International Summer School of Belarusian Studies Hajnówka, Poland-2009

International Summer School of Belarusian Studies Hajnówka, Poland

    The Center for Belarusian Studies at Southwestern College (Winfield, KS) invites undergraduate and graduate students to participate in its first International Summer School of Belarusian Studies from July 6 to August 7, 2009. The program, to be co-sponsored by the Poland-based Belarusian Historical Society, will be held at the Belarusian Lyceum in the town of Hajnówka (Hajnauka) in the Podlasie region of northeastern Poland, an area of great natural beauty and home to Poland's ethnic Belarusian minority — an ideal setting for the study of Belarusian language, history and culture, as well as for the study of a broad range of issues relating to cultural diversity and minorities policies in the expanded EU. Coursework will include intensive Belarusian language instruction (beginning and intermediate levels and individual advanced-level tutorials) and lectures in English and Belarusian on Belarusian history, literature, and contemporary politics and society. The program will also include a regional studies component, with lectures and events focusing on the history, culture and current status of the Belarusian minority in Poland, as well as of the Podlasie region's other ethnic groups, including Poles, Jews, Tatars, Lithuanians, and Russian Old Believers. Faculty will include instructors from Bialystok University and the Belarusian Lyceum in Hajnówka, as well as Hrodna University in Belarus. Additional guest lectures on Belarusian history, politics and culture will be given by visiting researchers from Europe and North America. Students will have a choice of dormitory accommodations at the Belarusian Lyceum, or homestays with Belarusian-speaking families in Hajnówka.

Coursework will be supplemented by a rich and diverse cultural program, including visits to Belarusian minority cultural organizations and media outlets, meetings with Belarusian writers and artists, films, concerts, theatrical performances, and excursions to important sites related to Belarusian and Orthodox culture and other attractions of the Podlasie region:

the city of Bialystok, the recently restored Orthodox monastery in Suprasl, the Bialowieza (Belaveža) National Park (the largest and ecologically most diverse remnant of the primeval forests of the Northern European plain), the historic town of Bielsk Podlaski, the Holy Mountain of Grabarka (the most important Eastern Orthodox pilgrimage site in Poland), and the Borderland Foundation in Sejny, a unique institution dedicated to preserving the rich multicultural heritage of the borderland region and promoting dialogue and new forms of cooperation between its many ethnic groups and cultures. In mid-July students will also have the opportunity to attend Basovishcha, the annual festival of Belarusian rock music organized by the Belarusian Students' Association in the town of Gródek (Haradok) east of Bialystok. At the end of the program, from August 8-19, students will have the option of traveling to Belarus on a tour including Hrodna, Navahrudak, Slonim, Niasviž, Mir, Minsk, Polack, Viciebsk, Mahilou, Pinsk and Brest.

The program cost, including tuition, room, board, cultural program and excursions is $2,900 (the cost of the optional Belarus tour at the end of the program will be announced as details become available). For further information and application materials, please contact the program director, Dr. Curt Woolhiser, Harvard University, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Barker Center 327, 12 Quincy St., Cambridge MA 02138-3804; e-mail:

cwoolhis@fas.harvard.edu; tel. (617) 495-3528. Please note that the due date for all applications is May 15, 2009.

 

 

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON 21st CENTURY EUROPEAN LITERATURESST ANDREWS UNIVERSITY: 15-17th SEPTEMBER 2010

'21st-Century European Literature: Mapping New Trends'
to be held at the University of St Andrews, Scotland on September
15-17 2010

We are inviting proposals either for individual papers or for panels by
September 1 2009.

I would be very grateful if you could bring the conference and this Call for
Papers to the attention of any of your colleagues who might be interested.
We look forward to welcoming you to Scotland next year.

Best wishes,
Claire Whitehead
Dept. of Russian
University of St Andrews


INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON 21st CENTURY EUROPEAN LITERATURES
ST ANDREWS UNIVERSITY: 15-17th SEPTEMBER 2010

21st-Century European Literature: Mapping New Trends

CALL FOR PAPERS

Organising body: St Andrews University School of Modern Languages

Convenor: Professor Margaret-Anne Hutton, Department of French

Subject convenors:
British literature: Dr Sarah Dillon (sjd16@st-andrews.ac.uk)
French-language literature: Prof. Margaret-Anne Hutton (mh80@st-
andrews.ac.uk)
German-language literature: Dr Michael Gratzke (mg43@st-andrews.ac.uk)
Italian literature: Dr Rossella Riccobono (rmr8@st-andrews.ac.uk)
Russian literature: Dr Claire Whitehead (cew12@st-andrews.ac.uk)       
Spanish literature: Dr Ricardo Fernàndez (rfr1@st-andrews.ac.uk)

This major international conference offers scholars from six disciplines the
rare opportunity to come together to discuss what is happening in European
literatures now. We are seeking to map out emerging trends in a range of
national literatures with a view to putting together inter-disciplinary
panels which will reveal significant convergences, divergences and
cross-fertilisations in literary trends across Europe. 

