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1 | Timestamp | Name | Email Address | Institutional Affiliation (If none, enter "Independent Scholar") | ASEEES Membership Status | If you are a student, select your current status (we do not accept undergrad presenters) | Select ONE category for your proposed panel or paper | If trying to organize a panel, enter a brief description of the proposed panel | Select all that apply. I am looking for: | If you have a paper and would like to be part of a panel, enter a brief description of your proposed paper topic | If you would like to volunteer to serve as chair or discussant, select all that apply: | Describe topics of interest to you as chair or discussant: | |||
2 | 1/10/2025 12:30:06 | Grace Clifford | graceclifford2028@u.northwestern.edu | Northwestern University | Current Member | PhD Student | Arts II: Music, Theater, Performance Studies | Space and embodiment in the libretto of Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin | |||||||
3 | 1/10/2025 13:33:30 | Cristiana Lucchetti | cristiana.lucchetti@uzh.ch | University of Zurich / Chicago | Current Member | Sociology, Public Health, Education | Suggested title/topic: Interdisciplinary approaches to migration and multilingualism. In this panel, I envision several papers next to mine which treat migration and multilingualism from an interdisciplinary point of view, including linguistic (non-structural approaches), anthropology, sociology and migration studies. | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | My paper presents a comparative study of migration from former Yugoslavia to Switzerland and to the US, with a specific focus on the construction of language prestige in the diasporic situation and on the underlying ideologies. It is an interdisciplinary research project at the interfaces of sociolinguistics, sociology, anthropology and migration studies, hence the difficulty of choosing a category. | Chair, Discussant | Migration, multilingualism, former Yugoslavia, Israel | ||||
4 | 1/10/2025 15:15:03 | Nelly Shulman | nashulmans@gmail.com | Hebrew University of Jerusalem | Current Member | PhD Student | Arts I: Visual Culture, Material Culture, Applied and Fine Arts | The Visual Representation of Women in Soviet Propaganda Posters This panel discusses the representation of female images in Soviet propaganda posters, focusing on their roles as cultural symbols and ideological messengers during a transformative periods in Soviet history. | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | The Visual Representation of Jewish Women in Soviet Yiddish Propaganda Posters This project explores the visual portrayal of Jewish women in Soviet Yiddish propaganda posters, focusing on their roles as cultural symbols and ideological messengers during a transformative period in Jewish and Soviet history. Through an interdisciplinary approach that combines art history, gender studies, and Jewish cultural studies, the research examines how visual culture contributed to shaping and disseminating narratives about Jewish identity, femininity, and modernity under Soviet rule. | Discussant | Russian and Soviet literature, gender studies, art history | |||
5 | 1/12/2025 19:34:59 | Alexey Kotelvas | alexeykotelvas@ufl.edu | University of Florida | Current Member | PhD Student | History: 1945-1990 | The title of our panel is "Mediators: Translators and Translations in Soviet International Relations." It is broader than diplomacy. Both the results of translation and personal agency are crucial for coherency of the program. The following topics are very welcome: - Translations in Soviet Samizdat - Foreign literature in Soviet Translations - Translators in Soviet Diplomacy We need the fourth presenter. It means that there is the only vacant position at the panel. Please send the working title of your presentation and the brief description of your idea to the email alexeykotelvas@ufl.edu. I am waiting for your letters before January 20. I will make the decision shortly. | Presenter(s) | ||||||
6 | 1/16/2025 5:51:34 | Ondrej Klipa | ondrej.klipa@fsv.cuni.cz | Charles U in Prague | Current Member | Sociology, Public Health, Education | My colleague Ota Konrád and I are organizing a panel titled "Contested Histories: History Education and the Struggle for Democratic Resilience in Central and Eastern Europe". In our panel, we explore the contentious role of contemporary history education in shaping democratic resilience within Central and Eastern Europe. We examine the tension between approaches grounded in "democratic education" and the historical policies promoted by right-wing populist governments in the region. My paper focuses on disputes about modern history textbooks in Czechia and Poland. Ota will present some controversies regarding the Holocaust in history teaching in Germany. We are currently looking for the third panel member, ideally covering related topics in Hungary or Slovakia (but other states of the region would be fine, too). We also welcome anyone who could serve as a chair or discussant of our panel. | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | Chair | history 1945 - present, state socialism, Central and Eastern Europe, Ukraine | |||||
7 | 2/5/2025 15:17:47 | Alisa Kuzmina | kuzmi013@umn.edu | University of Minnesota | Current Member | PhD Candidate (ABD status) | Gender/LGBTQ Studies | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | Chair, Discussant | ||||||
8 | 1/21/2025 19:25:40 | Cynthia Buckley | cynbuck@umich.edu | Univ. of Michigan | Current Member | Sociology, Public Health, Education | The proposed title "Sexual and Reproductive Health in Central Asia Past, Present, and Future" (edits welcomed). Over the past 30 years, unmet contraceptive needs have declined, yet reported health knowledge among youth remains relatively low. Fertility differentials by language and ethnicity are seen in many areas. Contraceptive access has expanded for married couples, but the contraceptive mix remains heavily skewed towards IUDs. Attitudes towards HIV and AIDS have improved, but yet reflect persistent stigmatization. Male reproductive and sexual health is understudied. STDs in many areas are rising among youth. SO MUCH TO THINK ABOUT. Comparative or single case papers, qualitative or quantitative, and historical or contemporary pieces are welcomed. Join us! | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | |||||||
9 | 1/22/2025 5:00:00 | Edward Waysband | e.waysband@gmail.com | The Hebrew University of Jerusalem | Current Member | Literature: 20th Century | "Dream Records as Historical Sources and Literary Narratives.” Dream records and reports have been an object of analysis by literary scholars, cultural historians, sociologists, and anthropologists, and have long been viewed as legible historical evidence (see, inter alia, Peter Burke, “The Cultural History of Dreams,” in: Burke Peter, Varieties of Cultural History, Cambridge, 1997; Daniel Pick and Lyndal Roper, eds., Dreams and History: The Interpretation of Dreams from Ancient Greece to Modern Psychoanalysis, London, 2004). Speaking about “dreams of terror” during the Third Reich, Reinhart Koselleck has argued that they “testify to a past reality in a manner which perhaps could not be surpassed by any source.” Drawing on these premises, the panel would test various modalities of dream records, both as historical sources and literary narratives endowed with unique insights into human existence; and would focus on questions – what are the specifics of these modalities and what analytical approach can be pursued? | Presenter(s), Chair | My contribution will focus on a Russian Jewish WWI dream record. | ||||||
10 | 1/23/2025 5:28:29 | Dmytro Iarovyi | diarovyi@kse.org.ua | Kyiv School of Economics; Vytautas Magnus University | Current Member | International Relations, Security Studies, Foreign Policy | I would like to have a panel to discuss the issues of disinformation/propaganda, OR societal resilience in the countries of Baltic region, Ukraine, and/or Moldova and Georgia. My own contribution is a resilience to information disorders in Lithuania and Ukraine. I have a potential discussant for the panel, and at least one other potential contributor from the US, but we are welcome to more! | Presenter(s), Chair | I am studying the resilience to information disorders in Ukraine and Lithuania. Together with colleagues from Lithuania and Estonia, we've submitted a paper with a model of resilience to information disorders - basically, disinformation, propaganda etc. - on macro, intermediary, micro level. Now I am working on the conceptual methodology and empirical studies of the social practices enhancing/deteriorating resilience to make this model practical. The final results will be by late October and would like to discuss them. | Chair, Discussant | information disorders (propaganda, disinformation, conspiracy theories); popular culture as a means of the propaganda; public policy in Ukraine; Ukraine; Lithuania; Cold War; Russian sharp power | ||||
11 | 2/16/2025 10:46:56 | Dragana Zivkovic | dzivkovic@fsu.edu | Florida State University | Current Member | PhD Candidate (ABD status) | Gender/LGBTQ Studies | This panel is complete | Discussant(s) | Chair | gender, Balkan studies | ||||
12 | 1/28/2025 8:30:14 | Matilda Hicklin | matilda.hicklin@bristol.ac.uk | University of Bristol | Current Member | PhD Student | Linguistics, Language Pedagogy, Translation | We are two PhD students seeking a third panelist to join our panel exploring intersections of poetry and translation in Russia, Eastern Europe and Eurasia. The panel will examine how poetry translation engages with personal and collective memory, especially in contexts where gender perspectives have been historically marginalised or silenced. We particularly welcome papers addressing translation as a form of resistance, gender-specific experiences of remembering/forgetting and the intergenerational transmission of memory through poetry and translation. | Presenter(s) | ||||||
13 | 1/28/2025 15:00:42 | Danica Anderson | danica@kolocollaboration.org | The Kolo:Women's Cross Cultural Collaboration | Current Member | Anthropology, Cultural Studies | A vital aspect of this research focuses on the neglected role of epigenetic memory gene- oral memory in the femicide, war and genocide. It is the Slavic- South Slavic use of oral memory practices that ameliorated transgenerational trauma, informed trauma methodologies. The Holocaust women and children survivors ranging from the Afghans, Ukrainians, South Slavic Muslim women war crimes survivors’ life experiences are not easily translatable.Consider the biopolitics-explore the current political situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) and Serbia, collection of testimonies around Temple of David and 2003 Museum Annex, as it intersects with the Ukrainian war and its refugees. Include Afghan, Africans, to Syrians traversing the Balkan Route. | Presenter(s) | Discussant | Epigenetic memory-transgenerational trauma | |||||
14 | 1/28/2025 15:35:39 | Naira Sahakyan | n.e.sahakyan@gmail.com | American University of Armenia | Current Member | History: 1900-1945 | This panel examines the intersection of history education, identity formation, and political context in the caucasus across different historical periods. By focusing on history textbooks and teaching strategies, the panel explores how narratives were constructed, negotiated, and contested in response to shifting socio-political environments. The presentations address a range of themes, including the challenges of introducing social history in post-Soviet Caucasus, public debates over history curriculum reforms, and the representation of nations in textbooks from the late Ottoman and Russian imperial periods. This discussion contributes to broader conversations on the politics of history education, the role of textbooks in constructing national consciousness, and the interplay between educational institutions and the socio-political landscape. | Presenter(s), Discussant(s) | Chair, Discussant | Russian Revolutions of 1917, Muslims of North Caucasus, Armenian in late imperial, early Soviet era | |||||
15 | 1/29/2025 10:57:37 | Louis Porter | l_p309@txstate.edu | Texas State University | Current Member | History: 1945-1990 | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | Global Memory: Reading Andrei Gromyko's Memoirs in Light of the International Turn | Chair, Discussant | Soviet history, particularly international affairs | |||||
16 | 1/29/2025 11:34:20 | Will Prigge | will.prigge@sdstate.edu | South Dakota State University | Current Member | Literature: 20th Century | We are looking for one, possibly two panelists with a paper they would like to present related to our topic. Here is the current description. Memory is a key element that defines human communities, both at the individual and collective levels. In the Soviet Union and in Post-Soviet countries, where authoritarian regimes often have manipulated history to consolidate their power, individual and "unofficial" memory has sometimes been seen as more credible than official narratives. Panel participants will present analyses showing how literature and cultural narratives document the struggles of individuals and communities in the process of preserving their own memory in the face of political pressure and censorship. During the discussion, participants will reflect on how public memory and historical politics have affected literary narratives, and how literary creators have undermined official versions of history by exploring marginalized perspectives. Particular attention will be paid to the conflict between the authentic experience of artists/historians/literators and their ability to "be remembered" by future generations. The panel will ask the question of using the legacy of past generations to shape the understanding of the nation and its identity. | Presenter(s) | Chair | ||||||
17 | 1/29/2025 12:46:39 | Alexander Whelan | alexander.whelan@nyu.edu | New York University | Current Member | Library/Information Sciences | Panel proposal: 'Uncovering early histories of Soviet bibliographic librarianship' (confirmed topics to include the journal Sovetskaya Bibliografiya and professional librarian discourse; impact of Soviet bibliographic practice on Central/Eastern European states). We are looking for one or two additional panelists to present on topics broadly related to Soviet librarian practice and history of bibliography; optionally seeking discussants. | Presenter(s), Discussant(s) | |||||||
18 | 1/29/2025 13:21:52 | Gail Bratcher | abratcher@uchicago.edu | University of Chicago | Current Member | PhD Candidate (ABD status) | History: 1945-1990 | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | I am looking to be a part of a panel on post-war Soviet agriculture, food production, imperial environments, and/or Soviet science studies during the Cold War. My dissertation is entitled "The 'Second' Virgin Lands Campaign: Ecological Imperialism and Livestock-Agriculture on the Kazakh Steppe, 1891-1980." I trace the transition of nomadic pastoralism to industrial livestock-agriculture in Kazakhstan focusing specifically on cattle raising. My work sits at the nexus between environmental history, the history of science and technology, and the history of Russian/Soviet imperialism. | ||||||
19 | 1/31/2025 14:32:46 | David Salkowski | david.salkowski@unf.edu | University of North Florida | Current Member | Arts II: Music, Theater, Performance Studies | We are organizing a panel on theater and religion in Russia/Eastern Europe. Current presenters are David Salkowski and Alisa Lin. We have a chair and discussant in place and are currently seeking a third presenter. | Presenter(s) | Chair, Discussant | music, Silver Age, Russian Orthodoxy | |||||
