Our biannual newsletter, REEIfication, contains feature articles and other news about issues in the field and the work of our faculty, students, and alumni. It is sent to alumni, associates, affiliates, and friends of the Institute. You can view the current newsletter below, or peruse past REEIfication issues on IU's Archives of Institutional Memory.
Dear Friends of REEI,
As we swiftly (and exhaustedly!) approach the end of an eventful academic year, I would like to share some brief updates about the impressive accomplishments of our faculty, staff, students, and alumni. In this newsletter, you can read about our community members’ new jobs, publications, research projects, and more!
We are pleased to include a list of events REEI presented this semester in collaboration with our wonderful partners. I especially want to call your attention to the panel “Taking Sides: An Assessment of Mikhail Gorbachev’s Legacy Forty Years Later” and the conference and concert “In Memoriam Béla Bartók (1881-1945).” Although these events were dissimilar in their focus, both were very well attended and received, and both showcased the breadth and expertise of IU faculty. I was delighted to hear the invited participants and members of the audience sing the praises of my IU colleagues!
We continue to develop new courses from REEI. Next fall, we are offering six new classes! Such offerings will allow students to explore the breadth and depth of our region, showcasing such topical themes as Ukrainian migration and radio broadcasting’s role in ideological warfare (see page 5). I am thrilled to say that our new courses already have robust enrollments, but there are still some seats available, so feel free to share our course information with interested students!
Please consider supporting REEI on IU Day (see page 8). No gift is too small, and every bit helps REEI realize our promise to our students. And to celebrate IU Day, the IU Foundation is matching dollar-for-dollar first-time donors who make gifts of $50-$500 between now and April 23!
As we come to the end of a busy academic year, I also want to sincerely thank you, our community, for your ongoing support and engagement with REEI. I am deeply grateful for everything you do!
by Mark Trotter
The AATSEEL Teacher Excellence Program (TEP) “graduated” its second cohort of teachers in Spring 2025. The program was established in 2021 by REEI and the American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages (AATSEEL) to recognize and support excellence in the pre-college teaching of Russian.
TEP program costs were covered by REEI and AATSEEL, with additional support from the University of Pittsburgh Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies; the University of Wisconsin Center for Russia, East Europe, and Central Asia; the Ohio State University Center for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies; and the University of North Carolina Center for Slavic, Eurasian, and East European Studies.
OTEP aims to sustain a professional network for K-12 teachers of Russian, expansion of K-12 teacher involvement in AATSEEL and promotion of their leadership within the organization, encourage professional development for K-12 teachers of Russian, and cultivate a robust, mutually beneficial partnership of K-12 and post-secondary teachers of Russian. The ten teachers selected to participate in the second iteration of TEP represent schools from a broad cross-section of the US.
The TEP administrative team includes William (Bill) Comer, Professor of Russian, Director of the Russian Flagship Center at Portland State University, Lee Roby (MA, Slavic and East European Languages and Literatures, 1996), Russian Teacher at Friends School of Baltimore, Tommy Tabatowski, Russian teacher at Noble Academy (Chicago) and 2021-2023 TEP cohort participant, and Mark Trotter, then-REEI Associate Director. Comer, Roby, and Tabatowski serve as program mentors while Trotter oversees logistics.
Following application and selection in Fall 2023, TEP participants began the program with a “get acquainted” session over ZOOM in January 2024, facilitated by their mentors. They then convened in Las Vegas, NV for a long weekend of activities that began with Unpacking the World-Readiness Standards for Learning Russian: From Learning Scenarios to Lesson Plans, a day-long professional development workshop led by Commer, Roby, and Tabatowski. After the workshop, TEP participants attended panels devoted to language teaching pedagogy at the AATSEEL conference. Post-conference, mentors met with participants and helped them navigate the conference proposal process for the following year. All the resulting paper and roundtable proposals were accepted.
Over the summer and through January 2025, participants worked individually and as a group with mentors on the development of their conference presentations. “Collaborating with like-minded educators who teach the same content is a huge benefit that we don’t usually have in our school districts,” said participant Anna Surin.