The focus will be on post-2000 literature only. We invite you to tell us
what is new, right now, in the national literature you research; what
patterns are already discernible; what clusters of texts exploring common
themes, ethical or aesthetic imperatives, theoretical or generic
preoccupations, can be identified in the new millennium. This extreme
contemporary approach opens up fields of enquiry that inevitably have to be
explored speculatively. We encourage colleagues to take risks whilst
adhering to good practice in literary scholarship. The aim is to position
each literary text, author or topic presented in each paper within today's
cultural landscape. What is the trend? Why might it have emerged? What next? 

To facilitate communication we will be asking all contributors to present
their papers in English, though we may be in a position to offer some help
with translation should this prove to be crucial.

The following list, which comprises just some of the possible trends which
might be explored, should be regarded as neither exhaustive nor in any way
prescriptive: 

Writing the future
•       Responding to global risk
•       (Post-) apocalyptic fictions
•       Understanding time
•       A new ethics
•       Atheism and the messianic

Dealing with trauma
•       The event
•       Re-viewing WWII
•       Archiving and memorialising the past
•       Historical revisionisms
•       9/11 and after

Re-working genres
•       Literary engagements with the canon
•       Return to modernism - the end of postmodernism
•       Science fiction in the mainstream
•       New takes on old genres (crime, thriller, romance, historical novel, saga,
fairy-tale)
•       Literary engagements with theory
•       Skeuomorphism

Re-positioning Identities
•       (Post-) Autofictions
•       Blogosphere narratives: between essay and fiction
•       New sexualities - Post-queer
•       Family configurations
•       Urban / rural dialogues
•       Immigrant fictions
•       New (post-) nationalisms
•       Diasporic identities
•       The question of the animal
•       Science and technology


Submissions for papers and panels on any aspect of 21st- century literature
are welcome. This includes prose, drama and poetry. The St Andrews Poetry
Forum will be running panels concentrating on the newest developments in
European poetry.  Topics may include:

•       Musicality and poetry
•       Poetry and ethics
•       Self-poetry and autobiographisms
•       New mysticism
•       Political, performative and heteroglossic poetry
•       Gnoseological poetry
•       Reworking poetic classics

All poetry proposals should be send to Dr Rossella Riccobono
(rmr8@st-andrews.ac.uk ).

PROPOSALS
DATE for SUBMISSION: 1 September 2009

(i) Individual proposals
Should be of 300-400 words, and must be in English. Please also supply a
short bio-bibliographical statement. Individual proposals should be
submitted electronically to the appropriate subject convenor (above).

(ii) Panel proposals
Panels must cover at least three of the subjects (e.g. 'post queer
literature in France, UK and Germany'). One proposal (in English) of 400-500
words should be submitted electronically to the conference convenor (Prof.
M-A Hutton).

Please also supply a short bio-bibliographical statement for each proposed
speaker.

In Memoriam: Parnov

20.03.2009 Ушел из жизни автор исторических бестселлеров В московской Боткинской больнице в возрасте 74 лет умер Еремей Парнов - автор книг, тираж которых превышает 10 млн.экземпляров. Читать дальше

From Stratfor: Turkey and Russia on the Rise by Reva Bhalla, Lauren Goodrich and Peter Zeihan

Turkey and Russia on the Rise

March 17, 2009 | 1716 GMT

 

By Reva Bhalla, Lauren Goodrich and Peter Zeihan

Russian President Dmitri Medvedev reportedly will travel to Turkey in the near future to follow up a recent four-day visit by his Turkish counterpart, Abdullah Gul, to Moscow. The Turks and the Russians certainly have much to discuss.

RELATED SPECIAL TOPIC PAGES

• The Russian Resurgence
  
• Turkey's Re-Emergence
  
• Central Asian Energy: Circumventing Russia
  
• Russian Energy and Foreign Policy
  

Russia is moving aggressively to extend its influence throughout the former Soviet empire, while Turkey is rousing itself from 90 years of post-Ottoman isolation. Both are clearly ascendant powers, and it would seem logical that the more the two bump up against one other, the more likely they will gird for yet another round in their centuries-old conflict. But while that may be true down the line, the two Eurasian powers have sufficient strategic incentives to work together for now.