20 | 2/24/2025 11:41:58 | Nelly Shulman | nashulmans@gmail.com | Hebrew University of Jerusalem | Current Member | PhD Candidate (ABD status) | Gender/LGBTQ Studies | The Visual Representation of Women in Soviet Propaganda This panel discusses the representation of female images in Soviet propaganda, focusing on their roles as cultural symbols and ideological messengers during a transformative periods in Soviet history. Presenters Natalia Chernyaeva, PhD Senior Researcher Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (the Kunstkamera) of the Russian Academy of Sciences From ethnographic photo to propaganda poster to feature film: evolving images of indigenous women of the North in Russian and Soviet visual media The paper explores representations of indigenous women in Russian Imperial and Soviet visual media, such as postcards, educational and propaganda posters. I will begin with a detailed analysis of a photograph of a Yakut woman taken during an ethnographic expedition in the early 20th century that was subsequently reproduced in a postcard format, a book illustration in a Soviet propaganda pamphlet, used in an educational poster in the late 1920s, and finally, in 2022, recreated in a feature film. I will then examine visual images of women of the North in Soviet educational and propaganda posters, focusing on the interplay between gender and ethnicity in the construction of these images. I will draw my analysis on the series of posters for school children, Peoples of the USSR (Moscow, State Publishing House, 1929), and posters issued by the House of Sanitary Education addressed to the inhabitants of the Arctic North that promoted a healthy lifestyle. Kim Dasom, PhD Student, Yale University A Man with a Movie Camera or Film-Person Starting from questioning the translation of the very title of Vertov's most famous film, Man with a Movie Camera, this paper explores Vertov's conceptualization of filmmaking agency. By analyzing the representation of filmmakers in the film and its accompanying poster, designed by the Stenberg brothers, I aim to highlight their transhuman qualities and offer a reinterpretation of the film through this lens. Nelly Shulman. PhD student, Hebrew University of Jerusalem The Visual Representation of Jewish Women in Soviet Yiddish Propaganda Posters This project explores the visual portrayal of Jewish women in Soviet Yiddish propaganda posters, focusing on their roles as cultural symbols and ideological messengers during a transformative period in Jewish and Soviet history. Through an interdisciplinary approach that combines art history, gender studies, and Jewish cultural studies, the research examines how visual culture contributed to shaping and disseminating narratives about Jewish identity, femininity, and modernity under Soviet rule. Elena Kohn M.A., The University of Texas at Austin J.D. Candidate, New York Law School Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies | Department of Slavic and Eurasian Studies | Department of Women's and Gender Studies Femininity and Food: Consumption and Construction of Soviet Womanhood in Socialist Realism. This paper examines the intersection of representations of gender and food in socialist realism, analyzing how Soviet propaganda posters utilized food imagery to construct and reinforce representations of women. Often depicted as agricultural leaders, maternal figures, and symbols of the Soviet project’s success, women in these visual and literary works were intricately linked to narratives of production, nourishment, and ideological strength. By exploring themes of femininity, sexuality, censorship, and starvation, this study highlights the ways in which food functioned as both a literal and symbolic tool in shaping the portrayal of women in socialist realism. Through this lens, the paper contributes to broader discussions on the role of female imagery as a cultural and ideological force during key periods of Soviet history. Discussant Liubov Kartashova, PhD, Instructor in the Department of Slavic & Eurasian Studies, Duke University Chair Jenny Kaminer Professor of Russian Faculty Advisor for the Arts and Humanities, College of Letters and Science University of California, Davis Department of German and Russian | Chair | Chair, Discussant | Gender Studies, Soviet Literature, Russian Jews | ||||
21 | 2/1/2025 5:46:33 | Elena Marasinova | lenamarassinova@gmail.com | University of Münster | Current Member | Early Slavic Studies | The Silent Majority and Social Control in the 18th-Century Russian Empire. Our panel is dedicated to an issue that is both obvious and underexplored: the relationship between the empire and the individual subject. At the center of our inquiry are sources that embody the state's interest in the actions, motivations, and thoughts of individual subjects: investigative cases, reviewed petitions, denunciations, directives to the Legislative Commission, and similar documents. These sources allow us to hear the voice of individual representatives belonged to the silent majority (to use Aron Gurevich’s precise phrase). This research perspective involves combining microanalysis of a source, centered on an individual, with the study of macroprocesses of imperial governance mechanisms. (We are looking for one more presenter). | Presenter(s) | |||||||
22 | 2/3/2025 8:14:26 | Kateryna Burkush | burkush.kateryna@gmail.com | Imre Kertész Kolleg Jena, FSU Jena | Current Member | History: 1945-1990 | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | I am looking to be a part of a panel that addresses either of the following subjects: Soviet forestry or, broader, social histories of Soviet extractivism; intersection of labor history, migration, and Soviet/socialist (resource) development; or communication techniques/strategies in the Soviet Union. My paper will examine workers’ recruitment campaigns (from Ukraine) into rapidly modernising and professionalizing timber industry (in Russia) during the final years of Stalinism with a particular focus on official and unofficial circulation of information, especially recruits’ letters and their impact on the progress of the recruitment campaign. The paper will test the limits of state propaganda campaigns and explore the significance of letter-writing in the quasi-universally literate post-World War II Soviet countryside. I will be happy join a panel addressing the mentioned topics, tackled either within the Soviet geographical boundaries or across state socialist countries of Eastern Europe. | Chair, Discussant | labor migration, state socialism, social history, history of natural resources, communication | |||||
23 | 2/3/2025 18:59:44 | Philip Tuxbury-Gleissner | tuxbury-gleissner.1@gmail.com | Ohio State | Current Member | Literature: 20th Century | We are seeking participants for a panel or series of panels titled “Provincializing Internationalism.” We invite papers that analyze the construction and (re)negotiation of communist/socialist internationalism through cultural institutions (e.g., periodicals, publishers) and practices (e.g., translation, layout design), focusing on the opportunities they created for local agency, forms, and meanings within the transnational pursuit of socialist politics. We welcome contributions that address different periods of state socialism (pre-WWII, post-WWII) and places within the Soviet Union, socialist Eastern Europe, or other parts of the world. | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | |||||||
24 | 2/6/2025 20:56:11 | Alice Volfson | avolfson@g.harvard.edu | Harvard University | Current Member | MA Student | History: 1945-1990 | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | Through archival research and interviews with surviving Soviet Central Asian and African writers, translators, and cultural participants, this study seeks to uncover how these figures navigated their unique identities at the crossroads of post-coloniality and empire, contributed to global literary movements, and asserted their voices independent of state control. By examining their participation in Afro-Asian literary exchanges such as the Asia-Africa Writers Conference, this project highlights the efforts of both Central Asian and African writers to foster an “imagined international community” of cultural solidarity. | ||||||
25 | 2/5/2025 12:02:43 | Christopher Hartwell | chartwell@kozminski.edu.pl | ZHAW School of Management and Law; Kozminski University | Current Member | Politics, Law | Presenter(s), Chair | Writing the Rules of the Game - a look at parliamentary development in both early western Slavic countries, compared and contrasted with decision-making rules in modern-day parliaments in Ukraine and Estonia. The purpose of the paper is to see how these rules impact property rights development. | Chair, Discussant | Economic history' business history; economics; political history | |||||
26 | 2/5/2025 13:48:46 | Aminat Tsuntaeva | sheikhova@gmail.com | Independent Scholar | Current Member | PhD Candidate (ABD status) | Anthropology, Cultural Studies | I am looking for panelists to organize a panel on the representation of memory in art. In my paper, I will focus on the representation of the memory of Indigenous ethnic groups of the North Caucasus in documentaries. This contemporary ethnographic cinema released in the period from 2020 to 2025, and it differs from the multitude of films that represent a stable ideological narrative or exoticization of the region. These documentary filmmakers (I. Poroshin, A. Fedotov, M. Troshinkin, etc.) are not anthropologists, but they actively use the methods of visual anthropology to create the most profound portraits of modern locals. Due to the democratization of audiovisual content production, these films are becoming a tool for self-reflection and conversation with “others” about one’s own culture. These works on developing a new language of self-description of the region's inhabitants and actualize a conversation about cultural memory. | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | ||||||
27 | 2/5/2025 17:11:07 | Daniel Rhea | d.m.rhea@att.net | Independent Scholar | Current Member | History: Since 1990 | Discussant(s) | Erasing Memory: Historical Revisionism in Bosnia-Herzegovina's Republika Srpska Entity | Discussant | The Balkans | |||||
28 | 2/27/2025 16:33:46 | Hanna Baranchuk | baranchuk.hanna@curry.edu | Curry College | Current Member | Anthropology, Cultural Studies | [The panel is complete now.] I am looking for panelists to organize a panel on militarization and memory in Russia. The proposed panel will focus on the current militarization of Russian society in a variety of aspects. My paper deals with the militarization of education in Russia as a part of the process of national identity/memory negotiation. In addition to education, other papers may focus on arts, family, law, government, economy, etc. | Presenter(s), Discussant(s) | |||||||
29 | 2/6/2025 12:09:21 | Yana Kirey-Sitnikova | yana.kirey.sitnikova@gmail.com | Independent Scholar | Current Member | PhD Student | Gender/LGBTQ Studies | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | Transgender activism in Russia can be traced back to the late 1990s but grew in visibility in the mid-2010s. Anti-trans repressions in 2022-23 nearly spell its end, at least in the public form. This study will rely on oral history to explore the fortunes of trans activism during these 25 years with a focus on the relationship between the growing authoritarianism and trans self-organizing. | Chair, Discussant | gender, lgbt | ||||
30 | 2/6/2025 20:56:38 | Josh Hughes | jhughes@g.harvard.edu | Harvard University | Current Member | MA Student | Sociology, Public Health, Education | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | My paper explores how sport development in Kyrgyzstan contributes to national identity (re)formation in the country based on interviews conducted in-country in 2025. Monumental infrastructure projects, the expansion of the Kyrgyz Premier Football League, the tradition and pride surrounding the World Nomad Games, and the pronounced participation and interest of President Sadyr Japarov in sports have dominated news cycles in recent years, and this paper explores how these developments are reflected in the ways Kyrgyz citizens understand themselves and their country as a whole. | ||||||
31 | 2/7/2025 6:10:52 | Vera Beloshitzkaya | vera.beloshitzkaya@plus.ac.at | University of Salzburg | Current Member | Politics, Law | The panel seeks proposals that study the impact of legacy and socialization on contemporary political attitudes in post-communist European democracies and post-Soviet autocracies. The panel is particularly interested in papers that examine the intergenerational transmission of attitudes and family experiences and their impact on contemporary political attitudes. | Presenter(s), Chair | Intergenerational transmission of memories about communism in Czechia | Discussant | Socialization, political attitudes and behavior, gender and politics | ||||
32 | 2/21/2025 6:00:15 | Andrew Tompkins | andrew.tompkins@dhi.waw.pl | German Historical Institute Warsaw | Current Member | History: 1945-1990 | Chair | ||||||||
33 | 2/7/2025 22:30:40 | Svetlana Nikitina | svetlana@wpi.edu | Worcester Polytechnic Institute | Current Member | Literature: 20th Century | I am looking to assemble a roundtable for 2025 ASEEES Virtual Convention around the topic of The Power of Memory in the 20th century Russian Literature. How does the memory of life (well or poorly lived) have us face our relationships or mortality? Tolstoy, Ulitskaya and many other writers have reflected on it and we could have a rich conversation on this topic. Please email me to join! | Presenter(s), Discussant(s) | Chair, Discussant | Power of Memory in the 20th century Russian Literature - Memory of Life Lived and People Loved while Facing Mortality, Faith, Future | |||||
34 | 2/8/2025 4:23:45 | Madeline Stull | stullma@iu.edu | Indiana University, Bloomington | Current Member | PhD Candidate (ABD status) | History: 1900-1945 | I am looking to organize a panel on interwar social/cultural histories, particularly of the Balkans or Eastern Europe more broadly. My paper will focus on the urban development of Belgrade from 1920-1940 to explore idealized notions of the city, the types of futures imagined in the the past, and how such imagined futures both interacted with crisis/conflict and produced harmful categories of urban management that rendered specific communities "hostile" to the city's "proper" and "healthy" development. My research relies on a digital humanistic approach that employs both speculative and deep mapping methods. For the panel, any research that engages with the interwar period, "failed" projects, imagined futures, eugenic practices, notions of peripherality (being on the "edge" of "Europe"), urban/rural development, theories of space/place, and/or the development/reification of gender roles would fit nicely. While projects focused on the Balkans or Eastern Europe are particularly welcome, studies from other contexts that engage with these themes are also encouraged. Additionally, while a digital humanistic approach is welcome, it is not a requirement for participation. | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | Discussant | Urban history; interwar period; Balkan history; Yugoslavian history; modernization | ||||
35 | 2/9/2025 11:10:21 | Vladimir Ivantsov | vivantso@oberlin.edu | Oberlin College | Current Member | Literature: 19th Century | Dostoevsky and Music: broadly understood, both in his works – from structure and poetics to music-related themes -- and in their subsequent reception/adaptation. Responding to the Convention’s theme, Memory, one question that the panel poses is how Dostoevsky’s legacy lives on in music – from classical adaptations of his works to rock songs inspired by his writings and thought. | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | |||||||
36 | 2/9/2025 11:41:51 | Jay Hadfield | hadfield.13@buckeyemail.osu.edu | Ohio State University | Current Member | MA Student | Cinema, Television, Electronic Media | I would hope to form a panel similarly interested in music and music video analysis, but other pop-culture and subculture topics would also be well suited to a shared panel. Additionally, my paper touches on the following themes which might warrant its inclusion in other panels: gender studies/alternative masculinity, online/digital media, national identity, and emigration. | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | My paper "Indie Rock in Exile: the Search for Russian Identity in the Music Videos of Arseny Morozov" follows the online music video output of renowned indie rock songwriter Arseny Morozov (Padla Bear Outfit, Sonic Death, Арсений Креститель) in the years before and during his emigration from the Russian Federation in 2022. Morozov's videos form a case study of Russian dissident youth culture and the struggle for reckoning with Russian national identity before and after the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. I combine a journalistic approach (personal interviews with Morozov, relaying the narrative of his emigration) with visual and filmic analysis of his music videos to ask questions about the roles of subculture, gender, and artistic expression for mediating a sense of self at conflict with its national affiliation. | Discussant | I would be happy to volunteer as discussant on panels related to the following areas: -Queer theory / gender studies -Narrative theory -Modernism -Contemporary Music & Subculture | |||
37 | 2/9/2025 12:50:45 | RAUL ALGARIN | ralgarinphd@gmail.com | Autonomous University of Barcelona | Current Member | PhD Candidate (ABD status) | Literature: 21st Century | Title: Representations of Memory in Contemporary Balkan Literature: Poetics of a Common European Memory? Literature plays a crucial role in preserving, contesting, and reinterpreting memory. This panel explores how Balkan literature engages with both personal and collective memory in shaping narratives of identity, history, and trauma. By analyzing the poetics of selected contemporary literary works from the region, participants examine the mechanisms through which authors craft their characters’ experiences to resonate with both national and European memories. The discussion will also highlight how these literary works contribute to shaping a broader European memory, challenging dominant Eurocentric perspectives. By bridging literary analysis with memory studies, this panel aims to shed light on the ways Balkan literature informs ongoing debates on historical justice, reconciliation, and European identity. | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | ||||||
38 | 2/10/2025 16:52:53 | Tom Dolack | dolack_thomas@wheatonma.edu | Wheaton College | Current Member | Literature: 19th Century | We are seeking papers on cognitive perspectives on Slavic literature and artistic culture for the DC meeting of ASEEES, November 20 - 23. We’d like to build on our momentum after the publication of Russian Literature and Cognitive Science (Lexington Books 2025), as well as 4 monographs in the upcoming issue of Tolstoy Studies Journal. “Cognitive” here is viewed broadly and may include any aspect of cognitive, developmental, evolutionary, behavioral, or cultural psychology; or any subset of the social sciences or humanities that are informed by them. | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | |||||||