The TEP cohort figured prominently at the AATSEEL 2025 Conference (held virtually). Three participants contributed individual papers: “Using AI tools to transition from traditional assessments to integrated Performance Assessments” by Kateryna Decker (North Carolina Virtual Public School in Raleigh, NC), “ Classroom-Tested Strategies to Promote Russian Language Growth through the Use of Metacognitive Strategies and Proficiency Portfolios” by Anna Surin (North Forsyth High School in Cumming, GA), and “Walking Monuments: What about Pushkin?” by Olga Zaslavsky (The Wheeler School in Providence, RI). In addition, the following TEP participants participated in roundtables at the conference: Zoya Surits (Franklin High School in Portland, OR), Anna Asadov-Ossowska (San Diego Russian School in La Jolla, CA), Irina Feofanova (Enlightium Academy in Spokane, WA), Lara Ravitch (Concordia Language Villages in Moorhead, MN) Nat Leach (Friends School of Baltimore in Baltimore, MD), Lauren Braytenbach (Sparta Muddle School in Sparta, NJ), and Robert Chura (Saint Louis University High School in Saint Louis, MO).
After the conference, TEP participants met with the mentors individually and as a group for feedback and assistance with follow-up plans, which for many include contributions to next year’s AATSEEL Conference in New Orleans. “My school needed a curriculum they could use both asynchronously online and in a local school,” commented Irina Feofanova. “The AATSEEL-TEP project . . . provided me with abundant materials, guided me through the structure and proficiency requirements, helped me establish my networking circle, and opened doors to workshops, professional chats, and other conferences. I would do it all over again if I could!”
REEI and AATSEEL hope to bring on a third TEP cohort in the near future.
Kirby Fleitz (REEI MA/REEI Outreach Assistant) will be attending the University of Illinois at Chicago’s History PhD program starting in Fall 2025
Matt Hulstine (Central Eurasian Studies PhD) presented “Navigating New Subject-Ruler Relationships: Examining an 1880 Petition to the Russian Administration in the Fergana Valley” at the UChicago Forum (Franke Institute for the Humanities) held April 4-5, 2025.
Brittany Jánosi (REEI MA/MLS Dual Degree), Ryan McCrea (REEI MA), Sydney Verel (REEI MA), and Tabor Walls (REEI MA) presented papers for the panel “Layered Narratives in Eastern Europe: Identity, Art, and Religion,” at the 2025 Midwest Slavic Conference in Columbus, Ohio, held April 4-6, 2025.
Kat Payne (REEI MA/MLS Dual Degree) will be a junior fellow at the Library of Congress this summer, working on a project about cataloguing Russian technical textbooks from the late Cold War era.
In April, Grace Pechianu (Musicology PhD) presented her essay “The Romanian Church in Exile: Sacred Strains in the Ether” at the Music Biennale Zagreb International Musicology Conference hosted at the University of Zagreb Academy of Music with the assistance of the At the archive of the Societatea Română de Radiodifuziune in Bucharest REEI Mellon Student Conference Travel Grant. She also carried out archival research at the Societatea Română de Radiodifuziune in Bucharest for her dissertation, “War of the Waves: Radio Free Europe’s Crusade for Freedom in Early Socialist Romania.
John C. Stanko (Political Science PhD/REEI Curriculum Assistant) presented a talk entitled “Incorporating Populist Authoritarian Rhetoric into Dynamic Legitimation Theory” at the October 2024 installment of the REEI Colloquium Series.
Taylor Nasim Stone (Central Eurasian Studies PhD/REEI Communications GA) is presenting her research on indigenous Kurdish tattoos at the 4th International Kurdish Studies Conference hosted in Hewlêr (Erbil), Iraqi Kurdistan this April. She has also received two 1st place awards for this project in the 2025 Women’s Research Poster Competition at the IU Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering through the IU Center of Excellence for Women & Technology.
Dear Friends of REEI,
With IU Day 2025 fast approaching on April 23rd, we would like to thank our community of donors for their invaluable support this year and invite you to join us in celebrating with a gift to the Russian and East European Institute Fund!
IU Day is an opportunity to support an IU cause close to your heart. When you support the Russian and East European Institute Fund, your gift could be used to support one of our priority initiatives such as the CaREEr Frontier professional development series, which brings professionals and REEI students together to discuss the ins and outs of fields such as international development, consulting, civil service, the military, and more.
This much beloved professional development series allows students to explore how their emerging expertise in our region will support their future careers, while learning from and networking with individuals who work and thrive in those careers today. Make a gift to the REEI Fund, and you can help REEI students take their first steps toward careers in which they can use their Russian and East European area studies expertise!
No gift is too small, and every bit helps. And to celebrate IU Day, the IU Foundation is matching dollar-for-dollar first-time donors who make gifts of $50-$500 between now and April 23!