Russia's World

Russia is among the world's most strategically vulnerable states. Its core, the Moscow region, boasts no geographic barriers to invasion. Russia must thus expand its borders to create the largest possible buffer for its core, which requires forcibly incorporating legions of minorities who do not see themselves as Russian. The Russian government estimates that about 80 percent of Russia's approximately 140 million people are actually ethnically Russian, but this number is somewhat suspect, as many minorities define themselves based on their use of the Russian language, just as many Hispanics in the United States define themselves by their use of English as their primary language. Thus, ironically, attaining security by creating a strategic buffer creates a new chronic security problem in the form of new populations hostile to Moscow's rule. The need to deal with the latter problem explains the development of Russia's elite intelligence services, which are primarily designed for and tasked with monitoring the country's multiethnic population.

(click image to enlarge)

 

Russia's primary challenge, however, is time. In the aftermath of the Soviet collapse, the bottom fell out of the Russian birthrate, with fewer than half the number of babies born in the 1990s than were born in the 1980s. These post-Cold War children are now coming of age; in a few years, their small numbers are going to have a catastrophic impact on the size of the Russian population. By contrast, most non-Russian minorities — in particular those such as Chechens and Dagestanis, who are of Muslim faith — did not suffer from the 1990s birthrate plunge, so their numbers are rapidly increasing even as the number of ethnic Russians is rapidly decreasing. Add in deep-rooted, demographic-impacting problems such as HIV, tuberculosis and heroin abuse — concentrated not just among ethnic Russians but also among those of childbearing age — and Russia faces a hard-wired demographic time bomb. Put simply, Russia is an ascending power in the short run, but it is a declining power in the long run.

The Russian leadership is well aware of this coming crisis, and knows it is going to need every scrap of strength it can muster just to continue the struggle to keep Russia in one piece. To this end, Moscow must do everything it can now to secure buffers against external intrusion in the not-so-distant future. For the most part, this means rolling back Western influence wherever and whenever possible, and impressing upon states that would prefer integration into the West that their fates lie with Russia instead. Moscow's natural gas crisis with Ukraine, August 2008 war with Georgia, efforts to eject American forces from Central Asia and constant pressure on the Baltic states all represent efforts to buy Russia more space — and with that space, more time for survival.

Expanding its buffer against such a diverse and potentially hostile collection of states is no small order, but Russia does have one major advantage: The security guarantor for nearly all of these countries is the United States, and the United States is currently very busy elsewhere. So long as U.S. ground forces are occupied with the Iraqi and Afghan wars, the Americans will not be riding to the rescue of the states on Russia's periphery. Given this window of opportunity, the Russians have a fair chance to regain the relative security they seek. In light of the impending demographic catastrophe and the present window of opportunity, the Russians are in quite a hurry to act.

Turkey's World

Turkey is in many ways the polar opposite of Russia. After the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire following World War I, Turkey was pared down to its core, Asia Minor. Within this refuge, Turkey is nearly unassailable. It is surrounded by water on three sides, commands the only maritime connection between the Black and Mediterranean seas and sits astride a plateau surrounded by mountains. This is a very difficult chunk of territory to conquer. Indeed, beginning in the Seljuk Age in the 11th century, the ancestors of the modern Turks took the better part of three centuries to seize this territory from its previous occupant, the Byzantine Empire.

The Turks have used much of the time since then to consolidate their position such that, as an ethnicity, they reign supreme in their realm. The Persians and Arabs have long since lost their footholds in Anatolia, while the Armenians were finally expelled in the dying days of World War I. Only the Kurds remain, and they do not pose a demographic challenge to the Turks. While Turkey exhibits many of the same demographic tendencies as other advanced developing states — namely, slowing birthrates and a steadily aging population — there is no major discrepancy between Turk and Kurdish birthrates, so the Turks should continue to comprise more than 80 percent of the country's population for some time to come. Thus, while the Kurds will continue to be a source of nationalistic friction, they do not constitute a fundamental challenge to the power or operations of the Turkish state, like minorities in Russia are destined to do in the years ahead.

