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June 2018 Newsnet NewsNet News of the Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies June 2018 v. 58, n. 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS 2 Prague Spring at 50 In Search of the “Perfect Collection”: Armenian Studies 8 Collections at the UC-Berkeley Library Collaborating across Centers 12 and Disciplines: Pitt’s Central Eurasia Initiative 14 Affiliate Group News 16 Publications 22 Personages Cohen-Tucker Dissertation 24 Research Fellowship Recipients 26 In Memoriam 28 Institutional Member News 31 Member Spotlight: Dan Healey Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES) 203C Bellefield Hall, 315 S. Bellefield Ave Pittsburgh, PA 15260-6424 tel.: 412-648-9911 • fax: 412-648-9815 www.aseees.org ASEEES Staff Executive Director: Lynda Park 412-648-9788, [email protected] Communications Coordinator: Mary Arnstein 412-648-9809, [email protected] NewsNet Editor & Program Coordinator: Andrew Behrendt 412-648-7403, [email protected] Membership Coordinator: Jacob Boehmer 412-648-9911, [email protected] Financial Support: Krystina Rigdon 412-648-4049, [email protected] Convention Manager: Margaret Manges 412-648-4049, [email protected] http://oskf.flu.cas.cz/1968-1989-home office, but was nonetheless lauded for shining a spotlight on the Armenian genocide. FX’s Cold War period drama The Americans (2013-) is mentioned in just about every op-ed on US-Russia relations. In the case of the Prague Spring, this tectonic shift in modes and registers of representation is overlaid by a changing attitude toward the events of 1968. German historian Jan Pauer trenchantly remarks that the Prague Spring has been consistently fetishized by the West, while in the former Czechoslovakia, perception of the nascent liberalization of 1968 has changed over time. On the one hand, the Prague Spring presaged the Velvet Revolution of 1989 and has thus become regarded, because of its failure, as “the historical end of reform communism.”1 Famously, 1989 Prague Spring at 50 witnessed a demonstration in honor of Fig1Aleš Najbrt, Jaro 68 - Podzim 89 Občanské fórum Československo the twentieth anniversary of Palach’s self-immolation, as well as the return the Prague Spring on the cusp of its reconceptualization of the Prague 50th anniversary? Spring in an international context call Daria V. Ezerova of Alexander Dubček and Václav Havel YALE UNIVERSITY for the creation of new forums and into the public eye. On the other hand, A recent conference entitled 1968- the backlash against all things Soviet approaches to the study of the events 1989: Paris-Prague offered yet another of 1968 in Czechoslovakia and their that swept across the former Eastern retrospective reconceptualization On January 16, 1969, on Wenceslas Square in Prague, twenty-year-old Jan Palach doused Bloc in the 1990s cast a shadow on the aftermath. Such is the rationale behind of the event. Not only was 1989 Prague Spring on Screen, a panel series himself in gasoline and struck a match. In his suicide note – or rather, his manifesto – he Prague Spring’s glorified legacy, and it presented as “a mere inversion of vehemently condemned the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia and the regression to became remembered as “primarily a sponsored by the ASEEES Working spring 1968” – evoking a popular Group on Cinema and Television hardline Communist propaganda and draconian censorship. Three days later, suffering severe struggle between various communist poster that showed “89” as an upside- disfiguring burns on 85% of his body, Palach died in a hospital. Forty-four years later, HBO made parties and the whole event is viewed (WGCTV), which will take place at this down mirror image of “68” (see figure year’s annual convention in Boston. a mini-series about it. as an episode in the history of an absurd above)– but the insistence on a parallel experiment –communism.”2 In other HBO’s Burning Bush (Hořící keř, 2013) indicates an ongoing shift in the representation of between the Prague Spring and Mai 68 Although primarily focusing on words, the memory of 1968 appears to demonstrated an attempt to examine cinematic representations of political monumentalized historical events. Proliferating in television and big-budget blockbusters, they have been overlaid by the chronology no longer belong exclusively to the realm of high culture, nor do these depictions aspire to the events in Czechoslovakia from liberalization and the Warsaw Pact of late and post-Communism. But a broader international perspective, invasion of Czechoslovakia, Prague maintain a somber tone. But can commercial cinema and television do the kind of memory what about now? Soviet socialism has work typically done in higher cultural registers? Are these new depictions merely opportunistic rather than just in the context of Spring on Screen strives for maximum been extinct for too long and in many Communism, and to fully inscribe interdisciplinarity in order to assess and speculative, or can they be somehow commemorative and therefore politicized? The ways, the term “post-Communism” . 