2026 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, March 28

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

2nd Floor Foyer, Pfahl Hall

8:30-10:15 AM - Plenary Panel
Pfahl Hall, Room 302

Chair: Dr. Alisa Ballard Lin (Ohio State U., Midwest Slavic Association President)
Participants:

• "Emotional Ecologies of Violent Infrastructure in Georgia’s Abandoned Soviet Spas" by Dr. Ariel Otruba (Arcadia U.) 
• "The Ethics and Aesthetics of Silence: Reading the Jewish “Return” Through the Lens of Trauma Theory" by Dr. Diana Sacilowski (Ohio State U.)
• "Witnessing in Transit: Poetic Testimony and the Formation of Collective Trauma in the Russian Oppositional Arts Review" by Dr. Natalia Vygovskaia (Miami U.)

10:15-10:30 AM - Coffee Break 

2nd Floor Foyer, Pfahl Hall

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

1.A: Not Just for Fans: Scholarly Approaches to Heated Rivalry
Pfahl Hall, Room 302

Chair: Dr. Jennifer Suchland (Ohio State U.)
Roundtable Participants:

• Sophie Papp (Ohio State U.)
• Marge Stafford (Ohio State U.)
• Siobhán Seigne (Ohio State U.)
• Michelle Verbitskaya (Ohio State U.)

1.B: Fractured Selves and Remembered Worlds: Russian Literature Between Language, Memory, and Being        
Pfahl Hall, Room 330

Panel Chair: Dr. Ona Renner-Fahey (U. of Montana)
Participants:

• "Vvedensky: Thoughts Between Heaven and Earth" by Tyler Berndt (U. of Michigan)
• "Reading Tsvetaeva in Tarusskie Stranitsy: On Censorship, Scandal, and Literary Recovery in a Tiny Russian Town" by Dr. Molly T. Blasing (U. of Kentucky)
• "Windows Without Walls: Rebuilding Home in the Writings of Nina Berberova and Irina Odoevtseva" by Lina Turygina (Harvard U.)
• "Nichtozhestvo (Non-Entity) as the Essence of Evil in the Works of Fyodor Sologub" by Daria Vlasova (U. of Pittsburgh)

1.C: Fragmented Hegemonies: Regional Responses to Russian Decline
Pfahl Hall, Room 340

Panel Chair: Laura Linderman (Central Asia-Caucasus Institute, American Foreign Policy Council)
Participants: 

• "Localized Population Decimation: Scale and Implications" by Lindsey Cliff (Georgetown U.)
• "Chechens in Ukraine: A War from Both Sides" by Anna Harvey (Central Asia-Caucasus Institute, American Foreign Policy Council)
• "The Quest for Strategic Autonomy: Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia in the Multipolar Era" by Laura Linderman (Central Asia-Caucasus Institute, American Foreign Policy Council)
• "From Grozny to the Donbas: Transnational Networks of Anti-Russian Resistance in the Caucasus and Ukraine, 1991-2025" by Alexander John Paul Lutz (Central Asia-Caucasus Institute, American Foreign Policy Council)

1.D: REEE Think Tank Showcase I       
Pfahl Hall, Room 330

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

• "На лагата ѝ се кратки нозете: Feminized Truth‑Work in Patriarchal Societies: A Yugofeminist Reading with Post‑Yugoslav Illustrations" by Anastasija Mladenovska (Miami U.)
• "How Liberation Becomes Oppression: The Sexual Misconduct of Soviet Soldiers in World War II" by Mia Molina (U. of Arizona)
• "Female Participation in Kazakhstan’s Oil Industry: Economic Analysis and Social Barriers" by Tira Thomas (Howard U.)
• "Lost in Translation: Latvian Language Policy and its Impact on Interethnic Relations Between Ethnic Latvians and Russian‑Speaking Ethnic Russians in Latvia" by Gilda Pesqueira (U. of North Carolina Chapel Hill) 
• “Peripheral Transnationalism: The Ibero-American and Polish Avant-Gardes in Conversation." by Adres Roa (U. of Illinois Chicago)

1.E: Undergraduate Research Across the East European and Eurasian Worlds  
Pfahl Hall, Room 240

