2024 Midwest Slavic Conference Panel Schedule

2024 Midwest Slavic Conference Panels

Panels subject to change; CSEEES will notify panelists in case of changes. 

All panels will take place in the Blackwell Inn and Conference Center.

Saturday, April 6

8:00-8:30AM - Registration and Coffee

3rd Floor Foyer, Pfahl hall

8:30-10:15AM - Plenary Panel

Pfahl Hall, Room 302

Moderator: Dr. Richard Herrmann (Ohio State U.)
Participants:

  • Dr. Julia Keblinska (Ohio State U.)
  • Brano Mandić (Editor in Chief and Founder of Normalizuj.me)
  • Jeffrey Trimble (Board of Directors Chair at Eurasianet) 

10:15-10:30AM - Coffee Break 

3rd Floor Foyer, Pfahl hall

10:30AM-12:00PM - Session 1

1.A: Narratives of Marginalization and Empowerment in Eastern Europe
Pfahl Hall, Room 102

Panel Chair: Dr. Sunnie Rucker-Chang (Ohio State U.)
Participants:

  • "Polish Performances of Resistance" by Sofia Bachman (Ohio State U.)
  • "Roma and the EU: Centuries of Oppression, Decades of Failure" by Liam Martin (Ohio State U.)
  • "Duality in Damjan Kozole’s Spare Parts or How do you Humanize a Human Smuggler?" by Siobhán Seigne (Ohio State U.)
1.B: Violence in the Arts
Pfahl Hall, Room 230

Panel Chair: Dr. Philip Gleissner (Ohio State U.)
Participants:

  • "Reconceptualizing Art Exhibitions During the [Last] Cold War" by Dr. Roann Barris (U. of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)
  • "Indifference in Burnt by the Sun, Nelyubov’, and Captain Volkonogov Escaped: The Gulag Face of Cruelty Returns" by Dr. Irina Dzero (Kent State U.)
  • "Traumatized Perpetrators on Film: Using Perpetrator Guilt Towards Reconciliation in Post-Yugoslav Cinema" by Katie Kasperian (U. of Michigan)
1.C: Ideology, Identity, and Gender Between East and West 
Pfahl Hall, Room 302

Panel Chair: Dr. Randall Rowe (U. of Cincinnati)
Participants:

  • "Russian Motherhood: 'Russianness' as a predictor of attitudes towards motherhood among Russian mothers surveyed in the United States" by Marin Deevers (U. of Cincinnati)
  • "East-West or Passion-Procreation: Women and motherhood in Turkish-Russian binational television melodrama" by Dr. Randall Rowe (U. of Cincinnati)
  • "Russian Geopolitical Identity and Historical Trauma from 1991-2008" by Arabella Schwarber (U. of Cincinnati)
1.D: New Approaches in Linguistic Pedagogy
Pfahl Hall, Room 330

Panel Chair: Dr. Ljiljana Duraskovic (U. of Pittsburgh)
Participants: 

  • "Developing Language Competency in L2 Slovak" by Dr. Renáta Kamenárová (U. of Pittsburgh)
  • "Иван-да-Марья. Adventure game-based learning" by Ilia Shcherbakov (U. of Nebraska-Lincoln)
1.E: Focusing on the Periphery of the Russian and Soviet Empires
Pfahl Hall, Room 340

Panel Chair: Dr. David Hoffmann (Ohio State U.)
Participants:

  • "'Provincializing' the Cold War: A Nenets Hunter and the Tsar Bomba in the Soviet Arctic" by Dr. Dima Arzyutov (Ohio State U.)
  • "'Internal Others' of the Russian North: Interpretations of Finno-Ugric ‘otherness’ by the Russian Imperial government in the 19th century" by Richard Byington (U. of Illinois Urbana Champaign)
  • "A Narrative of Erasure: The 'Transfer' of Alaska from the Tsarist Empire to the U.S. Empire" by Michael Kraemer (Ohio State U.)
  • "Striking as with a Sword: The Development of Integrated Pest Management in Soviet Tajikistan’s Cotton Sector" by Nicholas Seay (Ohio State U.)

12:00-1:30PM - Lunch Break (on your own) 

12:15-1:15PM - Lunchtime Performance: José Limón’s Missa Brevis with Dr. Mara Frazier (Ohio State U.)