Turkey's security is not limited to its core lands. Once one moves beyond the borders of modern Turkey, the existential threats the state faced in years past have largely melted away. During the Cold War, Turkey was locked into the NATO structure to protect itself from Soviet power. But now the Soviet Union is gone, and the Balkans and Caucasus — both former Ottoman provinces — are again available for manipulation. The Arabs have not posed a threat to Anatolia in nearly a millennium, and any contest between Turkey and Iran is clearly a battle of unequals in which the Turks hold most of the cards. If anything, the Arabs — who view Iran as a hostile power with not only a heretical religion but also with a revolutionary foreign policy calling for the overthrow of most of the Arab regimes — are practically welcoming the Turks back. Despite both its imperial past and its close security association with the Americans, the Arabs see Turkey as a trusted mediator, and even an exemplar.

With the disappearance of the threats of yesteryear, many of the things that once held Turkey's undivided attention have become less important to Ankara. With the Soviet threat gone, NATO is no longer critical. With new markets opening up in the former Soviet Union, Turkey's obsession with seeking EU membership has faded to a mere passing interest. Turkey has become a free agent, bound by very few relationships or restrictions, but dabbling in events throughout its entire periphery. Unlike Russia, which feels it needs an empire to survive, Turkey is flirting with the idea of an empire simply because it can — and the costs of exploring the option are negligible.

Whereas Russia is a state facing a clear series of threats in a very short time frame, Turkey is a state facing a veritable smorgasbord of strategic options under no time pressure whatsoever. Within that disconnect lies the road forward for the two states — and it is a road with surprisingly few clashes ahead in the near term.

The Field of Competition

There are four zones of overlapping interest for the Turks and Russians.

First, the end of the Soviet empire opened up a wealth of economic opportunities, but very few states have proven adept at penetrating the consumer markets of Ukraine and Russia. Somewhat surprisingly, Turkey is one of those few states. Thanks to the legacy of Soviet central planning, Russian and Ukrainian industry have found it difficult to retool away from heavy industry to produce the consumer goods much in demand in their markets. Because most Ukrainians and Russians cannot afford Western goods, Turkey has carved out a robust and lasting niche with its lower-cost exports; it is now the largest supplier of imports to the Russian market. While this is no exercise in hard power, this Turkish penetration nevertheless is cause for much concern among Russian authorities.

So far, Turkey has been scrupulous about not politicizing these useful trade links beyond some intelligence-gathering efforts (particularly in Ukraine). ConsideringRussia's current financial problems, having a stable source of consumer goods — especially one that is not China — is actually seen as a positive. At least for now, the Russian government would rather see its trade relationship with Turkey stay strong. There will certainly be a clash later — either as Russia weakens or as Turkey becomes more ambitious — but for now, the Russians are content with the trade relationship.

Second, the Russian retreat in the post-Cold War era has opened up the Balkans to Turkish influence. Romania, Bulgaria and the lands of the former Yugoslavia are all former Ottoman possessions, and in their day they formed the most advanced portion of the Ottoman economy. During the Cold War, they were all part of the Communist world, with Romania and Bulgaria formally incorporated into the Soviet bloc. While most of these lands are now absorbed into the European Union, Russia's ties to its fellow Slavs — most notably the Serbs and Bulgarians — have allowed it a degree of influence that most Europeans choose to ignore. Additionally, Russia has long held a friendly relationship with Greece and Cyprus, both to complicate American policy in Europe and to provide a flank against Turkey. Still, thanks to proximity and trading links, Turkey clearly holds the upper hand in this theater of competition.

But this particular region is unlikely to generate much Turkish-Russian animosity, simply because both countries are in the process of giving up.

Most of the Balkan states are already members of an organization that is unlikely to ever admit Russia or Turkey: the European Union. Russia simply cannot meet the membership criteria, and Cyprus' membership in essence strikes the possibility of Turkish inclusion. (Any EU member can veto the admission of would-be members.) The EU-led splitting of Kosovo from Serbia over Russian objections was a body blow to Russian power in the region, and the subsequent EU running of Kosovo as a protectorate greatly limited Turkish influence as well. Continuing EU expansion means that Turkish influence in the Balkans will shrivel just as Russian influence already has. Trouble this way lies, but not between Turkey and Russia. If anything, their joint exclusion might provide some room for the two to agree on something.

The third area for Russian-Turkish competition is in energy, and this is where things get particularly sticky. Russia is Turkey's No. 1 trading partner, with energy accounting for the bulk of the trade volume between the two countries. Turkey depends on Russia for 65 percent of its natural gas and 40 percent of its oil imports. Though Turkey has steadily grown its trade relationship with Russia, it does not exactly approve of Moscow's penchant for using its energy relations with Europe as a political weapon. Russia has never gone so far as to cut supplies to Turkey directly, but Turkey has been indirectly affected more than once when Russia decided to cut supplies to Ukraine because Moscow felt the need to reassert its writ in Kiev.

