baltic States’ historical and cultural image-making within the broader context of the Soviet West and beyond. The discussion explores examples of the Soviet-era othering and contested heritage represented in Baltic Soviet and Post-Soviet literature. The ideological undercurrents and the impact of censorship on writing will be considered providing insights into the oppressive practices. | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | ||||||||||
38 | 2/6/2024 18:01:04 | Tess Megginson | tessjm@email.unc.edu | UNC Chapel Hill | Current Member | PhD Candidate (ABD status) | History: 1900-1945 | The panel is on local involvement/interest with border changes after the First World War. The main idea is to deal with questions on border changes/mapping/self-determination "from below." | Presenter(s), Chair | |||||||||
39 | 2/6/2024 21:00:46 | Emily Hoge | Ehoge@clemson.edu | Clemson University | Current Member | History: 1945-1990 | Social Activism in the USSR | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | One paper on disabled veteran activism; One paper on environmental activism | |||||||||
40 | 2/7/2024 15:57:28 | Andjela Djordjevic | djordjevicandjela1995@gmail.com | University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Social Sciences | Current Member | PhD Candidate (ABD status) | International Relations, Security Studies, Foreign Policy | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | The title of paper is "'Undivided' city in a divided post-conflict society: explaining the peaceful coexistence of Albanians and Serbs in Kamenicë/Kamenica, Kosovo". This paper is a result of research conducted in Kamenica (Kosovo) within the project "Anxiety(s) in 'divided cities' of post-conflict societies: development and testing of innovative (experimental) approaches in peace-building processes". There is an abundance of books and scholarly articles about poor inter-ethnic relations in Kosovo and failed attempts to build peace in Kosovo, but there is no rigorous academic research on more positive relations in this post-conflict society. Therefore, we examined factors that contribute to the relatively peaceful coexistence between Albanians and Serbs in this town and developed new concept within hybrid peace theory. | |||||||||
41 | 2/8/2024 12:08:23 | Alma Huselja | ahuselja@email.unc.edu | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill | Current Member | PhD Candidate (ABD status) | History: 1900-1945 | I am hoping to organize a panel on the so-called “Aryanization” of property during the Holocaust in Eastern Europe. My specialty is in the Independent State of Croatia. Other related panel topics I would be interested to take part in include local histories of the Holocaust or on far-right/fascist regimes during World War II. | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | Discussant | ||||||||
42 | 2/8/2024 15:45:13 | Tom Dolack | dolack_thomas@wheatonma.edu | Wheaton College | Current Member | Literature: 19th Century | Cognitive and Evolutionary Approaches to Russian Culture | Presenter(s) | ||||||||||
43 | 2/12/2024 15:46:48 | Mieke Meurs | MMEURS@AMERICAN.EDU | American University | Current Member | Economic History, Economics, Business | Policy Issues in Central Asia. Our paper is on child care and women's labor supply in Kazakhstan. We also have a proposed paper by Ruikai Xue who is a PhD candidate majoring in Russian and Eurasian studies of Jilin University, on water and fuel trade between Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. We organize a panel on Policy Issues in Central Asia. Send us your ideas! | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | Child care expansion and women's employment in Kazakhstan. We also have paper on | Chair, Discussant | Gender, social science, trade and environment | |||||||
44 | 2/10/2024 20:59:19 | Michael Coates | coates@berkeley.edu | University of Idaho | Current Member | History: 1945-1990 | I would be willing to organize a panel relating to any of the broad fields related to my paper topic. | I am interested in presenting a paper on some aspect of my research about Soviet encyclopedias. This could fit with a panel themed around the history of science/knowledge, the history of reading, intellectual history, or various other fields. Alternatively, I could speak about encyclopedias in contemporary Russia, including Russian alternatives to Wikipedia. Other possibilities include presentations on Soviet/Russian children's encyclopedias or the field of knigovedenie. | ||||||||||
45 | 2/11/2024 17:25:25 | Liya Zalaltdinova | lzalaltdinova@fas.harvard.edu | Harvard University | Current Member | Linguistics, Language Pedagogy, Translation | Roundtable: Contemporary perspectives on assessment strategies in Russian Language Learning: rethinking assessment and embracing the change | Presenter(s) | “Documentation of progress in language learning via time capsule interviews” by Liya Zalaltdinova and Anna Ivanov | |||||||||
46 | 2/12/2024 7:35:42 | Ksenia Smykovskaya | ksenia_smykovskaya@brown.edu | Brown University | Current Member | PhD Candidate (ABD status) | Gender/LGBTQ Studies | Changing femininity: The Social Construction of Women in Russian, Soviet, and Eastern European Art and Literature | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | I would like to present on the construction of femininity (in particular, motherhood) in Russian periodical publications and literature. | ||||||||
47 | 2/12/2024 11:37:39 | Yana Kirey-Sitnikova | yana.kirey.sitnikova@gmail.com | Independent scholar | Current Member | Gender/LGBTQ Studies | Title: Activist identities and attitudes towards activism among Russian-speaking transgender people. Abstract: Transgender (trans) people often face discrimination and violence, lack of access to medical services, including those aimed at gender transition, as well as barriers or even impossibility to change their legal gender. Trans activism all over the world, including the post-Soviet space, aims to solve the aforementioned problems and improve the quality of life for trans individuals. While the post-Soviet trans activism has become a subject of several papers, attitudes of trans people towards trans activism and their conceptualization of activism have not been studied yet. The article reports results of two surveys conducted in 2015 and 2020-21 respectively. The respondents understood activism both in a broad sense as any activities aimed at a goal (for example, writing texts, sharing information) or in a narrow sense as the work of NGOs and street protests. When talking about relationships between activism and gender transition, a bidirectional character of causation is observed. Not only do trans people join activism to protect their rights, but many learned about trans issues after becoming activists — usually LGBT activists. Some of the patterns identified in the study have parallels in the Russian intersex activism. | |||||||||||
48 | 2/12/2024 14:12:08 | Sooyeon Lee | sooyeon.lee.trt@gmail.com | University of Toronto | Current Member | PhD Candidate (ABD status) | Literature: 20th Century | I'd like to organize a panel under the proposed title "Visual Narratives in the Literature." We are looking for one more presenter and welcoming papers on illustration and visual arts connected to literature. My paper will be about a comparative analysis of illustrations in Soviet and North Korean children's books and the other presenter will be presenting research on Alissa Poret's illustrations. | Presenter(s) | The Soviet children’s literature was frequently translated and introduced to North Korea, and vice versa. This reciprocal exchange extended to the realm of illustrations. Consequently, illustrations accompanying children's literature traversed borders, sometimes being replicated by copy machines or artists, while other times, artists adapted existing templates to create new imagery. My research focuses on the concept of illustration as a form of translation, examining the techniques and trends employed in translating illustrations between the Soviet Union and North Korea, and uncovering the underlying purposes and motivations shaping these translation practices. | ||||||||