Panel Chair: Victoria Paige (Ohio State U.)
Participants:

• "Early Childhood of Saint Cyril" by Lydia Hargett (U. of Michigan)
• "‘The Children’s Republic’: Bulgarian Soft Power, Cultural Politics, and the 1979 Banner of Peace Assembly" by Lena LaPierre (Bates College)
• “Two Captains 2, Sergei Kuryokhin, and Imperial Humor” by Eliot Schlaack (U. of Michigan)
• "The South Slavic Communities of Milwaukee County, Wisconsin" by Lillian Walbrun (U. of Wisconsin-Madison)

12:00-1:30 PM - Lunch Break

12:15-1:15 PM - Lunchtime Theatrical Performance: Excerpt of The Body of a Woman as a Battlefield in the Bosnian War (1997) by Matei Vişniec
Pfahl Hall, Room 302

A staged reading by Kelly Gallagher (Ohio State U.) and Dr. Alisa Ballard Lin (Ohio State U.), with commentary on trauma in East European theater by Dr. Alisa Ballard Lin.

Due to the room capacity of Pfahl Hall 302, this event is limited to 55 audience members. Sign-up for this event will be available during the keynote and Saturday morning at the Blackwell, and a light lunch will be served to attendees. 

Session 2: 1:30-3:00 PM

2.A: Progressive Initiatives from the Bottom Up
Pfahl Hall, Room 302

Panel Chair: Dr. Alexandria Wilson‑McDonald (Otterbein U.)
Participants:

• "The Work of Ukrainian Public Libraries during the War in Ukraine" by Dr. Ulia Gosart (San Jose State U.) and Eri Andrews (San Jose State U.)
• "Negotiating Crisis: Protest, Memory, and Political Subjectivity in Contemporary Serbia" by Dr. Milica Milic-Kolarevic (Colgate U.)
• "From Trauma to Fatigue: Intergenerational Trauma, Schooling, and the Achievement Society in Post-Socialist Poland" by Aneta Sobieraj-Skórski (Pomeranian U.)
• "Post-Migration Stress in the Instagram Commentosphere: Images and Comments on to Individual Post-Migration Experiences among Polish and Russian-Speaking Creators in the United States" by Drs. Aleksandra Urzędowska (The Pontifical U. of John Paul II, Ohio State U.), Anna Teler (The Pontifical U. of John Paul II), and Alena Podviazkina (Maria Curie-Skłodowska U.)

2.B: Exploring REEE Careers Beyond Academia Roundtable
Pfahl Hall, Room 330

Panel Chair: Dr. Theodora (Kelly) McGee
Roundtable Participants:

• Dr. Michael Furman (Oxford U. Press, Ohio State U.)
• Laura Linderman (Central Asia-Caucasus Institute, American Foreign Policy Council, Indiana U.)
• Nancy Pellegrino (Hilton Parker LLC, Ohio State U.)

2.C: Teaching East European Languages Through Literature: A Collaborative Workshop               
Pfahl Hall, Room 340

Panel Chair: Mykyta Tyshchenko (Ohio State U.)
Roundtable Participants:

• Dr. Matthew Boyd (Ohio State U.)
• Dr. Diana Sacilowski (Ohio State U.)
• Mykyta Tyshchenko (Ohio State U.)
• Michelle Verbitskaya (Ohio State U.)

2.D: Language, Media, and Ideology in Motion: Diaspora, Trauma, and Political Memory        
Pfahl Hall, Room 230

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

• "How Discourse Shapes Social Reality: Linguistic Dehumanization during the 'Revival Process' in Bulgaria" by Dr. Iliyana Dimitrova (U. of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, St. Cyril and St. Methodius U. of Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria)
• "The Country That is Put Through Suffering: The Role of the Holodomor in Shaping Ukrainian National Identity, Then and Now." by Margot Hare (Ohio State U.)
• "(Dis)agency in the Matter: Queer Coming-Out Narratives in Modern Russian" by Landon Nett (U. of Kansas)
• "Anti-Racism, Anti-Capitalism, and African Americans: The Propagandistic Exploitation of the Black Man in Soviet Literature, Cinema, and Society" by David Rabinkov (Michigan State U.)