Pfahl Hall, Room 302

1:30-3:00PM - Session 2

2.A: Yugoslavia on the World Stage: Identity and International Relations
Pfahl Hall, Room 102

Panel Chair: Dr. Matthew Boyd (Ohio State U.)
Participants:

  • "Yugoslav Praxis philosophy – challenge of time" by Dr. Slađana Kavarić Mandić (U. of Montenegro)
  • "Reluctant Giant: American Intervention in the Bosnian War" by Charles Laubach (Ohio State U.)
  • "When Football Mattered: Yugoslav Resilience and the Tito-Stalin Split, 1948-1952" by Garrett Lewis (Bowling Green State U.)
  • "Refashioning the Revolution. Communist Yugoslav Regime’s Diplomacy with Memory in Africa in the 1950s" by Filip Mitričević (Indiana U., Bloomington)
2.B: Pedagogy and Educational Practices Across the Regions
Pfahl Hall, Room 230

Panel Chair: Dr. Larysa Stepanova (Ohio State U.)
Participants:

  • "Gender Disparities in Educational Attainment and Beyond: An In-depth Document Analysis of Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan" by Gunel Alasgarova (Ohio State U.)
  • "Maps for Complex Geographies: Teaching Eastern Europe and Central Asia in a Cold War Context" by Dr. Mark Guizlo (Lakeland Community College)
2.C: Nationalism, Politics, and Religion
Pfahl Hall, Room 302

Panel Chair: Mary Allen "Pasha" Johnson (Ohio State U.)
Participants:

  • "War on Ideology: Radical Nationalism, Orthodoxy, and Democracy in Post-War Bosnia" by Dr. Erna Anjarwati (Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies)
  • "A Comparison of the Ideologies of Communist and Socialist Parties in Eastern Europe after the Cold War" by Dr. Xue Xin Guo (Xihua U.)
2.D: Exploring REEE Careers Beyond Academia Roundtable 
Pfahl Hall, Room 330

Chair: Dr. Theodora Kelly McGee (Denison U.)
Speakers: 

  • Alicia Baca (U. of Colorado, Boulder), Outreach Coordinator for the Center for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies at Ohio State U.
  • Eric Connelly (Ohio State U.), Foreign Language-Enabled Research Analyst for Riverside Research
  • Dr. Sara Ceilidh Orr (Ohio State U.), Game Designer for Moonstream
2.E: National Identity and Culture
Pfahl Hall, Room 340

Panel Chair: Dr. Dorothy Noyes (Ohio State U.)
Participants:

  • "Bosnian Identity and Cold War Dynamics in Derviš Sušić’s novel Spies" by Enrico Davanzo (U. degli Studi "G. D'Annunzio" Chieti-Pescara)
  • "Epic as Device in Mykola Lysenko’s Opera Taras Bulba" by Dr. Kathleen Manukyan (U. of Pittsburgh)
  • "Songs and Laughter Were Heard: Frontline Songs and Poems in the Folklore of The Great Patriotic War" by Enes Tastan (Ohio State U.)

3:00-3:15PM - Coffee Break

3rd Floor Foyer, Pfahl hall

3:15-4:45PM - Session 3

3.A: Looking Back on Yugoslavia
Pfahl Hall, Room 102

Panel Chair: Dr. Timothy Pogačar (Bowling Green State U.)
Participants:

  • "Comparing Meša Selimović's Dervish and Fyodor Dostoevsky's Underground Man" by Dr. Keith Doubt (Wittenberg U.)
  • "Emergent Spaces: Experimental Performance and the Dimensions of Space in Milana Broš and Dubravko Detoni's 'La voix du silence' at the 1973 Music Biennale Zagreb" by Marjana Krajač (Ohio State U.)
  • "Man in the Machine: Julije Knifer's Nondeveloping Art" by Dorotea Sotirovska (Indiana U.)
  • "Hemon’s Autofiction and Canonization of Yugonostalgia" by Lejla Vesković (Ohio State U.)
3.B: Identity and Policy in the Caucasus and Balkans
Pfahl Hall, Room 230

Panel Chair: Dr. Yigit Akin (Ohio State U.)
Participants:

