NewsNet News of the Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies

March 2021 v. 61, n. 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Plots against Russia, 3 An Interview with Eliot Borenstein

Building a Network of Support 7 for Undergraduate Students of Color Interested in REEES

Uncomfortable Conversations: 11 On Preparing BIPOC University Students for Study in Russia

“You’re doing it all wrong:” 15 Course Revision and Planning in mid-career – True Confessions

19 Publications ASEEES Prizes Call for 21 Submissions

25 Institutional Member News

28 Personages

29 In Memoriam

30 Affiliate Group News

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] Deputy Director/Director of Membership: Kelly McGee 412- 238-7354, [email protected] NewsNet Editor & Program Coordinator: Trevor Erlacher 412-648-7403, [email protected] Communications Coordinator: Mary Arnstein 412-648-9809, newsnet@pitt.edu Convention Manager: Margaret Manges 412-648-4049, [email protected] Administrative Assistant: Jenn Legler 412-648-9911, [email protected] Financial Support: Roxana L. Espinoza NEWSNET March 2021 1 412-648-4049, [email protected] ASEEES RESEARCH GRANTS

ASEEES DISSERTATION RESEARCH GRANTS fund doctoral dissertation research in Eastern Europe and Eurasia in any aspect of SEEES in any discipline. Thanks to generous donations, we are offering several grants in Women and Gender Studies, LGBTQ Studies, and in Russian Studies. Applicants may be students of any nationality, in any discipline, currently enrolled in a PhD program in the US. Applicants must have successfully achieved ABD status by the start of the proposed research travel. ASEEES SUMMER DISSERTATION WRITING GRANTS will fund summer dissertation writing on any aspect of SEEES in any discipline. The writing grant program is directed at PhD students at US universities who do not intend to conduct research in the region. Applicants must be ASEEES student members, of any nationality, in any discipline, and currently enrolled in a PhD program in the US. Applicants must have achieved ABD status by the start of the proposed writing. Applicants may not accept full-time work during the funded summer nor may they receive concurrent grant funding from other sources. UNDERSTANDING MODERN RUSSIA RESEARCH GRANTS will fund graduate research related to the rule of law, governance, economy, business, and society in Russia. These grants are intended to help young scholars make connections with Russian peers and senior specialists, to promote long-term professional relations, and to foster the next generation of Russia experts. Applicants must be ASEEES student members, of any nationality, and enrolled at a US university. PhD students should be at the pre-dissertation level. Applicants must have language proficiency necessary to conduct research in Russia. GRANT AMOUNTS: UP TO $6,000 DEADLINE: APRIL 1 CONTACT: email [email protected] with questions

SUPPORT EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING

Amid the instability of life in 2020, the ASEEES Internship Grant Program helped me to maintain a sense of belonging and purpose. Not only did working in the archive help to fuel my Ryan Gourley, dissertation, but I managed to acquire hands-on skills. The staff at the museum facilitated virtual introductions with scholars in 2020 ASEEES the field and provided me with opportunities to contribute to their Internship ongoing projects. These kinds of experiences helped me to gain Program Grant confidence as a professional. Recipient None of this would have been possible without the support of PhD Candidate, ASEEES and the funders of the Internship Grant Program. Real Ethnomusicology, world training outside of academia is imperative to our future UC Berkeley success as experts in the field. My dissertation has only been enhanced by the materials that I have worked with in the archive Intern at Museum and my conversations with specialists around the world. I am very grateful to ASEEES and the Museum of Russian Culture San of Russian Francisco for providing me with this opportunity. Culture, San Francisco Thanks to generous individual support, ASEEES is able to expand the number of Internship Grants available to students. YES - I want to make more Experiential Learning Opportunities possible

TO LEARN MORE ABOUT HOW YOU CAN SUPPORT ASEEES

WWW.ASEEES.ORG/DONATE

NEWSNET March 2021 2 PLOTS AGAINST RUSSIA, An Interview with Eliot Borenstein

Excerpts from an interview with Eliot Borenstein (New York U) on his book, Plots against Russia: Conspiracy and Fantasy after Socialism (Cornell U Press, 2019), winner of the 2020 Wayne S. Vucinich Book Prize, by Diana Dukhanova (College of the Holy Cross). The interview appeared on New Books Network, April 16, 2019. Diana Dukhanova: In the preface to your book, you state the following: “This is an uncomfortable book to write. It is also the book that I’ve been preparing to write my entire adult life. Although there is no way I could have known it.” Could you talk about what you meant here and how this book represents, if I understand correctly, the culmination of your scholarly work so far? Eliot Borenstein: Sure. When I said that it was what I’d been working on my entire adult life, part of it was an acknowledgement that I have an attraction to fringe phenomena and to news of the weird in my own life. I try to develop a kind of healthy distrust of that instinct of my own when it comes to my scholarly work in Russia, because I get concerned that I’m just chasing after something very strange. But it is also the case that since I was in Moscow during the last couple of years of my graduate work or writing my dissertation in 1992, 1993, I was there at this perfect time to start watching some of the most interesting phenomena of post-Soviet culture developed, which led to my second book.

But along the way, I kept reading fringe newspapers, reading the extreme, right-wing red- brown coalition newspapers from the 1990s, buying all of these very strange pamphlets and books and so on, and then eventually following these phenomena online and of

NEWSNET March 2021 3 course reading the popular fiction. And more on the side of discourse, right? but it’s manageable to read basically all of when I was working on my last book, it. What you see as a certain set of trends, EB: Absolutely. I feel like, for the past 20 Overkill, I had included a chapter called a certain set of controversies that you years or so, I practically started every talk “Plots against Russia” about conspiracy really have to skirt around. And one of by saying that I’m not talking about real and paranoia, and was advised that the big ones is the connection between life or real people. I’m not doing surveys. it didn’t really fit the book, which was conspiracy and paranoia. And conspiracy In a sense the view that I have is not fine with me. I really didn’t think I was here being a bunch of people or entities really a bird’s eye view. I have a kind of going to be writing a conspiracy book working together to do something internet couch potato surfer view on for quite some time, largely because I in secret and that presumably is not things. That is, if you ask yourself what was concerned that I might actually be something that you would want. People view you would get of a culture simply by distorting Russian reality or even Russia’s point out that surprise birthday parties are consuming media and not necessarily by media reality, but enough time passed, conspiracies, but no one calls them that going out inside and talking to people, and sadly I no longer had that concern. because people don’t tend to be upset by that’s the material that I’m looking at. a surprise like this. I think this connection DD: You’re very cautious to avoid And I’m aware that there’s a whole world is an easy one to make because paranoia, simplistic, demonizing, or orientalizing outside of the internet, apparently, if you set aside its most extreme clinical views of Russia, which the study of these but that’s not a world that I’m actually version, is a tendency to over-interpret, topics might suggest. You describe it as the studying. to make too many connections, and to dangers of exoticising the Other. Can you assume that nothing is random. But the talk a bit more about how your caution DD: This connects to the process of birth of all this, the primal scene of all of around this issue informs your work and assembling the research for this book, and this is Richard Hofstadter’s famous essay especially your research in this book? the process that you’re using now for your next book, which started out as a blog. Can and book, On the Paranoid Style, a lecture EB: Well, for one thing, when I’m you talk a little bit about the development of he delivered on the day that Kennedy encountering a phenomenon, in this this project and how it took its present form? was shot, actually. This essay, which was case related to conspiracy, that strikes hugely influential in fact, and has gotten me as particularly bizarre or hard to EB: The blog thing—even though it’s a a real revival in the Trump age for, I think, credit, I then go back and remind myself public-facing thing, and I like to think obvious reasons, talks about how there is of something equally strange in my own that some people are reading it—is a paranoid style in politics and American native context here in the United States largely about setting up a device that politics in particular that comes around to get in the habit of reminding myself disciplines me and makes me work. rather cyclically, and how understanding that that strangeness in an extreme Because what I discovered when I started the paranoid style could help you to thought and belief in things that one the All the Russias blog was 1) that I really, understand what’s going on with the might think are impossible to believe really liked doing it; and 2) that this was politics. in are hallmarks of most cultures. I’m a format that works very well for me and trying to be very careful about that. seems really natural for me. This is an argument he made in Harper’s, And then also, to the extent that I can, originally. It is one of those arguments gauge how prominent a particular DD: Let’s get into some of the key that immediately makes sense—you phenomenon or idea is. That’s a problem terminology here. The first one, of course, don’t need to be a scholar to follow it— because I don’t really engage in that is conspiracy and conspiratorial thinking. which is exactly the sort of argument kind of empirical research and I don’t go How do you define it? You’re very careful to that scholars then immediately want looking for statistics. I don’t particularly specify that conspiratorial thought lies on to take apart, in part because it looms trust statistics in general and in Russia a spectrum. so large, and in part because, quite in particular. But I do try to keep in mind EB: Yes. That’s a really complicated rightly, a lot of scholars felt that this what’s out there that’s not strange and one because there is a large body of connection between conspiracy and conspiratorial. conspiracy scholarship, starting roughly paranoia pathologizes people who believe in conspiracy theories and DD: And you talk about your work being around the post-World war II era. It’s large,

NEWSNET March 2021 4 defines them as essentially mentally ill. enabled by the general lack of reliable I can certainly see why there’s been a information in the Soviet Union, and the hygienic impulse to separate the two, widespread assumption that you’re not but I argue that there’s no reason to being told everything. And in fact, every separate conspiracy and paranoia that time there is a revelation of some past carefully as long as you realize that you crime that is finally doled out, instead are using the word paranoid in no way of letting you know, finally, the truth, it as a medical or psychiatric diagnosis, just reminds you of these other things but in what I’m calling a mode, like irony, being kept from you. So the restriction or a point of view that you could have on information in late Soviet times or not your entire life. That distinction conspiratorial thought as a symptom of a facilitated conspiratorial thought. Then between a long-term paranoia and what complete conspiratorial worldview, that with Glasnost, with the opening up of the I call the paranoid subject position is the in fact we all adopt conspiratorial modes flood gates, that did a couple of things: it theoretical contribution that I’m hoping and drop them back and forth over reinforced the idea that this information other scholars of conspiracy end up the course of our day. And that’s what is being held from you, and it also made noticing. makes it possible for some to believe in actual conspiratorial tracts, novels, and conspiracy in a much more committed films available for mass consumption. DD: Could you say a little bit more about By the time you get to the post-Soviet the paranoid subject? and sustainable fashion. But again, I think one of the mistakes that intellectuals era, you have these longstanding habits EB: I start off, first of all, with the notion make—and people talk about this a of conspiratorial thought, but you have that our entire worlds are constructed by lot lately, particularly with regard to it in an informational ecosystem that is narrative. It makes psychological sense politics—is thinking of everything in almost the opposite of the one you had to be constantly constructing a narrative terms of rationality. And then when you in late Soviet times, and much more because narrative is about taking a bunch see a breakdown of rational explanation, like the informational ecosystem that of things that might not seem connected you show how something is not working. facilitates conspiracy here in the United and seeing how they’re connected so But this is really a matter of affect, States. There’s so much information out that everything is part of one big story. emotion, and habits of thought. And the there, so many competing sources and Paranoia certainly fits in with that quite fact that you can be conspiratorial for a narratives, that each one relativizes the well. When I’m talking about a paranoid little while and not be conspiratorial right other and makes it possible to pick and subject position of conspiracy, I argue afterward just seems to me very human choose or assume that they’re all wrong. that in fact, it is fiction about paranoia and and discursive. DD: That feeds into Russia’s perceived stories about conspiracy that condition DD: What is it about post-Soviet Russia role of a world leader on the vanguard of us to be able to imagine conspiracy as traditional values. something that’s really possible. So the that makes the conspiratorial subject very fact that you can watch an hour of, position one that is so often taken up? EB: That is a quite recent one, but say, The X-Files and for the course of that EB: That is a great question. And I would it’s a variation on a longstanding hour suspend disbelief and live in a kind of say that it’s part of a longer process that conspiratorial nationalist trope that sees epistemological mindset in which aliens has made Russia and the Soviet Union Russia as surrounded by enemies that and conspiracies are possible, and then, of the past several decades a great want to destroy it. The traditional values in the next hour, you’ll watch something hope for conspiracy theory. Again, I’m thing works on multiple levels. For one, else that’s not possible suggests that we saying that not to suggest that other it can actually serve as a way for Russia are always able to adopt a conspiratorial places are not; certainly, the United to find allies in the world, but it can also mindset when it’s necessary or when States is a great breeding ground of justify why Russia should reasonably it’s useful or handy, and then dispose conspiracy theory. But I’m coming out perceive of itself as a target, and why of it a minute later. There’s no need to of different sources and for different people hate Russia so much. diagnose someone as paranoid. There’s reasons, at least initially. In the post DD: Would you say that the rise and no need to see every manifestation of Stalin era, conspiratorial thought was conspiratorial thinking in Putin’s third