49 | 2/12/2024 14:11:48 | Arsenii Verkeev | arsenyverkeev@gmail.com | Ruhr University Bochum | Current Member | PhD Candidate (ABD status) | Sociology, Public Health, Education | Constructing (Dis)Trust in Polls: Public Opinion Research in Today's Russia. In 2022, tensions increased around opinion polls in Russia, with many scholars denying their reliability. Using a dataset of Russian news media publications, I explore the ongoing reassessment of survey research in Russia by showing how polls on war support are portrayed by different actors in and outside academia. I inquire into ways in which polls are portrayed as either trustworthy or not, depending on their results and the source they come from. I demonstrate the tension between scientific and political discourses – e.g. if a poll shows the majority support the war, its opposers blame methodology for the results, and vice versa. I claim that the observed methodological issues were always present in the Russian survey research and it is the transformed sociopolitical context that has made them more visible and frequently discussed. The methodological discussion about the reliability of polls intersects with the political discussion about how many Russians support the war. The latter unfolds not only as an empirical but also as a political question. The paper demonstrates how public speakers utilize poll figures to support their political stances. Examining opinion polls in the context of the extreme event of the Russian war against Ukraine contributes to a revised approach to survey measurement on sensitive topics in politically constrained environments. | Chair, Discussant | public opinion in Russia, Russian society | ||||||||
50 | 2/12/2024 14:40:26 | Olivia Kennison | olivia_kennison@brown.edu | Brown University | Current Member | PhD Candidate (ABD status) | Literature: 20th Century | Russian reception in literature of classical antiquity - Latin or Greek, in any period of Russian literature. Reception in poetry and prose, from Romantic and Symbolist writers, classical philosophy in the realist novel, or Soviet receptions. | Presenter(s), Discussant(s) | My paper | Chair, Discussant | Translation, reception | ||||||
51 | 2/12/2024 15:43:04 | Ariel Otruba | arielotruba@gmail.com | Virginia Tech | Current Member | Geography, Urban Studies, Built Environments | We are organizing a panel titled: Disaster Environments in the Caucasus: Human/Non-Human Entanglements in the Wake of Catastrophe The oft repeated adage in political ecology, “there is no natural disaster,” while well met, draws attention away from the biophysical world and into the political. In this panel session, we seek to bring material, non-human forces back into view, in the context of the long tail of disaster. Disaster (broadly construed) is a concept that relies on a continuity-breaking event, thus implying a rubicon crossed into new worlds, and all the loss, resilience, and potential implied therein. Similarly, the unique political-environmental context of the greater Caucasus allows for the results of war, “natural” disaster, and post-industrial decay to complement each other in a single discussion. We seek papers engaged with the nature-culture relationship as it applies to contestations, unlikely alliances, unexpected agencies, and more-than-human contact zones in the greater Caucasus. Possible topics include: Microenvironments of disaster; Green incursion into spaces of violence; Secondary ecological crises in extractive industrial settings; Infrastructure and the body (biopolitics); Post disaster urban natures; Posthumanist/more-than-human/multispecies/other-than-human geographies; Affective and emotional ecologies (especially memory, trauma, etc.); Ecologies of repair and recovery; Environmental justice For consideration, please send the title of your paper and a brief (200 words or less) abstract to Evangeline McGlynn (emcglynn@fas.harvard.edu) and Ariel Otruba (arielotruba@gmail.com) no later than Monday, February 26, 2024. | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | ||||||||||
52 | 2/12/2024 23:31:22 | Konstantin Ash | konstantin.ash1@gmail.com | University of Central Florida | Current Member | Politics, Law | TItle: History and Support for Peaceful Settlement of the Russian Invasion of Ukraine How do historical narratives affect public preferences for settling international conflict? This study uses a pre-registered survey experiment of Ukrainians in unoccupied regions of the country in late May and early June 2022 to assess public support for ending Russia's 2022 invasion. History played a significant role in both sides' propaganda leading up to and during the war. Respondents were randomly assigned one of three primes about historical events: the UPA insurgency against the USSR, the Holodomor famine, and Ukrainian service in the Red Army during World War II and asked about their support for concessions to Russia, the possibility of military victory and who they blamed for the war. Respondents primed with the UPA insurgency were significantly less likely to support several substantive and territorial concessions. Respondents primed with Ukrainian service in the Red Army during World War II were, apart from some Russian speakers, not significantly more likely to make concessions and significantly more likely to blame the Russian government and the Russian people for the invasion. The treatment effects are infrequently conditional on family history, suggesting collective memories drive the results and underscoring the relevance of historical narratives in shaping public support for responses to foreign invasion. | Chair, Discussant | Anything across contemporary history, political science or sociology. | |||||||||
53 | 2/19/2024 4:01:14 | Daria Dyakonova | daryadyakonova@yahoo.com | International Institute in Geneva & Sapienza Rome | Current Member | History: 1900-1945 | I would like to set up a VIRTUAL panel on women, gender in socialist/communist contexts of the interwar period or be part of such panel. My own paper will tackle the international Communist Women's Movement in the 1920s and 1930s with a focus on work among women in Asia. | Presenter(s) | My paper will tackle the international Communist Women's Movement in the 1920s and 1930s with a focus on work among women in Asia. | |||||||||
54 | 2/14/2024 13:59:53 | Susan Baker | sjsb40@gmail.com | Independent Scholar | Current Member | History: 1900-1945 | Aspects of Balkan Liberation--late 19th and early 20th Centuries. This topic is central to the theme of liberation. We have three presenters and could accept a fourth. We area looking for a Chair for this panel and a discussant. | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | ||||||||||
55 | 2/15/2024 5:25:06 | Maria Buko | mariabuko72@gmail.com | University of Konstanz, Germany | Current Member | History: 1945-1990 | 1. Violent experiences of children in XXth century OR 2. Gendered history of war/totalitarianism OR 3. Transgenerational memory and trauma of survivors | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | Post-WWII trauma and experiences of Polish children (oral history and drawings); transgenerational trauma in the families of WWII and Stalinism survivors from Poland; gendered experience of imprisonment during WWII and Stalinism, case of Polish women (oral history, archival and biographical research) | Chair, Discussant | the same topics or similar | |||||||
56 | 2/15/2024 14:20:59 | Yan Vuks | yanvuks@my.unt.edu | University of North Texas | Current Member | PhD Candidate (ABD status) | History: Since 1990 | I would like to organize a panel on transitional justice and decolonization in Eastern Europe after the fall of Communism in 1989. | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | I would like to present a paper on lustration policies as the tool of decolonization in Eastern Europe. | ||||||||