3 irreverent historical inaccuracy and farcical nature of Armando Iannucci’s The Death of Stalin it in the global 1968, as it were. the legacy of 1968 across time, genres, is already obsolete. After all, there is Paired with the changing modes of and media. To this end, the WGCTV (2017) – adapted from the eponymous and equally fanciful graphic novel by Thierry Robin and now a generation of adults born after Fabien Nury – did not prevent it from sparking heated debate and igniting a scandal in Russia. representation that I mentioned earlier, is bringing together experts from a 1989/1991 who never lived under the end of post-Communism and the number of fields, including art history, Terry George’s The Promise (2016) received outstandingly bad reviews and failed at the box Communism. So how do we approach NEWSNET June 2018 2 NEWSNET June 2018 3 architecture, film theory, and Slavic of “the event” by examining the works first WGCTV initiatives to focus entirely studies. The panels are organized of Jan Švankmajer and nonconformist on non-Russian film, and organizing this in a way that will allow screen composers of the USSR. The latter series revealed several larger concerns representations of the Prague Spring will offer a unique perspective on the relevant to Slavic Studies in the 2018 ASEEES BOARD ELECTION to be discussed both synchronically events of 1968 by looking at Soviet broadest sense. Firstly, the enthusiastic and diachronically. From the Prague radical intelligentsia and its protests of response to the call for papers could We are pleased to announce the slate of candidates for the 2018 election for positions on the ASEEES Board of Spring and the Soviet invasion to the Warsaw Pact invasion. not conceal the fact that the field Directors: Vice President/President-Elect and two Members-at-Large, serves three-year terms from January 1, 2019 Husák’s normalization, to Charta 77, remains skewed toward Russian to December 31, 2021. We thank them for their willingness to stand as candidates to serve on the ASEEES Board. to the Velvet Revolution, to post- The third panel will examine Studies. As a Russianist myself, I could Candidates for Vice President / President Elect Communism, the series will examine cinema’s interaction with literature and not help but notice that although we architecture during the “normalization” Jan Kubik, Rutgers University and University College London the far-reaching repercussions of 1968. continue to speak about the centennial Graeme B. Robertson, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. At the same time, the panels will avoid period under Gustáv Husák (1969- of the Bolshevik Revolution in 2018, the 1987). Innovative approaches to a purely historiographic, chronological 50th anniversary of the Prague Spring – Candidates for Members-at-Large interart dialogues will bring together approach and will investigate the events or, for that matter, any jubilee that does Thomas Jesús Garza (Slavic Studies), University of Texas at Austin of 1968 from a broadly interdisciplinary such diverse phenomena as the not center around Russia – remains Eileen Kane (History), Connecticut College and cross-media perspective. Czech New Wave, samizdat, and panel a somewhat marginalized topic. Maria Popova (Political Science), McGill University housing to help participants unpack Secondly, the conceptualization of Magda Romanska (Theater), Emerson College A panel entitled Witnessing 1968 such complex categories as genre, individual panels laid bare the ongoing will assume the ambitious task of gender, space, and cultural resistance. necessity to study the USSR as an For more information on the election including the candidate bios, visit our website. Information on how to vote investigating how the Warsaw Pact empire, and the potential for applying will be distributed by email to current members of ASEEES by mid-June. Finally, the fourth panel will zero in invasion volatilized the relationship postcolonial approaches to Russian on the difference between Czech and between documentary and fiction film imperialism throughout history. The Slovak cinematic representations of in former Czechoslovakia and Poland. epistemic violence that resulted from the Prague Spring, and juxtapose them Tracing the unstable relationship the Soviet Union’s obscuring or erasure with Hollywood’s own take on the that “to permit a far more adequate second life and a number of specters Kinokultura, and SEANS. between reality and fiction across of ethnic and geographical differences events. This way, the panel will not only account of the mechanisms of […] across the world. Revisiting Prague In Spring 2018, she accepted a position a broad array of works – from such in the name of a universalism that consider international perspectives mass culture [one has to] grasp [it] Spring and the Warsaw Pact invasion on as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Russian classics as Karel Kachyňa’s The Ear concentrated all cultural, economic on the Warsaw Pact invasion but will not as an empty distraction or ‘mere’ the eve of its 50th anniversary can allow Studies at Davidson College.
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