2.E: Witnessing Trauma: Film, Memory, and Moral Reckoning                                     
Pfahl Hall, Room 240

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

• "Restoring the Social: An Analysis of Three Short Films from Bosnia-Herzegovina" by Dr. Keith Doubt (Wittenberg U.)
• "At the Edge of the World, Salt of the Earth is Abandoned and Erased: A Comparative Study of Coastal Arctic Geographies as Critical, Narrative Locations in Zvyagintsev’s Leviathan and Apple TV’s Severance" by Isobel Hooker (Ohio State U.)
• "Mobilizing (Dis)Ability Within National Narratives of Heroism: A Comparison of Stolper’s Tale of a True Man and Shepitko’s Wings" by Siobhán Seigne (Ohio State U.)
• "Tarkovism: Stalker and the Cinema of Thinking" by Fotima Taylor (Ohio U.)

3:00-3:15 PM - Coffee Break

2nd Floor Foyer, Pfahl Hall

Session 3: 3:15-4:45 PM

3.A: Medical Factors in Politics and War        
Pfahl Hall, Room 302

Panel Chair: TBA
Participants:

• Bacteriological Battles: Antibiotic Usage and the Spread of Drug-Resistant Bacteria in the Ukrainian Military by Quinn Cline-Cook (Ohio State U.)
• "Gender Roles Reconfigured: Women as Soldiers, Volunteers, and Sole Providers in Wartime Ukraine" by Indrapal Gurjar (Jawaharlal Nehru U.)
• "Crisis as the Entry Point: Displacement, Gender, and HIV Care Among Ukrainian Women During War" by Ayaulym Saduakas (U. of Michigan)

3.B: 2026 Midwest Russian, East European and Eurasian (REEE) Undergraduate Lightning Talks    
Pfahl Hall, Room 330

Judges: Dr. Ariel Otruba (Arcadia U.) and Dr. Natalia Vygovskaia (Miami U.)
Presenters:

• Nora Archer (Kenyon College)
• Aliyah Moad Northwestern U.)
• Nicole Wang (Kenyon College)

3.C: “Ancient, Inalienable, and Unassailable”: Challenges of Nationalism and (Im)Mobility in Central & Eastern Europe        
Pfahl Hall, Room 340

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

• "Conditional Hospitality: Roma Refugees and the Racialized Boundaries in Moldova After 2022" by Owen McNeely (Ohio State U.)
• "Königsberg nash: Resettlement and Neighbors in Post-War Kaliningrad" by Sascha Rohde (Ohio State U.)
• "Migration, Memory, and the Mythos of the Shtetl: The (Re)Imagining of the Eastern European Jewish Homeland" by Parker Tysinger (Ohio State U.)

3.D: REEE Think Tank Showcase II
Pfahl Hall, Room 230

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

• "Assessing the Soviet System: American Social Workers and Childhood in the Khrushchev Thaw" by Anwyn Cook (James Madison U.) 
• "A Patron and The New Order" by William Ince (U. of Kansas)
• "From the Kui to Fusion: How the Boomerang Jazz Ensemble Pioneered Kazakhstan’s Ethnojazz" by Toby Isaac (U. of Oklahoma)
• "Soviet Legacy and EU Influence: Examining Lithuania’s Media Landscape from 1990 to Today" by Monika Jurevicius (Elon U.)
• "Remembering Semipalatinsk: Soviet Nuclear Colonialism and Youth Anti‑Nuclear Activism in Kazakhstan" by Abby Wagner (Smith College)

3.E: From Parody to Protest: Theater, Performance, and Music as Acts of Resistance         
Pfahl Hall, Room 240

Panel Chair: Dr. Anna Aydinyan (Kenyon College, Midwest Slavic Association Vice President)
Participants:

• "The Family as Political Battleground in Hungarian Drama" Kelly Gallagher (Ohio State U.)
• "Reenacting Biblical Trauma: Crucifixion as Theatrical Motif in Putin’s Russia" Dr. Alisa Ballard Lin (Ohio State U.)
• "The Evolution of Russian Folkloristics and Its Reflection in Soviet Wartime Poster Art" by Enes Tastan (Ohio State U.)