57 | 2/15/2024 15:52:01 | Maria Whittle | maria.whittle@berkeley.edu | UC Berkeley | Current Member | Literature: 20th Century | We are looking for a fourth presenter for a panel on Soviet energy humanities. This panel will examine the various ways in which energy politics and their aftermath shaped Soviet ideological and cultural discourse. How were coal, nuclear power, hydroelectricity, and other energy sources represented in Soviet literary and popular discourse? How did natural resource extraction and the changes it wrought on local ecosystems manifest in symbolic geographies of Soviet space? What kinds of discursive strategies did environmentally-minded writers use to critique such policies and their aftermath? We welcome a variety of regional focuses and disciplinary approaches for talking about literature and the environment. | Presenter(s) | ||||||||||
58 | 2/16/2024 11:09:40 | Tatsiana Shchurko | shchurko.1@osu.edu | The Ohio State University | Current Member | Gender/LGBTQ Studies | Lesia Pagulich and I are organizing a panel titled "Queer Encounters: Defying Imperial and Racial Violence." We are currently seeking one more presenter and a discussant. Panel title: "Queer Encounters: Defying Imperial and Racial Violence" Description: The ongoing crises, fueled by white supremacy, heteropatriarchy, and imperialist expansions, prompt concerns regarding responses to oppressive politics. This panel explores the potential of queer studies in addressing imperial and racial violence. It centers on queer encounters from the past and present, highlighting the needs and experiences of marginalized communities and their pursuit in defying imperial and racial violence. Specifically, the panel urges us to contemplate a unique dimension of political interactions and solidarities—one that prioritizes interconnectedness between marginalized communities affected by imperial and racial violence, rather than state-to-state relations and high politics. Queer encounters encompass practices of caring, sharing, dreaming, surviving, and desiring that disrupt oppressive powers. The term “queer” is employed not to impose a vision of a universal queer subject or identity but to underscore configurations of desire, sexuality, and gender resisting hegemonic colonial and racial paradigms of intimacy. In this context, the panel draws on scholarship elucidating how forms of desire and sexuality resist global geopolitics and hegemonic colonial and racial paradigms. Additionally, queer encounters contribute to "queer world-making," constructing alternative sociality and futurity outside heteronormativity and racial hierarchies. Through diverse examples, the panelists shed light on alternative pathways for communities to connect across various geographies, particularly in the face of imperial and racial violence. Two papers included in the panel explore: The first paper focuses on Audre Lorde’s journey to Uzbekistan in 1976, where she formed a connection with Chukchee writer Antonina Kymytval'. The second paper offers a reading of Bety Catfur (2021), a video produced by the Romani feminist theater “Giuvlipen” in Romania and directed by Mihaela Drăgan. The paper highlights the importance that this video was screened by the Ukrainian feminist film festival “Filma” in 2021. | Presenter(s), Discussant(s) | ||||||||||
59 | 2/16/2024 16:47:37 | Alla Roylance | ar4310@nyu.edu | New York University | Current Member | Anthropology, Cultural Studies | "Tools and influences of Russian propaganda machinery" | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | We are looking for one participant, a chair and a discussant for a panel which focuses on various tools and methods the Russian propaganda apparatus employs via various cultural venues. If your research is in the area of propaganda in theater, or in social media, or its efforts to propagate the official narrative abroad, please consider joining this panel. | |||||||||
60 | 2/18/2024 12:16:01 | Joanna Kula | joanna.kula@uwr.edu.pl | University of Wroclaw | Current Member | Literature: 19th Century | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | Title: "The Image of the Caucasus in the Memoirs of Polish Exiles in the 19th Century" In the 19th century, Poland was part of the Russian Empire. Poles opposed the tsarist authorities, defending the right to their native language, participating in conspiratorial circles or even organizing armed uprisings. The consequence of this activity was very often exile to the Caucasus, called Southern Siberia at that time, where the Caucasian War (1817-1864) was ongoing. The aim of the paper is to review selected memories of Polish authors (Mateusz Gralewski, Karol Kalinowski, Teofil Łapiński, Zygmunt Rewkowski, Władysław Strzelecki). I am going to conduct research regarding the image of the Caucasus in the several pieces of writing. An overview and comparison of memories will allow us to determine the authors' attitude towards Russia and Russian people; service in the tsarist army; the local population or the idea of the Caucasian highlanders' fight for independence. | ||||||||||
61 | 2/18/2024 12:24:38 | A'Yanna Solomon | asolom@umich.edu | Unviersity of Michigan, Ann Arbor | Current Member | PhD Student | Cinema, Television, Electronic Media | Currently, our panel takes a broad approach to analyzing Central Asian societies through television and music. Alexa Kurmanov's article, "Performing American Blackness in Central Asian Cultural Production", examines the Kazakh YouTube series Appaq Kelin, which surrounds the life of Kamazhai and her new Kelin, Leah, who is a Black American woman and the small dramas that ensue in Kamazhai’s village after Leah's arrival. Fatima Kubali, an Afro-Kazakh actress who plays the part of Leah, and her performance of “American Blackness” invites further inquiry into how blackness functions as a signifier in the context of Central Asia. Kubali’s performance not only highlights the ways blackness is conceptualized and constructed through cultural production, but also how notions of blackness recreate spatial difference– “imaginary west” in contrast to the Kazakh village (Nassey-Brown 2005, Yurchak 2005). This analysis of blackness’ function in Appaq Kelin will contribute to emerging scholarship on category of race in (post)socialist geographies and scholarship in Black Studies focused on limits and possibilities of blackness as a universal claim from the perspective of (post)socialist Central Asia (Partridge 2023). A'Yanna Solomon's presentation will contend with rap music and hip hop cultural forms as socially transgressive tools towards liberation. They write that while the average person is not radical, the act of a single person or a single act employed by a collective can set about radical change. Solomon's presentation does not seek to establish Karaganda-native, Aydin Nuralin (maslo chernogo tmina) as a radical, political, nor an intentional hip hop philosopher. Instead, they read selected works from the artist's discography as transgressive acts. Nuralin’s depictions of violence and sexual explicitness transgresses ideas of social decency. Transgressing social decency presents opportunities for direct confrontation with societal ills. Thus, these works can be read as tools towards liberation. Our panels seeks presenters, a discussant, and a chair who would be interested in engaging with Central Asian societies through television, film, music, or any relevant form of media. | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | |||||||||
62 | 2/18/2024 15:50:57 | Olha Korniienko | olkorniienko@gmail.com | Leibniz Centre for Contemporary History | Current Member | History: 1945-1990 | "Beyond Aesthetics: Unraveling the Liberation Potential of Soviet Fashion Design and Art" This panel aims to explore the multifaceted role of Soviet fashion design and art in fostering liberation beyond mere aesthetics. It unravels how fashion and art served as vehicles for cultural expression, resistance, and identity formation. The presentations will cover diverse perspectives, including the influence of state structures, the experiences of individual artists navigating societal constraints, and the promotion of national design and art. By going beyond the surface of aesthetics, the panel seeks to uncover the nuanced ways in which Soviet fashion and art contributed to liberation in various spheres of society. | Presenter(s) | ||||||||||