NEWSNET March 2021 5 term is connected to this desire to reinforce well-established in the literature on much to do with each other. One is Russia as a threat? anti-Semitism. It is particularly Jews, as liberalism as economic policy, which boundary-crossing people, connected is the Washington consensus or neo- EB: I think that the Putin regime’s use with the institutions of modernity that liberalism, Thatcher and Reagan, and of conspiratorial discourse is related to make them a great target for this kind it’s not a liberalism about procedural that. It’s remarkable how much of this of conspiratorial narrative, which is democracy or equality of rights. That stuff has gone from margin to center in particularly well and stupidly embodied liberalism also appears at the same the past several years. It was happening in The Protocols, which is just so badly time, but there’s no reason to expect any slowly over the first decade of the 21st written, it’s just lots of fun if it weren’t for average or even well-educated person century, but really kicked into high gear the fact that it was so destructive. The who’s being exposed to both these things with Putin’s reelection. The embracing master text of conspiracy for the 20th at the same time to be able to distinguish of a conspiratorial worldview is hugely century and beyond is The Protocols. The between the two. And neither of them useful politically. For years they had been result is that structurally, if a conspiracy is popular. Economic liberalism led to talking about the need for a national idea. has an international enemy, even if it’s the destitution of a huge portion of the If you take together traditional values, not named the Jews, it is homologous to population. And at the same time, you the notion that Russia is under attack the role that Jews played in The Protocols. suddenly have this attention being paid from all sides—that’s not an idea, but it to LGBT people, which a lot of people is enough. Those things are enough of a DD: I wanted to transition to the idea wouldn’t even think of as something to national story to be a unifying fantasy, or of “gender ideology” featuring so be concerned about, and this change in at least I think that’s what the regime is prominently in conspiracy thinking. Can values really disturbs people. So you end hoping, and it does seem to work fairly you talk a bit about why homosexuality up with this kind of liberal bogeyman well. is considered an attack Russian culture that is bad on just about every front. DD: Thinking about the roots of a and values, and how it’s used to frame this Everything about the 1990s becomes lot of these conspiracies and key inimical relationship with the West? associated with liberalism and whatever liberalism means. And one of the things adversaries, anti-Semitism plays a large EB: I mean, the short answer is actually that Putin and people around him did role, particularly the source text of The now homosexuality and Judaism for a lot extremely successfully was use the 1990s Protocols of the Elders of Zion. But it goes of the conspiratorial world are the same as a reminder of how bad things can get back much further. Could you talk a little thing. In terms of structural homologies, and how bad things will be if you don’t bit about the role that anti-Semitism plays, the LGBT people are in a sense the new let the leaders do what they’re doing, as well as its limitations, in understanding Jews, the new internal enemies. Russian conspiratorial thinkers? because the liberals will come back and DD: In terms of the idea that America is ruin our culture and economy. […] EB: Anti-Semitism is foundational trying to make Russia gay, there’s also this to a lot of Western conspiratorial critique of liberalism, that over in America Listen to the full interview to hear thought, going back in particular to The and the West, they have this liberal Borenstein and Dukhanova discuss Protocols, which is a wonderful Russian approach to politics that then creates conspiratorial thinking and the plagiarized contribution to the world of these really harmful social trends. Can you weaponization of information in the conspiratorial lore. But there are obvious talk a little bit more about this critique or conflict in Ukraine, the zombification reasons why Jews would be a group that fear of liberalism and particularly how it’s metaphor, the downing of Malaysian would be particularly useful for this kind used by the current administration? Airlines Flight 17, and Donald Trump and of narrative. They are a group of people the Mueller Report. who can look sort of like you, but not EB: The fate of liberalism in Russia has entirely like you; a state within a state; a some parallels with what’s happened group of people who won’t eat with you and been happening with liberalism in Diana Dukhanova is a Visiting Assistant and won’t eat the same foods as you; the United States and Western Europe. professor of Russian at College of the Holy but are everywhere and therefore don’t As we know, liberal can mean at least Cross. Eliot Borenstein is Professor of Russian have local loyalties. All of this is really two things that don’t have to have very and Slavic Studies at New York U.

NEWSNET March 2021 6 BUILDING A NETWORK OF SUPPORT for Undergraduate Students of Color Interested in REEES

Amarilis Lugo de Fabritz (Howard U), Colleen Lucey (U of Arizona), Krista Goff (U of Miami), Kelly Knickmeier Cummings (Howard U) I. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion...Where to Start? - Amarilis Lugo de Fabritz In my 25 years in the field – including my undergraduate years – I have only met two other Puerto Ricans with advanced degrees in any area of Slavic Studies. They specialized in history and social sciences, however. This – and I would like to be proven wrong – makes me the oldest Puerto Rican currently employed in the field of Russian language and literature. I share this experience with a lot of scholars of color in my generation. We have become quite used to always being the only one of our population at any domestic or international conference. At the 2018 ASEEES convention, I noticed that I was not alone in wanting to find fellow colleagues devoted to diversity, equity, and inclusion. I met Nicholas Detsch, from the U.S. Russia Foundation, who told me that the Foundation wanted to support projects expanding Russian Studies among undergraduates. I also met Colleen Lucey from U of Arizona. She told me about her classroom in Tucson where a diverse group of students were taking Russian. After some deep thought, I decided I wanted to bring these UA and Howard undergraduates together to explore the different opportunities they could have in the field. While I have enjoyed amazing mentorship and support from members in the field, I wanted to prevent another generation of students from having to wait decades to meet people that look like them in academia.

NEWSNET March 2021 7 The project, “Building a More Inclusive students can participate in the from faculty and administrators across Future: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion program. We allowed beginning the U.S. We therefore held a meeting in Russian, East European and Eurasian students to participate, as long as they with Howard alumni, faculty from MSIs, Studies,” which is described in detail showed up and put in the effort. Last, representatives from several Title VI below, is an innovative undergraduate but not least, lots of faculty are willing National Resource Centers, and a few mentorship program designed to tackle to help mentor these students if you others at Howard U in February 2020 this issue. Generously funded through ask. And ask we did. We ended up with to review best practices, the state of a grant from the U.S. Russia Foundation, over seventy undergraduates from the field, and how we could coordinate this initiative has been composed of eight universities participating in both across campuses. We had no idea three parts. In October 2019 students programs. that a month later we would rapidly from the U of Arizona, U of Puerto transition to fully online teaching in Rico, and Howard U participated in a We also saw some of the disturbing the wake of Covid-19, but the meeting two-day professional and academic national trends reflected in the group helped set the groundwork for a major workshop in Washington, D.C. They that worked with us. A considerable outreach campaign to bring students visited institutions that engage with number of the faculty members that of color to REEES through a mentorship Russian, East European, and Eurasian volunteered (including myself and program, a support network, and a Studies (REEES) beyond academia, a fellow Co-PI) are not tenure-track comprehensive project that included a learned about different types offaculty. Hopefully the success of a research stipend. professional graduate programs, and program like this will indicate to our listened to more traditional research institutions the vitality and importance At the beginning of the Fall 2020 presentations. of REEES, and that our respective semester, when it became clear that in- disciplines are alive, attracting new person meetings would not be possible In February 2020 we had an cohorts of students, and worth for some time, the four of us reached administrative conference where investing time, energy, and funds to out to a number of faculty at MSIs and faculty and administrators continue growing. institutions with large populations of contemplated how to innovate underrepresented students to help outreach programs for our field.Best of all, though, were the final recruit a cohort of undergraduates Summer 2020 was supposed to end projects: the performance on the who would take part in two concurrent with us traveling to Russia with a day of the Cybersecurity Simulation digital programs: 1) “Undergraduate group of students and administrators and the digital research projects Think Tank: Advancing Diversity, Equity, from the three participating Minority- first presented at ASEEES that will and Inclusion in REEES”; and 2) “U.S. – Serving Institutions (MSIs). soon be on display on the Howard U Russia Cybersecurity Simulation with Russian Minor homepage. With these Ambassador Bonnie Jenkins.” Thanks Then the pandemic hit, and we successes in mind, I feel confident that to the hard work of the following unfortunately had to cancel our trip this generation will not be alone. faculty, our team was able to recruit to Russia; however, we found new 33 students for the Think Tank and possibilities in virtual programming. II. Project Design and Learning 38 for the Cybersecurity Simulation: We developed two initiatives, a Outcomes – Colleen Lucey and Kelly Johanna Bockman (George Mason U), Cybersecurity Simulation and a Think Knickmeier Cummings Choi Chatterjee and Timothy Paynich Tank, where students worked in teams “The whole Think Tank group felt more (Cal State LA), Natalie McCauley (U with academic mentors to produce like a community and not just peers of Richmond), Sunnie Rucker-Chang research projects based on the and faculty working together.” –Jessica (U of Cincinnati), Rachel Stauffer students’ interests. We found out a few Diez, undergraduate from U of Miami (Virginia Tech, James Madison U), and important details. First, there are a lot After the October 2019 student Julia Vaingurt (U of Illinois, Chicago). more students of diverse backgrounds workshop at Howard U, we realized Together with students from Howard interested in REEES than we thought. that coordinating our efforts to bring U, U of Miami, and U of Arizona this Second, reaching out to them should more undergraduate students from diverse undergraduate cohort came not promote traditional exclusionist underrepresented backgrounds to together with the tremendous help and elitist practices such as requiring REEES would require broader support of the above faculty. Zachary Kelly, three or four years of Russian before

NEWSNET March 2021 8 Assistant Director of Berkeley’s now and in the future. “ASEEES was a were able to study podcasting with Institute of Slavic, East European, and unique experience that allowed me to Sean Guillory, host of the SRB Podcast. Eurasian Studies, has likewise offered see the range of possibilities that are Student feedback illustrated that invaluable support over the years and available to me in the future,” reflected such projects were one of the most continues to assist with outreach and Marilyn Robles Valenzuela, a freshman profound aspects of the program. programming. at U of Arizona. “I learned how to Aissa Dearing, an undergraduate from adapt to the circumstances and work Howard U, reflected, “I gained more Students who took part in the as a team with my group members,” skills in writing concisely, presenting Think Tank were grouped together she explained. The Think Tank also online, and crafting a podcast episode! based on similar interests and over successfully brought students together I also was able to practice converting a two-month period prepared a with mentors who are specialists in their difficult climate-related biological research presentation for the ASEEES topics of interest. Damian Cabrera, an concepts into a presentation that was Convention. To help guide their undergraduate at U of Illinois-Chicago, easy to understand.” research and acclimate them to the reflected that “one of my favorite field, a generous group of scholars parts of this program was being able III. Lessons Learned and Next Steps emerged to assist the undergraduates to connect with all sorts of fellow – Krista Goff and Colleen Lucey in their preparation for ASEEES (see students and mentors/professors from As an undergraduate student- list of faculty mentors below). Without all over the country, spanning many centered program that incorporated their efforts and countless hours of different ethnicities. This allowed me research projects and mentorship, the work with students, the project could to gain new perspectives through Think Tank could become a regular not have gotten off the ground and collaboration.” occurrence at the ASEEES Convention we are immensely grateful for their and other conferences as well. It dedication. The incredible support Working together with their groups, brought together a diverse cohort of from ASEEES staff, particularly Lynda students integrated feedback from students from across the country and Park, made it possible for this first their mentors and created a final helped them connect not only with cohort of undergraduates to take part digital humanities project. These other undergraduates but also with in the convention; not only did ASEEES projects will be posted on the Howard expert mentors, graduate program staff accommodate a quick turnaround U website in March 2021. The wide representatives, REEES professionals organizing panels, they also offered a range of presentation topics—from who provided career advice, and warm welcome to this new generation the African American experience in ASEEES members who attended their of REEES scholars. the USSR, to LGBTQ+ literary works, to conference panels. It was important to climate change in Russia—showcase Individual mentorship combined with us that we foster student autonomy, the variety of interests and expertise the experience of taking part in a be flexible, and provide guidance the students gained. In addition to national conference offered students and resources—including student developing research skills, students stipends—to empower students a unique opportunity to explore the who wanted to complete podcast participating in this inaugural Think disciplines of REEES, and hopefully episodes based on their research Tank initiative. As De’Vonte Tinsley, inspired them to continue their studies