39 | 2/11/2025 5:13:05 | Marta Łukaszewicz | marta.lukaszewicz@uw.edu.pl | University of Warsaw | Current Member | Literature: 19th Century | We are hoping to organize a roundtable devoted to marginal characters in Russian 19th-century literature. The idea of marginality includes both literary and social aspects. We plan to delve into such issues as social exclusion and its impact on literary representation, categories of characters, social and professional types that are rarely described in literary texts, characters who tend to play secondary or auxiliary roles in texts, as well as literary types neglected in research. Our aim is to explore the roles of marginal characters in literary texts (i.e. their interaction with main characters, their function in the plot development, etc.), as well as the way their marginality reflects the social imaginary implied in the literary work. We have a chair and one participant, and we are looking for at least two participants more | Presenter(s) | Chair, Discussant | Russian 19th century literature, literature and religion | |||||
40 | 2/11/2025 16:06:31 | Sarah Jane Nelson | sjkovner@gmail.com | Davis Center | Current Member | Folklore Studies | Presenter(s) | Decay and Abandonment of a Diasporic Community in New Jersey: Based on recent oral history work and archival resources, I discuss the life of a Ukrainian woman who--having survived World War II and several Displaced Persons camps--is intent on being a memory holder both in her home community and in Ukraine. I discuss the importance she attaches to artifacts, architecture and landscapes. | |||||||
41 | 2/12/2025 10:27:27 | Mira Markham | miram@live.unc.edu | University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill | Current Member | PhD Candidate (ABD status) | History: 1945-1990 | We're looking for a third presenter for a panel on medicine and morality under state socialism. Broadly speaking, we're interested in papers that examine how, and under what conditions, medical experts understood and treated behavior seen as transgressive. Our papers both focus on Czechoslovakia -- we have one on the medicalization of the fight against alcoholism in rural communities during the 1950s, and another about the use of pharmaceuticals to treat behavioral conditions during the late socialist period -- but we welcome papers about the USSR or other parts of East Central/Southeastern/Eastern Europe. | Presenter(s) | ||||||
42 | 2/12/2025 16:18:27 | Anna Smelova | as4412@georgetown.edu | Georgetown University | Current Member | PhD Candidate (ABD status) | History: 1800-1900 | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | My research examines the role of exiled Populist (Narodnik) ethnographers in the scientific exploration and colonization of Siberia. By addressing the “conceptual conquest” of the region in the late imperial and early Soviet periods, my dissertation highlights the production of knowledge beyond the metropolis and explores how marginalized and displaced scholars contributed to the orientalization and racialization of Indigenous populations. In the coming year, I plan to present a paper on former Populist member Vladimir Jochelson’s participation in the 1908–1910 Riabushinskii expedition and his contributions to the study of the Native populations of Kamchatka, the Aleutian Islands, and Alaska. | Chair, Discussant | |||||
43 | 2/12/2025 17:13:16 | Radosław Kaleta | rkaleta@uw.edu.pl | University of Warsaw | Current Member | Linguistics, Language Pedagogy, Translation | Dear Colleagues, I'm looking for presenters to be on ASEEES 2025 panel concerning the (Promotion of) Belarusian language and culture or other related topics within (comparative) linguistic and cultural studies. For those interested in participating please respond until February 19 with your ideas and preliminary proposals to rkaleta@uw.edu.pl Thank you! | Presenter(s) | |||||||
44 | 2/13/2025 2:31:59 | Elena Marasinova | lenamarassinova@gmail.com, rivkamaichak@gmail.com | University of Münster | Current Member | Early Slavic Studies | "The Silent Majority and Social Control in the 18th-Century Russian Empire. Our panel is dedicated to an issue that is both obvious and underexplored: the relationship between the empire and the individual subject. At the center of our inquiry are sources that embody the state's interest in the actions, motivations, and thoughts of individual subjects: investigative cases, reviewed petitions, denunciations, directives to the Legislative Commission, and similar documents. These sources allow us to hear the voice of individual representatives belonged to the silent majority (to use Aron Gurevich’s precise phrase). This research perspective involves combining microanalysis of a source, centered on an individual, with the study of macroprocesses of imperial governance mechanisms. (We are looking for the discussant and for the chair) | Chair, Discussant(s) | |||||||
45 | 2/13/2025 18:03:12 | Marta Lasota | martalasota2028@u.northwestern.edu | Northwestern University | Current Member | PhD Student | Gender/LGBTQ Studies | Queer(ing) Archives: Alternative Intimacies, Histories, and Subjectivities Archives have long been a contentious space for queer memory. Throughout history, queer stories have repeatedly been silenced or deliberately destroyed from official records and literary canons. As countries like Poland and Russia have grown increasingly hostile to queerness – calling “LGBT” a Western-imposed “ideology” – this panel seeks to explore the personal and collective queer intimacies, histories, and subjectivities that make up queer Slavic archives and to theorize how these stories inspire more nuanced queer ontologies and epistemologies to emerge. This panel also calls attention to the gaps and silences of archives, including how they have left out not only gay and lesbian voices, but also trans and non-binary voices, and how these erasures are symptomatic of the violent contradictions between national and personal histories. From these tensions and ruptures, our panel sets out to analyze overlooked queer texts, to re-envision how queer histories are remembered, and to burst open the archive as a catalyst for speculating queerness and the queer futures that are not yet here. | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | 1) Trans Memory and the Polish Body Politic in Julia Holewińska’s Ciała Obce 2) Yevgeny Kharitonov’s Under House Arrest, Pantomime, and "Word and Image." 3) *We are looking for 1-2 more panelists* | |||||
46 | 2/14/2025 0:59:20 | Almira | sagimbayeva.almira@gmail.com | Independent Scholar | Current Member | PhD Student | Politics, Law | Panelists will discuss how Kazakhstan’s ethnic policies influence neighboring Central Asian countries, particularly in the context of migration trends, cross-border ethnic communities, and geopolitical tensions involving Russia and China. The panel will also explore the role of regional cooperation in addressing ethnic challenges and preventing conflicts, offering insights into how Kazakhstan’s experience can inform broader strategies for stability in Central Asia. | Presenter(s) | "The Ethnic Factor in Regional Security of Central Asia: Kazakhstan's Approach and Challenges" Kazakhstan, as the most ethnically diverse country in Central Asia, plays a significant role in shaping regional security. The state's approach to ethnic policy, based on official multiculturalism, interethnic harmony, and the formation of a civic identity, has contributed to internal stability despite geopolitical challenges from neighboring powers. However, factors such as demographic changes, language policies, economic disparities, and regional ethnic tensions continue to influence the country’s security landscape. This study examines Kazakhstan’s ethnic composition and the historical foundations of its national identity, the government’s policies on interethnic relations, and their effectiveness in maintaining stability. It analyzes the impact of ethnic factors on Kazakhstan’s domestic politics and regional diplomacy, as well as the role of Russia, China, and neighboring Central Asian states in shaping the country's ethnic dynamics. Particular attention is given to the risks and potential flashpoints of ethnic tensions, including migration, socio-economic inequalities, and nationalist sentiments. By analyzing Kazakhstan’s ethnic policy within the broader framework of regional security, this study evaluates both the achievements and limitations of the current approach, as well as its long-term implications for stability in Central Asia. | Discussant | Ethnic politics, regional security, and identity formation in Central Asia. Migration, demographic shifts, and socio-economic disparities | |||
47 | 2/14/2025 3:20:22 | Viktoriia Serhiienko | sergienko.victoriya@gmail.com | German Historical Institute (Poland) | Current Member | History: 1945-1990 | The Catholic Church and the Challenges of Communism during the Cold War For many Vaticanists, communism was the greatest challenge to the Catholic Church since the French Revolution. This panel aims to discuss the religious dimension of the Cold War, which extended far beyond Europe, reaching almost all continents and regions of the Catholic Church’s presence. How did high politics, everyday diplomacy, and religious philosophy shape different models of confrontation/coexistence between Catholicism and communism in various political and socio-cultural contexts? | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | "Withdraw From the East. The Vatican View of New Borders Between Poland and the USSR After World War II" New borders between Poland and the USSR were agreed upon at the Yalta Conference. Denying new political reality, the Catholic Church in Poland and the Polish government in exile appealed to the Holy See for official support for their position, emphasizing the Polishness of eastern Galicia, now Western Ukraine. The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and the Ukrainian national emigration in the West defended the opposite point of view and - if we are talking about the latter - tried to ensure the Vatican's loyalty to their anti-Soviet struggle in Western Ukraine. For the Vatican itself, the Yalta agreements, which left behind the iron curtain millions of the Greek and Roman Catholic believers, meant shortening of the opportunities for the so-called "Russian apostolate". However, it is in the tradition of Vatican diplomacy to leave the door open for negotiations with every possible partner. This paper aims to discuss how the interaction of various players with different interests shaped the Vatican's position on the post-war eastern borders of Poland. | Chair, Discussant | Vatican policy towards the USSR during the Cold War. | ||||
48 | 2/14/2025 9:52:52 | Jonathan McCombs | mccombjd@uwec.edu | University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire | Current Member | Geography, Environmental Studies | This session calls for engagements that trace the entanglements of (post)colonialism and/or (post)imperialism through the lens of land and property across and beyond Eastern Europe and Eurasia. Much of the scholarship on land adheres to western and Eurocentric understandings of property as carefully demarcated parcels with an attached bundle of rights bestowed to a single possessor. In this session, we transcend the familiar theorization of property and land by bringing into a dialogue (post)colonial and (post)imperial contexts, recognizing that Eastern Europe and Eurasia is both a progenitor of imperial and colonial relations, as well as a subject of imperial power from inside and outside the region. To this end, we seek papers that investigate both contemporary and historical tensions produced when alternative practices of land ownership are confronted by hegemonic forms of property-making. We envision a few potential trajectories. The first would investigate the historical and contemporary dimensions of imperial property and land relations imposed by Eastern European (i.e. Habsburg) and Eurasian (i.e. Soviet Union) states outside of their immediate national borders. Within this broader framework, we seek to highlight how these countries built and maintained statist and modernist projects of calculation, demarcation, taxation, and/or land commodification. These themes can also draw on discussion about knowledge exchange in property making practices across (post)imperial and (post)colonial worlds or property as a practice of (post)imperial and (post)colonial worldmaking. The second would inquire into the tensions produced by liberal property and land relations imposed by western (neo)liberal institutions such as the IMF, World Bank, and/or the European Union. Within this second trajectory, we are particularly interested in papers that engage a growing body of literature in settler and post-colonial studies that highlight how liberal property formations make possible racialized, gendered, and classed dispossessions within East European and Eurasian contexts and beyond. These themes can also highlight property relations in the context of financial technologies of real estate, gentrification, or displacement. We welcome other papers that fit this broader theme even if they do not fit these stated trajectories. | Presenter(s), Discussant(s) | Discussant | urban geography, property, race and racialization | |||||
49 | 2/14/2025 19:04:08 | Karlis Verdins | karlis.verdins@lulfmi.lv | University of Latvia, ILFA | Current Member | Gender/LGBTQ Studies | We are organizing a panel on East European queer history dedicated to the career of Professor Dan Healey. We still miss one presentation on some topic related to Healey's research or inspired by him. | Presenter(s) | |||||||
50 | 2/15/2025 9:01:17 | TBD | cjchulos@gmail.com | Towson University | Current Member | Religion/Philosophy | Chair | Chair | Religion and religious practice in the Russian empire (pref. 1800-1921) | ||||||
51 | 2/15/2025 17:50:40 | Charles McKenna Smith | mckennasmith@berkeley.edu | UC Berkeley | Current Member | MA Student | Literature: 20th Century | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | Revolutionary Tears: Lament as Form in the Russian and Mexican Cycles of Babel and Campobello In February 1918, the Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata wrote to one of his generals, stressing the “clear analogy” between the Russian Revolution and “Mexico’s agrarian revolution” and arguing that “Both are directed against what Tolstoy called ‘the great crime’: the infamous usurpation of land.” My paper extends Zapata’s historical analogy into a literary comparison between two canonical and contemporaneous texts of these twin revolutions: Isaac Babel’s Red Cavalry and Nellie Campobello’s Cartucho. Both texts counterpose the utopian righteousness expressed by Zapata to aestheticized violence that withholding moral judgement in favor of a modernist excavation of the revolution’s brutal truth. Both texts have been read as novels that deconstruct the novelistic form, since their nonlinear narratives are composed by radically short pieces stitched together into a cyclic rhythm. My paper reads Babel and Campobello’s texts alongside critical reviews contemporary to Red Cavalry and Cartucho’s publication. I examine their states’ attempts in the 1930s to consolidate themselves by narrativizing the revolutionary movement as a collective, impersonal force of history. I argue that Red Cavalry and Cartucho articulate a lament at this historiographical collectivization of the Revolution, a project against which Babel and Campobello compose elegiac cycles focused on the interiority and isolation of the individual subject caught up in a revolutionary dream. | Chair, Discussant | technology of language (writing/printing, recording/broadcasting), history of literacy, translation, epic literature, erotic literature, Russian Formalism, Soviet nationalities policy, history and literature of the Caucasus. | ||||
52 | 2/16/2025 2:41:27 | Tomasz Wicherkiewicz | wicher@amu.edu.pl | Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań PL | Current Member | Linguistics, Language Pedagogy, Translation | I'm looking for a panel that could include my in-person presentation | Chair, Discussant(s) | I am going to prepare a paper on the history of multilingualism and sociolinguistics of diversity in Latgale (eastern Latvia), where Slavic, Baltic, Finnic and Germanic language areas interfere - and have created a unique ethno- and sociolinguistic structure in the 19th and 20th centuries. I'm looking for a panel that could include my in-person presentation. | Chair, Discussant | Linguistic diversity, language policies, minority languages, sociolinguistics | ||||
53 | 2/16/2025 15:05:35 | Mariana Peixoto Irby | mpi214@nyu.edu | New York University | Current Member | Urban Studies, Built Environments | Panel title: Urban Histories of Central Eurasia: Memory, Mobility, and Modernization From a historical and anthropological perspective, the papers in this panel explore how contemporary urban development initiatives across Central Asian cities (including Bishkek, Dushanbe, and several urban areas in Kazakhstan) relate to historical legacies tied to mobility and modernization. | Chair, Discussant(s) | |||||||
54 | 2/16/2025 19:17:24 | Kirill Goriachok | kg534@cam.ac.uk | University of Cambridge | Current Member | PhD Student | Cinema, Television, Electronic Media | Presenter(s) | My paper explores Soviet women filmmakers of the 1920s, focusing on how their working conditions changed compared to the 1910s and their position within the hierarchy of Soviet cinema. The study primarily examines lesser-known figures—female film editors at the Sovkino studio—who, unlike Elizaveta Svilova and Esfir Shub, were unable to gain recognition or build successful careers. I aim to shed light on the various professional paths and opportunities available to women in film editing during this period. A key question of my paper is how to discuss the many invisible women who worked in Soviet cinema and sought recognition—writing poetry, engaging in public and educational activities—despite their near-total absence from historical records. I also examine how fragmented archival evidence can help reconstruct their contributions and whether it is possible to write the history of Soviet cinema without acknowledging the experiences of these overlooked women. | Discussant | Soviet film history | ||||