63 | 2/18/2024 16:16:17 | Lily Tarba | lily.tarba@mail.utoronto.ca | University of Toronto | Current Member | PhD Candidate (ABD status) | Literature: 19th Century | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | In my paper, I focus on the nineteenth-century Circassian/Adygean writer Adil Girey Ch'ashe. Educated in a Russian Gymnasium, Ch'ashe writes about the Caucasus from a native perspective. In his literary works, he explores the question of a Circassian/ Adygean identity and what it means to feel like an outsider amongst one's own people. Ch'ashe straddles two ways of being: the humanist perspective by way of a Russian education and his own cultural inheritance. He grapples with the role education has played in alienating him from his own people, all while critiquing the prevailing romantic view of the Circassian warrior. Writing in the mid-nineteenth century, in the background of Ch'ashe's work is the Russian conquest of the north Caucasus. I am interested in joining any panel that deals with the Caucasus, questions of identity and exile, or the Russian conquest of the Caucasus. | |||||||||
64 | 2/19/2024 7:29:03 | Guido Sechi | guidosechi78@gmail.com | University of Latvia | Not a Member (Your submissions will be deleted. Become a member first) | Geography, Urban Studies, Built Environments | Chair, Discussant(s) | NEOLIBERALISM AS SPACE FRAGMENTATION: LOOKING AT POST-SOCIALIST TRANSITION THROUGH A LEFEBVRIAN PRISM | Chair, Discussant | Social justice, neoliberalism, socialist heritage | ||||||||
65 | 2/19/2024 10:10:31 | Zaur Kapanadze | zaur.kapanadze@ttu.edu | Texas Tech University | Current Member | PhD Student | Politics, Law | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | Paper: Allocation of Equalizing Transfers, Regional Development, and Business Interests in Georgia | Chair, Discussant | Comparative Politics, Democratization, Electoral Systems, Post‑Communist Politics, Political Economy, and Legislative Behavior | |||||||
66 | 2/19/2024 21:49:57 | Patricia Manos | manos1@g.harvard.edu | Harvard University | Current Member | PhD Candidate (ABD status) | History: Since 1990 | Liberation/Preservation: “Monuments debates” around public commemorative sculpture, memorial institutions, and the built environment more generally, in the formerly-socialist countries of Europe have been a favorite topic for academics interested in the iconoclastic spectacles associated with the end of the Cold War. What are the ways in which the preservation and care for the state socialist monuments and institutions of the former Warsaw Pact countries and Yugoslavia have been, or can be, used as a vehicle by which to critique the economic and social effects of the transition to capitalism of the countries affected? | Presenter(s), Chair | I would like to present a paper on the restoration of a Yugoslav WWII monument conceived of as a public amphitheater in North Macedonia in the context of late-20th century, "activist" art practices visible in the "global" art world | Chair, Discussant | public art, neoliberalism, monuments | ||||||
67 | 2/19/2024 23:12:36 | Mila Listrovaya | llistrov@uoregon.edu | University of Oregon | Current Member | PhD Candidate (ABD status) | Sociology, Public Health, Education | Would like to organize or enter a panel on one or all of the following items related to Russia's war in Ukraine: relokanti/y; migration; political socialization; family; authoritarianism; Russians in Georgia. | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | Abstract of my paper: "The article investigates the impact of authoritarianism on the political engagement of new Russian immigrants—”relokanti”. It introduces the notion of “emotional extraterritoriality of authoritarianism,” to explain the migrants’ absence of public-facing political engagement. To do so, the article adopts the perspective of relokanti’s three distinct social statuses and roles: as citizens of Russia, as the relatives of the families continuing to reside in Russia, and as migrants living in Georgia. Through in-depth interviews and secondary research, it uncovers that despite the opportunity for activism and transmission of political remittances after exit, relokanti choose not to be politically engaged, even within their families. This work contributes to the wider literature on post-migration transnational political participation and authoritarianism and offers insights into the silent struggles of Russian emigrants living in Georgia." | ||||||||
68 | 2/20/2024 9:52:43 | Assiya Issemberdiyeva | a.issemberdiyeva@qmul.ac.uk | Queen Mary University of London | Current Member | PhD Student | Cinema, Television, Electronic Media | Folklorisation of Central Asia and Mongolia in Soviet Cinema | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | Sukhbaatar (1942) and Orientalisation of Mongolia in Film Mongolia remains largely absent from discussions in post-Soviet scholarship, and the extensive Soviet influence, particularly within cinema, has been largely overlooked. My objective is to bridge the gap between Mongolian, Central Asian, and (post-)Soviet studies through an exploration of Sukhbaatar (1942, Iosif Kheifits, Aleksandr Zarkhi). This film played a pivotal role in mythologising Sukhbaatar and Choibalsan as founders of the Mongolian People’s Party, akin to the canonisation of Lenin and Stalin within the USSR. Contextualising the narrative and the filmmakers’ choices against the backdrop of the Second World War, this research provides an overview of Mongolian history, highlighting the intricate relationship between the Soviet Union, Mongolia, and China. It explores how the film served to legitimise Mongolia’s alignment with the Soviet Union and its wartime aid for Russia. Through an in-depth analysis of the film’s messages and its key scenes, I examine the film’s portrayal of the Mongolian people, their established elites and knowledge systems from the pre-Soviet era. The objective is to highlight the distinct features of Soviet Orientalist narratives, which reinforced racial stereotypes and advanced discriminatory assumptions about Mongolia and Central Asia. | Chair, Discussant | Representation of the Other | ||||||
69 | 2/20/2024 10:22:35 | Laura Howells | laura.howells@princeton.edu | Princeton University | Current Member | PhD Student | Politics, Law | Presenter(s), Discussant(s) | How does a state-mandated language policy affect ethnic self-identification, national identity, and social trust and cohesion in society and in the domestic political realm? From September 2024, Estonia will begin a nationwide education system overhaul which will require Estonian as the language of instruction for all public schools. For a nation in which roughly a third of the population is Russian-speaking and 15% of schools have operated predominantly in Russian at the time of transition, this language mandate will have significant socio-political as well as individual, psychological ramifications. Existing research evinces that language and socio-political identity are closely, though complexly, related (Laitin, 1998; Pérez and Tavits 2019). However, the causal effects of “civic integration,” including educational, policies are rarely studied, in part due to the rarity of as-if random policy variation (Fouka 2023, 3). While there is reason to anticipate some “material” gains from this language mandate such as greater higher educational uptake (which is only available for free in Estonian), prior research on compulsory language integration suggests that “symbolic” backfire effects are possible, can be long-lasting, and usually arise from “parental compensatory responses” (Bisin & Verdier 2001, Fouka 2020). Leveraging a cutting edge causal identification strategy coupled with deep qualitative fieldwork, this paper contributes to a better understanding of the effects of “civic integration” policies on identity and social cohesion among both majority and minority groups, with careful consideration of the importance of historical memory and post-communist nation-building. | Discussant | interethnic relations, language (policies), nation-building, nationalism, education, politics | |||||||