NEWSNET March 2021 9 an undergraduate at Virginia Tech participating students. Lynd (U of California Berkeley), Marintha explained, “During the course of Miles (George Mason U), Aaron Retish our research I learned the value of In planning the project, we sought (Wayne State U), Sunnie Rucker-Chang choosing the right topic, and knowing input from students, scholars, (U of Cincinnati), Valerie Sperling (Clark the limits of your skills and funding, and professionals of color in the University), Anika Walke (Washington U in which unfortunately can stop you field regarding what practicesSt. Louis), Emily Wang (U of Notre Dame). from doing certain types of research. I would improve the retention of also learned that it was okay to change underrepresented students in our direction in your research, as it happens disciplines. They consistently pointed B. Amarilis Lugo de Fabritz, PhD, is a Master Instructor of Russian at Howard U. to researchers fairly frequently.” to the need not only for more and better mentoring and networking Colleen Lucey, PhD, is Assistant Professor With the support of the U.S. Russia opportunities for undergraduates, but of Russian and Slavic Studies at the U of Foundation, we will organize another a reassessment of how we think about Arizona. Cybersecurity Simulation and Think programming, curricula, study abroad Tank in 2021. We plan to recruit preparation, access to resources, K-12 Krista Goff, PhD, is Assistant Professor of students from more universities, outreach, and much more. While Russian and Soviet History at the U of including undergraduates from considerable efforts are neededMiami. smaller programs who join not as to make REEES a more equitable, Kelly Knickmeier Cummings, PhD, is a part of an institutional cohort but diverse, and inclusive space, ongoing Lecturer in Russian at Howard U. independently to gain fellowship initiatives like this one can help solidify opportunities outside their home our field’s commitment to promoting institution. We also hope to build on and supporting new generations last year’s successes by maintaining of scholars and a lasting sense of community among professionals as undergraduates, graduate students, they embark on and career and academic mentors. their academic and Ultimately, we want to foster more professional careers in pathways between the Think Tank and REEES. further studies in REEES. We would like to express None of this would be possible if not profound gratitude to for the generous partnerships that the the following mentors program has benefitted from thus far. who worked with and Going forward, we would like to see supported this cohort of this initiative grow and intersect with undergraduates: Naomi Caffee (Reed College), CALL FOR SELF-NOMINATIONS other efforts to generate and support Joy Gleason Carew (U FOR 2021 ASEEES BOARD diverse cohorts of students in REEES. of Louisville), Emily CANDIDACY Building a robust network that will help Couch (Independent all students feel welcome, less isolated, Researcher), Leah We are accepting self-nominations and excited about the future of this Feldman (U of Chicago), field is essential for the continuation Thomas Garza (U for the 2021 ASEEES Board candidacy. of our disciplines. If you are interested of Texas at Austin), in participating in the Think Tank as a Sean Guillory (U of Please email at [email protected] with mentor, institutional sponsor, or as an Pittsburgh), Erik Herron questions or click through for more (West Virginia U), Julie undergraduate scholar, please email information. Krista Goff ([email protected]) or click Hessler (U of Oregon), here. We need DH and subject-matter Yvonne Howell (U of advisors for new student projects this Richmond), Kimberly St. Julian-Varnon (U of Nomination Deadline: year, but also professional mentors Pennsylvania), Hilary willing to offer career guidance to April 15

NEWSNET March 2021 10 UNCOMFORTABLE CONVERSATIONS: On Preparing BIPOC University Students for Study in Russia

THOMAS JESÚS GARZA, UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN Going West…Or East Study abroad during the undergraduate experience has been described as crucial to the development of intercultural competence (Maharaja 2018), a boost to creative thinking (Lee, Therrialt, & Linderholm, 2012), and a transformative experience (Stone 2014; Garza 2021). However, 2018-19 data from the Institute of International Education (IIE) indicate that of the 347,099 US students who participated in study abroad programs, only 31% identified as nonwhite and, as the Association of International Educators (NAFSA) remarks, “Although the diversity of study abroad participation has increased in recent years, minority students are still greatly underrepresented in study abroad programs” (NAFSA, n.d.). Abraham (2018) supports this position, citing cost and family situations as the primary reasons for lack of participation and, consequently, lack of diversity in US study abroad programs. One solution to the issue of access to the benefits of study abroad is to create new or redesign existing programs that are more affordable and inclusive. Federally funded programs such as the National Security Education Program for Youth and the Critical Languages Scholarship Program for university-level students have been effective in creating access to study abroad for students at Tribal, HBCU’s, Hispanic and Two-Year Colleges, and other learner populations that have been historically

NEWSNET March 2021 11 underrepresented in study abroad. be branded and advertised as such, able to draw upon the expertise and The Gilman International Scholarship showing potential participants that experience of BIPOC alumni of these Program, which provides funding students like themselves have had programs to help mentor and advise to students with limited financial successful experiences. new students of color in our programs. resources, has awarded more than First-hand accounts of experiences 65 percent of its grants to nonwhite (Un)Comfortable Conversations and challenges, both positive and students. Programs such as these Among many of the uncomfortable negative, during study abroad are provide access to more students, but conversations taking place in the wake invaluable in dispelling anxieties and such opportunities are relatively few of the Black Lives Matter movement doubts some BIPOC students may and cost still remains the primary and the related revelations of the have about programs in Russia. reason given by students of color extent and depth of institutional It is at this early stage of preparation against studying abroad. racism in the US, preparation of BIPOC students to undertake for study abroad that difficult In spite of the evident inequities in study abroad demands a focused conversations must be initiated. While study abroad, the inherent dispari- engagement of university personnel most BIPOC students are already ties in access to and success in such with students of color that involves aware that racism and stereotypes programs should not prevent BIPOC a level of candor and truthfulness know no geopolitical boundaries, (Black, Indigenous, and People of not usually sustained in orientation some may not be prepared for the Color) students from enjoying the ad- programs. Pre-departure preparation region-specific prejudices of post- vantages of study abroad, nor should of students going abroad has long Soviet communities. As with any it deprive them of the spontaneous been a part of university programs, orientation aimed at combatting interaction and authentic contact but only recently have issues of racial aggressive forms of culture shock, with the language and culture that and ethnic identity been brought to establishing expectations of behaviors “culminates in a transformative learn- the fore in the scholarship (Goldstein and/or practices goes far in helping ing experience” (Garza 2021, 91). 2017). The usual advising process students cope with them if and when Not only should funders continue to for white students who have prior encountered. Thus, BIPOC students make more study abroad programs travel experience to white-dominant will benefit from a candid discussion more financially accessible to low- regions is not the same for BIPOC about white Russia’s contemporary er-income students, educators must students, many of whom have attitudes towards Asians, people from also guard against further isolating already dealt with racist micro- and the Caucasus, and indigenous peoples underrepresented populations by macro-aggressions domestically. For of Siberia, among others. This context making BIPOC participation and suc- inclusive programs, advising and helps to prepare them to understand cess in study abroad an accepted and orientation are often enhanced by why they might find themselves as expected part of their undergraduate peer counseling and mentoring, if the object of a racist comment or act, experience. Laying the groundwork possible, by BIPOC faculty and/or staff. including public harassment. One for successful participation of BIPOC As our institutions develop records key takeaway from this discussion is students in study abroad programs in of successful, diverse, representative for BIPOC students who are victims Russia begins with recruitment and cohorts of students abroad, we will be of a racist act: Remember, it’s not retention. Inclusive programs must your fault. Once students are able

NEWSNET March 2021 12 to decouple their identity from the to foster an ecology of equity and which should be part of any group assault, it becomes more possible for inclusivity for all students in class. studying abroad, is essential for BIPOC them to process the incident and not Nonetheless, all programs abroad students. Not only is it advisable to focus blame on the individual(s) who should have a “safety net” in place for have a companion for safety in a new committed the offence. As traumatic BIPOC students who are faced with environment, it is also a practice that and offensive as the event is at the unexpected difficulties. This support aids in building camaraderie and moment, non-engagement is the best system might be a dedicated faculty good will among the members of the response. That does not mean that member at the institution abroad student cohort. Empirical evidence episode should be forgotten or pushed who had worked with program and also shows that BIPOC students, aside; often writing about the incident US students of color before, and a especially women, are more likely can help students work through their US contact for matters that need to avoid racist confrontations when responses in a productive way. resolution outside of the site abroad. with a partner (Willis 2015, 217). In addition to preparing BIPOC We’re Not in Kansas Anymore It is important to acknowledge to BIPOC students for the study abroad Upon arrival in Russia, all participants students that racist aggressions in the experience in Russia, program in the program should adhere to the study abroad context are different group leaders accompanying the “buddy system,” ensuring that no from those that occur domestically, group also need to be made aware person goes out unaccompanied by not only in substance, but also in of the sociocultural particulars of at least one other student. This policy, effect. That is to say, for example, the the regional destination, as well as of the kinds of stereotyping and related racial aggressions that can occur. Their intervention will also be 2021 ASEEES Initiative for Diversity and Inclusion critical within the group, as incidents of racial/ethnic aggression are not We invite our BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) colleagues to unique to the environment abroad. participate in a two-year (2021-2022) pilot program, the ASEEES Initiative for Pre-departure role-playing activities Diversity and Inclusion. ASEEES recognizes that BIPOC scholars and students of racial micro-aggressions can help in our field have often experienced isolation and marginalization. The aim of participants to focus on potential this initiative is for ASEES to provide structural support to create a community situations and better understand of BIPOC students, scholars, and professionals in the US so that they can their respective roles in ameliorating network, share their experiences and mentor each other. such occurrences. We are pleased to offer complimentary two-year memberships to eligible BIPOC Group leaders should also work students, scholars, and professionals who are working on topics in Eastern closely with their partner institutions Europe, Russia, and Eurasia in or outside the academy or those who have an to ensure the creation of a safe MA or PhD in the field but are working in unrelated areas or disciplines. Previous and supportive ecology for all ASEEES members whose membership has lapsed are especially welcome to students once in country. Even in rejoin the Association at no cost in 2021 & 2022. 2020 many post-Soviet universities As part of the aim to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion in our field are ill-equipped, institutionally and provide professional benefits and support for our BIPOC members, or personally, to accommodate we request that those participating in this initiative be willing individual differences within a group to engage with other BIPOC students and colleagues in a of students. Simply meeting with local designated online networking platform. administrative and instructional staff prior to the group’s arrival to discuss TO LEARN MORE the expectation of a prejudice-free ASEEES thanks Douglas Smith and Stephanie Ellis-Smith for their learning space can go a long way generous gift to fund this initiative.

NEWSNET March 2021 13 overt use of racial epithets in public can be “innocent, investigatory, Studies, and Director of the Texas Language places is more commonplace in parts or prejudicial” (234). In cases of Center at the University of Texas at Austin, of the post-Soviet lands; but further, prejudicial treatment, BIPOC students where he has received more than a dozen BIPOC students do not have access to may find a simple act, such as standing teaching awards during his 30-year tenure the same kinds of support from family, and waiting for the next metro train, there. He has completed a manuscript on friends, even institutions while abroad. to be the trigger for an act of racial filmic and cultural portraits of machismo in Thus the impact of these micro- and aggression. Students of color might contemporary Russian and Mexican cultures and is now working on a cultural portrait of macro-aggressions might be more benefit from the practice of “process Vladimir Vysotsky in the Americas. intense and sustained than if they had journaling,” the regular recording in occurred in the home institution. writing of their experiences – good, bad, and ugly – during their program. Finally, the usual phenomenon of Abraham, Aliyah. “Lack of Diversity in Studying This practice not only serves the Abroad.” Diverse Issues in Higher Education. “culture shock” that is expected immediate purpose of creating a 2018. Accessed January 26. 2021. https:// for many students travelling and diverseeducation.com/article/134254/. sense of clarity to the day’s events, but studying abroad can be exacerbated it also ameliorates the pain of those Garza, Thomas Jesús. 2021. “Cultural by the occurrence of racial/ethnic Transformation: Virtual Communities, events borne out of racial prejudice aggressions. For BIPOC students Autonomous Contact, and Intercultural and ignorance. It will further serve as Competence.” In Transformative Language abroad, studying and interacting in Learning and Teaching, edited by Betty Lou Leaver, a record of survival and excellence for a different language, living with new Dan E. Davidson, and Christine Campbell, 89–97. future BIPOC students who want to Cambridge: Cambridge University PRESS. people in a different environment, make the venture to the post-Soviet and eating new foods while having Goldoni, Federica. 2015. “Race, Ethnicity Class and lands, ensuring that our programs Identity: Implications for Study Abroad.” Journal of an identity that marks you as different abroad continue to be inclusive and Language, Identity, and Education, 16:5, 328-341. at best, inferior at worst, creates a equitable for all of our students. Goldstein, Susan B. 2017. “Teaching a Psychology- unique strain. Every minute of every Based Study Abroad Pre-Departure Course.” day, BIPOC students are not only Thomas Jesús Garza (Ed.D. Harvard Psychology learning and Teaching, 16:3, 404-424. “foreign” students in Russia; they are University) is UT Regents’ and University IIE (Institute of International Education). 2020. “different.” And the response to that Distinguished Teaching Associate Professor ‘Open Doors: Report on International Educational in the Department of Slavic and Eurasian Exchange.” Accessed February 2, 2021. https:// difference, in Goldoni’s (2017) words, opendoorsdata.org. Lee, Christine S., David J. Therriault, and Tracy Linderholm. 2012. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 26, 768-778. Postdoctoral Maharaja, Gita. 2018. “The Impact of Study Abroad on College Students’ Intercultural Competence Fellowships in Social and Personal Development.” International Research and Review: Journal of Phi Beta Delta Honor Society Science of Russia for International Scholars, 7:2, 18-41. at the NAFSA. n.d. “Trends in US Study Abroad.” Accessed January 28, 2021. https://www.nafsa.org/policy- University of and-advocacy/policy-resources/trends-us-study- abroad/.

Wisconsin-Madison Stone, Garrett A. 2014. “Study Abroad as Deadline to apply: March 31, 2021 a Transformative Experience: Measuring Transformative Learning Phases and Outcomes.” Master’s Thesis, Brigham Young University. Provo, UT.

Willis, Tasha Y. 2015. “’And Still We Rise…’” Microaggressions and Intersectionality in the Study Abroad Experiences of Black Women.” Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad, 26, 209-230.

