The Center for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies (CSEEES) and the Midwest Slavic Association (MWSA) were pleased to host the 2026 Midwest Slavic Conference, held on The Ohio State University campus from Friday, March 27 through Sunday, March 29. This year’s conference welcomed presenters and attendees representing 41 universities from across the United States and abroad. In total, 87 undergraduate and graduate students, independent scholars, and faculty members presented original research across 24 panels. These panels spanned the disciplines of history, linguistics, social sciences, and the humanities, and addressed topics relating to the Baltics, the Balkans, Central Europe, Eurasia, and Eastern Europe.

As the 2026 conference centered on the theme of crisis and trauma, it created a shared framework for examining the enduring effects of war, displacement, authoritarianism, and cultural erasure across the Slavic, East European, and Eurasian world. Panels and discussions explored how individuals and communities grapple with these experiences through literature and the arts, social and cultural practices, historical memory, and policy. Together, these conversations foregrounded questions of authenticity, identity, and belonging, highlighting the persistent longing for connection to heritage, place, and collective pasts that often emerges in moments of profound upheaval.

The conference opened with a keynote address by Dr. Jehanne Gheith (Duke U.), titled “‘It Could Happen Again’: Memory, Trauma, and Repair in and after the Gulag.” Drawing on her work as both a scholar of Russian culture and a trauma‑informed clinician, Dr. Gheith examined narratives of Gulag survivors and their descendants, emphasizing the roles of silence, repression, and intergenerational transmission in shaping traumatic experience. Her talk addressed the cultural specificity of “trauma,” the ways state‑enforced forgetting sustains power, and the difficulties of pursuing repair after extreme violence. By foregrounding both resilience and the absence of simple closure, the keynote invited a broader conversation about how societies remember, heal, and continue to live with the enduring consequences of historical catastrophe.

The keynote was followed on Saturday by a plenary panel titled “Echoes of the Unspoken: Witnessing War through Space, Verse, and Generation.” The panel featured Drs. Marianna Klochko (Ohio State U.), Ariel Otruba (Arcadia U.), and Natalia Vygovskaia (Miami U.) and was moderated by MWSA President Dr. Alisa Ballard Lin (Ohio State U.), who also served as discussant and chair. General panels followed throughout Saturday and Sunday, with conference participants presenting on topics including trauma and cultural memory; politics, power, and resistance; language, identity, and belonging; and art, media, and performance as sites of social meaning.

In addition to its regular academic programming, the conference featured several special events. The Midwest Slavic Association Meeting provided an opportunity to discuss future conferences and initiatives, while also allowing incoming officers to share their ideas for expanding conference programming and outreach. The conference also welcomed the return of its lunchtime cultural event, which this year featured a deeply moving staged reading of The Body of a Woman as a Battlefield in the Bosnian War (1997) by Matei Vişniec. The reading was performed by Kelly Gallagher (Ohio State U.) and Dr. Alisa Ballard Lin, and was followed by commentary on trauma in East European theater.

The conference also hosted the Midwest REEE Lightning Talks, which spotlighted undergraduate research across a wide range of disciplines related to Eastern Europe and Eurasia. Participating students delivered five-minute presentations on their original research and engaged in discussion with both judges and audience members. This year’s competition was won by Nora Archer of Kenyon College for her presentation, “Supranational Foreign Policy: The European Community and the Creation of Slovenia.”

This year's student mixer was hosted by CSEEES' and MWSA's graduate student representatives Margot Hare and Siobhan Seigne and provided both undergraduate and graduate students a chance to network with their peers and make new connections. Faculty and independent scholars also had a chance to mingle during our faculty and independent scholar mixer. This allowed for colleagues and friends, both old and new, to connect with each other and catch up in a relaxed setting.

Overall, this year’s conference was an intellectually stimulating weekend that provided attendees and presenters alike with the opportunity to present and discuss their research and network with other scholars in the field. Several first-time attendees commented on how this was a wonderful experience and great opportunity to meet colleagues in a friendly environment and receive valuable feedback on their work, and expressed their hopes to participate again in the future. 

CSEEES and the Midwest Slavic Association would like to thank all those who presented, chaired panels, and attended this year’s conference. In particular, we would like to extend a special thank you to the following people and co-sponsors who helped make this year's activities and special events possible: 

• The Midwest Slavic Conference Program Committee: Drs. Dima Arzyutov (Ohio State U.), Anna Aydinyan (Kenyon College), Nicholas Breyfogle (Ohio State U.), Keith Doubt (Wittenberg U.), Ljiljana Durasković (U. of Pittsburgh), Alisa Ballard Lin (Ohio State U.), Karen Petrone (U. of Kentucky), and Laura Siragusa (Ohio State U.)
   

• Ohio State student volunteers: Gunel Alasgarova (Ohio State U.), Cody Allen (Ohio State U.), Quinn Cline‑Cook (Ohio State U.), Emma Clute (Ohio State U.), Jay Hadfield (Ohio State U.), Margot Hare (Ohio State U.), Sarah Hohman (Ohio State U.), Aurora Malave (Ohio State U.), Andrey Ridling (Ohio State U.), Nina Rakowsky (Ohio State U.), Devon Rancourt (Ohio State U.), Siobhan Seigne (Ohio State U.)

• Those who donated registrations to the Young Scholars of Slavic Studies Fund

2026 Co-Sponsors

• Gold Sponsors

  • International Studies Program (Ohio State U.), The Hilandar Research Library (Ohio State U.), The Mershon Center for International Security Studies (Ohio State U.), Robert F. Byrnes Russian & East European Institute (Indiana U.)

• Silver Sponsors

  • American Councils for International Education, Bard College Abroad, American University of Central Asia, Department of Theatre, Film, and Media Arts (Ohio State U.)

• Bronze Sponsors

  • The Center for International Business Education and Research (Ohio State U.), The Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies (U. of Michigan), Department of History (Ohio State U.), Department of Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures (Ohio State U.), EUSA Internships Abroad, The Havighurst Center (Miami U.), Global Arts + Humanities Cross‑Disciplinary Research Exchange (Ohio State U.), The Melton Center for Jewish Studies (Ohio State U.), The Russian, East European, and Eurasian Center (U. of Illinois Urbana‑Champaign)

We look forward to seeing you all again at the 2027 Midwest Slavic Conference!