70 | 2/20/2024 11:03:50 | Dragana Zivkovic | dzivkovic@fsu.edu | Florida State University | Current Member | PhD Candidate (ABD status) | Gender/LGBTQ Studies | Maddy Stout and I would like to organize a panel centered roughly on women’s experiences and identities. Maddy’s paper will focus on the experiences of African American women traveling to the Soviet Union in the 1920s-1930s and how they reflected on gendered institutions in the USSR, while mine will be focused on women in 19th century Serbia and how their work pushed social boundaries (I will be mainly focusing on female writers). | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | Chair | women & gender, Balkans, travel, trade | |||||||
71 | 2/20/2024 12:15:36 | Jiří Janáč | jira.janac@gmail.com | Institute of Contemporary History, Prague, Czech Republic | Current Member | History: 1945-1990 | Experts as Agents of Liberation?Expert Cultures and Trans/International Knowledge Networks in Cold War Era Recent decades have seen a great deal of attention paid to expertise, its circulation and its transfer across various (post-)Cold War borders. In fact, the existence of transnational networks of experts working across the Iron Curtain is often cited as one of the main reasons former Soviet countries embraced the Western model so rapidly and successfully after 1989. One could even, in a somewhat "Whiggish" manner, interpret the events of 1989 as an example of liberation through expertise. Much of the literature approaches transnational expert networks and institutions as places in which ideological and geopolitical conflicts, as well as rival types of expertise, have been reconciled in the name of the universal, humanist ideas of modern internationalism. However, the inherent ambiguity of transnational expertise lies not only in the well-known affinity of experts for technocratic approaches and solutions framed by Enlightenment discourses of human emancipation (liberation) and progress (modernity), which entail certain aspects of discipline and control. Simultaneously, a hegemonic discourse is created and other views and perspectives are marginalised due to the discursive and social nature of knowledge and expertise. Our aim is to put together a panel that will focus on three areas: 1) how experts used, applied and understood the concept of liberation, 2) which power hierarchies and structures influenced the formation of the agenda at the level of international networks, 3) how specific agendas and discourses contributed to liberation processes at the national level. | Presenter(s), Chair | Discussant | environmental history of eastern europe | ||||||||
72 | 2/20/2024 12:41:34 | Todd Nelson | t.h.nelson@csuohio.edu | Cleveland State University | Current Member | International Relations, Security Studies, Foreign Policy | memory politics Russia | Presenter(s) | Memory Politics and Militarization of Russian Society | |||||||||
73 | 2/20/2024 13:10:30 | Samantha Farmer | samfarm@umich.edu | University of Michigan | Current Member | PhD Candidate (ABD status) | Literature: 21st Century | Arrested development in contemporary (ex-? post-?) Yugoslav culture. It is my hope that this panel will present a diverse range of research grounded in cultural production of the last 15 or so years (literature, film, theater, visual art; disciplines like sociology, geography etc if significantly related to culture). It would also be interesting to see how “contemporary” is both a useful and problematic periodization here. Reach out if you have a paper idea that entertains or problematizes the idea of arrested development (culturally, politically, economically, as an aesthetic, or otherwise broadly defined) in the Yugoslav context, also broadly defined. Comparative approaches and/or papers that engage languages/cultures outside of BCMS are welcome (Slovene, Macedonian, Albanian, or other Balkan contexts)! We already have 2 papers (see next cell) and a discussant and are seeking 2 more papers from presenters who are not graduate students. If you’d like to volunteer to chair you may. | Presenter(s), Chair | My paper examines forms of arrested or misaligned development inflected by class, geography, and gender in, tentatively, the novels My Dowry by Nora Verde (Moja dota, 2022) and The Land Without Twilight by Marija Andrijašević (Zemlja bez sutona, 2021); in particular, I examine how Split/Dalmatia is shown to be stuck between deindustrialization and tourism, deviations from normative trajectories of gendered or economic success that Sara Ahmed calls “happiness scripts,” and these novels' connection to new developments in the regional ex-Yu literary scene/market. The other paper is by Katie Kasperian, whose abstract is as follows: “Using contemporary Yugoslav documentary as examples, this paper argues for victimhood nationalism as a form of arrested development that hampers and even prevents work towards non-violence. In particular, I analyze how victimhood nationalism is present in the documentaries Letter to Dad (Pismo ocu, dir. Srđan Keča, 2011) and Srbenka (dir. Nebojša Slijepčević, 2018). I also draw on the documentary The Unforgiven: A War Criminal’s Response (Lars Feldbelle Petersen, 2017) to demonstrate how victimhood nationalism must be challenged to prevent future violence.” | Discussant | Contemporary film and literature, translation, Marxist approaches to postsocialist culture, queer studies | ||||||
74 | 2/20/2024 14:12:09 | Daina Eglitis | dainas@gwu.edu | George Washington University | Current Member | History: 1900-1945 | Paper Topic: Women's Experiences in Soviet Filtration Camps at the End of World War II. This project examines the phenomenon of "filtration," which Soviet authorities imposed on all those who were returning to the USSR from German-occupied or other Western areas. This included prisoners of war, voluntary or forced laborers in German industry, and Jewish camp prisoners who had been liberated at war's end. This work focuses in particular on using women's voices through testimonies and memoirs to document how women experienced this paranoid and sometimes brutal process. The project also considers the significance of the historical filtration process for understanding revived filtration camps used by Russia in its aggression against Ukraine. | Chair, Discussant | Women's Experiences of World War II & the Holocaust; Gender & War; Holocaust in East Europe | |||||||||
75 | 2/21/2024 12:48:52 | José Luis Aguilar López-Barajas | jaguil04@ucm.es | Czech Academy of Sciences | Current Member | History: 1945-1990 | Presenter(s) | Medicine or human sciences broadly understood in state socialist East-Central Europe after 1945 I also work on tourism history in East-Central Europe after 1945. | Chair, Discussant | State socialist east-central Europe- Medicine, intellectual history, tourism | ||||||||
76 | 2/21/2024 16:48:06 | Roman Osharov | roman.osharov@history.ox.ac.uk | University of Oxford | Current Member | PhD Student | History: 1800-1900 | I am trying to organise a panel on Central Asia and the Caucasus under Russian imperial/early Soviet rule, and looking either to join an existing panel or form a new one. | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | The Caucasus and Central Asia under Russian rule – transfer of people and knowledge on Russia’s imperial borderlands, 1870-1890 | Chair | Central Asian history, Russian history | ||||||