We are deeply grateful for all who have made contributions to REEI’s funds over the years, and who continue to do so now. Thanks to you, we are realizing our promise to our students. 
George Andrei (IU College of Arts and Sciences) presented “Dreaming of the ‘English Indies’: Civilizing Missions, Racial Hygiene, and the Origins of Romanian Forestry Institutions” as part of the European Society for Environmental History’s Environmental History Today Webinar series in December 2024. He spoke about the relationship that Romanian foresters forged with imperial practices of the British in India, which he argues contributed significantly to the development of socio-environmental practices in Romania. He was also part of the roundtable “Beyond Print: Alternative Archives, Digital Humanities, and Interdisciplinary Methodologies in Environmental History” at the American Society for Environmental History 2025 Conference in April, speaking on the importance of rural archives and collections in studying Romanian environmental history.
Wookjin Cheun (IU Libraries) published a review of Charles G. Palm’s book, Documenting Communism: the Hoover Project to Microfilm and Publish the Soviet Archives, in the Winter 2024 issue of the Slavic and East European Journal.
Halina Goldberg's (Musicology) and Nancy Sinkoff’s edited volume, Polish Jewish Culture Beyond the Capital: Centering the Periphery (2023, Rutgers University Press), won the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America’s Anna M. Cienciala Award for Best-Edited Multi-Authored Scholarly Volume. The book has also been shortlisted by the American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages for Best Edited Multi-Author Scholarly Volume of 2024. The Jewish Inn in Polish Culture: Between Practice and Phantasm, coedited with Bożena Shallcross, will come out in June 2025, with Indiana University Press. Goldberg contributed a chapter “The Jewish Inn in the Polish National Ballet” for The Jewish Inn in Polish Culture and a chapter “The Piano Virtuosa at Home and Away: Transnational Salon Networks of Maria Szymanowska, Maria Kalergis-Muchanoff, and Marcelina Czartoryska” for A History of Women and Musical Salons (in production with Cambridge University Press).
Jeff Holdeman (Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures) was promoted to Teaching Professor (SLAV’s first) in February 2025. His massive overhaul of SLAV’s undergraduate curriculum (in effect as of the Fall 2024 semester) resulted in four separate major tracks (BCS, Czech, Polish, and Russian; formerly just Russian and Slavic) and seven minor tracks (BCS, Czech, Polish, Russian, Ukrainian, Slavic Cinema, and general Slavic; formerly just general Slavic). The Slavic Cinema minor is perhaps the only one in North America, and the Ukrainian minor one of about five. He created the SLAV Internship Program, the SLAV Federal Work Study Program, and completed the SLAV Undergraduate Teaching Internship/Assistantship Program, which are all fully operational for 2024–2025. In collaboration with IU Education Abroad, he launched IU’s CIEE Tallinn Russian Language and European Studies and CIEE Semester in Tallinn programs which now cover fall, spring, and summer semesters. In October 2024, he organized the IU Central and East European Career Night, and in January 2025 he organized the IU Slavic and East European Study Abroad Information Session, and he continues to serve as a faculty mentor of the IU Foreign/Second Language Share Fair, which is having its next event in April 2025.
Mark Hooker (Visiting Scholar, REEI) published James Bond Through Russian Eyes: An Analysis of the Russian Translations of From Russia with Love. In a letter (1957), Fleming said that From Russia with Love “will probably not be translated into Russian.” For almost thirty years, he was right. A Russian translation of his novel was not officially published until 1990, on the eve of the collapse of the USSR. His novel is an artifact of a politically charged time, and it needs to be understood in its historical context. The political waves that Fleming’s novel caused can still be seen in the Russian translations. Some of the translations redact Fleming’s biting commentary on the USSR to blunt its effect. Others embellish Fleming’s text to make it more scathing. One of the goals of this study is to point out those politically motivated differences. This study is based on an analysis of seven published Russian translations of From Russia with Love. In addition, the study uses five translations into other languages: Ukrainian, German (two), Dutch and Czech. These translations provide a background against which the peculiarities of the Russian translations are easier to see.