Sharing the Turks' energy anxiety, the Europeans have been more than eager to use Turkey as an energy transit hub for routes that would bypass the Russians altogether in supplying the European market. The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline is one such route, and others, like Nabucco, are still stuck in the planning stages. The Russians have every reason to pressure the Turks into staying far away from any more energy diversification schemes that could cost Russia one of its biggest energy clients — and deny Moscow much of the political leverage it currently holds over the Europeans who are dependent on the Russian energy network.

There are only two options for the Turks in diversifying away from the Russians. The first lies to Turkey's south in Iraq and Iran. Turkey has big plans for Iraq's oil industry, but it will still take considerable time to upgrade and restore the oil fields and pipelines that have been persistently sabotaged and ransacked by insurgents during the fighting that followed the 2003 U.S. invasion. The Iranians offer another large source of energy for the Turks to tap into, but the political complications attached to dealing with Iran are still too prickly for the Turks to move ahead with concrete energy deals at this time. Complications remain for now, but Turkey will be keeping an eye on its Middle Eastern neighbors for robust energy partnerships in the future.

The second potential source of energy for the Turks lies in Central Asia, a region that Russia must keep in its grip at all costs if it hopes to survive in the long run. In many ways this theater is the reverse of the Balkans, where the Russians hold the ethnic links and the Turks the economic advantage. Here, four of the five Central Asian countries — Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan — are Turkic. But as a consequence of the Soviet years, the infrastructure and economies of all four are so hardwired into the Russian sphere of influence that it would take some major surgery to liberate them. But the prize is a rich one: Central Asia possesses the world's largest concentration of untapped energy reserves. And as the term "central" implies, whoever controls the region can project power into the former Soviet Union, China and South Asia. If the Russians and Turks are going to fight over something, this is it.

Here Turkey faces a problem, however — it does not directly abut the region. If the Turks are even going to attempt to shift the Central Asian balance of power, they will need a lever. This brings us to the final — and most dynamic — realm of competition: the Caucasus.

Turkey here faces the best and worst in terms of influence projection. The Azerbaijanis do not consider themselves simply Turkic, like the Central Asians, but actually Turkish. If there is a country in the former Soviet Union that would consider not only allying with but actually joining with another state to escape Russia's orbit, it would be Azerbaijan with Turkey. Azerbaijan has its own significant energy supplies, but its real value is in serving as a willing springboard for Turkish influence into Central Asia.

However, the core of Azerbaijan does not border Turkey. Instead, it is on the other side of Armenia, a country that thrashed Azerbaijan in a war over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh enclave and still has lingering animosities toward Ankara because of the 1915 Armenian "genocide." Armenia has sold itself to the Russians to keep its Turkish foes at bay.

This means Turkish designs on Central Asia all boil down to the former Soviet state of Georgia. If Turkey can bring Georgia fully under its wing, Turkey can then set about to integrate with Azerbaijan and project influence into Central Asia. But without Georgia, Turkey is hamstrung before it can even begin to reach for the real prize in Central Asia.

In this, the Turks do not see the Georgians as much help. The Georgians do not have much in the way of a functional economy or military, and they have consistently overplayed their hand with the Russians in the hopes that the West would come to their aid. Such miscalculations contributed to the August 2008 Georgian-Russian war, in which Russia smashed what military capacity the Georgians did possess. So while Ankara sees the Georgians as reliably anti-Russian, it does not see them as reliably competent or capable.

This means that Turkish-Russian competition may have been short-circuited before it even began. Meanwhile, the Americans and Russians are beginning to outline the rudiments of a deal. Various items on the table include Russia allowing the Americans to ship military supplies to Afghanistan via Russia's sphere of influence, changes to the U.S. ballistic missile defense (BMD) program, and a halt to NATO expansion. The last prong is a critical piece of Russian-Turkish competition. Should the Americans and Europeans put their weight behind NATO expansion, Georgia would be a logical candidate — meaning most of the heavy lifting in terms of Turkey projecting power eastward would already be done. But if the Americans and Europeans do not put their weight behind NATO expansion, Georgia would fall by the wayside and Turkey would have to do all the work of projecting power eastward — and facing the Russians — alone.

A Temporary Meeting of Minds?