55 | 2/17/2025 9:46:46 | Kate Shields | shieldsk@rhodes.edu | Rhodes College | Current Member | Geography, Environmental Studies | Some patterns of broad scale social and environmental change are difficult to see from the ground but come into focus from above. However, few in the social sciences and humanities take advantage of remote sensing data (earth imagery typically captured through satellite and aerial photography) and associated analysis methodologies to buttress their work. Considering how countries in the Eurasian region, notably the Soviet Union, were instrumental in early advances in remote environmental monitoring, more attention should be paid to the methods, associated technologies, and social assemblages surrounding remote sensing. Further, with the declassification and digitization of aerial reconnaissance imagery from the US CORONA program, opportunities to conduct historical research on Eurasia from above are more prevalent than ever. We invite work incorporating remote sensing methods into the socio-environmental study of the Eurasian region, as well as papers interrogating historical and cultural specificities of remote sensing, environmental monitoring, or aerial data analysis within the Eurasian region. Possible themes for the session include (but are not limited to): Measuring urbanization using remote sensing Measuring environmental change using remote sensing Tracking urban and environmental change during periods of conflict Novel uses of remote data sets Aerial data politics Data contradictions, access problems, and other challenges to using remote data Histories of the Socialist Satellite Proto remote sensing technologies used in Eurasia (eg, Balloons) Mixed methods case studies Hands-on sessions focusing on skills or regionally-appropriate data | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | Chair, Discussant | Geography, environment | |||||
56 | 2/17/2025 17:44:52 | Diana Avdeeva | avdeeva2@illinois.edu | University of Illinois Urbana Champaign | Current Member | MA Student | Anthropology, Cultural Studies | The focus of the panel is the Russian opposition and anti-war movement(s) and its intellectual legacy. The panel will explore various aspects of anti-war resistance, including its cultural, social, and historical dimensions. | Presenter(s), Discussant(s) | Chair | |||||
57 | 2/17/2025 19:06:07 | Kyilah Terry | kyilah@sas.upenn.edu | University of Pennsylvania | Current Member | PhD Student | International Relations, Security Studies, Foreign Policy | Presenter(s) | The rise of hybrid warfare signals a world in transition, with migration emerging as an overlooked yet critical dimension in this shifting dynamic. While much of the existing discourse on migration focuses on state efforts to restrict movement, Belarus has uniquely incentivized migration as a tool of geopolitical subversion. By lowering travel costs, simplifying visa processes, and promoting accessible routes, Belarus strategically exploits European Union vulnerabilities, undermining its internal cohesion, and destabilizing its neighborhood policies. This paper examines how weaponized migration integrates into broader coercion strategies, complementing other tactics such as military aggression, cyberattacks, and election interference. Situating Belarus's actions within Russia’s broader objectives, the study highlights how states adapt immigration policies to achieve foreign policy objectives and underscores the risks such tactics pose to sending states, both domestically and internationally. It also considers how Belarus’s approach may serve as a model for other non-transit states seeking to weaponize migration | ||||||
58 | 2/17/2025 22:21:03 | Natalia | natalia@managarov.com | University of Auckland | Current Member | PhD Candidate (ABD status) | Literature: 21st Century | This panel explores how post-migrant German literature engages with both personal and collective memory to construct narratives of identity, displacement, and cultural hybridity. By analyzing contemporary literary works by authors of post-Soviet and post-socialist descent, participants will examine how writers navigate themes of migration, historical trauma, and nostalgia within the German literary landscape. The discussion will also consider how these works contribute to broader conversations on cultural memory, challenging national narratives and enriching the discourse on belonging in a transnational European context. By bridging literary analysis with memory studies, this panel seeks to illuminate the ways in which post-migrant literature both reflects and redefines collective memory in an era of global mobility and transformation. | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | Title: Collective Memory in Post-Migrant German Literature: Negotiating Identity and Belonging | Chair, Discussant | Memory Construction; Post-Soviet Literature; Trauma; Displacement; Jewish Identity | |||
59 | 2/18/2025 4:36:17 | Marta Starostina | starostina.marta@gmail.com | University of Birmingham | Current Member | PhD Student | History: 1945-1990 | This panel explores how exiles navigate memory, identity, and belonging when engaging with their homelands after displacement. It examines the ways in which return journeys—whether physical or imagined—serve as sites of memory negotiation, shaped by political, cultural, and historical transformations. Through personal narratives, state policies, and material landscapes, this panel considers how exiles reconcile nostalgia with the realities of a homeland that has changed in their absence. Key themes include the role of tourism in shaping memory, the transformation of national symbols, and the intersection of personal and collective remembrance. | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | Exile memory and the connection to homeland through narratives of displacement and return | Discussant | Any topic related 20-century Soviet History, Tourism or Baltics | |||
60 | 2/18/2025 5:33:49 | Anna Ivanova | anna.ivanova@sowi.uni-giessen.de | Justus Liebig University Giessen | Current Member | PhD Student | History: 1945-1990 | Title: Experiencing, Remembering and Forgetting Social Advancement in (Post)Socialist Societies This panel brings together interdisciplinary and comparative perspectives on “social advancement” in socialist and post-socialist states. We research how the promise of “social advancement” shaped collective imaginaries in socialist societies and how its remembrance and erasure shape social dynamics in post-socialist contexts. The panel will be particularly interested in tensions and contradictions between ideological structures and lived experience of (post)socialism. Our individual contributions focus on social advancement and upward mobility in the Polish People’s Republic and the de-commemoration of social advancement in contemporary Ukraine’s politics of memory. We invite one or two additional panelists, preferably with expertise in other (post)socialist states. | Presenter(s) | Chair | contemporary ukrainian politics and society | ||||
61 | 2/18/2025 9:25:50 | Carol / Kira Stevens | kstevens@colgate.edu | Colgate University | Current Member | Politics, Law | Presenter(s) | A remarkable legal case in 1719. An army officer accused of attempted rape is convicted (although his accuser is also punished). Why on the cusp of Petrine legal change? Law, petrine change, women | Chair, Discussant | pre Petrine military history as discussant; otherwise, 16th-18thc Russian history as chair | |||||
62 | 2/18/2025 9:41:35 | A. Austin Garey | amgarey@ucla.edu | Concordia College | Current Member | Anthropology, Cultural Studies | Humor and Censorship in Eurasia: Daria Ganzenko and I are organizing a panel on humor in Eastern Europe and Eurasia for the *virtual convention* (October 23 – October 24). We'd like to add one or two additional presenters working on comedy in any time period or genre--textual, film, stage. We are focusing on the relationship between authoritarian regimes and comedic expression. | Presenter(s) | |||||||
63 | 2/18/2025 10:22:38 | Bita | Bitatakrimi2028@u.northwestern.edu | Northwestern university | Current Member | PhD Student | Linguistics, Language Pedagogy, Translation | The panel will explore various aspects of Slavic poetry, including but not limited to its stylistic and linguistic features, historical and cultural influences, intertextuality, translation, and comparative perspectives. | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | Conceptual Metaphor of Love in Akhmatova’s Poetry | Chair, Discussant | Poetry and linguistics | |||
64 | 2/18/2025 10:46:02 | Jan Musekamp | jan.musekamp@dhi.waw.pl | German Historical Institute Warsaw | Current Member | History: 1800-1900 | I am looking for presenters for a panel focusing on (racist) migration and border policies and related policies of settler colonialism across the world, preferably 19th to 20th century. | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | A Racist International? Emigration Policies, Settler Colonialism, and "Global Color Lines," 1870-1900. Starting in the 1880s, German diaspora speakers from Volhynia/Ukraine began to emigrate because of religious and ethnic discrimination in the Russian Empire’s western border regions. On the grounds of a perceived military threat, these Imperial policies targeted ethnic German, Jewish, and Polish populations. Leaving Volhynia, German-speakers moved to many places, such as the Russian Far East and Siberia, the Baltic provinces, Brazil, and Canada. While the Russian Empire aimed at reducing the number of non-Russian populations in its Western governorates, Canada actively recruited settlers for its Prairie provinces. As a result, recruitment agents were sent out, focusing their efforts on prospective immigrants from Northern and Eastern Europe – “stout, hardy peasants in sheep-skin coats,” as Canada’s interior minister Clifford Sifton described them. These immigrants settled along newly established railroad lines, built by exploited laborers from the Chinese Empire. In its selective immigration policies, Canada discriminated against potential Southern European colonists. It also hindered further Asian immigration – rejecting “the mixture of the Mongolian and the Arian” races, as Canadian prime minister John A. Macdonald put it in 1883. Also, the government gradually marginalized, resettled, and dispossessed the indigenous First Nation peoples. Consequently, Canada financially supported the German-speakers' move to an area that, previously, was part of the First Nation Papaschase Cree’s reserve. This paper will connect ethnonationalist exclusionary policies, racialized borders, discriminating immigration policies, and settler colonialism. The paper develops W.E.B. du Bois’ concepts of the global “colour line” and “new religion of whiteness” further and applies it to the case of Volhynia’s German speakers' global migrations. Based on family genealogies, private correspondence, and public discussions on settlement and migration, I will demonstrate how Volhynia’s German-speakers were both – victims of the Russian Empire’s exclusionary population policies and beneficiaries of Canada’s racist settlement policies. | Discussant | Migration and Mobility History, Borderlands | ||||
65 | 2/18/2025 16:28:36 | Oksana Nesterenko | oksana.nesterenko@googlemail.com | Union College | Current Member | Arts I: Visual Culture, Material Culture, Applied and Fine Arts | Ukraine Decolonial Studies Network is organizing a panel series focusing on how colonial memory, the legacies of colonialism, and anti-colonial resistance have been addressed in Ukrainian culture following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, and how this experience of postcolonial transformation has further impacted Ukrainian resistance during Russia’s neocolonial war against Ukraine. The presentations encompass topics ranging from visual art to feminist discourses, from television to music and fashion, and trace changes within these fields. We have five presenters and are looking for at lease one more presenter, chairs and discussants. Please contact ukraine.decolonial@gmail.com | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | |||||||
66 | 2/18/2025 20:25:35 | Samantha Bodamer | sab620@pitt.edu | University of Pittsburgh | Current Member | PhD Student | Cinema, Television, Electronic Media | I'd like to organize a panel with 3-4 presenters on memory and/or postmemory in East European and/or Central Asia documentary cinema during the late socialist period. Papers would ideally explore how memory is mediated through various strategies: representation of space, narrative, archival interventions, visual effects –to name a few. Open to discussion. | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | ||||||
67 | 2/19/2025 6:50:32 | Zinaida Osipova | zo2149@columbia.edu | Columbia University | Current Member | PhD Candidate (ABD status) | History: 1900-1945 | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | I would like to join/organize a panel on the history of Soviet science/chemistry/agriculture/industrialization/foreign relations in the interwar years. | ||||||
68 | 2/19/2025 14:10:18 | Elena Yushkova (Iushkova) | evyu222@uky.edu | University of Kentucky | Current Member | Arts II: Music, Theater, Performance Studies | Russian Revolutionary songs in Isadora Duncan’s repertoire | ||||||||
69 | 2/19/2025 14:53:20 | Emma Rönngren | emma.ronngren@oru.se | Örebro University | Current Member | International Relations, Security Studies, Foreign Policy | I would like to have a panel (or roundtable) to discuss the Russian-speaking minority in the Baltics focusing on memory politics, identity and media use. My own contribution would be an audience perspective among Russian-speaking youth in Latvia. I have a potential contributor but more members are wanted! | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | I have been studying the reception of Russian strategic narratives among young Russian speakers in Latvia. I would like to present one of the chapters from my dissertation which I will rework as papers. As such I am open to topics concerning strategic narratives, propaganda, information influence, identity, memory and media use among diaspora. | Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, memory, identity, propaganda, information influence, media use, diaspora, strategic narratives | |||||
70 | 2/19/2025 15:31:57 | Kaitlyn Cannady | kaitlyn.cannady26@gmail.com | University of Nebraska Lincoln | Current Member | PhD Student | History: 1900-1945 | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | Exploration of antisemitic pogroms in Poland, tracing the events of the Lwów pogrom in 1918 to the Kielce pogrom in 1946 and exploring how the interpretation of these events has changed over time. | ||||||
71 | 2/19/2025 19:38:04 | Yuliya Minkova | yuliyam1@vt.edu | Virginia Tech | Current Member | Literature: 20th Century | We are planning a panel with a tentative title of "Documenting the Violence" on the broader topic of Russian, Jewish, and American Exchanges and Connections. There are currently two presenters and a discussant. One paper is on Vladimir Bogoraz and the Harlem Renaissance. The second paper is on memory and identity in Margarita Khemlin. We are looking for another presenter and a chair. | Presenter(s), Chair | |||||||
72 | 2/20/2025 9:17:05 | Mila Rossokhatska | m.rossokhatska@uva.nl | University of Amsterdam | Current Member | PhD Student | Digital Humanities | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | Following the full-scale invasion, discussions on decolonisation gained significant traction across digital platforms in Ukraine, with YouTube emerging as a key space for these debates. I am interested in the way YouTube content shapes and mediates decolonial discourse, exploring its role in reframing Ukrainian identity amidst the ongoing war. Through digital text analysis and qualitative discourse analysis, I look at how decolonial narratives are emotionally and discursively constructed, shaping both individual and collective subjectivities. The research also considers how digital discourse translates into everyday practices, such as language use and media consumption. By bridging nationalism, postcolonial theory, and social computing, this study highlights the active role of digital technologies in shaping decolonial imaginaries and identity negotiations in Ukraine. | Chair | Decolonial discussion in Ukraine; Memory politics in Ukraine | ||||
73 | 2/20/2025 10:39:24 | Anna Ivanova | anna.ivanova@sowi.uni-giessen.de | Justus Liebig University Giessen | Current Member | PhD Student | History: 1945-1990 | Title: Experiencing, Remembering and Forgetting Social Advancement in (Post)Socialist Societies This panel brings together interdisciplinary and comparative perspectives on “social advancement” in socialist and post-socialist states. We research how the promise of “social advancement” shaped collective imaginaries in socialist societies and how its remembrance and erasure shape social dynamics in post-socialist contexts. The panel will be particularly interested in tensions and contradictions between ideological structures and lived experience of (post)socialism. Our individual contributions focus on social advancement and upward mobility in the Polish People’s Republic and the de-commemoration of social advancement in contemporary Ukraine’s politics of memory. We invite two additional panelists, preferably with expertise in other (post)socialist states, and a chair. | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | ||||||
