April 2008 The Polish Studies Center will hold the New Directions, New Connections: Polish Studies In Cross-Disciplinary Context Conference April 17-20. Polish Studies in North America is at a crossroads. Its concerns and modes of operation are undergoing a reevaluation in the light of the political changes of the last two decades, and of the social, artistic, and cultural upheavals that they have engendered. Poland’s historical association with political struggle and oppression is being revalued, because it is no longer a relevant trope in a free and democratic Polish state, and because it has proved to be a limiting way of engaging with Polish literature and art overall. This has led to a reassessment of the canon of Polish literature, and of practices and curricula in Polish programs across the United States and Canada. New theoretical, substantive, and disciplinary modes are reinvigorating Polish Studies and pointing it in innovative and fruitful directions, linking it theoretically and thematically with other fields and disciplines. This has led many in Polish Studies to pose different questions that offer the hope of new responses to old problems and new ones.
March 2008 "Islam and Post-Communism" is the theme of this year's Indiana Roundtable on Post-Communism. The first session of the roundtable will take place Thursday afternoon at 1:00PM - 4:00PM in the Dogwood Room of the Indiana Memorial Union and is open to the public. A follow-up working session will occur on Friday morning at 10:00AM - 12:00PM also in the Dogwood Rooom of the Indiana Memorial Union for faculty and graduate students. The Roundtable will feature several prominent scholars on its panel, including Zaindi Choltaev (Chechen Political Activist), Kristen Ghodsee (Bowdoin College), Edmund Waite (University of London) and Indiana's own Gardner Bovingdon (Central Eurasian Studies), Nazif Shahrani (Anthropology), Abdulkader Sinno (Political Science), and Kevin Jaques (Religious Studies). The roundtable focuses on a brief "provocation" statement and set of questions sent in advance to the Roundtable panelists. Each panelist has prepared a 1000-word statement in response to the "provocation" and the questions. Participants should plan on reading these materials which can be found at the Roundtable website. Download the flyer here.
March 2008
Recent elections in Russia handed an overwhelming victory to Vladimir Putin’s anointed successor, Dmitri Medvedev. Still, the future of politics and democracy seems unclear as Putin, the current president and likely future prime minister, is unlikely to disappear from the Russian political scene. The Russian East European Institute will host a panel discussion to consider the future of Russian politics, and the implications of the Russian presidential elections, featuring prominent Russian political specialists. On Friday, March 21 at 12:00 noon in the State Room East of the Indiana Memorial Union, Professor Elizabeth Wood (History, MIT), Professor Stephen Hanson (Political Science, University of Washington at Seattle), Ambassador James Collins (former US Ambassador to Russia), and Professor Regina Smyth (Political Science, Indiana University) will discuss the events of the recent Russian residential elections and the future of Russian politics.
March 2008 The Romanian Studies Conference features panels on child welfare and the media, minorities and marginalization, and the relationship between Romania and Europe. All panels will be held March 4, 2008 in the Kelley School of Business, room 429. Marius Turda, Oxford Brookes University, will present the keynote address, “Ethnic Modernism and Scientific Nationalism: Reflections on Biopolitics in Interwar Romania” at 4pm in room 421. Sponsors for the event include the Romanian Studies Organization, Indiana University Student Association, Horizons of Knowledge, the Russian and East European Institute, and the Department of History. For more information contact the Romanian Studies Organization or download the program
January 2008
Joseph Crescente (MA 2007) is currently working with American Councils for International Education in the Vladivostok office. He frequently travels around the Far East region and Eastern Siberia, including Blagoveshensk, Chita, Irkutsk, Magadan, Ulan Ude, Vladivostok, and Yuzhno Sakhalinsk, to help implement US government funded exchange programs. The American Councils works in cooperation with the Russian Ministry of Education and spends most of its time in local schools and education centers. An international not-for-profit organization, the American Councils believes in the fundamental role of education in fostering positive change for individuals, institutions and societies. The image above depicts Crescente at work in a school in Far Eastern Russia. For more information about the ACLS view their website.
December 2007 December 6th and 7th, at the John Waldron Arts Center, the Romanian Studies Organization presents Juliet. The drama, by András Visky, is a “dialogue” which documents the true story of his parents from his mother’s perspective. In 1939, Visky’s father fled from Romania to Hungary, where he would meet his future wife. After the end of World War II, both decide to return to Transylvania, by then a part of Romania. After his father is sentenced to 22 years in prison for involvement with the Hungarian Reformed Church, his mother and the seven children are sent to a Romanian gulag a thousand kilometres from their home. But Juliet is not ready to give up her freedom and deny her love, and instead she decides to find a way out. Juliet has been has been on the program of the Thália Theatre in Budapest since the fall of 2002 and has since been translated into Romanian, opening at the Romanian National Theatre in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, last fall. The English adaptation has been touring the US since the fall of 2006. View the flier for information here.
