Alissa Ballard presented the paper, “Performing Emotions, Spectating Emotions in the Theatre of Nikolai Evreinov,” at the Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies Annual Convention.
Will Bezbatchenko (CSEES and Public Policy Dual MA Spring 2016) started his Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship in Kyrgyzstan. Read about his path to Central Asia.
Alexander Burry co-edited with Frederick H. White, Border Crossing: Russian Literature into Film. Burry presented the paper, “Adultery, Donjuanism, and Misogyny: Reading Chekhov’s ‘The Lady with the Little Dog’ through Pushkin’s ‘Stone Guest,’” and also served as a discussant for the panel “Global Dostoevskys” at the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies Annual Convention.
Jacob Coakwell received a University Fellowship from The Ohio State University Graduate School for Academic Year 2016-17.
Jeffrey Cohen and Natalia Zotova presented the paper, “Human Insecurity and Identity among Central Asians Living in New York City,” at the 17th Central Eurasian Studies Society Annual Conference.
Theodora Dragostinova and Yana Hashamova have published Beyond Mosque, Church, and State: Alternative Narratives of the Nation in the Balkans (Central European University Press). This edited volume questions the traditional narrative of ethno-nationalist and religious violence in the Balkans and brings a new interdisciplinary perspective to the topic. Both Dragostinova and Hashamova participated in a roundtable on the book at the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies Annual Convention.
Additionally, Dragostinova and Hashamova (along with Vera Brunner-Sung, Jeffrey Cohen and Robin Judd) were awarded a Humanities and Arts Discovery Theme pilot project grant, for their Global Mobility Project. The project aims to facilitate campus-wide conversations on the local and global factors that shape mobility. Over the course of the next two years, it will foster the exchange of ideas on campus, engage students in and outside the classroom and forge connections with the wider community in Columbus and beyond by focusing on two main questions, what does it mean to leave home and how do communities accept newcomers.
Theodora Dragostinova chaired the panel “Hearts and Minds: Reactions to the Vietnam War in Socialist Romania, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia” at the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies Annual Convention.
Emily Erken chaired the panel “Cultural Transformations in Literature and the Arts” and served as a discussant for the panel “An Alternative Discourse: Between Liminal and Subversive in Late Socialist Culture” at the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies Annual Convention.
Michael Furman completed his PhD in Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures in summer 2016. He is now a visiting assistant professor at the College of Wooster. Jennifer Suchland was chair of Michael’s dissertation committee.
Inez Garcia de la Puente served as a discussant for the panel “Cultural Echoes in Early Rus’: Religion and Society” at the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies Annual Convention.
Anastasiia Gordiienko presented the paper, “Russia’s Glamorization of the Shanson,” at the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies Annual Convention.
Christopher Guerrini completed his MAs in Slavic and East European studies and public policy in autumn 2016.
Margaret Hanson presented the paper, “Going to Court against the Regime: Citizen-State Disputes in Kazakhstan,” at the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies Annual Convention.
In June 2016, Yana Hashamova participated in a seminar at the Institute for the Individual and Society at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and at the Bulgarian Studies Association Conference in Sofia. She also published the book (with Beth Holmgren and Mark Lipovetsky), Transgressive Women in Modern Russian and East European Cultures: From the Bad to the Blasphemous (Routledge, 2016). Hashamova also chaired the panel “Queering the Color Line in Eurasia” at the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies Annual Convention.
Maria Ignatieva served as a co-director and taught at the international graduate seminar Teatrum Mundi in Dubrovnik, Croatia, in September 2016. She also published the essay “Pushkin’s Boris Godunov as Russian Political Nostradamus” in the collection of essays Teatrum Mundi.
George Kalbouss gave the talk “Putin on the Risk” to the Newark Rotary in October 2016.
Alisher Khaliyarov presented the paper “Money Waqf Endowments and Their Role in the Economy of the Khivan Khanate in the 19th Century” at the 17th Central Eurasian Studies Society Annual Conference.
Eileen Kunkler participated in the roundtable “Professionalizing Students for Life after Graduation” at the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies Annual Convention. She also received a Staff Development Grant from Ohio State.