74 | 2/20/2025 22:18:01 | Ekaterina V. Klimenko | ekavlaklimenko@gmail.com | Woodrow Wilson Center, Kennan Institute | Current Member | Politics, Law | The panel—tentatively titled Memory Politics in Times of War—explores the political instrumentalization of memory and its role in Russia’s war against Ukraine. Possible topics include the use of memory to justify the war, the memorialization of the ongoing conflict, Russia’s mnemonic indoctrination of the occupied Ukrainian population, the Kremlin’s propaganda and its public reception, and more. | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | |||||||
75 | 2/21/2025 9:35:09 | Dr. Natalia Borisova | natalia.borisova@uni-tuebingen.de | University of Tuebingen | Current Member | Literature: 20th Century | Guilt and responsibility: Soviet culture in its interaction with the West/ Our panel asks how Soviet culture (official and unofficial) interacted with Western European culture in the field of memory politics, what narratives it developed, and how it engaged with Western European concepts of working through the past. We would like to focus not only on reception, but also on cases of mutual transfer, when actors from two different cultures enter into a dialog and offer corresponding or complementary concepts. Our special focus lies on the relationship between West Germany (Heinrich Böll) and unofficial Soviet culture, but we can also imagine a broader interpretation of the subject of cultural transfer and the politics of memory. | Presenter(s), Discussant(s) | |||||||
76 | 2/21/2025 13:47:00 | Samantha Bodamer | sab620@pitt.edu | University of Pittsburgh | Current Member | PhD Student | Cinema, Television, Electronic Media | I, along with Zane Balčus at Vilnius University, are organizing a panel for this year’s ASEEES 2025 conference. Our panel will be focused on space and memory in Baltic and East European Cinema. We intend to discuss themes around memory, postmemory, and constructions of cinematic space. Zane's paper will be titled "First-Person Encounters with Family Histories. Autobiographical Narratives about Historical Trauma in Recent Documentary Cinema in Baltic Countries" and I am working on an abstract that will look at postmemory and representations of urban space in 1960s Baltic poetic documentaries. We need one to two more participants, a discussant, and a chair. | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | Chair | Baltic States, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Cinema, Media Studies, Documentary | ||||
77 | 2/21/2025 15:16:17 | Catherine Le Gouis | clegouis@mtholyoke.edu | Mount Holyoke College | Current Member | Literature: 20th Century | I am looking to form a panel entitled “Writing and Rewriting the Silver Age” which would explore memoirs about an intensely creative era succeeded by a regime which did not take kindly to the avant-garde. Themes: trauma; emigration; persecution; rebirth; urban centers of expatriation (e.g. Berlin, Paris, Rome, Prague, Harbin). Authors: Zinaida Gippius, Nadezhda Lokhvitskaya, Vladislav Khodasevich, Andrei Bely, Nina Berberova and others. | Presenter(s), Discussant(s) | |||||||
78 | 2/21/2025 22:41:58 | Bakhytzhan Kurmanov | bakh.kz@gmail.com | University of Central Asia (Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan) | Current Member | Politics, Law | When do hybrid democratic innovations work in autocracies? Investigating the Cases of Participatory Budgeting in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan Abstract Hybrid democratic innovations, typically introduced in democratic contexts to enhance citizen engagement and address democratic "malaise," combine deliberative "talking" among smaller groups with broader "voting" by the public. In recent years, authoritarian regimes have also begun adopting participatory practices, including mechanisms like participatory budgeting (PB). This paper investigates whether such mechanisms serve merely as tools to reinforce authoritarian rule or whether they can genuinely empower citizens and function as hybrid democratic innovations that foster inclusion, deliberation, and impact. Drawing on 36 in-depth interviews with state officials and civil society activists, as well as secondary sources, this study examines recent PB initiatives in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. The findings that are based on the comparative analysis of two cases suggest that PB can function as an effective hybrid democratic innovation under two key conditions: first, when the focus of PB activities resonates with citizens' needs and fosters meaningful engagement; and second, when the design of PB initiatives incentivizes local authorities to promote citizen empowerment actively. This research provides valuable insights into the potential of hybrid democratic innovations in autocracies and contributes to ongoing debates about the merits of participatory budgeting in non-democratic contexts. | Presenter(s) | Discussant | Central Asian Politics, Digital Activism, Democratization, Memory Politics | |||||
79 | 2/22/2025 7:00:16 | Zoran Spasovski | kscprevodi@gmail.com | Institute of Macedonian Language "Krste Misirkov" Skopje | Current Member | Linguistics, Language Pedagogy, Translation | The Latin on the crossroad: between the Greek and the Slavic languages. The causes and the impact of the Hellenization of the Empire and of the acceptance of the Greek as the official language of the Empire. One unexpected and under researched aspect of the raising of the Old Church Slavonic on the level of religious language. Where did the Latin go? What was the aftermath of the linguistic situation in the South Europe (Southernmost Balkans) after the Slavic language prevailed (after the introduction of the Old Church Slavonic)? | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | Discussion on the languages in the Byzantine Empire. Hellenization of the Latin. The appearance of the Slavic languages. What impact had the loss of Greek in the Asia Minor? What impact had the appearance of the Slavic languages in the Southern Europe? What was the aftermath of the cultural and linguistic interference of those three languages/language groups? | Chair, Discussant | The Greek language. Its previous history. Its previous cultural importance and prestige. The cultural interference of the Greek and the Latin in the Empire. The Latin. Factors that brought to its submittance to the Greek. Its further destiny after the Hellenization of the Empire. The Old Church Slavonic. The reasons of its appearance. The reasons of its rising as a religious language. The further consequences of its introduction as a religious and a literary language. The further destiny of the Latin and the Greek in the South Europe. | ||||
80 | 2/22/2025 11:52:31 | Oleg Minin | ominin@bard.edu | Bard College | Current Member | Arts I: Visual Culture, Material Culture, Applied and Fine Arts | Panel Proposal: The Trajectories of Culture in Early Soviet Russia, ca. 1917-1929 The decade following the 1917 Revolution witnessed a radical transformation in Russian culture. The new Soviet state sought to reshape artistic and intellectual life to align with revolutionary ideals, while artists, critics, and theorists navigated the shifting political and ideological landscape. This panel, The Trajectories of Culture in Early Soviet Russia, ca. 1917-1929, aims to explore the complex and contested developments in cultural and intellectual history during this period. We invite scholars to examine the ways in which artists, writers, movements, and institutions engaged with, resisted, or adapted to Soviet cultural policies and ideological imperatives. We seek papers that analyze not only visual culture but also the broader intellectual and artistic currents that shaped Soviet cultural history. Potential themes include, but are not limited to: • Revolutionary Aesthetics and Ideology (How did artistic and intellectual movements reflect or challenge Soviet cultural policies?) • The World of Art at the Time of Revolution and Civil War (The paths of modernist and traditional artistic forms amid political upheaval) • Exhibition Culture in Soviet Russia (The organization, curation, and political significance of art exhibitions in the 1920s) • Trotsky on Futurism and the Art of Revolution (Leon Trotsky’s perspectives on artistic modernism and its role in socialist culture, as expressed in Literature and Revolution) • Lunacharsky and Cultural Policy (The influence of Anatoly Lunacharsky, the first Soviet Commissar of Enlightenment, on cultural and artistic institutions) • Avant-Garde and Lenin’s Plan for Monumental Propaganda (The role of experimental artists in shaping public and monumental art in the early Soviet state) • Intellectual and Cultural Histories of Emigration (The impact of Soviet policies on artists and thinkers who left Russia) • Symbolism and Revolution (The persistence or adaptation of Symbolist aesthetics in the revolutionary period) • Proletkult and Cultural Production (The role of the Proletkult movement in shaping workers’ art and intellectual discourse) • Constructivism and State-Sponsored Art (The transformation of Constructivism from an avant-garde experiment to an instrument of state ideology) • Soviet Film and Revolutionary Narratives (The role of early Soviet cinema and visual media in shaping ideological discourse) • Censorship and Artistic Freedom (The evolving boundaries of expression under early Soviet rule) • The Legacy of Pre-Revolutionary Russian Culture in the Soviet Context (The reinterpretation and repurposing of Russian artistic and intellectual traditions in the 1920s) • The International Reception of Early Soviet Cultural Developments This panel seeks contributions from scholars in intellectual history, cultural history, art history, literary studies, and Soviet studies who can offer fresh perspectives on the evolution of Soviet cultural and intellectual life in the post-revolutionary era. We encourage interdisciplinary approaches and comparative studies. Proposals should include a title, a 200-word abstract, and a brief biographical statement. Please submit your proposals by Feb. 27 to Oleg Minin (ominin@bard.edu). | Presenter(s) | Chair, Discussant | ||||||
81 | 2/22/2025 14:37:13 | Polina Dimova | pdimova@du.edu | University of Denver | Current Member | Literature: 20th Century | The Memory and the Senses Roundtable is looking for a fifth participant and a chair. Abstract: Drawing on insights from sensory, visual, and sound studies, this roundtable traces how the senses trigger visceral and involuntary memories in literature, culture, media, and art; how they shape, alter, or distort history; and how they are curated to memorialize figures and events in Russian and East European culture. Current presentations focus on literature, music, war film, and folklore and explore sight/blindness, color/touch, sight/sound, and intersensoriality in Gordin’s "Yiddish King Lear,” the adaptations of Vasil’ev’s “The Dawns Here Are Quiet,” Teffi’s “Ved’ma,” and the literary and multimedia afterlife of Scriabin’s color-music. We are looking for a fifth participant and a chair and welcome participants from all the arts, as well as from history, anthropology, and literature. Thank you! | Presenter(s), Chair | |||||||
82 | 2/23/2025 16:01:30 | Dessie Zagorcheva | dpz2@columbia.edu | CUNY | Current Member | Politics, Law | Presenter(s), Chair | My paper is on Russia's use of sharp power (is.e., propaganda, disinformation and other tools) in Eastern European countries, and more specifically how Russia has used Communist monuments of the "Red Army" and "Victory Road" events of the Night Wolves in order to popularize specific Kremlin talking points and, thus, divide the population in those countries and weaken pro-democracy and pro-EU and NATO parties and movements. | Chair | Russian-Ukraine war, Russia's use of disinformation in Eastern Europe; Russia's use of strategic corruption; Russia's intervention in the elections of democracies and others | |||||
83 | 2/23/2025 21:16:55 | Seonhee Kim | seonheekim.politics@gmail.com | Seoul National University | Current Member | International Relations, Security Studies, Foreign Policy | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | This study examines the key drivers and dynamics of security cooperation among authoritarian regimes in Central Asia while also assessing the extent and nature of external great power involvement—specifically from Russia, China, and the West—and its implications for the future of regionalism and integration in Central Asia. | Discussant | authoritarian regimes in Central Asia, Russian Foreign Policy, Security in Central Asia, Immigration and Migration in Eurasia | |||||
84 | 2/24/2025 1:07:05 | Yulia Dubasova | dubasova@usc.edu | University of Southern California | Current Member | PhD Student | Literature: 19th Century | Chair, Discussant(s) | I analyze Dostoevsky’s novella Uncle’s Dream as a narrative centered on memory, its loss, and the potential — or impossibility — of revival through recollection. I argue that in Uncle’s Dream, memory loss is closely tied to death, where a preoccupation with the past foreshadows impending end. Unlike Dostoevsky’s other early works, where nostalgia offers solace, Uncle’s Dream portrays the tragedy of those already dead to the present. The ephemeral nature of memory — "Everything dies, Zinochka, even our memories!" — is linked to the inevitability of death that follows its loss. | ||||||
85 | 2/24/2025 10:54:47 | Maria C. Taylor | mtaylor@cornell.edu | Cornell University | Current Member | Urban Studies, Built Environments | Write me if you want to form a panel around infrastructure, city-nature relations, architectural or environmental history, anything built environment or GIS related | Presenter(s) | In general: Soviet history of city planning and environmental politics/attitudes. More specifically: Could present on either the transnational history of urban climatology (STS + inter/trans-regional focus including Central Asia and Siberia) OR the intersection of communal hygiene and industrialization in the greening of factories, both from 1930s through 1970s. | Chair, Discussant | Soviet history, Siberia, environmental or architectural history, everyday life, cities, trees, industrialization, environmental politics, naturecultures, Krasnoyarsk, Tashkent, monogoroda | ||||
86 | 2/24/2025 14:00:56 | Łukasz Wodzyński | wodzynski@wisc.edu | UW-Madison | Current Member | Cinema, Television, Electronic Media | Communism and Post-Communism in Contemporary East-Central European Cinema | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | Chair | film, cinema, adventure, genre theory, contemporary fiction | |||||
87 | 2/24/2025 15:07:09 | Duncan MacLean Eaton | dme82@cornell.edu | Cornell University | Current Member | PhD Candidate (ABD status) | History: 1900-1945 | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | My paper is focused on the contestation of political narratives in interwar Slovakia, particularly by the Slovak branches of the Republican Party of Farmers and Peasants, in order to enact their policies of economic independence and agricultural reform. Through speeches and press periodicals, members of the Slovak Republicans built off of a tradition of romantic nationalists, portraying the Slovak peasantry as a noble repository of a “true” and immemorial Slovak national culture that needed to be amplified in order to stave off Czech and Hungarian interlocutors—who were often portrayed as either parasitic feudal land-lords or as invading medieval knights. These efforts provided a justification for large-scale land parcelization that was directed predominantly at non-titular national groups— drawing the concern of international observers at the League of Nations—and led to the creation of a newly emergent nationally conscious Slovak land-owning class. As well, this created the platform for mainstream Slovak autonomist politics and led to restructuring the Czechoslovak Republic’s constitutional make-up following the Second World War. | ||||||
88 | 2/24/2025 21:11:15 | Michael Coates | coates@berkeley.edu | Independent Scholar | Current Member | History: 1900-1945 | The Problem of the Soviet Children’s Encyclopedia The Soviet Union did not succeed in producing a comprehensive children’s encyclopedia until the Detskaia entsiklopediia of 1958-62. This was not for a lack of effort: Nadezhda Krupskaia, the Deputy Commissar of Enlightenment and widow of Lenin, tried on many occasions throughout the 1920s and 30s to initiate the creation of such a work, seeking to involve Maksim Gor’kii and other prominent writers, scholars, and cultural figures. Similar efforts were made by others: beginning in 1936, a never-published attempt was made under the title Krug znanii, and Nikolai Rubakin, the prominent bibliographer, psychologist of reading, and popularizer of science, also made an attempt. The lack of a children’s encyclopedia is striking given the heavy emphasis that the Soviet state and its publishers placed on the production of textbooks, readers, and children’s literature as part of its broader campaigns to promote education and eliminate illiteracy in that era. It was also known that children were regular readers of Soviet encyclopedias: studies by the publisher of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia indicated that its readership skewed young, and there is much documentation available in memoirs and diaries that describe children’s use of that publication. This talk will consider consider the proposed characteristics of the genre of the Soviet children’s encyclopedia, the unique challenges faced by those who sought to create it, and how its history compares to that of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, which was completed (albeit after many delays). The talk draws on archival records in addition to various published sources. | Chair, Discussant | Topics relating to Soviet knowledge, science, technology, ideology, or thought/intellectual history. I would be open to serving as the discussant or chair on a wide variety of panels or as a member of a roundtable relating the aforementioned topics. | ||||||
