Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies A member of the American Council of Learned Societies President Guntis Šmidchens
[email protected] Baltic studies newsletter Department of Scandinavian Studies University of Washington Box 353420 Convergences in Baltic Studies: Past, Present and Future Seattle, WA 98195-3420 PRESENT AND FUTURE CONVERGENCES President - Elect Vėjas Liulevičius, AABS President Elect, 2010-2012, Associate Professor of Vėjas Liulevičius
[email protected] History, University of Tennessee University of Tennessee Since the founding of AABS in 1968, the Baltic world has of course changed beyond all recognition, and this seems an especially apt time to take stock of the Vice Presidents many convergences and continuities so evident today. In these essays, presidents of the AABS look back to evaluate a great store of shared Conferences Aldis Purs experience. They note key continuities: the succession of generations caught up in the University of Washington work of the AABS; the challenges of “thinking Baltically” in terms of conceiving of Bal- tic Studies as a whole greater than its parts of individual histories and cultures of Baltic Professional Development peoples studied in isolation from one another; the continuing challenge of engaging spe- Daunis Auers Vėjas Liulevičius cialists in the Baltic countries themselves in the larger undertaking of Baltic Studies. University of Latvia (continued on p. 4) Publications Bradley D. Woodworth AABS Archives: Twelfth Conference on Baltic Studies University of New Haven HISTORICAL 1990 PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS BY ANDREJS PLAKANS Secretary Some decades ago among the political history of the past ticators among us. Nonetheless, Laimonas Briedis scholars who thought about soci- year, but I would suspect that it the idea of convergence as such University of British Columbia eties on a world wide scale there has not fared so well.