There is clearly no shortage of friction points between the Turks and the Russians. With the two powers on a resurgent path, it was only a matter of time before they started bumping into one another. The most notable clash occurred when theRussians decided to invade Georgia last August, knowing full well that neither the Americans nor the Europeans would have the will or capability to intervene on behalf of the small Caucasian state. NATO's strongest response was a symbolic show of force that relied on Turkey, as the gatekeeper to the Black Sea, to allow a buildup of NATO vessels near the Georgian coast and threaten the underbelly of Russia's former Soviet periphery.

Turkey disapproved of the idea of Russian troops bearing down in the Caucasus near the Turkish border, and Ankara was also angered by having its energy revenues cut off during the war when the BTC pipeline was taken offline.

The Russians promptly responded to Turkey's NATO maneuvers in the Black Sea by holding up a large amount of Turkish goods at various Russian border checkpoints to put the squeeze on Turkish exports. But the standoff was short-lived; soon enough, the Turks and Russians came to the negotiating table to end the trade spat and sort out their respective spheres of influence. The Russian-Turkish negotiations have progressed over the past several months, with Russian and Turkish leaders now meeting fairly regularly to sort out the issues where both can find some mutual benefit.

The first area of cooperation is Europe, where both Russia and Turkey have an interest in applying political pressure. Despite Europe's objections and rejections, the Turks are persistent in their ambitions to become a member of the European Union. At the same time, the Russians need to keep Europe linked into the Russian energy network and divided over any plans for BMD, NATO expansion or any other Western plan that threatens Russian national security. As long as Turkey stalls on any European energy diversification projects, the more it can demand Europe's attention on the issue of EU membership. In fact, the Turks already threatened as much at the start of the year, when they said outright that if Europe doesn't need Turkey as an EU member, then Turkey doesn't need to sign off on any more energy diversification projects that transit Turkish territory. Ankara's threats against Europe dovetailed nicely with Russia's natural gas cutoff to Ukraine in January, when the Europeans once again were reminded of Moscow's energy wrath.

The Turks and the Russians also can find common ground in the Middle East. Turkey is again expanding its influence deep into its Middle Eastern backyard, and Ankara expects to take the lead in handling the thorny issues of Iran, Iraq and Syria as the United States draws down its presence in the region and shifts its focus to Afghanistan. What the Turks want right now is stability on their southern flank. That means keeping Russia out of mischief in places like Iran, where Moscow has threatened to sell strategic S-300 air defense systems and to boost the Iranian nuclear program in order to grab Washington's attention on other issues deemed vital to Moscow's national security interests. The United States is already leaning on Russia to pressure Iran in return for other strategic concessions, and the Turks are just as interested as the Americans in taming Russia's actions in the Middle East.

Armenia is another issue where Russia and Turkey may be having a temporary meeting of minds. Russia unofficially occupies Armenia and has been building up a substantial military presence in the small Caucasian state. Turkey can either sit back, continue to isolate Armenia and leave it for the Russians to dominate through and through, or it can move toward normalizing relations with Yerevan and dealing with Russia on more equal footing in the Caucasus. With rumors flying of a deal on the horizon between Yerevan and Ankara (likely with Russia's blessing), it appears more and more that the Turks and the Russians are making progress in sorting out their respective spheres of influence.

Ultimately, both Russia and Turkey know that this relationship is likely temporary at best. The two Eurasian powers still distrust each other and have divergent long-term goals, even if in the short term there is a small window of opportunity for Turkish and Russian interests to overlap. The law of geopolitics dictates that the two ascendant powers are doomed to clash — just not today.

Tell STRATFOR What You Think

This report may be forwarded or republished on your website with attribution towww.stratfor.com

 

The March/April 2009 issue of D-Lib Magazine (http://www.dlib.org/) is now available.

The March/April 2009 issue of D-Lib Magazine (http://www.dlib.org/) is now available.

 

This issue contains five articles, an opinion piece, two conference reports, the 'In Brief' column, excerpts from recent press releases, and news of upcoming conferences and other items of interest in 'Clips and Pointers'. This month, D-Lib features the Washington College of Law Historical Collection, courtesy of Susan McElrath, American University and Allison B. Zhang, Washington Research Library Consortium.

 

The opinion piece is:

 

What's Wrong with Citation Counts?