89 | 2/24/2025 22:09:35 | Katarzyna Jezowska | k.jezowska@unsw.edu.au | UNSW Sydney | Current Member | Arts I: Visual Culture, Material Culture, Applied and Fine Arts | Chair | Chair | cultural history, Cold War exchanges, cultural diplomacy, design and architectural history | ||||||
90 | 2/25/2025 15:48:12 | Huso Hasanovic | huso.hasanovic@cnu.edu | Christopher Newport | Current Member | International Relations, Security Studies, Foreign Policy | Message me if you'd like to be on a panel regarding issues in Visegrad states related to democratization, civil society or other anything related huso.hasanovic@cnu.edu | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | I am working on a paper that examines the relationship between rule of law erosion in Hungary and impact on civil society resilience. My tentative abstract is below: The effects of democratic backsliding throughout Eastern Europe have beleaguered rule of law norms across all EU member states. Consequently, legislation passed directly targeting the work of civil society organizations (CSOs), such as Hungary’s “Stop Soros” laws , present serious challenges to democracies. Hungary’s government has further introduced a series of measures that criminalize assistance to undocumented migrants and impose strict reporting requirements on organizations receiving funding. In this study I explore how these laws and restrictions on foreign funding have impacted the ability of CSOs to operate effectively within Hungary. Using surveys with CSO leaders and domestic experts combined with existing reports via international as well as domestic reporting agencies, this research seeks to assess the effects of these changes on CSO’s funding, their advocacy efforts and overall sustainability. Preliminary findings indicate that many CSOs are under resource constraints and increased legal risks, however remain resilient by adopting alternative approaches such as digital advocacy and grassroots fundraising and support. With a focus on specific legislation, this research contributes to larger conversations on the rule of law, civil society resilience and challenges of operating in illiberal regimes. | illiberal regimes, Eastern Europe, rule of law, EU | |||||
91 | 2/25/2025 8:50:01 | Maria Taylor | mtaylor@cornell.edu | Cornell University | Current Member | History: 1945-1990 | Still room for a Chair and possibly one more paper, but otherwise we are set | Presenter(s), Chair | update: my paper has found a home, thanks all for the inquiries. | ||||||
92 | 2/25/2025 10:00:41 | Christy Monet | m.christy@nyu.edu | NYU | Current Member | Literature: 21st Century | We are organizing a Book Discussion roundtable for this year's annual ASEEES meeting in Washington D.C. The book up for discussion is one we consider to be of importance to the field of contemporary Russian literature: Evgenia Nekrasova's award-winning novel Kozha (2021). Nekrasova's novel is likely the first work of fiction in either Russian or English to place portrayals of Russian serfdom and American slavery side-by-side through the intersecting lives of its two heroines. This roundtable seeks 3-4 more participants to speak on any aspect of the novel that is of particular interest to the field, including but not limited to: -the ways in which the novel speaks to the conference theme of "memory," especially vis-a-vis historical memory and literature's role within it; -the comparative literary history of fictionalized slave and serf narratives, and why fictional serf narratives have not proliferated in Russophone literature to the same extent that slave narratives have become an influential genre in Anglophone literature; -the ability of Kozha in particular and, further, contemporary literature in general to enact and/or challenge theories of transnational and cross-racial solidarity in our current political moment; -the ways in which Nekrasova in Kozha employs similar or different literary strategies as compared to any of the contemporary feminist writers in her cohort who also address controversial topics in Russia (i.e., issues of identity, sexism, homophobia, racism, disability, or mental health); -Nekrasova's engagement with her sources for and intertexts in Kozha, including but not limited to Phillis Wheatley, Alexander Pushkin, Nikolai Gogol, Nancy Prince, Saltykov-Shchedrin, Charles Dickens, Sarah Baartman, Toni Morrison, and the electronic hip-hop duo Aigel; -Nekrasova's peculiar use of language as a tool to both defamiliarize and decolonize our usual frameworks for thinking about the racialized, gendered, material and emotional bases for these two systems of oppression and their contemporary legacies; -the significance of Nekrasova releasing Kozha as an serialized audiobook first, before publishing it in print, and the differences in experiencing the story between the two mediums; -the importance and symbolism of the body in Nekrasova's exploration of memory, sisterhood, and solidarity; -the significant role of folklore in Nekrasova's Kozha. Participants must agree to read the novel (only available in Russian, in hardcopy or .pdf format) by the time of the conference. We are currently in contact with the author and hoping that she will be able to attend the conference for this discussion. | Chair, Discussant(s) | |||||||
93 | 2/25/2025 12:18:19 | Alexandra Tkacheva | zephyra@umich.edu | University of Michigan | Current Member | PhD Candidate (ABD status) | Literature: 21st Century | A panel on ecopoetics, exploring the the capacity of poetry to critically and creatively engage with the world beyond the human. | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | I would like to present a biosemiotic analysis of Anna Glazova’s poetry, focusing on alternative modes of engagement with non-human Others and the co-creation of meaning. | Chair, Discussant | Contemporary poetry, feminist studies, ecopoetics, posthumanism | |||
94 | 2/25/2025 14:36:44 | Michael Burri | mburri@haverford.edu | Haverford College / Botstiber Institute | Current Member | History: 1900-1945 | Panel Title: “Social Science Expertise between Habsburg Austria and the United States.” Papers: "Beyond Marienthal: Regional Social Science Partnerships and the Interwar Crisis of Liberal Democracy"; "A Transatlantic Central European on the Third Way: Oscar Jászi and his intellectual impact on the New Deal debates"; "Aesthetic Judgment in Modernism’s Margins: The Case of Lois Welzenbacher." We are hopeful to find a discussant with some interest in social science discourse/history. | Discussant(s) | |||||||
95 | 2/25/2025 17:03:23 | Piotr Goldstein | piotr.goldstein@zois-berlin.de | Centre for East European and International Studies, Berlin | Current Member | Anthropology, Cultural Studies | I would like to organise a panel on "Legacies of Diversity in a Post-Multi-Ethnic Space: Between memory and practise". For this panel I invite contributions from scholars who research the role of bygone or diminished ethnic diversity in cities that used to be very cosmopolitan and multiethnic but, for different reasons, lost their diversity. The panel will explore the legacies of past cosmopolitanism and in the ways today’s activists, public intellectuals and normal citizens try to remember (or forget) their cities’ multiethnic histories. Of interest are also long-lasting frequencies of (ethnic) change and the meanings of old diversities for new migrants. | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | |||||||
96 | 2/25/2025 17:07:51 | Piotr Goldstein | piotrgoldstein@gmail.com | Centre for East European and International Studies (ZOiS), Berlin | Current Member | Anthropology, Cultural Studies | I am seeking to organise a roundtable on the use of visual, sensory and multimodal methods in East European Studies. Please let me know if you would be interested in joining. | Presenter(s), Chair | |||||||
97 | 2/25/2025 18:55:03 | Yulia Dubasova | dubasova@usc.edu | University of Southern California | Current Member | PhD Student | Literature: 20th Century | This panel explores the relationships between memory, its loss, and identity in Russophone literature and film. Focusing on how memory functions as both a personal and collective experience, we aim to examine the diverse ways in which memory loss — whether through the gradual erosion of individual memory, the effects of historical trauma, or the manipulation of collective memory — affects individuals and societies. Topics may include, but are not limited to: the representation of personal and collective memory and its loss; the interplay between memory and history; the impact of trauma on remembrance; the roles of nostalgia and amnesia; the exploration of memory loss across various genres and media; and the ethical dimensions of remembering and forgetting. The panel aims to highlight how memory, whether lost, preserved, or distorted, plays a crucial role in shaping both individual experiences and broader societal narratives. | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | I analyze Dostoevsky’s novella Uncle’s Dream as a narrative centered on memory, its loss, and the potential — or impossibility — of revival through recollection. I argue that in Uncle’s Dream, memory loss is closely tied to death, where a preoccupation with the past foreshadows impending end. Unlike Dostoevsky’s other early works, where nostalgia offers solace, Uncle’s Dream portrays the tragedy of those already dead to the present. The ephemeral nature of memory — "Everything dies, Zinochka, even our memories!" — is linked to the inevitability of death that follows its loss. | Chair | ||||
98 | 2/25/2025 19:15:39 | Yevhen Yashchuk | yevhen.yashchuk@wadham.ox.ac.uk | University of Oxford | Current Member | PhD Student | History: 1800-1900 | I am looking to participate in the panel focusing on the circulation of memories about wartime and international crises from transnational and transimperial perspectives. In particular, I am interested in presenting a paper on memories of the Great Eastern Crisis of 1875-1878 in provincial contexts of the Russian Empire and Austro-Hungary. My paper will demonstrate how the references to experiences of the crisis were adopted on the ground to make political claims about the local and imperial issues and how the enduring presence of memories led to the prolonged presence of the crisis in the areas that were not directly affected by it. This paper would fit both panels aiming to highlight the same time period or the panels with more thematic focus on wartime in historical perspective. | Chair, Discussant | Media history, history of East Central Europe in the late 19th century, imperial history, memory politics in local urban spaces (19-21th centuries) | |||||
99 | 2/25/2025 19:26:57 | Lukasz Wodzynski | wodzynski@wisc.edu | UW-Madison | Current Member | Cinema, Television, Electronic Media | Out from the Past: Representations of Communism and Post-communism in Contemporary East-Central European Cinema. The period of post-communist transformation initiated after 1989 came to an abrupt end, first with the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014 and then a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, ushering new questions about the region's future as well as its postwar history. These events have coincided with the last generation born under communism reaching the peak of its artistic and professional activity. For those born in the 1970s and 1980s, reckoning with the communist and post-communist legacy is essential for determining their nation's collective identity. We see a reflection of this phenomenon in the film and television production of recent years, with directors and screenwriters revisiting the region's pre-1989 past to find parallels with or develop a better understanding of the present moment. This panel examines the multi-faceted nature of these returns and poses questions about the historical vision they collectively present us with. | Presenter(s), Discussant(s) | My contribution to the panel, tentatively titled "PRL Noir," looks at the recent Polish crime film and TV series that undertake the kind of revisionist work I describe in the panel description by deploying the film noir form to narrativize and process trans-generational traumas inflicted during Poland's communist era. | Chair, Discussant | film, contemporary fiction, post-communism, communism, adventure | ||||
100 | 2/26/2025 2:02:53 | Hayate Murayama | hmurayama@ucsb.edu | University of California, Santa Barbara | Current Member | PhD Student | History: 1945-1990 | Memorization of Stalinism memory culture in post-Soviet space | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | Gulag memory culture in Kazakhstan with a focus on Japanese POWs | |||||
101 | 2/26/2025 8:27:47 | Gulzat Egemberdieva | egemzat@gmail.com | egemzat@gmail.com | Current Member | PhD Student | Anthropology, Cultural Studies | Presenter(s) | My presentation is based on the writings I composed intermittently during the span of many years, from youth to adulthood. By adopting a stream-of-consciousness style, the narration-meditation engages in a dialogue between myself and five generations of women from my own family, whose lives changed dramatically from nomadism to a forced settlement existence under socialism and the changes brought by the disintegration of the Soviet empire. The words, rhythms, dreams, and laments of oral narration help me to stay connected with those among whom I spent the first nineteen years of my life, and to understand the harshness of their existence, of which I experienced a fair part.From today’s perspective I attempt to make sense of this family past that I now try to take into my own hands. | ||||||
102 | 2/26/2025 9:02:58 | Gulzat | egemzat@gmail.com | Humboldt University | Current Member | PhD Student | Literature: 21st Century | Presenter(s) | My presentation is based on the writings I composed intermittently during the span of many years, from youth to adulthood. By adopting a stream-of-consciousness style, the narration-meditation engages in a dialogue between myself and five generations of women from my own family, whose lives changed dramatically from nomadism to a forced settlement existence under socialism and the changes brought by the disintegration of the Soviet empire. The words, rhythms, dreams, and laments of oral narration help me to stay connected with those among whom I spent the first nineteen years of my life, and to understand the harshness of their existence, of which I experienced a fair part. | ||||||
103 | 2/26/2025 11:46:37 | Andy Kapinos | a.kapinos@ku.edu | University of Kansas | Current Member | PhD Candidate (ABD status) | History: 1945-1990 | We are looking for a third panelist and a discussant/chair for a panel on Soviet diplomatic history/international affairs. The two papers are on "Global Memory: Reading Andrei Gromyko's Memoirs in Light of the International Turn," (See Dr. Porter's entry above) and my paper on Soviet cultural diplomacy through international sport. | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | My paper analyzes the legacy of Soviet cultural diplomacy through international sport, using artistic gymnastics as a case study. | Chair | 20th C Russian/East European history, international affairs, gender and sexuality | |||
104 | 2/27/2025 12:14:25 | Cristina Pascu | cristina.pascu@amgd.ro | The Gheorghe Dima National Academy of Music | Current Member | Arts II: Music, Theater, Performance Studies | Chair | Title - Memory through Biography: Exploring Identity and Musical Traditions. I have recently authored a biography, Ninuca Oșanu Pop, A Multisonic Mosaic of Life: Memories in Dialogue, which was developed in close collaboration with its subject. My research focuses on the role of biography as a guardian of memory, exploring how identity, artistic legacy, and institutional history are shaped through personal recollections and collective narratives. Rather than a simple chronological reconstruction, the biography functions as a dialogue—between the subject’s lived experience and the broader socio-cultural context in which she evolved. In my paper, I discuss how biography preserves and mediates memory, raising questions about how musicians negotiate their presence in history and how their narratives are constructed for posterity. I reflect on biography’s potential to mediate between personal testimony and institutional memory, as well as its capacity to illuminate artistic traditions and legacies that might otherwise be overlooked. | Chair, Discussant | As a chair or discussant, I am particularly interested in topics that explore the intersection of biography, memory, and music. These include: • The Role of Biography in Preserving Musical Heritage: • Investigating how biographical narratives contribute to the documentation and preservation of musical traditions and legacies. • Examining the methodologies employed in capturing the life stories of musicians and their impact on cultural heritage. • Music-Evoked Autobiographical Memories: • Exploring how music serves as a powerful cue for recalling personal memories and the underlying cognitive and neural mechanisms. • Assessing the therapeutic applications of music-evoked memories in clinical settings, particularly for individuals with memory impairments. • Cultural Memory and Collective Identity in Music: • Analyzing how musical works and performances contribute to the formation and reinforcement of collective identities within communities. • Discussing the role of music in commemorating historical events and its influence on collective memory. • Innovative Methodologies in Music Biography Research: • Evaluating new approaches and interdisciplinary methods in researching and writing music biographies. • Considering the ethical implications and challenges in representing the lives of musicians. • The Impact of Digital Archives on Musical Memory Preservation: • Assessing how digital technologies and online platforms are transforming the preservation and accessibility of musical heritage. • Exploring the role of virtual archives in facilitating research and public engagement with historical musical materials. | |||||