77 | 2/21/2024 22:07:57 | Jenny Tsundu | jenny_lhamo_tsundu@brown.edu | Brown University | Current Member | PhD Candidate (ABD status) | Anthropology, Cultural Studies | Our interdisciplinary panel is interested in exploring the shifts and differences between Soviet and post-Soviet ideological projects of political and societal transformation and how they have informed practical projects and were internalized by people on the ground. While the realization of such projects remains by definition incomplete and controversial, inquiring into their premises can reveal the different political logics by which they operate. In particular we are interested in categories such as envisaged emancipation, visions of the past and the future, universalism vs particularism, and how they condition different dynamics of political development, including critique and contestation. We are also interested in how tracing these shifts enables us to think about modernity? We are looking for 1 or 2 other panelists, and potentially a discussant/chair. Presentations with a focus outside of Russia are especially welcome. Volha Biziukova (Anthropology, Watson Institute, Brown U) will look at Russia’s current political project and Jenny Tsundu (History, Brown U) will look at the Bratsk hydroelectric project in the Soviet period. | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | |||||||||
78 | 2/22/2024 10:18:27 | Oleg Manaev | manaev.oleg@gmail.com | University of Tennessee | Current Member | International Relations, Security Studies, Foreign Policy | RUSSIAN PROPAGANDA/DISINFORMATION CAMPAIGNS IN FSU: FROM MONITORING THE CONTENT TO THE EVENTS’S PROBABLISTIC PREDICTION We compared the dynamics of key propaganda narratives with the dynamics of subsequent events at the same timeframe. Comparison of the Chronologies of events with the Media analysis data shows that the dynamics of content preceded the dynamics of events. This conclusion is also supported by analysis of pro-Russian public statements of officials and public figures that set the framework for media content in the analyzed countries - Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, and Georgia. To paraphrase the widely used expression “event-driven data”, based on this comparison, with a certain probability, allows to predict or, more precisely, to expect the occurrence of certain events. The dynamics of some elements of media content can be considered as signs or signals of probable events. In our case of Monitoring the Content and Measuring the Effectiveness of Russian Propaganda/Disinformation Campaigns – with some degree of probability to predict/expect the dynamics of military-political actions that pose a direct threat to the interests of US national security – using completely open and accessible sources and a sound methodology: Triangulation Analysis of Media and its Audience. | |||||||||||
79 | 2/22/2024 11:29:13 | Robin Smith | robin.elizabeth.smith@gmail.com | Copenhagen Business School & Utrecht University | Current Member | Anthropology, Cultural Studies | I'm interested in organizing a panel about agri-business politics in southeastern Europe. I write about winemaking in Istria, Croatia, and about Agrokor/Fortenova, and would like to find others interested in food, supply chains, supermarket politics, investments in farming and food manufacturing, topics on debt, finance, subsidies, prices, inflation... | Presenter(s) | ||||||||||
80 | 2/22/2024 13:29:53 | Joanna Matuszak | jmatuszak@uttyler.edu | The University of Texas at Tyler | Current Member | Arts I: Visual Culture, Material Culture, Applied and Fine Arts | Panel title: “Museums and Identity Discourse in the Visual Arts in the post-Cold War period in the region of former Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc” I am looking for presenters and a discussant interested in the topic of the role of museums in identity transformations and how visual artists reflected the issue and participated in the identity discourse in the post-1990 period. My paper focuses on works of performance art and video art created in museums or in collaboration with museums by artists from Poland, Russia, and Ukraine. If you are interested or have questions, please do not hesistate to email me at jmatuszak@uttyler.edu | Presenter(s), Discussant(s) | If not successful in organizing my panel from scratch, I would be very happy to join a different panel to present my paper on the role of museums and visual arts in the identity discourse in the post-1990 period. I can be reached at jmatuszak@uttyler.edu | |||||||||
81 | 2/22/2024 14:13:44 | Jiwon Jung | jiwonjung2026@u.northwestern.edu | Northwestern University | Current Member | PhD Student | Literature: 19th Century | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | Tolstoy and psychiatry | |||||||||
82 | 2/28/2024 9:50:15 | Konstantin Ash | konstantin.ash1@gmail.com | University of Central Florida | Current Member | International Relations, Security Studies, Foreign Policy | Panel has been filled, thank you to all participating! | Chair | Discussant | |||||||||
83 | 2/22/2024 16:51:25 | Daina Eglitis | dainas@gwu.edu | George Washington University | Current Member | Gender/LGBTQ Studies | "Liberating Women's Voices in Historical Narratives" - I am interested in joining a panel, but am willing as well to organize one if there are interested presenters available. The idea behind this proposed panel would be to highlight ways in which women's voices -- in the form of testimonies/oral histories, letters, memoirs, etc., problematize the "smooth" telling of histories. As men have historically been the ones shaping dominant historical narratives of war, genocide, revolution, liberation, etc., women's different experiences of history have often been written only into the margins of the past. There is space under this umbrella for a variety of regional and temporally situated topics - the commonalty focuses more on the importance of women's voices to a more nuanced, complex, and complete telling of the past. Please reach out if interested in a role on such a panel: dainas@gwu.edu. | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | Paper Topic: Women's Experiences in Soviet Filtration Camps at the End of World War II. This project examines the phenomenon of "filtration," which Soviet authorities imposed on all those who were returning to the USSR from German-occupied or other Western areas. This included prisoners of war, voluntary or forced laborers in German industry, and Jewish camp prisoners who had been liberated at war's end. This work focuses in particular on using women's voices through testimonies and memoirs to document how women experienced this paranoid and sometimes brutal process. The project also considers the significance of the historical filtration process for understanding revived filtration camps used by Russia in its aggression against Ukraine. | Chair, Discussant | women in history; Holocaust testimonies; collective memory | |||||||
84 | 2/22/2024 23:31:11 | Aminat Tsuntaeva | sheikhova@gmail.com | Independent scholar | Current Member | PhD Candidate (ABD status) | Arts I: Visual Culture, Material Culture, Applied and Fine Arts | I would like to organize a panel on nostalgia for the Soviet past and ways of working with memory through mass culture. I have prepared a proposal about how the regional popularization of Soviet history and culture has become a part of a national trend. The revival of the memory of the Soviet past using modern media is aimed at popularizing this historical period, primarily among the young population, who were born after the collapse of the USSR. Among older people, depending on the region, memories of life in the Soviet Union are still nostalgic. The Soviet past is reflected in a variety of cultural forms, from theatrical performances and museum exhibitions to audiovisual documentary works. We propose to research contemporary forms of representation of the Soviet past on the example of performing art, museum space in mountainous Dagestan and the documentary cinema. | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | I also would be happy to join other panels. The topic of my proposal: "Cultural memory and Soviet aesthetics in the North Caucasus between politics, public history and visual anthropology". Please, email to sheikhova@gmail.com | ||||||||