Sunday, March 29

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

2nd Floor Foyer, Pfahl Hall

Session 4 8:30-10:00 AM

4.A: Language Contact, Heritage, and Sociolinguistic Change      
Pfahl Hall, Room 330

Panel Chair: Michelle Verbitskaya (Ohio State U.)
Participants:

• "Attitudes and Language Proficiency in Young Adult Russian Heritage Speakers" by Elizabeth Abel (Michigan State U.)
• "The Prevalence of Russian Loanwords in Uzbek Language Publications from 1980-2010" by Kale Fuller (Ohio State U.)
• "The Language of Trauma: Exploring Mechanisms of Trauma Narration in Soviet and Post-Soviet Contexts" by Aimma Farooqui (Ohio State U.)
• "Ukrainian Digital Activism: Interpreting Linguistic Trends Online" by Chandini White (Ohio State U.)
• "The Interaction of Loanword Diffusion and Language Group; Language Contact in Dagestan" by Ellie Wren-Hardin (Ohio State U.)

4.B: Haunted and Healing Spaces: Architecture, Memory, and Political Imagination        
Pfahl Hall, Room 230

Panel Chair: Dr. Gala Korniyenko (Ohio State U.)
Participants:

• "Constructing Hope: Ukraine" by Ashley Bigham (Ohio State U.)
• "Tirana’s Namazgja Mosque and the Creation of a Modern Albanian Islamic Identity" by Elena Burger (Ohio State U.)
• "Factors Influencing Youth Public Participation in Saint Petersburg’s Urban Development: The 'Nash Sankt-Peterburg' Online Platform" by Paula Garcia (Saint Petersburg State U.)
• "The Moscow Metro as a Haunted House in Dmitry Glukhovsky’s and Hamid Ismailov’s Works" by Megi Tedoradze (U. of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)

4.C: Breaking the Iron Cage of Political and Collective Traumas         
Pfahl Hall, Room 340

Panel Chair: Siobhán Seigne (Ohio State U.)
Participants:

• "The Eurasian Economic Union: A Failed Supranational Project, a Rising Regional Bloc, or Something Else?" by Cody Allen (Ohio State U.)
• "Surveillance and Memory: Negotiating Trust in Post-Communist Society" by Kristen Bellinger (Grinnell College)
• "(Non-) Ukrainian Migrants and the Contours of Eurocentrism" by Arthur Mengozzi (U. of Michigan, Ann Arbor)
• "The Importance of Memory in Eurasian Labor Movements; Evidence from Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia" by Justin Reynier (McGill U.)

4.D: Late Soviet History  
Pfahl Hall, Room 230

Panel Chair: Iryna Voloshyna (Indiana U.)
Participants:

• "Reorganization of Economic Management in Khrushchev's USSR" by A.J. Brucker (Ohio State U.)
• "Hegemony and Reproduction: Abortion Policy in the Post-Stalin USSR" by Nathaniel Oliveira (Kenyon College)
• "The 35s and Refusenik Wives: Female Activism and Sociality in the Struggle for Soviet Emigration, 1958-1973" by Stella Sarefield (U. of Vermont)

4.E: The Rich Cultural Worlds of 19th and Early 20th Centuries
Pfahl Hall, Room 240

Panel Chair: Dr. Nicholas Breyfogle (Ohio State U.)
Participants:

• "A Death in Namdanak: Or, On Salvage Archaeology, Heritage Politics, and One Coin-Based Crisis" by Albert Cavallaro (U. of Michigan, Ann Arbor)
• “The Natural World and the Imperial Imagination” by Dr. Mary Cavender (Ohio State U.)
• "Franciszek A. Gryglaszewski’s Journey of Polish Identity" by Mark Dillon (Polish Cultural Center & Museum)

10:00-10:15 AM - Coffee Break

2nd Floor Foyer, Pfahl Hall

Session 5: 10:15-11:45 AM 

5.A: Bearing Memory: Motherhood, Trauma, and Cultural Continuity        
Pfahl Hall, Room 302