105 | 2/27/2025 16:16:23 | Liudmila Listrovaya | llist@umich.edu | University of Michigan | Current Member | Sociology, Public Health, Education | I am examining financial benefits-driven conscription and the role of regions' poverty and ethnic diversity in driving male mortality rates and increasing disability pensions across Russian regions from 2022 to 2024. My working hypothesis suggests that more impoverished and more ethnically diverse regions will be used by the Russian government to outsource more conscripts, consequently, creating unequal distributions of mortality and disability across the regions. Abstract This article investigates shifts in male mortality and disability rates across Russian regions during the first two years of the war in Ukraine. While war-specific casualty and disability data remain suppressed, broader national statistics reveal sharp increases in male mortality and disability pensions. These increases are unevenly distributed, with the highest spikes occurring in Siberia and the Russian Far East—regions that are poorer, more remote, and more ethnically diverse than Central Russia. In these areas, financial hardship has driven many men to enlist, as conscription bonuses and military death compensation exceed their lifetime earnings. Although precise war-related figures remain obscured, available data indicate that the war’s demographic toll is disproportionately borne by impoverished and ethnically diverse regions, which face the most severe increases in mortality and disability rates. | ||||||||
106 | 2/27/2025 20:30:38 | Maria Kurbak | mariakurbak87@gmail.com | Washington University in St. Louis | Current Member | Gender/LGBTQ Studies | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | The ongoing Russia-Ukraine war is primarily examined through official narratives, propaganda, and victims' testimonies. However, the deeper motivations driving Russian men to enlist and fight often remain underexplored. While Western and Ukrainian media frequently attribute this to Russian propaganda, animosity towards Ukrainians, naivety, or financial incentives, these factors only partially capture the issue's complexity. An additional motive rooted in an enduring "behavioral schema" also plays a significant role. This schema is based on traditional gender roles influencing men's decisions to engage in combat and women's decisions to support them. By analyzing Russian social media and combatants' writings, this research reveals how war discussions are framed by entrenched "traditionalist" behavioral patterns. Utilizing Astrid Erll’s concept of "implicit memory" and James V. Wertsch’s concept of narrative templates, I elucidate not only the official narratives of the war but also the "hidden" narratives that shape collective feelings and memories. | Chair, Discussant | Gender studies in Russia, Gender and Russia's aggression in Ukraine | |||||
107 | 2/27/2025 23:50:06 | Jadie Minhas | Jminhas@asu.edu | Arizona State University, The Melikian Center for Russian, Eurasian, and East European Studies | Current Member | PhD Student | International Relations, Security Studies, Foreign Policy | I’m open to organizing or joining a panel on the Russia-Ukraine War and the political, cultural, religious, and strategic narratives that shape it. My work focuses on Russian nationalism, propaganda, and rhetorical strategies justifying aggression. Open to anyone working on related topics. Please contact me. I am also interested in joining round tables. | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | This is short notice, but I would love to join a panel regarding Russian nationalism, Russian propaganda, disinformation, rhetorical strategies, and/or the Russia-Ukraine War. Rhetorical Strategies and Nationalism: Analyzing Putin's Language in Justifying Aggression against Ukraine through Machine Learning This study investigates the strategic deployment of nationalist rhetoric by President Vladimir Putin to justify aggression against Ukraine and shape perceptions of great power competition. Specifically, it examines how Russian elites, through carefully crafted nationalist narratives, frame military actions as legitimate, particularly during key events such as the annexation of Crimea and the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The research addresses the question: How does elite nationalist rhetoric serve as a mechanism for legitimizing aggressive foreign policy? Using ruBERT, a transformer-based language model fine-tuned for Russian. This study systematically analyzes Kremlin speeches and official communications to identify recurring themes and rhetorical patterns. Combining machine learning with qualitative text analysis, the research aims to uncover how Putin’s discourse constructs a narrative of national destiny rooted in historical, cultural, and ethnic appeals to garner domestic support and suppress dissent. This study contributes to understanding the interplay between nationalism, propaganda, and state behavior, offering critical insights into how elite discourse can enable and sustain aggressive policies. | Chair, Discussant | Politics, international relations, law, international security, philosophy, machine learning, religion and politics, religion, Russian Orthodox Church, discourse analysis, text analysis, Russian-Ukraine War | |||
108 | 2/27/2025 20:54:45 | Anna Kozlova | annakozlova@cmail.carleton.ca | Carleton University | Current Member | PhD Candidate (ABD status) | History: 1945-1990 | We are seeking a third panelist, as well as a chair and discussant, for a panel exploring the nexus of identity, belonging (or lack thereof) experienced by ethnic minorities in the Soviet Union and the Communist Bloc. While Communist ideology emphasized equality, what played out in practice was often in stark contrast to that. This was especially true for ethnic, racial, religious and sexual minorities. The current two papers in the panel focus on the experiences of Soviet Koreans and ethnic Germans in the Soviet Union. | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | Chair | Diaspora, migration, identity, | ||||
109 | 2/28/2025 10:59:58 | Novel Forms of Resistance to Hybrid Regimes at European Periphery | filipovic.luka95@gmail.com | Institute for Contemporary History | Current Member | History: Since 1990 | Democratic backsliding is a global phenomenon, which has hit countries of Western Balkans and Eastern Neighborhood quite hard. Unprotected by a wider European structure and absent from NATO, they were more vulnerable both to external pressures and internal power grab. That was especially the case since the EU experienced expansion fatigue. Not only indexes of political and media freedom, but also economic and even demographic indicators were (and still are) reflecting the crisis of significant proportion, adding to the sentiment of despair . In such circumstances, it came as a surprise that quite unique forms of civic resistance to hybridization evolved in these countries. Their "trademark" was a grassroot element, which brought back the citizens as active actors to the political field, basically sidetracking the existing, thoroughly delegitimized institutions. | ||||||||
110 | 2/28/2025 11:17:45 | Dinissa Duvanova | did214@lehigh.edu | Lehigh University | Current Member | Politics, Law | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | Unconventional Spiritual Practices in the War-Time Ukraine and Russia | Chair, Discussant | Politics and economics of Russia and Central Asia | |||||
111 | 2/28/2025 14:11:24 | Anna Oldfield | aoldfield@coastal.edu | Coastal carolina University | Current Member | Literature: 20th Century | Presenter(s) | Central Asian Studies: Images of Women in Early 20th century Kazakh Literature -focusing on Alash writer Mirzhalyp Dulatov. | Chair | Central Asian/ Caucasus Studies | |||||
112 | 2/28/2025 14:24:03 | Alma Prelec | alma.prelec@cssd.ac.uk | The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London | Current Member | Arts II: Music, Theater, Performance Studies | Theatre in the Yugoslav space - Don Juan / Don Zuan | Discussant | Yugoslavia, Theatre, Memory Studies, Balkans, Film | ||||||
113 | 2/28/2025 15:36:14 | Kateryna | Odarchenko | Institute for Democracy and Development "PolitA," SIC Group | Current Member | International Relations, Security Studies, Foreign Policy | Russian disinformation campaigns represent a sophisticated threat to global democratic stability, leveraging societal vulnerabilities to reshape public opinion and advance geopolitical aims. This panel will explore the mechanisms and impacts of these campaigns, with a focus on the strategic use of religious institutions, particularly the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC), as ideological tools. Through case studies from Ukraine, Georgia, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic, experts will analyze how Kremlin-aligned narratives infiltrate national discourse, influencing attitudes toward NATO, the EU, and national sovereignty. The discussion will highlight the financial and logistical networks sustaining disinformation, including digital platforms, media outlets, and covert state-religious alliances. | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | Tactics of Influence: Dissecting Russian Disinformation and Religious Institutions’ Role | Discussant | disinformation and tactics against disinformation | ||||
114 | 2/28/2025 20:41:13 | Ali Shehzad Zaidi | zaidia@canton.edu | SUNY Canton | Current Member | Literature: 20th Century | Chair | This presentation examines the subversive cultural references in Mircea Eliade’s novella With the Gypsy Girls. | Chair, Discussant | literature history | |||||
115 | 2/28/2025 21:11:44 | Jack Leydiker | jack.leydiker@yale.edu | Yale University | Current Member | MA Student | History: 1945-1990 | Gratitude at Gunpoint: Soviet Representations of Kazakh Veterans in WWII During the early 1920s, Soviet policymakers made earnest attempts to elevate the social status of disenfranchised ethnic minorities. Through a policy known as indigenization (korenizatsiya), non-Russians enjoyed unprecedented access to higher education, careers in civil service, and economic mobility as a result of affirmative action and other programs designed to eliminate inequities within the Soviet state. After Stalin rose to power, however, an increasing emphasis on the status of the Russian people as the leading nation of the Soviet state, the ‘first among equals,’ replaced the policy of indigenization and came to dominate public discourse. Local party administrators curtailed affirmative action programs and began actively discriminating against minority entry into the careers they had incentivized years earlier. The Second World War catalyzed this process, and while the war necessitated a certain rapprochement between the state and conscriptable minorities, by the end of the war state narratives had shifted in favor of the ‘Great Russian’ ideological paradigm. However, ethnic minorities still retained agency in public life, with many non-Russian veterans of the Second World War writing memoirs of their wartime years that highlighted the heroism and sacrifice of non-Russian ‘national’ divisions. Two such writers, the Kazakh veterans Baurzhan Momysh-uly and Malik Gabdullin, wrote memoirs that garnered significant criticism from the Soviet Writer’s Union for insufficiently portraying the heroism of the ‘Great Russian’ nation. I explore the implications of their work on Soviet representations of national minorities during and after the war in my thesis 'Gratitude at Gunpoint: Metropolitan Representations of Kazakh Veterans in WWII.' I intend to further develop this theme in my scholarship by utilizing two archives in the National Library in Astana. | |||||||
116 | 2/28/2025 21:35:32 | Andrey Davydov | andrey.davydov@mail.mcgill.ca | McGill University | Current Member | PhD Candidate (ABD status) | Politics, Law | Presenter(s) | I would love to join a panel on any aspect of nationalism, media, ethnicity, and the far-right in Russia. Topic: "Divergence in Radical Rhetoric by Pro-Regime Platform in Russia". Abstract: "Using evidence from automated transcripts and Telegram channels, this paper argues that the formality of a pro-regime platform determines its adoption of radical right rhetoric against racialised minorities in Russia, Western Europe, and North America. Informal platforms like pro-regime Telegram channels pursue both anti-Black and anti-Central Asian rhetoric, intermediate platforms like television propaganda talk shows only support anti-Black narratives, while formal platforms like television news as well as presidential and parliamentary speeches avoid either type of hostile rhetoric. This limitation suggests that the regime recognises the proximity between ethnonationalism across foreign and domestic contexts, qualifying the argument that it uses anti-Black rhetoric to promote a narrative of "Western chaos"." | Chair, Discussant | nationalism, ethnic nationalism, radical right, Russia | ||||
117 | 2/28/2025 22:56:07 | Victoria Thorstensson | vthorstensson@carleton.edu | Carleton College | Current Member | History: Since 1990 | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | I would like to find a home for my oral history project on a panel, devoted to the Russian War in Ukraine or a panel on memory/exile. The topic is "Oral History of Russian-Speaking Minnesota: Russian Political Asylum Seekers at the Time of Russian War on Ukraine. The paper describes an oral history project, conducted in the spring of 2024 with the collaboration of the community organization "Russians Against War-MN.". The project gathered ten oral history interviews of recent Russian political asylum seekers who settled in Minnesota. The presentation will analyze the stories, that were gathered, and the uses of the project for research, teaching and activism. | |||||||
118 | 3/1/2025 2:01:16 | Benedict DeDominicis | bendedominicis@gmail.com | The Catholic University of Korea | Current Member | Economic History, Economics, Business | The virtual panel for the October 23-24, 2025 virtual conference would be focused on Balkan political economy, broadly understood. Two prospective paper presenters would focus on Bulgaria, but to attract a third paper, the another Balkan or former Soviet community would allow a comparative perspective. We also already have a chairperson and discussant, who is a Bulgarian economist. | Presenter(s) | Chair, Discussant | all things former Warsaw Pact | |||||
119 | 3/1/2025 8:08:29 | Kamila Akhmedjanova | kamila.akhmedjanova@ames.ox.ac.uk | University of Oxford | Current Member | PhD Candidate (ABD status) | Literature: 20th Century | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | The name of the paper I would like to present is "The Image of Persia in the Works of Ivan Bunin, Nikolaǐ Gumilëv and Sergeǐ Esenin". This paper will discuss the particular interest that Russian poets and writers of the so-called “Serebrianyǐ vek" showed in the image of Persia and its culture, which in their works tended to be extensively romanticized. Scholars of this period focused on the European origins of Russian modernism (Barta and Goebel, 1991; Fink, 1999), highlighting the key role of such Western thinkers as Henri Bergson and Charles Baudelaire, as well as Paul Verlaine and Stephane Mallarme (Stone 2007: 7), in the formation of this movement in Russia. There exists a solid view of Russian modernism as being created and shaped by the West. However, this paper will challenge this perspective by demonstrating the role of the Orient in the formation of the movement under discussion. As Tolz (2011) outlines in her book, European scholars’ (German and Russian ones in particular) interest in the oriental world passed through various stages, ranging from admiration to complete rejection. In the case of modernism, Germans and Russians, “the two peoples whose national identity formation was particularly unsettled by modernization [...] made the most radical and far-reaching attempts to rethink what the ‘Orient’ meant for Europe” (Tolz 2011: 2) and used the image of the Orient in their attempts to build their own national identity. By discussing how oriental (and specifically Persian) motifs were an integral part of the various modernist movements that characterized the early twentieth century in Russia, this paper will show that the choice of ‘Persia’ (this notion places a greater focus on the cultural side than the strictly political and geographical notion of ‘Iran’, since the Persian-speaking world consists of parts of Iran, parts of Central Asia, Afghanistan and parts of South Asia and of the Caucasus (the latter two belonged to this group in the 19th century)) as a representative of oriental countries in the Russian poetry of that time was far from coincidental. | Chair, Discussant | history of Central Asia, Russian conquest of Central Asia, Persian (Tajik) literature produced in Central Asia, how literature was used for political purposes by the Soviet government during the process of border demarcation in Central Asia, influence of Russian intellectual trends on Central Asia in the 19th and early 20th century (pre-Revolutionary period), the ways in which Persian literature was received in Russia and how it was reflected in the works of Russian writers, Sadriddin Aynī and Lohutī's roles in the creation of modern Tajik identity, creation of modern national identities in Central Asia in the 20th century | ||||
