REEI faculty, students, staff, affiliates, and supporters in the community at large gathered for drinks, hors d’oeuvres, and conviviality in the IMU President’s Club at the annual REEI Fall Reception. Attendants celebrated REEI’s recent success in the Title VI competition (see related article), congratulated recipients of various REEI awards, welcomed new faculty and visiting scholars, and examined new and older publications on display by Slavica Publishers, which once more co-sponsored the event.
Anne Armstrong and members of her family were present as REEI Director Sarah Phillips introduced recipients of awards established to honor her late husband, Daniel Armstrong (1942-1972), a beloved IU Slavic Department alumnus, scholar, teacher, and administrator. Sam Fajerstein, a PhD student in History, was awarded the Daniel Armstrong Memorial Research Paper Prize for “A Microprocess of Stalinization, 1928-1930: The Transformation of Puti sel’skogo khoziaistva and the ‘Army of Soviet Agronomists,’” a paper written in Fall 2017 for Seminar in Russian History, taught by Professor Hiroaki Kuromiya.
Recipients of the Daniel Armstrong Memorial Scholarship for 2018-19 include incoming first year undergraduate student Andrew Waddell and continuing students Sydney Way, Jacob Gilley, and Clara Fridman. Phillips also recognized Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) fellowship awardees for 2018-19, a list that includes graduate students Ani Abrahamyan, Clare Angeroth Franks, Russell Gifford, Bryce Hecht, Nicholas Jackson, Bailey Orr, William Smeal, and Austin Wilson, as well as undergraduates Abigail Gipson, Jeremiah Saxton, and Sydney Way. Phillips went on to hail recipients of prestigious REEI fellowships specifically designated for REEI MA students. Recipients of the Robert F. Byrnes Memorial Fellowship include Sasha Stott, an entering student who is pursuing a dual REEI MA/MLS degree and continuing student Madeline McCann. The incoming Tucker-Cohen Fellow is Rachel Myers, who is pursuing a dual REEI MA/JD degree. Recipient of the REEI Director’s Fellowship is entering student Wondy Joseph, and Nikola Parlic continues his studies as a second-year student and recipient of the Erne Fellowship for Serbian Studies. Phillips also acknowledged recipients of fellowships through REEI’s Russian Studies Workshop: PhD students Sam Fajerstein and Alex McGrath as well as MA students Rachel Myers and Wondy Joseph.
Phillips also welcomed visiting scholars Asim Mujkić, a McCloskey Fellow and Professor of Political Ethics and Philosophy at the Faculty of Political Science of the University of Sarajevo and 2018 McCloskey Fellow at REEI; Tamás Gerőcs, a PhD student in political economy from Corvinus University in Budapest, currently in residence at IU under the auspices of the Department of Sociology; and Melinda Kindl, is a Fulbright Visiting Fellow in history from Hungary who studies Italian-Hungarian Diplomacy in World War II. The program concluded with Phillips’ introduction of new REEI faculty affiliates: Andrew Bell (International Studies), Vesna Dmitrieska (School of Education), Tatiana Saburova (History), Theresa Marguerite Quill (Libraries), Andrea Stanislav (School of Art, Architecture, and Design), Miriam Zadoff (Jewish Studies/History), and Justyna Zajac (International Studies).