Jose H. Canos Cerda and Manuel Llavador Campos, Technical University of Valencia, Spain; and Eduardo Mena Nieto, University of Zaragoza, Spain

 

The articles include:

 

Going Grey? Comparing the OCR Accuracy Levels of Bitonal and Greyscale Images Tracy Powell and Gordon Paynter, National Library of New Zealand

 

How Good Can It Get? Analysing and Improving OCR Accuracy in Large Scale Historic Newspaper Digitisation Programs Rose Holley, National Library of Australia

 

Profiling Social Networks: A Social Tagging Perspective Ying Ding and Elin K Jacob, Indiana University; James Caverlee, Texas A&M University; Michael Fried, University of Innsbruck, Austria; and Zhixiong Zhang, Chinese Academy of Science

 

Digitization Education: Courses Taken and Lessons Learned Mats Dahlstrom and Alen Doracic, Swedish School of Library and Information Science

 

Toward Digitizing All Forms of Documentation George V. Landon, Eastern Kentucky University

 

The Conference Reports include:

 

International Data curation Education Action (IDEA) Working Group: A Report from the Second Workshop of the IDEA Carolyn Hank, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; and Joy Davidson, University of Glasgow

 

Report on the 2nd Ibero-American Conference on Electronic Publishing in the Context of Scholarly Communication (CIPECC 2008) Ana Alice Baptista, University of Minho, Portugal

 

 

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D-Lib Magazine

 

Islamic Digital Library at Princeton

Princeton University officially unveils its digital library of 200 Islamic manuscripts.



Announcement:





Website:
http://library.princeton.edu/projects/islamic/index.html





Source-Joyce Bell

[UCLA Conference] Society for Armenian Studies, 35th Anniversary Conf., Mar. 26-28, 2009

 

Armenian Studies at a Threshold

Society for Armenian Studies

Source: Professor Richard Hovannisian

 

Complete Program in PDF

 

35th Anniversary Conference

March 26-28, 2009

University of California, Los Angeles

Session 1. Thursday, 1:00-2:30 p.m.

Medieval Literature and the Arts Theo van Lint, Oxford University, Chair

* Andrea Scala, University of Milan, "About the Name of the Latin Language in Classical Armenian"

* Robert Thomson, Oxford University, Emeritus, "Armenian Biblical Commentaries: The Present State of Research"

* Sona Haroutyunian, Ca' Foscari University of Venice, "Dante Alighieri and the Mekhitarist School of Translation"

Session 2. Thursday, 2:30-4:00 p.m.

Medieval History and Culture

Anne Elizabeth Redgate, Newcastle University, Chair

* Sergio La Porta, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, "Cultural Interaction and Cultural Strategies in Post-Seljuk Armenia"

* Sara Nur Yildiz, Bilgi University, Istanbul, "Competing for the Il-Khan's Favor: Seljuk and Armenian Rivalry in Thirteenth Century Mongol-Dominated Anatolia"

* Tom Sinclair, University of Cyprus, "Coins, Trade, and Cities in Greater Armenia during the Il-Khanid Period"

Refreshments, 4:00-4:15 p.m.

Session 3. Thursday, 4:15.6:30 p.m.

Researching the Contemporary Armenian Diaspora: Consolidating the Past, Situating the Future

Khachig Tölölyan, Wesleyan University, Chair

* Sossie Kasbarian, Graduate Institute of International and

Development Studies, Geneva, "From Exile to Empowerment Reinvigorating the Concept of Diaspora: The Armenian Case"

* Aida Boudjikanian, Montreal, "The Literature on the Armenian Diaspora in France and Canada"

* Susan Pattie, University College London, "Twenty-First Century Armenians: Is Anyone Paying Attention?"

* Anny Bakalian, City University of New York, "Still Alive and Thriving: Assimilation and Identity among Armenian Americans in the 21st Century"

* Nelida Boulghourdjian, University of Buenos Aires, "Migration Studies in Argentina: The Armenian Case"

* Discussant: Aram Yengoyan, University of California, Davis

Friday, March 27, 2009, 1200 Rolfe Hall, 9 A.M. 9 P.M.

Session 4. Friday, 9:00 a.m.

Armenian History as Connected History

Houri Berberian, California State University-Long Beach, Chair

* Sebouh Aslanian, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, "From 'Autonomous' to 'Interactive' Histories: World History's Challenge to Armenian Studies"

* Peter Cowe, UCLA, "The Armenian Oikoumene of the 11th to 14th Century in Search of a Holistic Discourse"

* Rachel Goshgarian, Zohrab Center, New York, "The Futuwwa and Armenian History in the Late Medieval 'Islamicate' World of Anatolia"

* Elyse Semerdjian, Whitman College, "Morality, Communalism, and the Armenians of Ottoman Aleppo"

Refreshments, 11:00-11:15 a.m.

Session 5. Friday, 11:15 a.m.1:00 p.m.