NEWSNET March 2021 14 “YOU’RE DOING IT ALL WRONG” COURSE REVISION AND PLANNING IN MID-CAREER – TRUE CONFESSIONS

CHRISTIAN RAFFENSPERGER, WITTENBERG UNIVERSITY My scholarly goal since finishing my dissertation in 2006 has been to reshape how medieval Eastern Europe, specifically Rus’, is perceived in scholarship. Whether it was my grandiosely titled first book, Reimagining Europe, or more recent articles that question the place of Rus’ in medieval European studies, I have been attempting to shift the perceptions of my peers in the academic world, asking them to reshape their own images of either the Slavic or medieval world to include a more nuanced and interconnected Rus’.1 However, despite that lofty scholarly goal, my daily life as an academic is much more consumed with teaching my undergraduate students than shifting the attitudes of the current generation(s) of scholars. When I obtained my first tenure-track position at Wittenberg University in Springfield, OH, in 2007, I inherited a bipartite Russian history survey with a clean break at 1917. As a medievalist, and a young and eager one at that, I asked and received permission to reshape the class. Working within the existing framework of a bipartite class, I shifted the break to 1796 to try and give more space to the traditional ‘premodern’ period in Russia, and not emphasize the dominance of the Soviet Union in Russian history by making it the entirety of one semester. As a new faculty member, this was considered to be something normal to do. My colleagues in the History Department were immensely supportive of me putting my own stamp on the classes that my predecessor had taught for decades, as they would now be my classes for decades as well. It was also easier for me because I was writing my lectures

NEWSNET March 2021 15 from scratch at the same time. Of multiple lecture notes, I am ashamed it was clearly integrated into the course, when I say from scratch, I mean to say, still have “add more here” in worldview of the people at the time. that I was cribbing items from my oral bold at the top. Those materials were I implore my colleagues to consider exam preparation at the University of a minimum of eight years out from the what role and impact Rus’, Rusian Chicago with Richard Hellie and Sheila most recent scholarship, more likely women, trade connections, etc. might Fitzpatrick from earlier in the decade. much more than that given that I had have on their own research and work. I In so doing, I was not just putting in written the lectures from orals notes also urge them, perhaps self-servingly my views about Rus’, I was putting of a decade before, based on material to use work like Portraits of Medieval in Hellie’s views about Muscovy and from books and articles published long Eastern Europe in their classrooms, to Imperial Russia, and Fitzpatrick’s before that. Of course, I had added a introduce their students to a broader views about the Soviet Union.2 This few new details, items that I learned medieval Europe than perhaps they, or new bipartite division was a success, from my friends typically, and their their instructors, are used to. All of this to my mind, as both halves regularly ongoing research. But by and large, despite the fact that I still have lectures filled, it supported the university’s the place that I improved, changed, that include “add more here” and that Russian Studies Program, and it met and kept current in the classroom may have been dated when I wrote my requirement of having more was in the area on which I was doing them, much less today. I am certainly premodern content in the classroom. research. This was fine, for me anyway, not practicing what I preach. but the students that I was educating When I was tenured and took my were taking all three classes (some of I am preparing to head into another first sabbatical, I had the chance them at least), and so the ones taking sabbatical and reading widely in to take a mental break, work on Medieval Russia were learning a much preparation for my plan of research new publications, and spend time more current idea of history than those projects. And while I conceive of myself discussing academic work with taking Imperial Russia or Soviet Russia. as a medievalist and scholar, I am still scholars at the Harvard Ukrainian In fact, the ones most left out, I think, the “Eurasian” historian at Wittenberg Research Institute.3 Returning to were the ones taking and have a responsibility to educate Wittenberg in the fall, I endeavored Imperial Russia.5 again to reshape my courses, and created a tripartite division consisting Which leads me back Scholar Program of a Medieval Russian, Imperial Russian, to my scholarship once and Soviet Russian history section, over again. I have moved The Fulbright U.S. Scholar a three semester rotation. Again, both away from presenting award competition opens the History Department and Russian regularly at ASEEES February 2021 Studies Program (now rebranded and have become as the Russian and Central Eurasian more comfortable Studies Program) were supportive. The at the International main change that I made was in the Medieval Congress first segment, my area of focus, where I at Kalamazoo or incorporated more of my own research Leeds, or even the and expanded the piece on medieval Medieval Academy Rus’. Eventually, I added to this a short of America. But at book of my own that I wrote for a broad all of those venues, I readership and an edited collection talk about medieval that I prepared with Donald Ostrowski, Eastern Europe and For application which was designed for classroom how it needs to be information, visit 4 The Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program is awards.cies.org use. The content of the segments on integrated into the sponsored by the U.S. Department of State with funding provided by the U.S. Government and administered by the Imperial Russia and Soviet Russia? Well, worldview of the Institute of International Education. they stayed mostly the same – in fact, scholars present, as eca.state.gov/fulbright

NEWSNET March 2021 16 my students to the best of my ability – I know that for many of us time is at on all the fields and classes that I teach. a premium. We have families, friends, So, while I have been housebound jobs, research agendas, hobbies, and due to the pandemic, I have added much more. And despite the fact that I to my reading books from my shelves have those things too, and despite the about Muscovy, the Mongols, Poland, fact that I really do not want to spend Lithuania, etc. in periods not my own. precious time in other ways – I think What I have found, not surprisingly, is that I need to. I have come to believe that I am doing it (my classes) all wrong. – everyone does this, my students will that updating my teaching regularly The question then remains to me; never know the difference, no one will and learning new material will make what to do about it? When I was just care if I do this, and my university will me a better scholar as well as increasing starting out as a new faculty member, not pay me more or less to improve or the information and content that I can I was in a position where I had to change my classes in any way. I admit bring to my students in the classroom. write the vast majority of my lectures that I lived with that for a bit, but I So, I call on all of you who are still and class materials from scratch – not still felt uncomfortable with it and I teaching from grad school notes to having had a great deal of teaching think that instead of just living with take time to read something new and experience in graduate school. This the way things are (even though my try and incorporate it into your classes was a hardship at the time, but it was rationalizations may all be correct), I – there are a lot of us out there, I know. also a boon to my own learning and need to make some changes. And, I admit, perhaps by doing this, my classes. Now that was over thirteen I will have a little more validity in my years ago, and many of those materials This leaves me with a decision, and own calls for scholars to integrate Rus’ are out of date. I am at a position in ideally a plan to be made. I need to into their classes – whether relative to my career where I want to devote the devote some portion of my time over the medieval or to the Slavic world. time allotted for academic work to my a summer, or during my sabbatical Christian Raffensperger is Associate own research and publications. Which to reading something, or more likely somethings, about periods on which Professor of History and Director of the Pre- leaves me with a conundrum of how to Modern and Ancient World Studies Program I teach, but do not actively research. fix my classes, and be true to my own at Wittenberg U, Associate at the Harvard ideal of encouraging others to change And then, I need to sit down and Ukrainian Research Institute. their own research and teaching to really think and reconceptualize what ENDNOTES incorporate my ideas and material. I want my students to get out of those periods. I am continually appalled 1 Christian Raffensperger, Reimagining Europe: Kievan When I began reading and finding by the textbooks that present Rus’ as Rus’ in the Medieval World, 988–1146 (Cambridge, Mass.: problems with what I was teaching; just a precursor to the greatness of Harvard University Press, 2012); “Reimagining Europe: material wildly out of date, facts simply An Outsider Looks at the Medieval East-West Divide” Muscovy, or as a hotbed of internecine in Medieval Networks in East Central Europe: Commerce, incorrect, perceptions updated based conflict because it doesn’t haveContacts, Communication, eds. Balázs Nagy, Felicitas on new analyses and methodologies; what later polities have. I can well Schmieder and András Vadas (New York: Routledge, I thought to simply open a lecture 2018): 9-24. imagine that Muscovite and Imperial 2 The latter of which bothered my retired predecessor and replace a line or a date and be historians are similarly appalled by (and friend) immensely who was sure I wasn’t a able to move on. Instead what I found my Rise of Moscow lectures in which communist, but perhaps was teaching like one! when I tried that was that what was 3 Thanks to a Shklar Research Fellowship in the 2013- I repeat ideas that are several decades 2014 academic year. required to really fix and update my old, even though I know better; or 4 Christian Raffensperger, The Kingdom of Rus lectures was a wholesale rewriting, present merely a litany of rulers in the (Kalamazoo, Mich.: ARC Humanities Press, 2017); Co- and rethinking, of not just the material, nineteenth century with a focus on war Editor with Donald Ostrowski, Portraits of Medieval but how I approach the material. Once Eastern Europe, 800-1300 (New York: Routledge, 2017) and conflict rather than anything to do 5 Having recently heard a presentation from Erika I realized that, my gut instinct was with the arts and sciences, or culture in Monahan on her book, The Merchants of Siberia: Trade a familiar, “I don’t want to!” This was the broadest form. in Early Modern Eurasia (Cornell University Press, 2016), followed by a series of rationalizations I am quite convinced that I am woefully out of date in this class.

NEWSNET March 2021 17 Three String Books is an imprint of New from Slavica PubliSherS Slavica Publishers devoted to transla- tions of literary works and belles-lettres David M. Griffiths, No Collusion! Charles J. Halperin. Ivan IV and Mus- from Central and Eastern Europe, in- Catherine the Great and American In- covy, viii + 409 p., 2020 (ISBN 978-0- cluding Russia and the other successor dependence, ed. George E. Munro, xvi 89357-501-4), $44.95. states of the former Soviet Union. + 717 p., 2020 (ISBN 978-0-89357-499- In many ways Ivan the Terrible’s per- 4), $44.95. sonality and reign remain mysteries. Anna Starobinets. Look at Him, trans. The fledgling United States desper- This anthology will attempt to shed Katherine E. Young, xii + 151 p., 2020 ately needed more than its single ally, new light on a variety of issues relat- (ISBN 978-089357-503-8), $19.95. France, to pursue its war for indepen- ed to Ivan’s person and 16th-century In this groundbreaking memoir, Anna dence. Unwilling to engage in tradi- Muscovy, including accounts of the Starobinets chronicles the devastating tional European diplomatic behavior, oprichnina written by Germans in his loss of her unborn son to a fatal birth the Americans developed a concept of service, intrafamilial strife and foreign defect. A finalist for the 2018 Nation- “militia diplomacy,” under which mer- slaves in Muscovite society, the role of al Bestseller Prize, Look at Him ignited chants would be sent to foreign ports clergy in the documentary life of the a firestorm in Russia, prompting both to initiate friendly trading relations. Muscovite laity, the Muscovite per- high praise and severe condemnation Not fully realizing Empress Catherine ception of the political culture of the for the author’s willingness to discuss II’s intention to maintain absolute neu- Crimean Khanate, diplomatic relations long-taboo issues of women’s agency trality in order to mediate peace be- between Ivan IV’s Muscovy and Lith- over their own bodies, the aftereffects tween Great Britain and its breakaway uania, coinage, Ivan and the russkaia of abortion and miscarriage on marriage colonies, the Americans sent to St. Pe- zemlia, Ivan as a charismatic ruler, and and family life, and the callousness and tersburg, uninvited and unannounced, a historiographical analysis of Ruslan ignorance displayed by many in Russia a would-be ambassador. The empress Skrynnikov’s Tsarstvo terrora and Reign in situations like hers. refused to collude in any way. of Terror.