October 2007 Olena Chernishenko (Slavic), Markus Dickinson (Computational Linguistics), Ronald Feldstein (Slavic), Steven Franks (Slavic), Denise Gardiner (Title VI Grant Coordinator), and Natalia Rekhter (Public & Environmental Affairs IUPUI) have just received a grant under the United States-Russia Program: Improving Research and Educational Activities in Higher Education. This grant will provide ample funding for Russian language training at IUB and IUPUI, scholarships for students to study global public health issues in Rostov-on-Don, Russia, and the development of foreign language and multi-disciplinary curricula, including innovative language-learning technologies. The program targets students interested in public health issues and includes a four week course of basic Russian and a four week course of technical Russian related to the program. The program is partnering with Southern Federal University in Rostov-on-Don, which received a similar grant and will create a similar program. View the program website here.
August 2007 Students of the Russian East European Institute frequently receive interesting and exciting internships in their areas of interest. In Summer 2007, for instance, four REEI students worked in embassies and consulates abroad as interns for the State Department. The internships gave the students valuable knowledge of the State Department and allowed them to practice their language skills. Jennifer Evans (pictured above) served in St. Petersburg, Russia, Richard Payne-Holmes in Kyiv, Ukraine, Elizabeth Raible in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Jeremy Stewart in Bucharest, Romania. Joshua Ruegsegger was an intern at the US Embassy in Minsk, Belarus during Spring 2007.
April 2007
The Polish - German Post / Memory: Aesthetics, Ethics, Politics conference addresses the historical and cultural relationship between Poland and Germany in the context of memory studies. The conference brings together scholars of history, political science, ethics, law, cultural studies, literature, and performance, to share in an exploration of the culture of memory and the memory of culture. The conference features distinguished guests such as Adam Michnik (pictured above), a famous historian and dissident of the socialist period in Poland.
For more information visit the conference webpage.
March 2007
The theme of this year's Indiana University Roundtable on Post-Communism is “Public Health.” There have been some dramatic changes in public health indicators in the post-communist countries of the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and China during the last two decades. The shifts (and continuities) in public health policies and the restructuring of medical education and health care provision make this a fruitful topic to examine in comparative perspective. Three expert panelists will address such questions as public health challenges, health care reforms, inequalities in access, mental health, HIV/AIDS, international aid and donations, and family planning and reproductive health.
March 2007 The Romanian Studies program at Indiana University announces the conference entitled “The Hour of Romania” to be held March 22-24, 2007 on the IU Bloomington campus. The conference will revisit important U.S. scholarship in various fields of Romanian studies over the past few decades and will feature current trends in scholarship with a focus on Romania or placing Romania in comparative perspective. In a period when “area studies” are undergoing important shifts in many disciplines and as Romania enters the European Union, we also want to discuss what the future of “Romanian studies” looks like. For more information and please visit the "Hour of Romania" conference webpage.
January 2007 A group of about 20 students, faculty, staff and interested community members have formally organized the Indiana University Ukrainian Studies Organization under the auspices of IU Student Activities Office. During the fall semester, the students wrote a constitution for the new organization and elected officers. The goal of the organization is to promote and celebrate Ukrainian language and culture at Indiana University and the wider Bloomington community. Pictured here are members of Professor Olena Chernishenko’s first-year Ukrainian class enjoying a special classroom activity at the end of the semester which taught them how to paint Pysanky.
November 2006
Robert Gates, President George W. Bush’s nominee to succeed Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense, received his MA in History from Indiana University in 1966, during which time he was affiliated with the Russian and East European Institute and studied with several of IU’s well-known historians of that era (Chase Mooney in U.S. history, Robert Ferrell in diplomatic history and Robert Byrnes in Soviet history). He went on to earn his Doctorate in Russian and Soviet History from Georgetown University in 1974. Born in Wichita, Kansas, he joined the CIA in 1966, serving as an intelligence analyst. Gates also served on the White House national security staff in 1974-79, and became deputy national security adviser to President George Bush before he became CIA director (1991-93). Most recently, he has worked as President of the Texas A&M University since August 2002
September 2006
This past summer, Neil Gipson (REEI MA/MPA ‘06) served as Resident Director of the American Councils' Russian Language & Area Studies Program in St. Petersburg, Russia. The program provided language and cultural instruction for twenty-three American college students at St. Petersburg's Herzen State Pedagogical University. Part of his responsibilities as Resident Director was to organize cultural excursions for his students.
August 2006
Journalism Ph.D. student Kevin Grieves has been awarded the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences Joseph Hasek Graduate Student Award recognizing the best graduate paper in the U.S. on a Czechoslovak-related topic for his paper, “An Uncertain Image: U.S. Television Coverage of Czechoslovakia, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.” Grieves, who wrote the paper for his International Newsgathering (J414) class, taught by Owen V. Johnson, during the spring semester, will receive a small monetary award and a year’s membership in the society.
July 2006 REEI MA/MPA student Meagan Call pictured with Romanian president Traian Basescu at the U.S. Embassy Independence Day Reception. Call is interning for the U.S. State Departmentat the U.S. Embassy in Bucharest, Romania. Visit the embassy’s website for more pictures of the event. July 2006.
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