Morgan Liu participated in the panel discussions on the books, “Sergei Abashin’s Sovetskii Kishlak” and “Rian Thum’s Sacred Routes of Uyghur History,” and chaired the panels “Energy, Water, and Trust,” “Geographies and Political Economies of Extraction and Anti-Extraction in Central Asia” and “Negotiating Group Formation, Integration, and Insecurity: Central Asians in the United States” at the 17th Central Eurasian Studies Society Annual Conference.
Jeff Parker (SEELC PhD 2016) has started a new position as assistant professor in the Department of Linguistics and English Language at Brigham Young University. Andrea Sims was chair of Jeff's dissertation committee.
Daniel Pratt presented the paper “The French Enlightenment: Sources of Milan Kundera’s Sense of Irony and Cultural Identity” and chaired the panel “Re-Narrativizing Heroism in Central and Eastern Europe” at the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies Annual Convention.
Carole Rogel chaired the roundtable “Slovenian Foreign Policy after 25 Years: Past Accomplishments and Future Challenges” at the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies Annual Convention.
Andrea Sims (PI) and Adam Ussishkin (University of Arizona, Co-PI) have been awarded a National Science Foundation grant to organize a two-day workshop entitled "Morphological Typology and Linguistic Cognition" at the Linguistic Society of America's 2017 Linguistic Summer Institute at the University of Kentucky. The workshop will feature a number of invited speakers and a poster session. Sims also co-authored with Jeff Parker “How Inflection Class Systems Work: On the Informativity of Implicative Structure” in Word Structure. Additionally, she gave the keynote address at the 11th Annual Meeting of the Slavic Linguistic Society in October.
Mark Sokolsky completed his PhD in history in summer 2016 and is now a visiting instructor in history at Colby College.
Undergraduate student Robin Smith was awarded The Ohio State University’s Board of Trustees Student Recognition Award in November 2016.
In September, Jennifer Suchland delivered the presentation “Locating Post-Soviet Postcoloniality in Global Coloniality: Political Economics of Race” as part of the Translating Race in Eurasia symposium organized by the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Humanities Forum. Suchland, in collaboration with Simone Drake, Wendy Hesford, Amy Shuman and Maurice Stevens, won a Humanities and Arts Discovery Theme grant for their project, Human Rights in Transit. The project will explore the complex questions surrounding the evolution of the concepts of human rights and the human. A variety of activities and events will take place over the two years of the project. Suchland also presented the paper “Claiming ‘Whiteness,’ Rebuking Queerness: The Ethnosexual Roots of Russian Political Homophobia” and participated in the roundtable “Expanding the Field: Post-socialist Feminisms in Women’s and Gender Studies” at the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies Annual Convention.
Olli Tuovinen gave the presentation “Bioleaching of Metals: Perspectives and Trends” at the fifth Conference of the Russian Biochemical Society in Russia in October 2016. As part of his collaborations with Tomsk State University, Tuovinen also co-authored and presented articles with faculty from Tomsk, “Eukaryotic Microorganisms Associated with Coal and Metal Mine Sites in Southern Siberia” and “Novel Acidophilic, Metal-Tolerant Sulfate-Reducing Bacteria Can Produce Nano-Size Transition Metal Sulfides.” In October 2016, Tuovinen undertook a month-long research visit to Tomsk.
Maryann Walther-Keisel celebrated her 30th work anniversary at the university, and 29th with CSEES. Since joining CSEES in 1987, she has assisted numerous directors and assistant directors. Additionally, she has guided everyone of the Center's 130+ MA graduates from the time that they submitted an application through the graduation process, as well as supporting hundreds of lectures, conferences, and other events. Please join the Center in thanking Maryann for her years of service!
In September, undergraduate Russian and Linguistics student Chandini White presented at the 2016 Fall Undergraduate Research Forum. White served as a research intern for Andrea Sims during summer 2016, examining the relationship between defectiveness (missing grammatical forms of words) and syncretism (homophonous grammatical forms of words) in inflectional systems.
