Jack Bloom (Sociology, IUNW) has been invited by the International Council for Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) to serve as an expert witness with respect to the nomination of the Gdansk Shipyard in Poland as a World Heritage Fund Site. ICOMOS is a division of the World Heritage Fund that is based in UNESCO.
Maria Bucur (History) has co-edited a special issue of Feminist Encounters under the title "East European Feminisms," available here through open access. Her The Nation’s Gratitude: World War I and Citizenship Rights in Interwar Romania has been accepted for publication with Routledge Press, and her article “Gender as Proselytism: Romania's Education Law Hits a New Low” appeared in Public Seminar. In November, she and participants from Argentina, Brazil, Poland, Romania, South Africa, and Turkey were featured speakers at “The U.S. Elections and the Future of Democracy: Perspectives from Abroad,” a roundtable organized by the New School for Social Research.
Vesna Dimitrieska (Education) has received the Best Practice Award in Support of Global and International Perspectives from the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education. The award, presented in March 2020 at the association’s annual meeting in Atlanta, recognizes Dimitrieska’s unique work in spearheading collaborations between the School of Education and the Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies. She serves as Coordinator of Global Education Initiatives in the IU School of Education.
Kathryn Graber (Anthropology, Central Eurasian Studies) published Mixed Messages: Mediating Native Belonging in Asian Russia, with Cornell University Press. Graber’s book was the subject of a roundtable discussion at the 2020 ASEEES conference.
Owen V. Johnson (Emeritus, Journalism) published "Ernie Pyle & Harriet Davidson: Two Red-Headed Travelers" in Traces of Indiana & Midwestern History 32:3 (Summer 2020), pp. 46-55. On October 2, he presented "'That's All We Did For Him': The Story of Ernie Pyle and His Relationship to Blacks" as well as research in progress on his project "Media and Nation in 20th Century Slovakia" at the annual convention of the American Journalism Historians Association.
Marianne Kamp (CEUS) delivered a presentation on " "Jobs for Orphans, Taxes for Kulaks, and Love of Tractors: Collectivization Oral Histories from Uzbekistan" as a featured speaker in the Area Studies Showcase Lecture Series, a collaborative effort to showcase an area studies specialist from each Title VI funded National Resource Center that focuses on the Russian, East European, and Central Asian world region.
Patrick Michelson (Religious Studies) led an online discussion about secularism with students from the IU Collins Living-Learning Center as part of its Q-Project in November. In December, n December, Prof. Michelson led a one-hour webinar on “History and the Humanities” as part of Tel Aviv University's International B.A. in Liberal Arts.
Sarah Phillips (Anthropology/REEI) delivered a presentation on "American Literary and Cultural Diplomacy during the Cold War: Kurt Vonnegut in the USSR" as a featured speaker in the Area Studies Showcase Lecture Series, a collaborative effort to showcase an area studies specialist from each Title VI funded National Resource Center that focuses on the Russian, East European, and Central Asian world region. Her talk drew upon extensive research that she undertook in both Russia and the United States during her sabbatical year in 2019-20.
Mark Roseman (History, Jewish Studies) is the author of Lives Reclaimed, a book that was the subject of the seminar “Resistance and Rescue in History and Memory. Rethinking Opposition in the Third Reich” at the Institute for Holocaust, Genocide and Memory Studies at UMass Amherst, in September. The panel discussion with Alon Confino, Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann and Rebecca Whittmann can be viewed on Youtube here. In November, he participated in the State of Indiana's 22nd Annual Holocaust Remembrance Program, for which he was interviewed as part of a video celebrating the life of “Hidden Child” Holocaust survivor, Esther Davidson. He also delivered the keynote address for the conference “New Approaches to the Rescue of Jews during the Holocaust. History, Politics, Commemoration,” organized by the Selma Stern Center for Jewish Studies Berlin-Brandenburg, November 23-25. and was featured in an hour-long interview on WFIU’s Profiles.
Tatiana Saburova (History) has published “Geographical Imagination, Anthropology, and Political Exiles: Photographers of Siberia in Late Imperial Russia” in Sibirica: Journal of Siberian Studies, Vol. 19, No. 1, Spring 2020: 57–84. She also served as co-organizer, presenter and moderator of "The Graduate Methods Training Workshop: Focus on Russia" held on October 2-3 and hosted by the Russian Studies Workshop in REEI at Indiana University and funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The event was attended by thirteen Ph.D. students from US higher education institutions selected on a competitive basis, and taught by an international group of leading scholars in the field. The workshop, which introduced participants to archival and library resources and offered two conceptual panels on "Crossing Borders: Transnational and Comparative History" and "From the First Person: Identity, Subjectivity and Ego Documents," was a follow-up to an equally successful event offered in 2018.
Kaya Sahin (History) presented "Imperial Performances: Circumcision Ceremonies for Ottoman Princes, 1457-1582"as part of the University of York (UK), Department of History Research Seminar.
Shelley Scott (Slavics) has retired from IU after serving as fiscal officer for the Department of Slavic and East European Languages for the last 20 years.
Miriam Shrager (Slavics) was selected as Faculty Mentor of the year for 2019-20 by graduate students in the Department of Slavic and East European Languages and Literatures.
Andrea Stanislav (Art) has been artist-in-residence at the Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh since last May. As featured guest at a meeting of the University of Pittsburgh’s Czechoslovak Nationality Room Committee, she spoke about her upcoming exhibit.
Mark Trotter (REEI) spoke as a panelist for "Changes to the pedagogy at the K-12 level (programmatic goals, methods, assessment)"in National Conversations on Teaching of Russian, an ongoing series of discussions that was launched during the summer under the leadership of the American Council of Teachers of Russian (ACTR). Mark discussed the ACTR Olympiada of Spoken Russian, which he has served as National Co-chair since 2011.