Robert F. Byrnes
Russian and East European Institute

As a result of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the annual convention of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES) did not convene in Washington, DC as originally planned, but instead unfolded in online format over the course of two weekends on November 5-8 and 14-15, 2020. IU faculty and students figured prominently among the participants, as did colleagues from other Indiana-based public colleges and universities (see list below). The virtual Exhibition Hall included REEI, IU’s Language Workshop, and Slavica Publishers as featured exhibitors, and REEI once again supported the convention as a Silver Sponsor. Among those honored at the awards ceremony was IU doctoral student in History Leah Valtin-Erwin, winner of the 2020 ASEEES Graduate Student Essay Prize (see Student News for detail). Alas, given the virtual format, the traditional IU Alumni Reception did not take place this year. However, REEI looks forward to hosting the reception when we meet in person at next year’s convention, scheduled to take place in New Orleans on November 18-21. Information about the 2020 Convention can be found at: https://www.aseees.org/convention.

IU and other IN public university/college participants at 2020 ASEEES Annual Convention

Faculty/Staff Papers

Michael V. Alexeev (Economics): Who Profits from Oil Windfalls in Russian Regions?: Inequality, Decentralized Revenues, and Corruption

Gardner Bovingdon (Central Eurasian Studies, International Studies): Seeing Like the State: The Transformation of the Postwar Landscape in Almaty

Maria Bucur (History):  The Undoing: How a Disabled Officer and Future Fascist Leader Exposed the Metropolitan, the Con Artist, and Their Veterans Association

Elizabeth Frances Geballe (SLAV): Scandalous Homage: E.-M. de Vogüé’s 'Translation' of Dostoevsky

Joshua Malitsky (Cinema and Media Studies): Condensation, Limitlessness, and Ecstasy: Labor, Landscape, and the Yugoslav Postwar Newsreel

Sarah Phillips (Anthropology): Kurt Vonnegut in the USS

Andrea Rusnock (Women’s and Gender Studies/IU South Bend): Fighting on the Home Front: Images of Women Working for the Motherland During the Great Patriotic War

Lukasz Sicinski (SLAV): Epistemology of Evil in Jerzy Kawalerowicz’s Mother Joan of the Angels

Regina Smyth (Political Science): The Popular Logic of Authoritarian Policymaking: Blame and Attribution in Russia

Regina Smyth (Political Science): Who Supports the Housing Renovation Program?

 

Student Papers

Ani Abrahamyan (SLAV):  The Threat of Communal Creation in Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Heart of a Dog and The Theatrical Novel

Rebecca Cravens (SLAV): 'Time marches on, but I’ll make it dance in a circle': Authority, Authorship, and Temporality in Krzhizhanovsky’s 'Memories of the Future'

Greer Gerni (Theatre History): Challenging Gender Roles and Sexual Identity in Chekhov’s Three Sisters

Aidan Francis Klein (Political Science):  Federal Networks and Economic Management in Authoritarian Russia

Dima Kortukov (Political Science): Electoral Empowerment and Authoritarian Breakdown: USSR’s Congress of People’s Deputies

Joie Meier (Gender Studies): Strange Bedfellows: Hungarian Women's Involvement in Hungarian Far-Right Movements

Filip Mitricevic (History): Rethinking Rebellion, Rethinking the Nation: Antifascism and Memory in Post-Socialist Serbia

Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed (SLAV): Dreiser Looks at Russia: An American Insight into the USSR

Jessica Ruth Storey-Nagy (Central Eurasian Studies): 'Budapest is not a circus!': The Linguistic Landscape of Budapest’s 2019 Municipal Elections

 

Panel Discussants

Ben Eklof (History): Late Soviet Village I: Rural Youth of Northwestern Russia and Soviet Modernities, 1950s-1980s

Andrea Rusnock (Women’s and Gender Studies/IU South Bend): Trans-cultural Translation, Agency, and Antisemitism in Folk Narratives: Russian, South-East, and East European Examples

Kathryn Graber (Anthropology): The Promises of Infrastructure I: Imagining Isolation and Integration

Michael Benjamin De Groot (International Studies): Comecon Revisited: Cooperation and (Dis)integration in the Soviet Bloc

Padraic J. Kenney (History): Beyond Anti-Corruption Campaigns: The Social and Cultural History of Corruption in Late Socialism

Padraic J. Kenney (History): Socialization into Rebellion: Political Engagement of Youth in Interwar Central Europe

 

Panel/Roundtable Chairs

Kathryn Graber (Anthropology): Book Discussion: "Words Like Birds (Jenanne Ferguson) and Mixed Messages (Kathryn E. Graber): Language Anxieties in Russia’s East"

Michael Benjamin De Groot (International Studies): Comecon Revisited: Cooperation and (Dis)integration in the Soviet Bloc

Dima Kortukov (Political Science): Parliamentary Politics in Gorbachev’s USSR and Putin’s Russia

Joshua Malitsky (Cinema and Media Studies): Reimagining Landscape: Geographical Imaginaries in the Wake of WWII

Joanna Nizynska (SLAV): Literary Tradition After WWII: Polish and Yiddish Writing in the 1940s and '50s

Sarah Phillips (Anthropology): Foreigners in the Soviet Union

 

Roundtable Participants

Michael V. Alexeev (Economics): Two Decades of Russia’s Economic Policies: 2000-2020

Marina Antić (SLAV): Marxist Polemics II: Literary and Film Studies beyond Liberalism

Maria Bucur (History):  Book Discussion: "Socialist Heritage: The Politics of Past and Place in Romania," by Emanuela Grama

Ben Eklof (History): Russian Family Networks in Times of Turmoil: From the Napoleonic Wars to the Time of Stalin #thelong19c

Kathryn Graber (Anthropology): Book Discussion: "Words Like Birds (Jenanne Ferguson) and Mixed Messages (Kathryn E. Graber): Language Anxieties in Russia’s East"

Alisha Kirchoff (Sociology): Book Discussion: "Between Two Fires: Truth, Ambition, and Compromise in Putin's Russia," by Joshua Yaffa

Janet Rabinowitch (IU Press): Russian Family Networks in Times of Turmoil: From the Napoleonic Wars to the Time of Stalin #thelong19c

 

Participants from other Indiana-based public universities (apart from IU)*

Francine Friedman (Ball State U): Roundtable Member: Ethnic and National Identity in Bosnia-Herzegovina: Kinship and Solidarity in a Polyethnic SocietAmina Gabrielova (Purdue U): Roundtable Member: The Oeuvre of Vladimir Sharov: Beyond History

Olga Lyanda-Geller (Purdue U):  Gustav Shpet's Philosophy of Music

Rebekah Klein-Pejsova (Purdue U): Borders of Temporality in the US Zone Displaced Persons Camps

Amber N. Nickell (Purdue U): 'Jew Shoes' and 'Hitler Help': Ethnic Germans, Jews, and their Diasporas during the Famines of 1921/22 and 1932/33; Roundtable Member: Implementing New Scholarship and Research in the Classroom

Sergei Ivanovich Zhuk (Ball State U): Roundtable Member: The KGB/FSB and Soviet/Russian Youth: Soviet/Russian Forms of Ideological Control and Foreign Enemies

* Purdue, Indiana State, Ball State, Purdue Fort Wayne, Purdue Northwest, Vincennes, and the University of Southern Indiana, along with IU campuses, are part of IREEN (Indiana Russian and East European Network), an Indiana-based network that facilitates teaching and research collaboration in Russian and East European studies across Indiana’s public higher education institutions.