Slavica Publishers [Tel.] 1-812-856-4186 Indiana University [Fax] 1-812-856-4187 1430 N. Willis Drive [Toll-free] 1-877-SLAVICA Bloomington, IN, USA [email protected] 47404-2146 http://www.slavica.com

Vol. 22, no. 1 (Winter 2021)

Articles Pavol Rankov, It Happened on the First Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History Samuel J. Hirst of September (or Some Other Time), http://kritika.georgetown.edu Comrades on Elephants trans. Magdalena Mullek, viii + 267 p., Robert Dale 2020 (ISBN 978-089357-502-1), $29.95. Remobilizing the Dead Erin Hutchinson Winner of the European Union Prize for Kritika is dedicated to critical Ivan Denisovich on Trial Literature. inquiry into the history of Russia and Eurasia. The quarterly journal Documents and Source Analysis “It’s where we’ve ended up. Not be- features research articles as well Artemy M. Kalinovsky and Isaac Scarborough cause of our own mistakes, because of as analytical review essays and The Oil Lamp and the Electric Light politics. We weren’t able to live our own extensive book reviews, especially lives; we had to live the way we were Review Article of works in languages other told to.”—Maria (excerpt from book) than English. Subscriptions and Patryk Reid previously published volumes The Lands beyond the Rivers “It Happened on the First of September is a available from Slavica—including, novel with epic sweep yet without the Review Essays as of 16, no. 1, e-book editions epic length as both the years it covers (ePub, MOBI). Contact our Julia Leikin and its action fly by. Though much of business manager at slavica@ From Comparative to Entangled Histories indiana.com for all questions the book deals with history’s bleaker regarding subscriptions and Sarah Matuschak chapters, the novel is a page turner eligibility for discounts. In Apollo’s Sphere filled with humor, vibrant writing, and hope.“—Michael Stein, Literalab, B O D Y

NEWSNET March 2021 18 on several gender and generation narratives labor policies, in choosing allegiances, PUBLICATIONS about communism, anticommunism, and and in defining the very nature of work. postcommunism. It explores the belief American Slavery and Russian Serfdom in the that while methodological reflection on Robert Litwak’s Managing Nuclear Risks Post-Emancipation Imagination, by Amanda communism, as well as on generations (Wilson Center, Fall 2020) assesses the Brickell Bellows, was published by UNC and gender, is conducted extensively in heightened risks across the three major Press in June 2020. The abolition of Russian contemporary research, the overlapping of nuclear categories: relations among the serfdom in 1861 and American slavery in these three terms is still rare. existing nuclear-weapon states, the possible 1865 transformed both nations as Russian proliferation of nuclear weapons to additional peasants and African Americans gained new Lukasz Krzyzanowski’s book, Ghost Citizens: states, and nuclear terrorism. Contemporary rights as subjects and citizens. Analyzing Jewish Return to a Postwar City (Harvard dangers across these categories present portrayals of African Americans and Russian University Press, June 2020), draws on policy tensions that cannot be resolved, serfs in oil paintings, advertisements, fiction, Radom Jewish Committee documents to but, if clearly understood, can be better poetry, and ephemera, Bellows argues recount the story of this largely forgotten managed. Litwak lays out utilitarian options that these depictions shaped collective group of Holocaust survivors. Amid the to ameliorate nuclear risks. This book is a memory of slavery and serfdom, affected devastation of Poland, recurring violence, timely reminder to ourselves what is at stake the development of national consciousness, and bureaucratic hurdles, they attempted in maintaining the nuclear peace. to rebuild local Jewish life, recover their and influenced public opinion as peasants Michael Romanov: Brother of the Last Tsar, homes and workplaces, and reclaim property and freedpeople strove to exercise their Diaries and Letters, 1916-1918, by Helen Azar appropriated by non-Jewish Poles or the newfound rights. (Translator) and Nicholas B. A. Nicholson state. This book tells the larger story of what (Annotator), was published by Academica happened throughout provincial Poland Big Ideas: A Guide to the History of Everything, Press in June 2020. This book presents, for as Holocaust survivors faced new struggles by Cameron Gibelyou and Douglas Northrop the first time in English, Grand Duke Michael’s along with massive political, social, and legal (Oxford University Press, July 2020), narrates annotated diaries and letters of 1916-1918. change. the history of the universe, Earth, life, and These documents offer insight into the fall humanity while analyzing how grand stories Labor in State-Socialist Europe, 1945-1989: of the Russian Empire, the rise and fall of the are crafted and framed. The authors grapple Contributions to a History of Work (Central Provisional Government, and the terrifying with issues at the intersection of the natural European University Press, July 2020), edited days of the Bolshevik Revolution, after which sciences, history, literature, philosophy, by Marsha Siefert, re-examines the policies Michael was a prisoner doomed to meet his religion, and the humanities while making a and problems of communist regimes and end in the remote city of Perm, just over a reasoned analysis of worldviews that underlie recovers the voices of the workers who month before the former Tsar and his family historical writing across many fields. And built them. The contributors explore the were murdered in Ekaterinburg. they bring a wide range of voices to bear on relationship between politics and labor questions of where everything came from, policy, dealing with topics including New Drama in Russian: Performance, Politics how it got to be the way it is today, and where workers’ safety and risks; labor rights and and Protest in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, things might be headed in the future. protests; working women’s politics and edited by J.A.E. Curtis, was published by Gender, Generations, and Communism in Central professions; migrant workers and social Bloomsbury Academic in June 2020. New and Eastern Europe and Beyond, edited by welfare; attempts to control workers’ Drama, which draws heavily on techniques Anna Artwińska and Agnieszka Mrozik, was behavior and to stem unemployment. of documentary and verbatim writing, published by Routledge in July 2020. This book Workers are presented as active agents is a key means of protest in the Russian- provides a theoretical frame and overview in resisting and supporting changes in speaking world; since the fall of the Soviet

NEWSNET March 2021 19 Union in 1991, theaters, dramatists, and Scheiring argues that Hungary’s new hybrid cinema in Russia today. critics have collaborated in using the genre authoritarian regime emerged as a political as a lens through which to explore a wide response to the tensions of globalization. He Survival on the Margins: Polish Refugees in the range of topics. This volume sheds light on demonstrates how Orbán’s Fidesz exploited Wartime Soviet Union, by Eliyana R. Adler, performance, politics, and protest in Russia, the rising nationalism among the working- was published by Harvard University Press in Ukraine, and Belarus. class casualties of deindustrialization and the November 2020. Adler’s book tells of 200,000 national bourgeoisie to consolidate illiberal Polish Jews who escaped the Holocaust Orthodox Revivalism in Russia: Driving Forces hegemony. as refugees stranded in remote corners of and Moral Quests, by Milena Benovska, was the USSR. Between 1940 and 1946, these published by Routledge in October 2020. Russia’s Entangled Embrace: The Tsarist Empire refugees endured hard labor, bitter cold, and Orthodoxy has achieved a large scale and the Armenians, 1801-1914, by Stephen extreme deprivation. But out of reach of the revival in Russia following the collapse of Badalyan Riegg, was published by Cornell Nazis, they escaped the fate of millions of Communism. This book explores the social University Press in July 2020. This book traces their coreligionists in the Holocaust. Adler background and moral attitudes of the “little the relationship between the Romanov state rescues these stories of determination and flock” of believers who actively participate in and the Armenian diaspora that populated suffering on behalf of new generations. religious life. It reveals that the complex moral Russia’s territorial fringes and metropolitan beliefs of the faithful have a disproportionately centers. Riegg demonstrates how imperial The Things of Life: Materiality in Late Soviet high impact on Russian society overall; that rule represented not hypothetical, clear- Russia, by Alexey Golubev (Cornell University there are strong collective ideas concerning cut alternatives but simultaneous, messy Press, December 2020), is a social and cultural religious nationalism and the synergy realities. He examines why, and how, Russian history of material objects and spaces between the secular and the religious. architects of empire imagined Armenians during the late socialist era. It examines as being politically desirable. Russia’s how the material world influenced Soviet “Quiet Spiders of the Hidden Soul”: Mykola Entangled Embrace reveals that the Russian people’s gender roles, habitual choices, (Nik) Bazhan’s Early Experimental Poetry, government relied on Armenians to build social trajectories, and imaginary aspirations. edited by Oksana Rosenblum, Lev Fridman, its empire in the Caucasus and beyond. Through its focus on materiality and and Anzhelika Khyzhnya, was published by personhood, The Things of Life expands Academic Studies Press in November 2020. She Animates: Soviet Female Subjectivity in our understanding of what made Soviet This bilingual Ukrainian-English Russian Animation, by Michele Leigh and people and society “Soviet.” collection brings together the experimental Lora Mjolsness (Academic Studies Press, works by Mykola (Nik) Bazhan, one of the November 2020), examines the work of twelve major Ukrainian poets of the twentieth female animation directors in the Soviet century. As he moved from futurism to Union and Russia. In addition to making a Index of Advertisers neoclassicism, symbolism to socialist realism, case for including these women and their Fulbright Scholar Program 16 Bazhan displayed a creative approach to work in the annals of film and animation Kritika/Slavica/ Three Strings Books 18 theme, versification, and vocabulary. This history, this volume also explores why U of Chicago Postdoc Researcher 24 book makes works from his three early their work should be considered part of U of Wisconsin-Madison Postdoc 14 collections available for the first time. the tradition of women’s cinema. Leigh and NewsNet features advertisements from Mjolsness focus on the changing attitudes organizations presenting scholarly publications, The Retreat of Liberal Democracy: Authoritarian towards both the woman in question and products, services, or opportunities of interest Capitalism and the Accumulative State in feminism by examining the films in light of to those in the Russian, Eurasian, and Central Hungary, by Gabor Scheiring, was published European fields. Please contact newsnet@pitt. the emergence and evolution of a Soviet edu for rates, specs and production schedule. by Palgrave MacMillan in September 2020. female subjectivity that still informs women’s

NEWSNET March 2021 20 2021 ASEEES PRIZES CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

ELIGIBILITY REQUIREMENTS APPLICABLE TO ALL sciences or humanities (including literature, • Jon Stone, Franklin & Marshall College BOOK PRIZE COMPETITIONS: the arts, film, etc.). Policy analyses, however • Louise McReynolds, UNC at Chapel Hill For full rules and complete details about all scholarly, cannot be considered. prizes, click here. The copyright date inside the The winner will be chosen by: REGINALD ZELNIK BOOK PRIZE IN HISTORY book must be 2020. • Thomas Seifrid, U of Southern California The Reginald Zelnik Book Prize in History, established in 2009 and sponsored by the • The book must be a monograph, preferably • Neringa Klumbyte, Miami U Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian by a single author, or by no more than two • Nancy Condee, U of Pittsburgh Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, authors • Donald Raleigh, UNC at Chapel Hill is awarded for an outstanding monograph • Authors may be of any nationality as long as USC BOOK PRIZE IN LITERARY & CULTURAL published on Russia, Eastern Europe, or Eurasia in the work is originally published in English in the field of history in 2020. the US* STUDIES • Textbooks, collections, translations (including The USC Book Prize in Literary and Cultural RULES OF ELIGIBILITY: self-translations/authorial translations), Studies, established in 2009 and sponsored by the • The competition is open to works of bibliographies, reference works, and self- Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures scholarship in history published works are ineligible at the University of Southern California, is awarded The winner will be chosen by: • Works may deal with any area of Eastern for an outstanding monograph published on • Wendy Goldman, Carnegie Mellon U Europe, Russia, or Eurasia* Russia, Eastern Europe, or Eurasia in the fields of • Barbara Engel, U of Colorado • Additional eligibility requirements unique to literary & cultural studies in 2020. • Ronald Suny, U of Michigan each prize competition are listed below RULES OF ELIGIBILITY: *Except where otherwise indicated • The competition is open to works of DAVIS CENTER BOOK PRIZE IN POLITICAL & SOCIAL STUDIES Nominating Instructions: scholarship in literary and cultural studies, • Fill out the Book Prize nomination form including studies in the visual arts, cinema, The Davis Center Book Prize in Political and Social • The deadline to nominate books is April 15. music, and dance. Studies, established in 2008 and sponsored by • Each book may be nominated for up to two The winner will be chosen by: the Kathryn W. and Shelby Cullom Davis Center prizes • Diane Nemec Ignashev, Carleton College for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard • Send one copy of eligible monograph to University, is awarded for an outstanding each committee member according to their stated preference. Please also send ebook (where available) to [email protected]. Mark submissions with the name of the prize(s) • All nominated books must be received by May 15.

WAYNE S. VUCINICH BOOK PRIZE Established in 1983, the Wayne S. Vucinich Book Prize, sponsored by ASEEES and the Stanford University Center for Russian and East European Studies, is awarded for the most important contribution to Russian, Eurasian, and East European studies in any discipline of the humanities or social sciences published in English in the US in 2020. RULES OF ELIGIBILITY: • The competition is open to works of scholarship in any discipline of the social