  • "The Irony of Fate: Tbilisi’s Soviet Catalyst" by Steven Almond (U. of Cincinnati)
  • "Turkey’s Shift Toward the Western Bloc during the Early Cold War Period" by Balazs Barany (Florida Atlantic U.)
  • "Identity in Flux: The Transformative Journey of Meskhetian Turks and the Challenge of Homeland Perception" by Shota Bekadze (Indiana U., Bloomington)
  • "The Cold War between Iran and Tajikistan: Islamic Ideologies, Foreign Influences, and the Soviet Legacy" by Mehrenegar Rostami (U. of California, Los Angeles)
3.C: Politics and Activism in the Media
Pfahl Hall, Room 302

Panel Chair: Dr. Julia Keblinska (Ohio State U.)
Participants:

  • "Western Radio and the Radicalization of Solidarity Activists" by Dr. Mary Erdmans (Case Western U.)
  • "'Remissioners:' Literary Community as Narcopolitical Resistance" by Ryan Hoaglund (U. of Michigan)
  • "Decoding narratives: The depiction of Russian hacker groups in Russian media (2014-2023)" by Dr. Julia Sweet (Rutgers U.)
3.D: Queering East European Literature 
Pfahl Hall, Room 330

Panel Chair: Sofia Bachman (Ohio State U.)
Participants:

  • "The Labyrinth of Homoerotic Desire: Intertextuality in Sologub’s 'The Petty Demon'" by Angel Estevez (Northwestern U.)
  • "Nora Verde’s My Inheritance: Queer Class Fictions in Contemporary Yugoslav Literature" by Samantha Farmer (U. of Michigan)
  • “‘The danger comes from men’: Homophobia, Misogyny, and Ableism in Country of the Deaf” by Sophie Papp (Ohio State U.)
3.E: Democratization, Europeanization and Economic Reform in Central and Eastern Europe
Pfahl Hall, Room 340

Panel Chair: Dr. Diana Sacilowski (Ohio State U.)
Participants:

  • “Temporary Crush or Long Term Commitment: The Changing Attitudes of Poles Towards War Refugees from Ukraine”  by Luke Bendick (Ohio State U.)
  • "Ukraine on the path toward the European Union: Lessons from the 2004, 2007 and 2013 enlargements" by Dr. Sylwia K. Mazur (U. Católica Portuguesa)
  • "Lack of Elite: Polish Case" by Aneta Sobieraj-Skorski (Institute of Humanities SWPS, U. of Social Sciences and Humanities)

Sunday, April 7

8:00-8:30AM - Registration and Breakfast

3rd Floor Foyer, Pfahl hall

8:30-10:00AM - Session 4

4.A: Russian Modernism
Pfahl Hall, Room 102

Panel Chair: Dr. Alisa Lin (Ohio State U.)
Participants:

  • "Revolutionary Identities: Gender and Sexuality in Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We" by Kelly Gallagher (Ohio State U.)
  • "Gray Areas: Dissolution of Binary Gender in Andrei Bely’s ‘Petersburg’" by Jay Hadfield (Ohio State U.)
  • “What’s in a Name? Cultural Erasure and Assimilation Through Name Changes in Kedra Mitrey’s ‘Heavy Yoke’” by Andrey Ridling  (Ohio State U.)
4.B: New Topics in Linguistics
Pfahl Hall, Room 230

Panel Chair: Dr. Ljiljana Duraskovic (U. of Pittsburgh)
Participants:

  • "The Gheg Infinitive in Written Albanian: A Corpus-Based Analysis of the Effects of Language Standardization on Written Forms of a Language" by Thomas Kingsley (U. of Georgia)
  • "Lemko Rusyn /ɪ/ and /ɣ/: An acoustic analysis" by Dr. Nathan Marks (U. of Oklahoma)
4.C: New Approaches to Russophone Literature 
Pfahl Hall, Room 302

Panel Chair: Dr. Angela Brintlinger (Ohio State U.)
Participants:

  • "Jesus From the Desk Drawer: Sacred Authorship in The Master and Margarita" by Nina Anderson (The College of Wooster)
  • "'Good Lord! How Sad Their Russia Is!': Home Life in Russia and Translation as Propaganda" by Sam Bowden (Kenyon College)
  • "War and Peace: Class Consciousness through 'Russianness'" by Dante Gilbert (Pomona College)
  • "Reading the War in Ukraine in Transnational Russian Poetry" by Alex Perchatkin (New York U.)
4.D: Politics, Identity, and Language
Pfahl Hall, Room 330