Ke Chin Hsia (History) published “How to Pick Up the Pieces? War Victim Welfare from the Habsburg Monarchy to the Austrian Republic,” in Das Erbe der Habsburgermonarchie in den Nachfolgestaaten: Brüche und Kontinuitäten, ed. Ulrike Harmat, in the series “Die Habsburgermonarchie 1848-1918.” He also received a Sosland Foundation Fellowship at the Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, January to April 2025, and gave an invited presentation, “The Wanted Refugees? Volksdeutsche and Agriculture in Immediate Postwar Austria,” at the NYU Eastern European Workshop, on March 5, 2025.
Svitlana Melynyk (Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures) served as a discussant on the panel “Russian Discourse and Information Warfare: Linguistic Insights and Strategic Responses” at ASEEES (Boston, November 21, 2024). She also participated in the poster panel “Teaching the Less Commonly Taught Slavic and East European Languages” with the presentation “Incorporating the Topic of Disability and Inclusion into the Ukrainian Language Classroom,” as well as in the roundtable “New Developments in Teaching and Learning Ukrainian” with the presentation “Implementing Differentiated Instruction in an Intensive Ukrainian Language Classroom” (ATSEEEL, online, February 2, 2025). She served as a discussant on the panel “Russian Discourse and Information Warfare: Linguistic Insights and Strategic Responses” at ASEEES (Boston, November 21, 2024). She also participated in the poster panel “Teaching the Less Commonly Taught Slavic and East European Languages” with the presentation “Incorporating the Topic of Disability and Inclusion into the Ukrainian Language Classroom,” as well as in the roundtable “New Developments in Teaching and Learning Ukrainian” with the presentation “Implementing Differentiated Instruction in an Intensive Ukrainian Language Classroom” (ATSEEEL, online, February 2, 2025).
Öner Özçelik (Central Eurasian Studies) published a monograph, The Phonology of Turkish, with Oxford University Press.
Maria Shardakova (Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures) successfully oversaw the renewal of the Russian Flagship Program at Indiana University for another four-year cycle. Considering that half of the Flagship programs nationwide have been cut, this is a significant achievement that underscores the strength and impact of our program.
Veronika Trotter (IU Libraries) published an open access article, “Preserving Heritage: Exploring Armenian Language, History, and Culture Through Rare Books at Indiana University Libraries” in the Bulletin of Armenian Libraries.
Alina Bessenyey Williams (Islamic Studies, Southeast Asian and ASEAN Studies) published a review of Sándor Horváth’s book, Children of Communism: Politicizing Youth Revolt in Communist Budapest in the 1960s, in the Winter 2024 issue of the Slavic and East European Journal.
Eric D. Boyle (O’Neill MPA/REEI MA, 1999) recently joined The Asia Group as the Managing Principal for Strategy & Business Development. The Asia Group is a multinational consultancy that advises global corporations and investors at the intersection of geopolitics, public policy, and business across the Indo-Pacific region. In his new role, Eric will lead efforts to transform the firm’s business development infrastructure, secure new business, and launch new service lines.
Lieutenant Colonel (LTC) Nicole Hash (REEI Mid-Career MA, 2018) assumed command of the U.S. Army San Antonio Recruiting Battalion, marking another milestone in an already distinguished military career. LTC Hash officially stepped into this leadership role on March 4th, 2025, taking the helm of one of the Army’s leading recruiting battalions.
Barbara Junisbai (Political Science PhD, 2009) published her first monograph, The Pitfalls of Family Rule: Patronage Norms, Family Overreach, and Political Crisis in Kazakhstan and Beyond with Cornell University Press in February 2025.
Zachary Kelly (REEI MA, 2012) is overseeing an undergraduate research program in his capacity as Assistant Director at the Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ISEEES) at University of California Berkeley. In this program, four undergraduates are digging through the archives to (re)write the history of Slavic Studies at UC Berkeley. Plenty of IU faculty, past and present, make appearances throughout the archives and, in addition to Kelly, ISEEES Director Jeffrey Pennington is an REEI alum (REEI MA, 1993).
Valery Perry (REEI MA, 1994) is on a two-person team evaluating the Trustbuilding Programme developed by Initiatives of Change. Shortly before the inauguration, she published “Reflections on American Democratic Threats and Opportunities: A Pre-Inauguration Baseline” for Democratization Policy Council, and through writing and media she is trying to explain the potential consequences of the operationalized democratic deficit we are seeing, based on examples from around the world.
Elizabeth (Lee) Roby (MA Slavic/East European Languages and Literatures, 1996) was presented with the American Council of Teachers of Russian Distinguished Service Award in Recognition of Outstanding Service to the Russian Profession in February 2025.