NEWSNET March 2021 21 monograph published on Russia, Eurasia, or Eastern Europe in anthropology, political science, sociology, or geography in 2020. RULES OF ELIGIBILITY: • The competition is open to works of scholarship in anthropology, political science, sociology, or geography, and also to social science works that cross strict disciplinary boundaries The winner will be chosen by: • Emily Channell-Justice, Ukrainian Research Institute • Jeffrey Kopstein, UC Irvine, • Ola Onuch, U of Manchester • Authors must be scholars who are citizens or • The book must be an author’s first published MARSHALL D. SHULMAN BOOK PRIZE permanent residents of North America. monograph or work of synthesis. The Marshall D. Shulman Book Prize, established The competition is open to works on any It must be published in English and in North in 1987 and sponsored by the Harriman • • aspect of Southeast European or Habsburg America. Institute of Columbia University, is awarded for studies since 1600, or 19th- and 20th-century an outstanding monograph dealing with the • The geographic area of study is broadly Ottoman or Russian diplomatic history. international relations, foreign policy, or foreign- defined as the territories of the former policy decision-making of any of the states of the The winner of the will be chosen by: imperial Russian state and the Soviet Union. former Soviet Union or Eastern Europe published • Kimberly Elman Zarecor, Iowa State U The book may deal with any period of history. in 2020. • Theodora Dragostinova, Ohio State U • Books that have received other prizes are Sean McMeekin, Bard College RULES OF ELIGIBILITY: • eligible. • Works must be about international behavior • Scholarly merit, originality, and felicity of of the countries of the former Communist KULCZYCKI BOOK PRIZE IN POLISH STUDIES style will be the main criteria for selection. Bloc. The Kulczycki Book Prize in Polish Studies, The winner will be chosen by: The winner will be chosen by: established in 1996 and sponsored by the • Erika Monahan, Dartmouth College • Jeff Hass, U of Richmond Kulczycki family, former owners of the Orbis • Christine Evans, University of Wisconsin- • Jelena Subotic, Georgia State U Books Ltd. of London, England, is awarded for Milwaukee • Nikita Lomagin, European U at St. Petersburg the best book in any discipline on any aspect of • David Brandenberger, U of Richmond Polish affairs, published in 2019. ED A HEWETT BOOK PRIZE RULES OF ELIGIBILITY: OMELJAN PRITSAK BOOK PRIZE IN • Only works originally published in English, UKRAINIAN STUDIES The Ed A Hewett Book Prize, established in 1994 outside of Poland, are eligible The Omeljan Pritsak Book Prize in Ukrainian and sponsored by the U of Michigan Center for Studies, established in 2019 and sponsored Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies, • The book must be a monograph predominantly on Polish studies. by the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard is awarded for an outstanding monograph on University, recognizes a distinguished book in the • Preference will be given to works by first- the political economy of Russia, Eurasia and/or field of Ukrainian studies that was published in time authors. Eastern Europe, published in 2020. 2020. RULES OF ELIGIBILITY: • The competition is open to works in any RULES OF ELIGIBILITY: discipline, dealing with any aspect of Polish • Works must be on the political economy of • The competition is open to works in any Russia, Eurasia and/or Eastern Europe. affairs. discipline, dealing with any aspect of The winner will be chosen by: • Previous winners of this prize are ineligible. Ukrainian studies, including the works • Gerald Easter, Boston College The winner will be chosen by: that put Ukrainian experiences in a broad • Doug Rogers, Yale U • Piotr Kosicki, U of Maryland comparative context. • Sarah Wilson Sokhey, U of Colorado Boulder • Malgorzata Mazurek, Columbia U The winner will be chosen by: • Benjamin Paloff, U of Michigan • Catherine Wanner, Penn State University BARBARA JELAVICH BOOK PRIZE • Michael Naydan, Penn State University The Barbara Jelavich Book Prize, established W. BRUCE LINCOLN BOOK PRIZE • Steve Seegel, Northern Colorado U, in 1995 and sponsored by the Jelavich estate, The W. Bruce Lincoln Book Prize, sponsored by is awarded for a distinguished monograph Mary Lincoln, is awarded biennially (in even GRADUATE STUDENT ESSAY PRIZE published on any aspect of Southeast European numbered years) for an author’s first published The ASEEES Graduate Student Essay Prize was or Habsburg studies since 1600, or nineteenth- monograph or scholarly synthesis that is of established in 2006 and is awarded for an and twentieth-century Ottoman or Russian exceptional merit and lasting significance for the outstanding essay by a graduate student in diplomatic history in 2020. understanding of Russia’s past, published in 2020. Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. The RULES OF ELIGIBILITY: RULES OF ELIGIBILITY: winner of the competition receives free roundtrip

NEWSNET March 2021 22 domestic airfare to and room at the ASEEES • Jovana Babovic, SUNY Geneseo Deadline for submissions: May 15. Annual Convention and an honorary ASEEES • Lauri Mälksoo, U of Tartu (Estonia) membership in 2021. • Andrea Lanoux, Connecticut College The winner will be chosen by: • Matthew Lenoe, U of Rochester, RULES OF ELIGIBILITY: • Valerie Sperling, Clark U ASEEES Regional Affiliates and Institutional ROBERT C. TUCKER/STEPHEN F. COHEN • • Bruce Grant, New York U Members are invited to hold their own DISSERTATION PRIZE competitions for best essay among their The Tucker/Cohen Dissertation Prize, established ASEEES CLIR DISTINGUISHED SERVICE graduate students, and submit the winning in 2006 and sponsored by the KAT Charitable paper to the ASEEES Grad Student Prize Foundation, is awarded annually (if there is a LIBRARIAN AWARD Committee. distinguished submission) for an outstanding The ASEEES Committee on Libraries and Information Resources Distinguished Service • Essay author must be a graduate student and English-language doctoral dissertation in Soviet or Post-Soviet politics and history in the Award, which was established in 2010, honors must have written the essay in English while ASEEES member librarians, archivists or in a graduate program. tradition practiced by Robert C. Tucker and Stephen F. Cohen. curators whose contributions to Slavic, East • Essays can be any of several formats: European and Eurasian studies librarianship Expanded versions of conference papers; RULES OF ELIGIBILITY: have been especially noteworthy or influential. graduate level seminar papers; Master’s • The dissertation must be written in English The effect of these contributions may be the thesis chapters; dissertation chapters and defended at a university in the US or result of continuous or distinguished service NOMINATING INSTRUCTIONS: Canada; to the profession, but may also be the result of • Essays should be submitted by the Chairs • The dissertation must be completed and extraordinarily active, innovative or collaborative of the Regional Affiliates or the primary defended during the 2020 calendar year; work that deserves national recognition. The representatives of the Institutional Members. • The dissertation’s primary subject and deadline for nomination is June 1. Graduate students whose institution is analytical purpose must be in the realm RULES OF ELIGIBILITY: not an ASEEES institutional member or is of the history of domestic politics, as • Active participation in special projects, not holding a competition this year, are broadly understood in academic or public efforts or initiatives that have measurably advised to check the rules for their regional life, though it may also include social, impacted the profession competition. Students cannot self-nominate cultural, economic, international or other their papers/must go through the proper • Exemplary and influential research and/ dimensions. The dissertation must focus nominating procedures. or scholarship pertaining to SEEES primarily on Russia (though the topic may librarianship • Submitter must clearly indicate the format of also involve other former Soviet republics) the essay submitted and provide an abstract. • Consistently superior ASEEES committee or during one or more periods between subcommittee work and /or advocacy • Essays should have a word count of 7,500- January 1918 and the present. 14,000 (25 to 50 pages approximately) • Exemplary leadership on ASEEES inclusive of footnotes and bibliography. NOMINATING INSTRUCTIONS: committees, subcommittees or in other Submissions must be double-spaced and • A nomination will consist of a letter from the initiatives include footnotes or endnotes. faculty advisor explaining the ways in which • Conceiving of and implementing innovative or creative ideas that benefit the profession • Essays should be emailed to Mary Arnstein, the work is outstanding in both its empirical Communications Coordinator, at newsnet@ and interpretive contributions, along with • Quietly but enduringly and effectively pitt.edu and to all members of the prize a 700-1,000 word abstract, written by the promoting and strengthening the committee. candidate, specifying the sources and profession general findings of the research. A faculty Deadline for submissions: June 1. Deadline for nominations June 1. supervisor may nominate no more than The winner of the CLIR Distinguished Service one dissertation a year. The winner will be chosen by: Award will be chosen by:

NEWSNET March 2021 23 • Joseph Lenkart, U Illinois at Urbana- opens our disciplines to new perspectives and • The Committee positively encourages Champaign encourages fresh voices in Slavic, East European, nominations from ALL disciplines • Janice Pilch, Rutgers U and Eurasian Studies. in SEEES. It welcomes inclusive • Ana Arays, Yale U nominations that reflect the diversity • Alla Roylance, New York U NOMINATING INSTRUCTIONS: of the profession, and the diversity of • Roman Ivashkiv, U Illinois at Urbana • The Committee accepts nominations in contributions colleagues can make. Champaign writing or via e-mail from any ASEEES • The Committee will seek to ensure a • Natasha Lyandres member. The lead nominator should submit balanced pool of nominees and may • Heghine Hakobyan, U of Oregon all documents and letters in one PDF file to survey the field for prospective award the Committee Chair. The package should DISTINGUISHED CONTRIBUTIONS AWARD consist of: winners. • The deadline for nominations is April 1. ASEEES’ Distinguished Contributions to Slavic, • one nominating letter not exceeding 3 East European, and Eurasian Studies Award pages discussing the nominee’s service, The winner of this award will be chosen by honors members who have made major scholarship, mentoring and leadership; contributions to the field. Distinguished there is no limit to the number of signatories • Olga Shevchenko, Williams College, Contributions may be conceived of in it may append; Chair, diverse ways, and ASEEES seeks to recognize • max. of 10 supporting letters of 2 pages • Eliot Borenstein, New York U outstanding service, leadership, scholarship, each; letters must discuss evidence of the • Choi Chatterjee, California State U, Los mentoring, and public outreach. In particular, criteria categories; Angeles we hope to receive nominations that • the candidate’s full CV including • Gerald Creed, Hunter College highlight noteworthy contributions to public publications, editorships, curatorships, • Dan Healey, Oxford U (UK) understanding, contributions that innovate awards and prizes; and service to ASEEES and transform the way we understand our and/or the profession. regions and our disciplines, and leadership that • Self-nomination is not accepted.

University of Chicago hiring Postdoctoral Researcher at the Rank of Instructor The department of Slavic Languages & Literatures, with support of the Center for East European and Russian/Eurasian Studies, invites applications for a position as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the rank of Instructor. We seek a scholar who specializes in Russia/Eurasia and Eastern/Central Europe and who will further their own research at the University of Chicago. The selected candidate is expected to be in residence and conduct their own research under the mentorship of a faculty member. Further requirements include teaching two courses in the Russian Civilization sequence and participating in CEERES educator outreach activities. The position is open to applicants trained in any humanities or social sciences discipline. In the tradition of the University of Chicago Civilization courses, Introduction to Russian Civilization focuses on the close reading of primary sources to understand ideas, events, cultural patterns, and social change. The course is usually taught as a discussion or a combination of lectures and discussions. Within this general framework, the selected candidate will have the autonomy to select the texts and to structure the course as they wish. For a description of the course, please see above link. The selected candidate is also expected to participate in the Center’s outreach activities while they are in residence. Possible educator outreach activities include (but are not limited to):Class visits to City Colleges of Chicago or Chicago Public schools; Presentations at educator outreach programs such as International Education Conference or the Summer Institute for educators, or other programs; and Public presentations based on their research to local community organizations and/or public libraries.The initial position will be for one year, with the possibility of reappointment for one additional year upon satisfactory review and contingent upon the continued availability of federal funding. The position is benefits-eligible.

Qualifications Applicants must have completed all requirements for receipt of the PhD degree in a field related to the area of the position prior to the start of the appointment, including officially filing the dissertation, and must have no more than five years of cumulative experience working in a tenure track position following receipt of the PhD.

Application Instructions Complete application materials include: CV; cover letter; statement of research interests; a writing sample; a teaching statement addressing the applicant’s preparation to teach in the Russian Civilization sequence; and the names and contact information of three individuals familiar with the work of the applicant from whom letters of recommendation may be requested. All materials must be submitted at the University of Chicago’s Academic Recruiting website at http:// apply.interfolio.com/85076 no later than 11:00pm central time on April 12, 2021. Additional materials may be requested at a later stage in the application process. For questions please email Tracy Davis at [email protected].

EEO Statement We seek a diverse pool of applicants who wish to join an academic community that places the highest value on rigorous inquiry and encourages diverse perspectives, experiences, groups of individuals, and ideas to inform and stimulate intellectual challenge, engagement, and exchange. The University’s Statements on Diversity are at https://provost.uchicago.edu/statements-diversity. The University of Chicago is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity/Disabled/Veterans Employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national or ethnic origin, age, status as an individual with a disability, protected veteran status, genetic information, or other protected classes under the law. For additional information please see the University's Notice of Nondiscrimination. Job seekers in need of a reasonable accommodation to complete the application process should call 773-702-1032 or email [email protected] with their request.

NEWSNET March 2021 24 INSTITUTIONAL MEMBER NEWS

team of two (or three) applicants, the THE KENNAN INSTITUTE JORDAN CENTER AT NYU applicants must be citizens of at least AT THE WILSON CENTER two different countries. The goal of such joint fellowships is to promote The Jordan Center for the Advanced During the coronavirus outbreak, the collaborative research projects among Study of Russia and All the Russias are Wilson Center and Kennan Institute will be US, Russian, and Ukrainian experts. pleased to announce the second annual postponing onsite meetings and events. George F. Kennan Fellowship Teams Graduate Student Essay Competition. KI is working with awarded scholars to will: Produce joint paper(s) for policy- Enter for a chance to get published on provide the option to work remotely or to relevant publications; Present work the blog and win cash prizes! postpone start dates. Please visit https:// at DC, Russia, and/or Ukraine events; The Jordan Center invites 750- www.wilsoncenter.org/kennan-institute- Conduct meetings and engage with 1200 word submissions from full- or fellowships-and-internships for the latest policymakers in DC. Applicants must part-time MA and PhD students from updates or email [email protected]. submit a completed application. any accredited academic institution in the United States, on any topic and Fellowship Opportunities Galina Starovoitova Fellows on sub-discipline within Russian, East Title VIII Short-Term Scholarships Human Rights and Conflict Resolution European, and Eurasian Studies, broadly These grants allow scholars to spend up The Starovoitova Fellowship is defined. Cultural criticism; public-facing to one month using the library, archival, available to scholars, policy makers, treatments of scholarly work; political and other specialized resources while journalists, civic activists, and other analysis; book, film, or event reviews; in residence at the Kennan Institute. engaged persons who successfully and more are welcome. Applicants must hold an MA degree or bridge the worlds of ideas and public All submissions must be higher, or demonstrate commensurate affairs to advance human rights and in English and observe the blog’s professional achievement. You must be conflict resolution. submission guidelines and full a US citizen to apply. Applicants with experience competition rules. from a wide variety of backgrounds Essays are due no later than George F. Kennan Fellowships (including academia, government, the April 15th at 11:59 PM EST and must be George F. Kennan Fellows will be based corporate world, the professions, NGOs, submitted via this Google form. at the Wilson Center in Washington, DC. the media) are eligible for appointment. Seven (7) winners will be for three-month residencies. Fellows All applicants are required to have selected based on their pieces’ will receive access to the Library of a working knowledge of English. originality, clarity, and argumentation, Congress, National Archives, and For academic participants, eligibility is as well as their correspondence to the policy research centers in DC, as well limited to the postdoctoral level, and blog’s general tone and interests as as the opportunity to meet with key normally it is expected that academic stipulated in the submission guidelines experts and officials. While conducting candidates will have demonstrated their linked above. Winners will receive, research, Kennan Fellows are expected scholarly development by publication respectively, $500 (first prize); $250 beyond the Kandidat dissertation. For (second prize); $100 (third prize); and to participate in discussions with the policy and academic communities, other applicants, an equivalent level of $50 (runners-up). Winners and runners- professional achievement is expected. up will have their essays published in All including speaking engagements at the Wilson Center as well as potentially The Starovoitova Fellowship the Russias. offers a stipend, research facilities, Competition results will be outside of DC, and attending meetings, word processing support, and research announced by Summer 2021. conferences, and other activities assistance. One 6-month and one Please direct any questions to organized by the Kennan Institute and 3-month grant are available. Recipients [email protected]. Wilson Center. There are no citizenship requirements for this grant. must be in residence at the Kennan Applicants have an option to Institute for the duration of their grant. apply for the fellowship as individuals Starovoitova Fellows are expected to or as part of a team. If applying as a hold public lectures on the themes