120 | 3/1/2025 10:05:15 | Lena Franke | lena-marie1.franke@ur.de | University of Regensburg | Current Member | PhD Student | Literature: 20th Century | I would be happy to join a panel on Holocaust memory, Memory of trauma and violence in literature, Memory Narratives in Central Europe or similar. My paper is about early Shoah memory in Czech literature | Holocaust memory, Czech literature, Memory politics, Narratives, Baltic states | ||||||
121 | 3/1/2025 12:00:07 | Nathan Colvin | ncolv002@odu.edu | Council on Foreign Relations / Old Dominion University | Current Member | PhD Candidate (ABD status) | International Relations, Security Studies, Foreign Policy | Presenter(s) | The North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) identity shifts between a traditional alliance and elements of a collective security organization. The shift between these two “poles” are due to the dynamic relationship between available resources/capabilities on one side and changing external contexts on the other. The changing security environment necessitates the need for continuous securitization. As one type of security issue is dealt with, new issues arise, often leading to a pendular swing in focus between freedom from and freedom to concerns. While NATO is generally successful communicating security moves internally, it is less successful in communicating to future members, adversaries, and other actors in the security environment. The ambiguity required for resilience in the alliance can also create uncertainty external to the alliance, which changes the external context, and ultimately can lead to conflict and insecurity. By shifting towards “free to” security concerns through a logic of transcendence, NATO successfully created the means for internal cohesion after the Cold War. However, in doing so it sent mixed signals to different external audiences such as Ukraine and Russia. To navigate the challenges of the 21st century, NATO must follow a logic of mitigation, to both protect and build its cherished values. | Chair, Discussant | Security, NATO | ||||
122 | 3/1/2025 12:06:33 | Alex Strzelecki | alex.strzelecki@yale.edu | Yale University | Current Member | PhD Candidate (ABD status) | Literature: 20th Century | Stateless writers from Eastern Europe in 20th and 21st century | Chair, Discussant(s) | Avant-garde theatre across borders: the case of Ivan Vyrypaev | Chair, Discussant | Cold War literature, transnational writers, literature of emigration, life writing, autobiography, memory, performing arts, visual arts, Russian, Polish, Ukrainian, French, | |||
123 | 3/1/2025 12:59:30 | Ljubomir Filipović | lfilipov@asu.edu | Arizona State University, Arizona State University, The Melikian Center for Russian, Eurasian, and East European Studies | Current Member | PhD Student | Politics, Law | Presenter(s), Chair | This working paper investigates the strategic use of religious soft power by Russia and Serbia in Montenegro, analyzing how religious institutions, narratives, and affiliations shape political attitudes, foreign policy preferences, and national identity. The study utilizes a survey experiment to test the influence of exposure to messages from leaders of the Serbian Orthodox Church and Russian Orthodox Church, framing political stances in religious terms. Key variables include exposure to religious messaging, measured through religious attendance and endorsements by church leaders, with dependent variables encompassing attitudes towards foreign policy, political leadership trust, and identity perceptions linked to religious heritage. The research also considers factors like prior religious commitment, political ideology, and demographics to assess susceptibility to religiously framed messages. The central hypothesis posits that exposure to pro-Russian, nationalist messaging from Orthodox Church leaders correlates with an increase in authoritarian values. The study aims to extend internationally to understand varying impacts of such tactics and contribute insights into how religious soft power functions as a political persuasion tool in authoritarian regimes, influencing democratic backsliding. Feedback is solicited on the research design, particularly the survey experiment approach and the operationalization of religious soft power as an independent variable in evaluating the political influence of religious institutions in Orthodox Christian societies. | Chair | Russia and Serbia, Montenegro, Religious soft power, Orthodox Church influence, political attitudes, foreign policy, national identity, survey experiment, authoritarian values, democratic backsliding, nationalist discourse, political persuasion. | ||||
124 | 3/1/2025 13:54:21 | Emina Zoletic | eminazoletic81@gmail.com | University of Warsaw | Current Member | PhD Student | Sociology, Public Health, Education | Panel on intergenerational transmission of memories after war | Presenter(s) | Intergenerational perspectives on extreme violence: family memories | Chair, Discussant | Memory in the migration context and memories in Yugoslavia | |||
125 | 3/1/2025 23:59:09 | Mapping Gender Discourse in Central Asia | mpankova@bard.edu | Bard College | Current Member | MA Student | Gender/LGBTQ Studies | This panel examines the shifting landscape of gender discourse in Central Asia through interdisciplinary analyses of masculinity, femininity, violence, and queer identity. While the field of gender studies remains relatively young in the region, it has been shaped by Soviet-era policies on gender equality, the pressures of post-Soviet nationalism, and the impact of global cultural trends. The revival of patriarchal traditions alongside economic and political transformations has led to contested gender roles, heightened gender-based violence, and a fraught environment for feminist and LGBTQ+ activism. State policies and conservative social norms frequently suppress conversations around gender, yet new forms of self-expression and resistance continue to emerge. This panel brings together studies that illuminate these tensions from an interdisciplinary perspective. A study grounded in fashion studies explores how young men in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan adopt elements of South Korean pop culture to challenge rigid notions of masculinity. Another qualitative research project examines how Kazakh women born during the Nazarbayev era navigate shifting cultural ideals of body image in the post-Soviet transition. A data-driven analysis investigates femicide in Uzbekistan, exposing the patriarchal norms that justify and obscure violence against women. Finally, a study on queer social gatherings in Kyrgyzstan analyzes how temporary, neoliberal spaces provide both refuge and limitations for self-expression. By mapping these gendered experiences, this panel complicates the existing discourse on gender in Central Asia, revealing the ways in which individuals negotiate, resist, and redefine social norms in response to local and global forces. | Discussant(s) | Chair, Discussant | National identity, Museum Studies, Arts | ||||
126 | 3/5/2025 9:11:04 | Victoria Somoff | victoria.somoff@dartmouth.edu | Dartmouth College | Current Member | Folklore Studies | This panel explores Ukrainian folklore from multiple perspectives—its collection and documentation, textual analysis and interpretation, and adaptation in literature and film. Victoria Somoff analyzes the cumulative folktale in Ukrainian tradition, placing Ukrainian variants of international plots in a comparative context and examining folkloric narratives in relation to their literary adaptations. Olga Blackledge investigates how Ukrainian animators at Kyivnaukfilm (1960s–1990s) reimagined motifs and imagery from verbal, visual, and material folk art, translating them into the cinematic language of animated film. Together, these papers illuminate Ukrainian oral tradition and its study, situating it within both classic and contemporary folklore theory and examining its global and comparative dimensions. | Presenter(s) | |||||||
127 | 3/10/2025 11:59:59 | Michal Pospiszyl | michal.pospiszyl@protonmail.com | Institute of Political Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences | Current Member | Geography, Environmental Studies | Presenter(s) | I am an environmental historian working on 'escape ecologies' at the turn of the 19th century in Eastern Europe. How an illegible environment (wetlands, forests) made control by the authorities more difficult and encouraged flight, desertion and defence of the commons. I also look at the conflicts that accompanied the introduction of the first nature modernisation projects, such as how the rural population sabotaged the implementation of modern forestry, the construction of canals or the drainage of swamps. I have published on this topic in Environmental History (2023) and have forthcoming articles on this subject in the Journal of Modern History and Environmental Humanities. | |||||||
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134 | 3/17/2025 11:13:33 | Ekaterina Kosevich | ekaterina.kosevich@gmail.com | HSE University, Institute of Latin American Studies of RUS | Current Member | International Relations, Security Studies, Foreign Policy | Panel Title: Building a Multipolar World: Russia’s New System of International Relations Description: This panel analyzes the transformations of Russian foreign policy in the 21st century, marked by abrupt shifts akin to "shock therapy." Focusing on Russia's efforts to construct a multipolar world order, the discussion will examine the government's declared intention to revise traditional foreign policy priorities and downplay historical ties with Western Europe. Panelists will discuss the implications of this reorientation, including the promotion of alternative concepts like the "turn to the non-West," and the challenges of this departure from Russia's long-established political and economic connections. | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | Title of the paper: “Russo-Latin American relations after 2022: continuity and change". Description: After the start of SMO and the subsequent introduction of Western sanctions against Russia, the Russian government made it clear that it intends to fundamentally revise the list of traditional priorities of Russian foreign policy. By demonstratively rejecting more than five centuries of history, the political regime of the United Russia party is trying to build a new map of foreign policy priorities, widely announced to the national and global public as Russia's long-awaited entry into the Pacific or the "turn to the East", and rapprochement with the countries of the "global South". Needing to find new allies in the confrontation with the West, Russia is looking more closely than before at the countries of Latin America. Despite Russia's active push to strengthen economic ties with Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) after February 2022 as part of its strategy to counter Western sanctions, LAC remains an obscure and little-known region for Russia, with few real opportunities for expansion. This paper answers two research questions: 1) Has the level of Russia's interaction with LAC changed after the start of Russia's SMO in Ukraine? 2) How has Russia's SMO in Ukraine affected the development of dialogue between Russia and LAC in four areas of interaction: political dialogue, defense and security cooperation, trade and investment cooperation, and cultural and humanitarian ties? This paper deals with a topic which is very relevant today. | Chair, Discussant | Here are the topics related to the ASEEES 2025 conference that I would be interested in discussing as a chair or discussant: Russian Foreign Policy in the Post-Soviet Era; Eurasianism and its Influence on Russian Political Thought; The Evolution of Russian Theories of International Relations; Comparative Foreign Policy in Post-Soviet States; The Impact of Global Powers on the Post-Soviet Space; Latin America and Russia: A Geopolitical Relationship; Political and Economic Transformations in Post-Soviet Countries; Historical Memory and National Identity in Post-Soviet States; Global Governance and Russia’s Role in Multilateral Institutions; These topics reflect my interdisciplinary expertise in Russian foreign policy, political theory, and post-Soviet transformations, and I am eager to engage in meaningful discussions at ASEEES 2025. | ||||
135 | 3/17/2025 22:44:48 | Mateusz Leszczynski | male3577@colorado.edu | University of Colorado Boulder | Current Member | PhD Candidate (ABD status) | Gender/LGBTQ Studies | I am looking to see if there is a panel open for my paper. My paper proposal title: The Gender Ideology Conspiracy Theory: An Intersection between Polish Nationalism and Catholicism Brief Description: What explains attitudes toward the LGBTQ+ community, especially in Poland? With the intensification of ``gender ideology” rhetoric around the world it is now more than ever necessary to understand what factors lead to individuals believing in such narratives. Using my own original survey data of Polish citizens, I examine how respondents’ relationship with Catholicism blends in their perception of Polish nationalism and how it ultimately influences their belief in the gender ideology conspiracy theory. If there is a relevant panel with available space, I would greatly appreciate the opportunity to be part of it if my paper aligns. | |||||||
136 | 3/23/2025 5:37:38 | Ekaterina Kosevich | ekaterina.kosevich@gmail.com | HSE University, Institute of Latin American Studies of Russian Academy of Sciences | Current Member | International Relations, Security Studies, Foreign Policy | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | Proposed paper: The Genesis of Russian Theories of International Relations: Ideological Foundations of 'The Special Path' | Chair, Discussant | Foreign policy of Russia, foreign policy of the USSR, Theory of international relations, history of international relations of Russia | |||||
137 | 3/26/2025 19:34:35 | Nabokov | rusina_v@hotmail.com | Independent Scholar | Current Member | Literature: 20th Century | Chair, Discussant | Nabokov's Studies | |||||||
138 | 3/27/2025 5:10:37 | Nikoloz Nadirashvili | niknadirashvili@gmail.com | University of Washington | Current Member | PhD Student | Arts I: Visual Culture, Material Culture, Applied and Fine Arts | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | My paper discusses the socio-political impact of macabre political performances in Tbilisi (e.g., few weeks ago the protesters burned a coffin containing an effigy of oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili). Rather than analyzing the underlying rationale of such acts, I focus on their immediate effects; Drawing on Michel Foucault’s descriptive methodology, I examine how these performances function within the power dynamics of a neo-Soviet regime. | Chair, Discussant | non-conformism, visual art, counter culture, protest art, religious art, Russia, Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia | ||||
139 | 4/7/2025 20:57:01 | Dan Giblin | dgiblin@citadel.edu | The Citadel | Current Member | History: 1900-1945 | Presenter(s) | “‘By the Way, Not All of Them Were Bad:’ Civilian Memory of Soldiers and Trauma in the Ecosystem of Violence in Kursk Oblast, 1941-1943.” The German soldiers who occupied Kursk Oblast from 1941 to 1943 created an “ecosystem of violence:” a space in which all available instruments of war are deployed to achieve military objectives and all non-military activity is subsumed under the demands of military necessity. By coercive means, the needs of soldiers are always prioritized over the needs of non-combatants. In this space, all inhabitants are related by the exchange of the common currency of perpetual, indiscriminate violence. While conducting archival research in Kursk in 2011-12, I arranged interviews with over a dozen individuals who experienced the German occupation, Red Army liberation, and mobilization to provide labor for military projects in preparation for the German 1943 summer offensive. While I sought to learn about daily life during the Red Army’s liberation and mobilization, I realized that the narratives these individuals provided offered a richer description of the experiences of civilian children and adolescents who survived a prolonged period in the ecosystem of violence. While these women’s memories speak of horrible conditions in which they experienced a variety of traumatic events, they also all paused in the interview to inform me that not all German soldiers were “bad.” Such admissions speak to the complexity of life in wartime and instances of humanity even while living in an unendurable violence. | |||||||
140 | 4/14/2025 3:50:55 | Iulia Statica | i.statica@sheffield.ac.uk | University of Sheffield | Current Member | Urban Studies, Built Environments | Presenter(s), Chair, Discussant(s) | The paper examines the landscapes of care formed around Romania’s standardized socialist apartments (1966-1989), specifically investigating women’s uses of balconies and urban courtyards as subtle spaces of resistance. These areas, resembling reimagined gardens, expanded domestic boundaries providing refuge for generational knowledge of plants, which aided in practices including clandestine abortions amid restrictive state policies. Moving beyond the rigid apartment typology, this paper highlights how balconies and courtyards became key landscapes of care, where women’s concealed subversions and embodied knowledge preserved agency and heritage. | Chair | architecture, domesticity, urban studies, (post)socialist migration |