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

• "Reimagining a Ukrainian Past: Natalena Koroleva’s Old Kyivan Legends" by Joseph Mossé (U. of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)
• “A Child- and Mother-hood Interrupted in Anya Ulinich’s Petropolis” by Dr. Ona Renner-Fahey (U. of Montana)
• "Exploring Collective Trauma through Post-Soviet Poetry: The Case of Arseny Rovinsky" by Aleksandra Zakharova (U. of Michigan)
• "'Empty' People. Accusations of Biological Defects as a Form of Stigmatization of Childless Peasants in Russian Folk Culture from the Mid-19th to the 20th Centuries" by Anna Zalewska (Harvard U.)

5.B: Communities of Resistance: Gender, Identity, and Memory in Polish Contexts        
Pfahl Hall, Room 330

Panel Chair: Dr. Aleksandra Urzędowska (The Pontifical U. of John Paul II, Ohio State U.)
Participants:

• "Creating Queer Eutopia: LGBTQ Activism in Poland" by Sofia Bachman (Ohio State U.)
• "Place of Nostalgia, Trauma, or Joy? Poland in Contemporary Polish American Writing" by Dr. Izabella Kimak (Maria Curie-Sklodowska U., Loyola U. Chicago)
• "Migration, Security and Crisis: Hybrid Threats and Poland’s Legal Response" by Dr. Sylwia Mazur de Araújo Correia (U. Católica Portuguesa)
• "Mobilization, Self-Help and Discursive Activism: Shifting Strategies of Polish Feminist Movements" by Dr. Dagmara Rode (U. of Łódź, U. of Illinois Chicago)

5.C: Barriers to Integration and Democracy
Pfahl Hall, Room 340

Panel Chair: Dr. Dima Arzyutov (Ohio State U.)
Participants:

• "U.S. European Command State Partnership Program: Paradiplomatic Approach?" by Michaela Hrabušajová (Comenius U., Indiana U.)
• "Russia’s Arctic Ambitions: Mega-Projects, the Trans-Arctic Transport Corridor, and the Impact upon Environment and Peoples of the Far North" by Dr. Thomas Rotnem (Kennesaw State U.)
• "The Trial of Mihajlo Mihajlov as a Cold War Case Study: Ideological Perspectives in Yugoslavia, the USSR, and the United States" by Lejla Vesković (Ohio State U.)
• "What is democracy for you? Conceptions of Democracy in Czechia" by Dr. Alexandria Wilson-McDonald (Otterbein U.) and Vera Beloshitzkaya (U. of Salzburg)

5.D: Trans-Ethnic and Transnational Stories from the 20th Century
Pfahl Hall, Room 230

Panel Chair: TBA
Participants:

• "Specters of the Slansky Trials: The Obscuring of Jewry and the Diminishment of Antisemitism in 1970 Czech Cinema" by William DeVito (Ohio State U.)
• "Product of Trauma: Eurasianism’s Path from Exilic Thought toward Imperial Strategy" by Helen Hopersky (Oxford U.)
• "South Slavs and Southern Africa: Yugoslav Diplomacy in Zambia and Zimbabwe Amidst Cold War Competition, 1970-1986" by Matthew Ployhart (Clemson U.)
• "When Violence Spoke: Rumor, Fear, and the 1989 Fergana Valley Massacre" by Tomas Scott (Ohio State U.)

5.E: After Ideology: Desire, Suffering, and the Late-Soviet Subject
Pfahl Hall, Room 240

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

• "Bugs as Desiring Machines: Viktor Pelevin's The Life of Insects and Schizoanalysis" by Mitchell Baughman (Ohio State U.)
• "Affect and Censorship in Soviet-era Movies of Aleksei German" by Kasym Orozbaev (U. of Pittsburgh)
• "Mediating the AIDS and Beyond: Trauma of Late Soviet and Post-Soviet Society in AIDS Films in 1987-1992" by Ekaterina Petrenko (U. of Illinois Chicago)
• "An Exploration of Contemporary Czech Sports Films" by Marge Stafford (Ohio State U.)