NEWSNET March 2021 25 of conflict resolution and human rights The deadline for this participants. Daily sessions will include while conducting research on a specific competition is May 15, 2021. 30-minute presentations followed by topic. In addition, the Starovoitova Fellow a discussion (up to 30 min), as well as will participate in discussions with the The Kennan Institute welcomes its an opportunity for participants to do public policy and academic communities, current and incoming scholars: research at Yad Vashem’s library and including giving speeches and lectures Title VIII Short Term Scholars archives. at other institutions and taking part in • Samuel Casper, Adjunct Assistant Applications will be accepted meetings and conferences. Professor of History and Jewish from doctoral candidates (aspirants) The application deadline for this Studies, Hunter College, City and scholars who obtained their PhD fellowship will be May 15, 2021, contingent upon renewal of grant funding. University of New York, “The Bolshevik (or candidate of science degree) within Afterlife: Posthumous Rehabilitation the last five years. Applications are James H. Billington Fellowship in the Post-Stalin Soviet Union,” welcome from scholars working in all The Billington Fellow will be based at January – February 2021 relevant academic disciplines, including the Wilson Center’s Kennan Institute for anthropology, archaeology, art history, a nine-month term (one academic year). geography, film studies, history, Jewish Fellows will receive access to the Library studies, law, literature, material culture, of Congress, National Archives, and policy philosophy, political science, religion, US HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL research centers in DC, as well as the sociology, and other fields. MUSEUM opportunity to meet with key experts and Organizers intend to hold officials at the State Department, USAID, CFA: Everyday Life of Jews in the USSR the workshop on site at Yad Vashem. Department of Defense, and Congress. during the Holocaust and its Early However, if it is impossible to physically The Billington Fellow will be expected to Aftermath convene from August 29-September 2 actively participate in discussions with the The Moshe Mirilashvili Center for Research due to the Coronavirus pandemic, then policy and academic communities. These on the Holocaust in the Soviet Union of the workshop will be held either entirely discussions can be in the form of speaking the International Institute for Holocaust online or in a hybrid in-person and online engagements at the Wilson Center and Research at Yad Vashem and the Mandel potentially outside of Washington, DC, as format. Details on the workshop’s format Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies well as attending meetings, conferences, will be sent out well in advance of the of the United States Holocaust Memorial and other activities organized by the beginning of the program. Museum (USHMM) are pleased to invite Kennan Institute and the Wilson Center. All application materials must be applications for a research workshop Upon completion of the fellowship, the received by 23 April 2021. Incomplete entitled, “Everyday Life of Jews in the Billington Fellow will join our growing list applications will not be considered after USSR during the Holocaust and its Early of alumni, for whom the Kennan Institute this date. Late applications will not be Aftermath.” The workshop is scheduled will continue to offer opportunities for for August 29–September 2, 2021 at Yad accepted. The selected participants collaboration and engagement. Vashem in Jerusalem. will be notified by 23 May 2021. Applicants for the Billington The workshop will focus on the Please email application materials to: Fellowship must hold a PhD awarded Holocaust and everyday Jewish life during [email protected]. within the past 10 years. Preference will be World War II and early years after the Applications include: A current CV; an given to proposed research in the fields of war in the countries of the former Soviet abstract of no more than 1000 words Russian history and culture. There is no Union. Topics might include: antisemitism, for your proposed paper (including citizenship restriction on this grant. evacuation and Jewish life in the Soviet title and discussion of methodological The Billington Fellowship offers rear, ghettoization, collaboration, hiding, and theoretical issues); and a letter of a monthly stipend, research facilities, a resistance, gender, violence, Jewish children research intern, and computer access. recommendation (for students only) and families during the Holocaust, survival Fellows are required to be in residence addressing the applicant’s scholarly in camps and ghettos, Jews in the Red Army, at the Kennan Institute, Wilson Center in potential. Faculty recommenders must trauma, art and literature. Washington, DC, for the duration of the email their signed letters (on institutional Participants will be expected to grant. Awardees are expected to begin letterhead) directly to shlomit. submit a paper (no more than 15 pages) their appointments within six months of [email protected]. a month prior to the beginning of the accepting the fellowship. The organizers will cover the cost workshop for circulation among all

NEWSNET March 2021 26 of economy class flights to and from the • Virtual research support for general project, and indicate how they will workshop, lodging for the workshop’s and specialized queries throughout benefit from access to University of duration and meals. Participants must the Summer and beyond. Associates Illinois resources and participation obtain their own health insurance. may also request a personalized in the VSRL. Researchers conducting The workshop will be conducted bibliographic session with the Slavic policy-relevant research projects will be in English. Reference Service through Zoom. prioritized for Title VIII grant support. • Access to digital and database All applicants must also submit a short- UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS collections of the Library for an form CV. US Citizens who are applying SUMMER RESEARCH LAB extended period. for research support must also provide • Free duplication service for University a clearly formulated statement of policy The Russian, East European, and Eurasian of Illinois Library materials. relevance. Center (REEEC) and the Slavic Reference • Thematic and skill-building workshop Service (SRS) at the University of Illinois events as well as opportunities to FEATURED WORKSHOPS: announce a Call for Applications for the present and discuss work in progress. • Climate and Society in Eurasia: Past, 48th annual Summer Research Laboratory For a list of topics and dates, see Present, and Future - June 28 - July 2 (SRL) program. Due to the COVID-19 below. A fuller abstract of these • A Woman’s Work is Never Done: global pandemic, this year’s SRL will be workshops may be found on our Female Life and Labor across the held as a Virtual SRL (VSRL), with REEEC website. Imperial, Soviet, and Post-Soviet Eras and SRS working to support scholars US citizens are eligible to apply for - July 10-11 through remote research assistance, a $1000 Title VIII Research Award to • Media Culture in Balkan and Eurasian virtual programming, professional support their research work. Muslim Communities - July 15-16 development opportunities, and • Frozen Conflicts in Eurasia: Origin, collections and database access. VSRL APPLICATION PROCEDURE Status and Outlook - Dates TBD will take place June 14-August 8, 2021. Applications to the VSRL are accepted through an online portal, found For more information, please visit: WHAT THE LAB OFFERS: here. https://reeec.illinois.edu/research/ • Designation as a Summer Research Applicants must provide a short summer-research-laboratory Laboratory Associate. narrative explaining their research

Forthcoming in Slavic Review Vol. 80 Spring 2021

CRITICAL DISCUSSION FORUM: The Sociology of Protest in Belarus--Social Dynamics, Ideological Shifts and Demand for Change

Introduction: The Sociology of Belarusian Protest by Nelly Bekus and Mischa Gabowitsch

• “Echo of 1989? Protest Imaginaries and Identity Dilemmas in Belarus,” by Nelly Bekus • “‘Tear Down These Prison Walls!’ Verses of Defiance in the Belarusian Revolution,” by Simon Lewis • “Belarusian Protest: Regimes of Engagement and Coordination,” by Mischa Gabowitsch • “How Feminist is the Belarusian Revolution? Female Agency and Participation in the 2020 Post-Election Protests,” by Natallia Paulovich • “Class, Agency, and Citizenship in Belarusian Protest,” by Elena Gapova • “The Anatomy of Impatience: Exploring Factors behind 2020 Labor Unrest in Belarus,” by Volodymyr Artiukh • “The Moral Economy of the Koklhoz Worker, or Why the Protest in Belarus Seems not to Concern the Collectivized Countryside,” by Ronan Hervouet

ARTICLES • “Calendar Reform under Peter the Great: Absolutist Prerogatives, Plural Temporalities, and Christian Exceptionalism,” by Andreas Schönle • “An Ancient in Catherinian Russia: Classical Reception, Sensibility, and Nobility in Princess Ekaterina Urusova’s Poetry of the 1770s,” by Kelsey Rubin-Detlev • “‘To a Dog, a Dog’s Death!’: Naive Monarchism and Regicide in Imperial Russia, 1878-1884,” by Daniel Beer

NEWSNET March 2021 27 Harriet Murav received an honorable PERSONAGES mention from the Modern Language The Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America (PIASA) is pleased Sean Brennan was recently promoted Association Fenia and Yaakov Leviant Memorial Prize in Yiddish Studies for to announce its 2020 award recipient. to full professor at the University of Among them are two ASEEES members. Scranton. her book David Bergelson’s Strange New World: Untimeliness and Futurity, The Susanne Lotarski National Gallery of Art is hosting a new published by Indiana University Press. Distinguished Achievement Award: exhibit on the “dacha” of Catherine the Anna Frajlich-Zając, Senior Lecturer Great (also known as the “Chinese Palace”) The third annual­ Jewish Book Council Emerita of Polish Language and at Oranienbaum. The exhibit features an Biog­ra­phy Award in Mem­o­ry of Sara Literature, Columbia University, for her ensemble of images from a collection of Beren­son Stone was given to From Left many contributions to Polish culture nearly 149,000 digital images, negatives, to Right: Lucy S. Dawidowicz, the New York in poetry, prose, and literary studies and photographs of Russia donated to Intel­lec­tu­als, and the Pol­i­tics of Jew­ish extending over several decades. the department of image collections by History (Wayne State Uni­ver­si­ty Press) by The Bronisław Malinowski the scholar and photographer William Nancy­ Sinkoff, which was also named Award in the Social Sciences: Anna Craft Brumfield. a Natan Notable Book from Natan Fund Grzymala-Busse, Michelle and Kevin and Jew­ish Book Coun­cil in fall 2020. Douglas Professor of International The International Vladimir Valeria Sobol was selected as University Studies, Stanford University, for her Nabokov Society awarded Tatyana o,utstanding scholarship on the Gershkovich the Gene Barabtarlo of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign LAS Dean’s Distinguished Professorial Scholar development and transformation of Prize for her essay, “Suspicion On Trial: the state, political parties, religion and Tolstoy’s The Kreutzer Sonata and for the academic year 2021-2022. Each year, the Dean of the College of Liberal politics, and post-communist politics Nabokov’s ‘Pozdnyshev’s Address,’” in Poland and East-Central Europe. PMLA, 134. 3 (May 2019): 459–474. Arts & Sciences awards those faculty that http://thenabokovian.org/node/52293 have shown exemplary scholarship and teaching amongst those being promoted ASEEES Awards First Book Nigel Gould-Davies was appointed to Professor. Subvention in Spring 2021 Senior Fellow for Russia and Eurasia, and Editor of Strategic Survey, at the Alexis Zoto is now the Chair of Design, The winners of the Spring 2021 First International Institute for Strategic 3D at the Roski School of Art and Design Book Subvention are: Studies (IISS). at University of Southern California. Cornell University Press for Unsettled Heritage: Living Next to Poland’s Material John P. Ledonne’s Forging a Unitary state; Jewish Traces after the Holocaust by Russia’s Management of Eurasian Space, TOP L-R: Harriet Murav, Anna Grzymala-Busse, Yechiel Weizman. 1650-1850 (University of Toronto Press) William Brumfield, Valeria Sobol, Tatyana won the 2021 Prose Award for Best Book Gershkovich, Alexis Zoto University of Toronto Press for In in World History by AAP, as well as the Bottom L-R: Anna Frajlich-Zajac, John Ledonne, the Kingdom of Shoes: Bata, Zlin, and 2020 Mark Raeff Prize from the Eighteenth Sean Brennan, , Nigel Gould-Davies, Nancy Globalization, 1894-1945 by Zachary Sinkoff. Century Association for Russian Studies. Doleshal.