85 | 2/23/2024 12:19:56 | Julian Pokay | jpokay@fas.harvard.edu | Harvard University | Current Member | PhD Candidate (ABD status) | Literature: 20th Century | The panel I am trying to organize aims at exploring the concept of underground in Russian culture in general and Russian literature in particular as well as its liberating potential. Possible topics may include: Old Believers; Dostoyevsky's "Notes from the Underground"; Leningrad underground culture in the 1950s; early samizdat. | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | In my paper I would like to focus on the notion of the underground in early post-war samizdat and/or Leningrad literary scene, and look at its significance within Russian culture. In so doing, I would like to identify key figures of this unique underground culture and describe how they formed the underground -- a space that could be seen as a Foucaultian heterotopia. | Chair, Discussant | Russian emigre literature; samizdat: Russian 20th-century poetry; Russian and Soviet cinema | ||||||
86 | 2/23/2024 14:09:23 | Duncan MacLean Eaton | dme82@cornell.edu | Cornell University | Current Member | PhD Candidate (ABD status) | History: 1900-1945 | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | Building a Nation of Homesteaders: Economic and Political Liberation of the Slovak Peasantry Following the creation of the Czechoslovak state, despite the formally stated national policy of Czechoslovakism—that in which Czechs and Slovaks were seen as equal, indivisible, and part of the same nation—there existed deep material and political inequalities between the two major parts of the republic. Slovak politicians highlighted a double challenge to the national development and economic liberation of the Slovak peasantry. Firstly was the problem of political organization, due to much of rural Slovakia being socially atomized and markedly anational. Secondly was the lack of industrialization, and thus economic stability, of the agricultural sector—which dominated Slovak cultural and economic life—particularly when compared with the situation of farmers in the Czech lands. Slovak leaders traced both issues to the persistence of the aristocratic Hungarian land-owning class and the influence they held over a largely decentralized Slovak society. Utilizing documents from the Czechoslovak Ministry of Agriculture, newspapers and journals from Slovak-focused political parties, as well as administrative and financial reports from Slovak county offices, this paper will focus on the 1924 Czechoslovak land reform efforts and the creation of credit unions in 1925 that were concerned with providing economic liquidity directly to Slovak farmers. Spearheaded by Milan Hodža and the Republican Party of Farmers and Peasants, these developments in the Slovak agricultural sector were aimed at dispossessing the Hungarian aristocracy and creating a socially cohesive, economically viable and decidedly Slovak land-owning middle class in the rural areas of Slovakia. In doing so, this paper highlights the difficulty of nation-building and the nature of self-determination in a state created from two administratively and culturally disparate parts of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire. | |||||||||
87 | 2/23/2024 15:32:17 | Leila Wilmers | l.wilmers@gmail.com | Cornell University | Current Member | Politics, Law | A panel on activism in contemporary Russia. Could include analysis of movements, actions or actors within Russia or in diaspora since the invasion of Ukraine, including ethnic, regional, local and/or ecological activism as well as anti-war activism. | Presenter(s) | My paper is on discursive strategies of Russia’s ethnic minority sovereignty movements since the invasion of Ukraine. | |||||||||
88 | 2/24/2024 15:38:02 | Anna Kozlova | annakozlova@cmail.carleton.ca | Carleton University | Current Member | PhD Candidate (ABD status) | History: Since 1990 | Presenter(s), Chair | Transnational post-Soviet migration: The case study of ethnic Germans from the former Soviet Union in Canada My research consists of oral history narratives of post-Soviet migrants of German descent who migrated to Manitoba, Canada post-1991 after having previously migrated to Germany. This occurred as part of a large wave of migration in which over 20,000 post-Soviet Germans moved from Germany to the province of Manitoba, Canada between the years of 1998 and 2008 as part of the Manitoba Provincial Nominee, which originally targeted Germany due to Manitoba’s ancestral connections to the country. German-speaking Mennonites fleeing the Russification in the Russian Empire were the first settlers to migrate to Manitoba when the Government of Canada signed the Privilegium of 1873, providing them with land and protection against conscription. My research examines the sense of identity and belonging of ethnic Germans from the former Soviet Union and how those notions have evolved through their migration to Germany and Canada. | Chair | Soviet Union, emigration, diaspora, ethnicity issues during the Soviet Union, minority groups, national identity | |||||||
89 | 2/25/2024 8:58:41 | Yuri Shevchuk | sy2165@columbia.edu | Columbia University | Current Member | Cinema, Television, Electronic Media | Presenter(s) | Filmmaking as Cultural Aggression. The paper discusses cinematic depopulation, a discursive strategy of appropriation of the colonized by the colonizer widely used in the movies made in the Soviet Union and in some post-Soviet states. The cinematic depopulation is a particular mode of filmic representation whereby a given ethnoscape (Ukraine) is cleansed of the national community that has always considered it to be its ancestral homeland and instead is populated by the colonizer (Russians) as if it were an integral part of the latter’s historical territory. | ||||||||||
90 | 2/25/2024 14:38:22 | Lenka Ptak | lenka.ptak@uwr.edu.pl | University of Wroclaw | Current Member | Linguistics, Language Pedagogy, Translation | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | In my paper, I would like to focus on a specific category of deverbal adjectives in English, Slovak, Czech, and Polish that convey the notion of possibility/potentiality. These adjectives are characterized by high productivity and semantic compositionality, especially in the Czech and Slovak languages. Their regular meanings are clearly expressed by specialized suffixes. Earlier analyses show that the number of Polish -alny adjectives recorded in dictionaries is smaller than that of Slovak, Czech, and English adjectives. This is why in the Polish language, these words have different equivalents. The selected adjectives are analyzed based on the Czech multilingual parallel corpus Intercorp to demonstrate the innovative possibilities or limits of the parallel corpus. | ||||||||||
91 | 2/25/2024 18:43:44 | Diana Avdeeva | dianaavdeeva@arizona.edu | University of Arizona | Current Member | MA Student | Literature: 21st Century | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | Sweet Darusia, Bitter Milk: Symbolic Meaning of Dairy Products in Solodka Darusia. Mariia Matios’s novel Solodka Darusia: Drama na Try Zhyttia (2003) presents a unique and intricate work of contemporary Ukrainian literature. Centered on the nation’s complex history of subjugation by other states, the novel also offers an in-depth insight into the native culture of the Hutsul people, native to the Carpathian Mountains. Some scholars have examined the role and functions of Ukrainian culture in the novel. However, there remain significant aspects of the narrative that deserve scholarly attention, such as the symbolism of food in Solodka Darusia. This presentation seeks to fill the gap in existing scholarship through careful interpretive analysis of the significance of milk and dairy products to the narrative. In contrast to the traditional associations of milk with nurture, life, procreation, and mother-child relationships, the role of milk in the novel seems to be completely opposite. In Solodka Darusia, milk tends to appear in connection with death, rather than life. Matronka stops lactating after the three-day torture by the Soviets and consequently loses motherly connection to Darusia, which also leads to Matronka’s suicide. Darusia does not seem to mourn her mother and only visits the grave of her father where she brings milk and other dairy products. Close reading of the novel and its key passages will illustrate how Matios inverses the traditional connotations of milk in literature and culture, how the author creates new meanings within the novel, and in what manner it influences the plot of Solodka Darusia. | Chair, Discussant | Russian Literature, Russian language, Ukrainian literature, Russian activism/anti-war movement, gender and sexuality, folklore, propaganda | |||||||
