SRAS Study Abroad Info Sessions

Event Dates: April 7 and April 12, 2022

Please join SRAS info sessions to discuss your future study abroad program! We will go over funding and scholarship opportunities as well. 

SRAS is gearing up for summer programs in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan and Batumi, Georgia as well as online from Warsaw, Poland. We are also accepting applications for fall programs in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, as well as Chisinau, Moldova. Both programs will include intensive Russian-language study as well local cultural and travel programs that will introduce students to the unique peoples, cultures, and identities of these locations. 

We will also have our Security and Society in the Information Age program in Warsaw, Poland this fall, a particularly pertinent program looking at European security and global security issues. 

With so many students now in our Bishkek location, we’ve taken the opportunity to update and expand our Vegan and Vegetarian Guide to Bishkek, our guide to Fitness, Training, Gyms, and Jogging in Bishkek, and several other resources, now all linked from our giant SRAS Guide to Living in Bishkek.

Elsewhere on our Family of Sites, we have new articles on the Kyrgyz State Opera and Ballet Theater, a profile of Turkmen poet Magtymguly Pyragy, and a book review of This Thing of Darkness: Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible in Stalin’s Russia.

Lastly, we are heartened to report that all our friends and colleagues at Novamova, our partner school in Ukraine, are still safe. If you would like to donate to help them, please click here

Resources: Russian Modernization – A New Paradigm

I would like to draw to your attention details of the book summarizing the results of the Finnish Centre of Excellence in Russian Studies. It is published by Routledge in our series Studies in Contemporary Russia and will come to open access in the next month.

https://www.routledge.com/Russian-Modernization-A-New-Paradigm/Kivinen-Humphreys/p/book/9780367567255

Russian Modernization: A New Paradigm – 1st Edition – Markku Kivinen

Continue reading “Resources: Russian Modernization – A New Paradigm”

Resources: Doctoral Student Peer Mentoring Program (Slavic Reference Service)

Deadline: March 18, 2022

The Slavic Reference Service will be facilitating the next cycle of the Doctoral Student Peer Mentoring Program this Spring. This program aims to connect doctoral students at all levels of study and in all disciplines conducting research related to Russian, Eastern European, and Eurasia. Through this program, we hope to foster networking and mentoring among emerging scholars. Interested students can register for the program here: https://forms.gle/D3qdzdWSBfb6NmcT9. Please register by March 18 to be mentor matched and participate in an initial meet and greet event. Questions may be directed to srscite@library.illinois.edu. We hope that you will encourage students to apply as mentees and mentors

Resources: AATSEEL Graduate Student Committee

On behalf of the AATSEEL Graduate Student Committee, I am writing to encourage graduate students in Slavic and Eastern European Studies to join our organization. This is a wonderful opportunity for graduate students to collaborate with other colleagues and gain service experience valuable for professional development. The main goal of the committee is to help graduate students improve their experience at the conference.  

Every year at the AATSEEL Conference, the graduate student committee meets and gathers opinions from graduate students in Slavic Studies, then communicates them to the Executive Council. We also organize special events and panels at the conference, which will help you to meet other graduate students and build relationships with professionals in the field.

We welcome diverse students from all countries and universities! If interested (and we hope you are!), you can sign up by emailing me at ashkireva@umass.edu. We are also encouraging you to participate by attending the Graduate Committee meeting at the AATSEEL 2022 conference, which will take place on the 18th of February (3:30-4:30). We will be thrilled to see new faces tomorrow!

Please do not hesitate to reach out with any questions by emailing me at ashkireva@umass.edu

Prof. Dev: Job Opportunities at the DLI (University of Pittsburgh)

Event Date: February 23, 2022

We are pleased to host the Defense Language Institute for Job Opportunities at the DLI. The event is open to ASEEES members interested in employment opportunities to teach Russian at the DLI in Monterey, CA. Attendees will hear from DLI staff about job openings and the application process. Join us on 23 February to learn more! 

Preregistration is not required. To participate in this live Teams discussion: https://www.aseees.org/programs/webinars

Please note: this session will not be recorded

Job Opportunities at the DLI

Wednesday, 23 February 4PM Eastern, 1PM Pacific

Presented by: The Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center

Continue reading “Prof. Dev: Job Opportunities at the DLI (University of Pittsburgh)”

Resource: Soyuz – The Research Network for Postsocialist Studies

Join the new SOYUZ listserv!

Soyuz is broadly conceived as a group of scholars working in postsocialist studies. It serves as a vehicle to promote the study of postsocialist societies, the dissemination of current research, and collaborative and interdisciplinary work among an international community of scholars. For a long time, Soyuz had a listserv through H-Net/H-Commons, but we decided to make a more inclusive listserv with a platform (Google Groups) that is easy for people to manage. Some of you have already been added to the listserv. If you want to be added or change your email address, just email the Soyuz webmaster Dafna Rachok (darachok [at] iu.edu). This listserv is seen as complementing the Soyuz Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/groups/SoyuzNetwork/) and the Soyuz website (https://soyuz.americananthro.org/).  

Resources: The Rhetorical Rise and Demise of “Democracy” in Russian Political Discourse

In December 2021 Academic Studies Press published The Rhetorical Rise and Demise of “Democracy” in Russian Political Discourse, Volume One: The Path from Disaster toward Russian “Democracy” by David Cratis Williams, Marilyn J. Young, and Michael K. Launer. In the early 1980s the Communist Party still maintained nearly total control of political messaging in the USSR. This situation began to change after KAL007 was shot down in 1983. Then came Chernobyl (1986), which led to the development of a nascent civil society and, ultimately, the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Volume One focuses on analysis of rhetoric, public address, and political argumentation during the late Soviet period. Various studies (some previously unpublished) describe interactions between the US and USSR concerning these events. 

Resource: Scanned Issues of Samizdat Journals of the Late Soviet Period (University of Toronto Library)

We would like to draw your attention to some resources available for students, teachers and researchers in the Project for the Study of Dissidence and Samizdat (PSDS) (https://samizdatcollections.library.utoronto.ca) at the University of Toronto Library. Under the button “Journals,” you will find scanned issues of over 20 samizdat journals. This is a unique resource on uncensored art and literature of the late Soviet period. The set includes the landmark edition of Soviet conceptualism, the MANI folios, from the Forschungsstelle Osteuropa at Bremen University, as well as a full set of issues of the important Leningrad journal Chasy (The Clock, 1-80), furnished by the Andrei Belyi Centre in St. Petersburg. Users will also find nearly full sets of the outstanding journals Thirty–Seven and Transponans.

Continue reading “Resource: Scanned Issues of Samizdat Journals of the Late Soviet Period (University of Toronto Library)”

Russian as a Foreign Language Olympiad (St. Petersburg State University)

Deadline: October 29, 2021

Saint Petersburg State University is holding a unique Olympiad in Russian as a foreign language in the USA.
We invite all students from US universities to participate in our online event. 
Registration on the website https://rusolymp-usa.ru is open until October 29.

Continue reading “Russian as a Foreign Language Olympiad (St. Petersburg State University)”

Prof. Dev: Academic Libraries of Siberia

Event Dates: Oct. 8 and Oct. 22, 2021

We invite you to a 2-part webinar devoted to academic libraries of Siberia on Friday, October 8 at 10 am EDT, and Friday, October 22 at 10 am EDT.

Librarians from six Siberian cities will introduce their unique collections (including electronic collections), discuss interesting projects and international collaborations at their libraries, and field questions from those in attendance.

Continue reading “Prof. Dev: Academic Libraries of Siberia”