Panel Chair: Dr. Laura Siragusa (Ohio State U.)
Participants:

  • "Жыве беларус(кая мова)!: Long live the Belarusian language!" by Nya Feinstein (West Virginia U.)
  • "The Politics of Russian Feminizing Suffixes: Socio-Historical Trends" by Michelle Verbitskaya (Ohio State U.)
  • "Linguistic Conversion and Identity Shift Among Russian-Speaking Ukrainians" by Chandini White (Ohio State U.)
4.E: Health and Well-Being in Times of Disaster and War
Pfahl Hall, Room 340

Panel Chair: Dr. Lorraine S. Wallace (Ohio State U.)
Participants:

  • "Feeding an Identity Consumed by War" by Abigail Berhalter (Miami U.)
  • "Pervasive Prevalence of HIV: A comparison of infection rates between the US and Russia" by Quinn Cline-Cook (Ohio State U.)
  • "An Examination of Mental Health Implications During and After the Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster of 1986" by Aimma Farooqui (Ohio State U.)
  • "Experiments in children’s safety control on the streets of big cities in the USSR in the 1920s-1930s"? by Karina Povsteva (U. of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)

10:00-10:15AM - Coffee Break

3rd Floor Foyer, Pfahl hall

10:15-11:45AM - Session 5

5.A: Distant Cultural Contacts
Pfahl Hall, Room 230

Panel Chair: Dr. James McGavran (Kenyon College)
Participants:

  • "Exploring Russian Rap: Westernization of Russian Culture or Russification of a Western Genre" by Brandon Harvey (Ohio State U.)
  • "The cosmic connection: influence of Hinduism on Science Fiction of 20th century Russian Literature" by Gaurav Mor (Rashtriya Raksha U., India)
  • "‘This Is Not V.I. Lenin’: The Reconstruction of Meaning in Emil Venkov’s Lenin" by Olivia Rataezyk (Kenyon College)
  • "Isadora Duncan and Russian Culture" by Elena Yushkova (U. of Kentucky)
5.B: Russian Foreign Policy
Pfahl Hall, Room 302

Panel Chair: Dr. Jennifer Mitzen (Ohio State U.)
Participants:

  • "The Impact of the Russian Military Gerasimov Doctrine on the Course and Results of Elections in European Countries" by Kateryna Odarchenko (Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, South Ukrainian National Pedagogical U.)
  • "Putin’s Patriarch and the Russo-Ukrainian War" by Dr. Jerry Pankhurst (Wittenberg U.)
  • "Railroads, Human Capital and Baccunian Origin of Autocracy’s Concessions 1906- The Legacy of Individualism and Voluntary Cooperation in Post-Soviet Transition" by Dr. Sylvia Sztern (The Hebrew U. of Jerusalem)
  • "'Bear Hug' - Russian Foreign Policy and the First Decade of Eurasian Integration" by Justin Tomczyk (Stanford U.)
5.C: Conflicts in Soviet and Post-Soviet Central Asia 
Pfahl Hall, Room 330

Panel Chair: Dr. Morgan Liu (Ohio State U.)
Participants:

  • "Volga Tatars’ Continuing Resilience in Light of New (and Old) Challenges" by Dr. Renat Shaykhutdinov (Florida Atlantic U.)
  • "Economic and political causes of youth radicalisation during the January 2022 events in Kazakhstan" by Gulmira Sheryazdanova (U. of Minnesota, Twin Cities)
  • "Life Under Your Feet: The Fear of Underground Cities in Moscow in the 2000s–2010s" by Mikhail Svirin (Miami U.)
5.D: Interpreting Past Culture
Pfahl Hall, Room 340

Panel Chair: Dr. Yana Hashamova (Ohio State U.)
Participants:

  • "The Cold War and Polish Poetry: The Case of Czesław Miłosz" by Dr. Clare Cavanagh (Northwestern U.)
  • "Boris Christoff (1914–1993): Famous Opera Singer of the 20th Century" by Stanimira Dermendzhieva (Athena Hellenic Schools, Morton Grove, Illinois)
  • "Cultural History Through the Lens of Ukrainian Film" by Dr. Olga Kyrylova (U. of Kansas)
  • "Problems and Patterns in the Transnational Careers of Miloš Forman and Ivan Passer" by Tanya Silverman (U. of Michigan)