92 | 2/25/2024 23:07:26 | Marie-Alice L'Heureux | malheur@ku.edu | University of Kansas | Current Member | Geography, Urban Studies, Built Environments | I submitted a panel proposal Politics in the built environment --who decides what is built, where and how on 01/22/2024 18:12:22 and it was posted, but ASEEES never sent me a link to edit it. | Presenter(s) | So this is a notice that I am available as a DISCUSSANT on most aspects of the built and cultural landscape (architecture and urbanism). OR as presenter with a paper on the impact of Russian agressive behavior (especially since Putin) on the material culture of former Soviet states. The Politics of Commemorating the Estonian War of Freedom 1918-1920 in 2009. I am a scholar of the Estonian cultural landscape (1860-present) seen through the prism of Russian, Soviet, and post-Soviet power relationships. | Discussant | Built and cultural landscape (architecture and urbanism); I started in Russia and in my PhD branched to the Estonian cultural landscape (1860-present) seen through the prism of Russian, Soviet, and post-Soviet power relationships. I am knowledgeable about Russian urban/architectural history from Peter I to the present. | |||||||
93 | 2/26/2024 4:38:58 | Oskar Mulej | oskar.mulej@gmail.com | University of Vienna | Current Member | History: 1900-1945 | Liberation through group rights?: The national minorities in interwar Europe While serving to provide collective empowerment to marginalized groups, collective rights may simultaneously also pose a challenge to the freedom and autonomy of their individual members, as well as towards liberal political order and liberal societies at large. The intellectual processes taking place within the context of interwar national minorities activism in Europe demonstrate these ambiguity very well, as they saw proliferation of both liberal-compatible and highly illiberal approaches at accommodating group rights. The aim of this paper is to provide a detailed look into the mentioned processes, thereby discussing the possible links between group rights and liberation, as well as the complex and potentially conflicting relationship between group liberation and individual liberty. | |||||||||||
94 | 2/26/2024 15:18:34 | Michelle Verbitskaya | verbitskaya.2@osu.edu | Ohio State University | Current Member | PhD Student | Gender/LGBTQ Studies | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | "Activist approaches to gender asymmetry in Russian." My paper discusses ways femininity is marked in Russian, the gender asymmetry and sexist practices of Russian speakers, and different approaches of combating sexism/asymmetry in language through language reforms. | |||||||||
95 | 2/26/2024 18:54:29 | Benedict E. DeDominicis | bendedominicis@gmail.com | The Catholic University of Korea | Current Member | Politics, Law | "Bulgarian National Security and the Fight Against Corruption": Bulgaria’s integration into Euro-Atlantic structures has incentivized Bulgarian judicial authority and national security institutions to reorient their enforcement aims and tasks. This difficulties in this collective reorientation are evident, for example, in Bulgaria have the hight Covid-19 mortality rate in Europe and the second highest in the world. Bulgaria occupies a position on the Black Sea EU-NATO frontier amidst the escalating Moscow vs. Euro-Atlantic conflict. It has increased pressures on the capacities of the governing institutions of the sovereign Bulgarian state to implement its obligations in the so-called rules-based international order. | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | “Building Hegemony in Ukraine and Bulgaria: Alliance Integration and Fighting Corruption in Europe": This study focuses on EU conditionality regarding rule of law institution as applied to Bulgaria and Ukraine as each state has sought integration into Euro-Atlantic structures. It focuses on the normative power of appeals to liberal nationalism in both cases. Liberal nationalism refers here to the association of national self-determination through institutionalization of liberal economic and political values in state administration. Specifically, it focuses on the strategic goal of full integration into these so-called Euro-Atlantic structures. Until 2024, Bulgaria was not part the Schengen visa area. Other EU member states, namely Austria and the Netherlands, had blocked Bulgaria’s admission due to purported rule of law weaknesses, particularly corruption in relation to immigration control. This refusal constituted a discrimination in national status that has been an emotive issue in Bulgarian politics until 2024. Consensual, or the belief in consensual, institutionalization around a common set of variations that facilitate belief in the so-called rule of law is a component of US nationalistic universalism. It is the foundation of the Western led so-called rules-based international order. It constitutes a form of indirect competition within the nuclear setting. The vulnerability of US claims lies in the double standards and hypocrisy of some US allies. Supposedly these US allies that fall far short of the developed democracy ideal type are moving in the direction as so-called developing countries. The US rejoinder is that in conditions of international anarchy, the number and quality of US allies is far superior comparatively to Moscow or Beijing alliance systems. | |||||||||
96 | 2/27/2024 5:22:08 | Kristin Roth-Ey | k.roth-ey@ucl.ac.uk | University College London | Current Member | History: 1945-1990 | Presenter(s), Chair | Discussant | I have written primarily about Soviet media cultures in the Cold War, but I'd be happy to discuss (and have experience discussing) topics in Soviet and Cold War history more broadly. I have particular interests in Second-Third World connections, anthropological and sociological approaches to historical work, gender, sound studies, prosopography. | |||||||||
97 | 2/27/2024 8:42:54 | Richard Byington | byingtr@gmail.com | University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign | Current Member | MA Student | Anthropology, Cultural Studies | Empire in the Way: Controlling and Liberating the Narratives of the Russian North | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | Imperial interpretations of the degree of Finno-Ugric alterity surrounding the 1905 revolution. | ||||||||
98 | 2/27/2024 13:35:25 | Maria C. Taylor | mtaylor@cornell.edu | Cornell University | Current Member | Geography, Urban Studies, Built Environments | Chair, Discussant | urban planning, environmental history, Siberia, public health, architecture, everyday life, Soviet history | ||||||||||
99 | 2/27/2024 17:01:36 | Jiwon Jung | jiwonjung2026@u.northwestern.edu | Northwestern University | Current Member | PhD Student | Literature: 19th Century | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | I would like to organize a panel on 19th-century Russian literature or, if possible, a panel on the intersection between medicine and literature. My research paper delves into Tolstoy's War and Peace, with a particular focus on Tolstoy's perspective on medicine and psychiatry of the 19th century. I argue that although Tolstoy was skeptical of contemporary medicine and psychiatry, War and Peace offers profound insights into the human psyche—insights that were not fully recognized by his contemporaries in the field of psychiatry. | |||||||||
100 | 2/27/2024 21:31:43 | Assel Uvaliyeva | auvaliye@usc.edu | USC | Current Member | PhD Student | Literature: 20th Century | Literature about nuclear tests or catastrophes | Presenter(s) | I am writing about Rollan Seisenbayev's The Day When The World Collapsed about first nuclear test in Semipalatinsk, KazSSR. | Chair | Central Asia; Modernism |