NEWSNET March 2021 28 IN MEMORIAM and Ukrainian intellectual history, Pelech the time of his death, he was working on earned his MA (1971) and PhD (1976) in a magisterial history of Slovak Literature. University of Toronto Emeritus Professor History from Princeton University. Two Excerpted from his obituary. Kenneth Alfred Lantz passed away on years before defending his doctoral August 29, 2020. Born on October 21, dissertation, he began working as Judge Stephen F. Williams died on 1940, in Edmonton, Alberta, he received Bibliographer for Russia and Eastern August 7, 2020, at age 83. Williams came his BA in Slavonic and Soviet Studies Europe at Princeton University Library, a to the field of Russian History late in life. from the University of Alberta in 1963. He position he held for 11 years (1974-1985). He was an attorney and law professor received his MA (1967) and PhD (1974) During this period, he earned a MLS at the University of Colorado before from the Department of Slavic Languages degree from Rutgers University (1978). Ronald Reagan appointed him to the and Literatures at the University of In 1985, Pelech accepted the position of US Court of Appeals for the District of Toronto. He began to teach there in 1970, Slavic/Western European Bibliographer Columbia, where he heard cases for achieved tenure in 1976, and became a at Duke University, and later, he became three decades. In 2010, he (as part of a full professor in 1987, specializing in the first full-time Slavic Bibliographer. panel of judges) heard oral arguments Nineteenth-Century Russian Literature. Over the course of his two decades at in a case concerning the Brooklyn-based His first book (1979) was on Nikolai Duke, he built a great research collection Lubavitch Hasidim’s claim that they are Leskov; he also published reference and was proud that he spent much of the rightful owner of tens of thousands books on Chekhov and Dostoevsky and his professional lifetime establishing a of books, pamphlets, and manuscripts was a noted translator. His translation collection of excellence. He was equally that had come into the possession of of Dostoevsky’s Writer’s Diary won proud to serve as Adjunct Assistant the Russian State Library after World War AATSEEL’s prize for best translation Professor in the Department of Slavic I. The judges ruled that the materials in 1993. In 2006, in recognition of his Languages and Literatures. After his belonged to the Lubavitchers and service, Lantz received AATSEEL’s annual retirement, Pelech continued to teach ordered repatriation of the collection. award for Outstanding Contribution to adults and children in the community on In the early 1990s, Williams enrolled in the Profession. He served twice as chair of the Eastern Shore of Virginia. Russian classes so he could research the the Department and took on many other Excerpted from text provided by Ernest historical foundations of private property administrative roles in the University. Zitser, Duke University. in post-communist Russia. Building upon He served as secretary-treasurer of the his interest in the rule of law, particularly Canadian Association of Slavists (CAS), Father Gerald Sabo, S.J., member of when it concerned the carceral state, editor of the CAS newsletter for several the Jesuit community and Associate he immersed himself in the study of years, and co-editor of Toronto Slavic Professor of Slavic Languages and property rights in the immediate post- Quarterly. He also digitalized the first Literature at John Carroll University, 1905 era and wrote his first book, Liberal nine volumes of Dostoevsky Studies. After passed away suddenly on October 24, Reform in an Illiberal Regime: The Creation Lantz retired in 2005, he translated a 2020, at age 75. Sabo spent forty years of Private Property in Russia, 1906-1915 book of memoirs (Voices from the Gulag) teaching Slovak, Russian, and Eastern (2006). His next book, The Reformer: How and a book of Solzhenitsyn’s short stories European Literature at JCU. A native of One Liberal Fought to Preempt the Russian (Apricot Jam: and Other Stories) He had Connecticut, he joined the New England Revolution (2017), was a biography been working with Donna Orwin on an Province of the Society of Jesus in 1969 of Vasilii Maklakov, a trial lawyer and anthology of war and Russian literature and was ordained as priest in 1980. He prominent Kadet who advocated for the to be published by Columbia University celebrated his 50th anniversary as a rule of law in tsarist Russia. Press. Jesuit last year. An alumnus of Fairfield Excerpted from text provided by Bob Prep and Fairfield University, he studied Weinberg, Swarthmore College Orest Lubomyr Pelech (1947-2020), Theology at Weston Jesuit School of the long-time Slavic Bibliographer at Theology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Duke University, died at his home in now part of Boston College. He also Onancock, VA, on March 13, 2020, after earned a doctorate in Eastern European a long illness. Born stateless in a German Languages at Yale. Sabo transferred to refugee camp, this first-generation the Midwest Province and joined the JCU Ukrainian-American attended Seton Hall faculty in 1981. He served as rector of the Prep and Antioch College. Pursuing his Jesuit Community from 2007-2013. At interests in nineteenth-century Russian

NEWSNET March 2021 29 AFFILIATE GROUP NEWS

to the field. ASSOCIATION FOR WOMEN IN AATSEEL • The submitted work must bear a SLAVIC STUDIES copyright date of 2020 or 2021. • Books that were already nominated for AATSEEL 2020 BOOK PRIZE WINNERS AWSS invites nominations for four 2021 the prize in 2020 are not eligible. The full citations are posted on the Awards Heldt prizes: • Nominated works can be published in page for the 2020 AATSEEL Book Awards • Best book in Slavic/Eastern European/ any language and in any format (analog winners: Eurasian women's and gender studies or digital). Best Book in Literary Studies • Best book by a woman in any area of • Books that have received other prizes • Galin Tihanov, The Birth and Death of Slavic/East European/Eurasian studies are eligible. Literary Theory: Regimes of Relevance • Best translation in Slavic/East Nominating Instructions: in Russia and Beyond European/Eurasian women’s and • Nominations must be emailed to Best Book in Cultural Studies gender studies Gregory Afinogenov (Committee Chair) • Eliot Borenstein, Plots Against Russia • Best article in Slavic/Eastern European/ at Gregory.Afinogenov@georgetown. Best First Book Eurasian women's and gender studies edu or to any member of the ECRSA • Kelsey Rubin-Detlev, The Epistolary Art To be eligible for nomination, books and Prize Selection Committee. of Catherine the Great articles must be in English and should be • Publishers should send a printed copy to Best Edited Multi-Author Scholarly Volume published between April 15, 2020 and each ECRSA Prize Selection Committee • Eds. Julie Buckler, Julie Cassiday, and April 15, 2021 (or from April 15, 2019 in the member; where needed, ebooks may Boris Wolfson, Russian Performances: case of the biennial translation prize). be accepted. Word, Object, Action • Nominations must be received no later Best Literary Translation into English than 15 June 2021. • Daša Drndić, EEG: A Novel, ed., EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY RUSSIAN 2020 ECRSA Prize Selection Committee: translated by Celia Hawkesworth STUDIES ASSOCIATION • Elena Marasinova, Ulitsa Dmitriia Best Contribution to Language Pedagogy MARC RAEFF PRIZE IN 18TH CENTURY Ulianova 19, Institute of Russian History • Irina Dubina and Olesya Kisselev, RUSSIAN STUDIES RAN, Moscow 117292, Russia Rodnaya Rech’: An Introductory Course ECRSA is now accepting submissions for the • Simon Franklin, Clare College, for Heritage Learners of Russian 2021 Marc Raeff Book Prize. We encourage Cambridge, CB2 1TL, UK both presses and individual scholars to • Gregory Afinogenov, 850 Quincy St NW, AATSEEL AWARDS FOR TEACHING, submit nominations to the members of the Apt 621, Washington, DC 20011 SERVICE, AND SCHOLARSHIP prize committee. • Ricarda Vulpius, Schopenhauerstr. 60, AATSEEL congratulates the following The Raeff Book Prize is awarded for 14129 Berlin, Germany award winners and acknowledge their a publication that is of exceptional merit • Amanda Ewington, 218 Fairview Ln, significant contributions to the profession and lasting significance for understanding Davidson, NC 28036 and to the organization. Imperial Russia during the long 18th century. • Excellence in Teaching (Pre-College): The recipient of the award will be recognized NORTH AMERICAN DOSTOEVSKY The Team at Pritzker College Prep, with a cash prize, which will be presented SOCIETY Chicago – Phil Stosberg, Lauren in November 2021 at the ASEEES annual Nelson, and Rebecca Kaegi STUDENT ESSAY CONTEST convention in New Orleans. • Excellence in Teaching (Post- NADS invites its members to nominate Eligibility: Secondary): B. Amarilis Lugo de outstanding student essays. Self • The publication must be a monograph, Fabritz and Julia Vaingurt nominations are also welcome. The topic is translation, or reference work about any • Distinguished Service to AATSEEL: open; however, Dostoevsky and his works aspect of the long 18th century (the last Kevin Platt and Jon Stone should be the main focus of the essay. quarter of the 17th to the first quarter • Outstanding Contribution to the To nominate an undergraduate of the 19th century) and focused on any Profession: Karen Evans-Romaine student essay, please send an email of the territories of the former imperial • Outstanding Contribution to containing the student’s name, email Russian state. Textbooks, festschrifts, Scholarship: Irina Reyfman address, institutional affiliation, and the and edited collections of essays are • Emeritus Award for Outstanding title and level/number of the course for not eligible unless they constitute Dedication to the Profession: Janet which the essay was written (e.g. BIOL significant and innovative contributions Tucker 322 “Dostoevsky and Spiders”) to Vladimir

NEWSNET March 2021 30 Ivantsov. Attach the essay as a .pdf without The conference hosts many panels have been published between January 1, on a variety of topics from a wide diversity identifying information about the author. 2019, and December 31, 2020, as indicated of disciplines. Papers on Russia and all the The essay should be less than 4000 words; by the copyright date. Books may be in countries of Eastern Europe and Central Asia any academic field, with a predominant 12 font size, double-spaced; it should are welcome, including the Uyghur region in consistently follow either MLA or Chicago focus on Romanian or Moldovan subject China (Xinxiang and elsewhere). matter (including subjects relating to the style and contain full bibliographic There are no registration fees for activities of non-Romanian ethnic groups information on the sources used. REECAS Northwest conference participants To nominate a graduate student or attendees. on Romanian or Moldovan territory). essay, email the student’s name, email Edited books, translations, reprints or new • To submit a proposal by March 28, 2021 address, and institutional affiliation to editions of works published before 2019, click here Greta Matzner-Gore. Attach the essay as a and non-scholarly books are not eligible. • To register as an attendee: click here .pdf containing no identifying information Either authors or publishers of If you have questions not answered by this books may make submissions. Submissions about the author. The essay should be webpage, please contact [email protected]. no more than 8000 words, with the same should be sent to the SRS prize committee formatting and citation instructions as by June 1, 2021. Questions or inquiries can SOCIETY FOR ROMANIAN be emailed to dragos.petrescu@fspub. above. Submissions will be accepted until STUDIES June 1, 2021. unibuc.ro THE SIXTH BIENNIAL SRS BOOK PRIZE SRS Book Prize Committee SRS invites nominations for the Sixth Members: Ruxandra Trandafoiu, Michael POLISH STUDIES ASSOCIATION Biennial SRS Book Prize awarded for the Stewart, and Dragoș Petrescu (Chair) best scholarly book published in English in For details of the Prize and Historian, Jan Musekamp, and literary the humanities or social sciences, on any past winners please see: https:// scholar, Agnieszka Mrozek, have been subject relating to Romania or Moldova and society4romanianstudies.org/awards- elected to serve three-year terms on their diasporas. To be eligible, books must prizes/ its Advisory Board. They will be joining continuing board members, Michał Wilczewski of UIC and Northwestern ASEEES Exploring Career Diversity Conversation Series: University, and Kate Wroblewski at the Spring 2021 Pilot Program University of Michigan.

REECAS NORTHWEST ASEEES is pleased to announce the Exploring Career 27TH ANNUAL REECAS-NW CONFERENCE Diversity Conversation Series for graduate students or VIRTUAL EVENT: APRIL 28-30. recent graduates who are interested in broadening their REECAS Northwest, the annual ASEEES career horizons. The events provide a space for informal Northwest Regional Conference for Russian, East European and Central Asian Studies, conversations in Zoom breakout rooms with professionals welcomes students, faculty, independent in career fields outside of academia or within academia scholars, and language educators from the outside the professoriate. United States and abroad. Established in 1994, REECAS Northwest is an important annual Participants will learn about careers in secondary event for scholars and students in the Pacific education, in academia beyond teaching and research, in Northwest and beyond, with participant and partner universities from across the government/government-affiliated organizations, and in United States, Canada, Europe, and Asia. The business and consulting. They will also gain insights into interdisciplinary conference is organized by how to transfer their skills into the professional world. the University of Washington’s Ellison Center for Russian, East European, and Central Asian Studies, which seeks to promote in-depth study of the many post-communist European and Eurasian sub-regions. For more information on eligibility and registration, click here

NEWSNET March 2021 31 aseees Association for Slavic, East European, & Eurasian Studies 53rd Annual Convention

November 18-21, 2021 December 2-3, 2021 New Orleans, LA Virtual Convention

Registration information Hotel information Membership Renewal

Note: Panel/paper acceptance emails will be sent out mid-April

ASEEES offers travel grant for members to present their papers at the Annual Convention in New Orleans. Only current regular or student members may apply for the grants listed below:

• Kathryn Davis Graduate Student Travel Grant Program • Russian Scholar Travel Grant Program • Regional Scholar Travel Grant Program • Convention Opportunity Travel Grant Program • Diversity & Inclusion Travel Grant Program

NEWSNET March 2021 32