Economy, Society, and Culture of Early Modern East Central Europe (14th 19th Centuries)

George Bournoutian, Iona College, Chair

* Andreas Helmedach, Center for the History and Culture of East Central Europe (GWZO), Leipzig, "Armenian Minorities as Actors in Early Modern Globalization"

* B?lint Kov?cs, Center for the History and Culture of East Central

Europe (GWZO), Leipzig, "Interregional Cultural Relations of the

Transylvanian Armenians in the 17th and 18th Centuries"

* Judit Pl, Babes-Bolyai-University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania, "The

Social and Economic History of the Armenians in Transylvania in the

18th and 19th Centuries"

Lunch Recess, 1:00-1:45 p.m.

Session 6. Friday, 1:45-3:45 p.m.

Between Perversion and Representation: Sexual Allegories in Armenian Literature Rubina Peroomian, UCLA, Chair and Discussant

* Tamar Boyadjian, UCLA, "The Female City and Its Textual Function:

Grigor Tghay's Lament over the City of Jerusalem"

* Talar Chahinian, UCLA, "The Crisis of Incest: Reconfiguring the

Catastrophe in Orpuni's 'Vartsu Seniag, ' Sarafian's Ishkhanuhin, and

Shahnur's 'Buynuzlenere'"

* Myrna Douzjian, UCLA, "Challenging Social and Literary Norms:

Sexual Agency in Violet Grigorian's Poetry"

* Lilit Keshishyan, UCLA, "Sexual Perversion as Political Allegory in

Gurgen Khanjian's Hivandanots"

Session 7. Friday, 4:00-6:00 p.m.

New Perspectives on The Armenian Genocide George Shirinian, Zoryan Institute, Chair

* Taner Ak?am, Clark University, "Ottoman Documents and Genocidal

Intent of the Union and Progress Party"

* Janet Klein, University of Akron, "The Kurds and the Armenian

Genocide: Reflections on Historiography"

* Lerna Ekmekcio lu, New York University, "Approaching the Unlucky

Sister and Her Child: Sexual Violence as a Marker during and after the

Armenian Genocide"

* Vahram Shemmassian, California State University-Northridge, "The

Rescue of Captive Genocide Survivors, 1919-1921"

Light Dinner Recess (on site), 6:00-7:00 p.m.

Session 8. Friday, 7:00-9:00 p.m.

Contemporary Armenia

Hovann Simonian, University of Southern California, Chair

* Khatchik Der Ghougassian, Universidad de San Andr?s, Buenos Aires,

"Market Fundamentalism, Economic Hardship, and Social Protest in Armenia"

* Konrad Siekierski, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan, Poland,

"Nation and Faith, Past and Present: The Contemporary Discourse of the Armenian Apostolic Church in Armenia"

* Tamara Tonoyan, National Institute of Health, Yerevan, "HIV/AIDS in

Armenia: Migration as a Socio-Economic and Cultural Component of

Women's Risk Settings"

* Anahid Keshishian-Aramouni, UCLA, "Inknagir Magazine: Frivolous

Iconoclasm or Marker of Artistic Liberty?"

* Gregory Areshian, UCLA, Pavel Avetisyan and Armine Hayrapetyan,

Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, Yerevan, "Archaeology in

Post-Soviet Armenia: New Discoveries, Problems, and Perspectives"

Session 9. Saturday, 9:00-10:30 a.m.

Discourse and Violence: Revisiting the Adana Massacres of 1909 Richard Hovannisian, UCLA, Chair

* Ohannes Kili?dagi, Bilgi University, Istanbul, "Ottomanism among the Anatolian Armenians after the 1908 Revolution"

* Bedross Der Matossian, MIT, "From Verbal to Physical Violence:

Ihsan Fikri's Itidal and the Massacres of Adana in 1909"

* Rubina Peroomian, UCLA, "The Poetics of Violence in Literary Responses to the Adana Massacres"

Session 10. Saturday, 10:30 a.m.12:45 p.m. The State of Armenian Studies Chairs and Programs in the United States Marc Mamigonian, NAASR, Chair (with comments on prehistory of Armenian programs)

* Taner Akçam, Clark University

* Kevork Bardakjian, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor

* Peter Cowe, UCLA

* Richard Hrair Dekmejian, USC

* Barlow Der Mugrdechian, California State University-Fresno

* Roberta Ervine, St. Nersess Seminary

* Richard Hovannisian, UCLA

* Jirair Libaridian, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor

* Christina Maranci, Tufts University

* Simon Payaslian, Boston University

* Ara Sanjian, Armenian Research Center, UM-Dearborn

* Vahram Shemmassian, California State University-Northridge

Lunch Recess, 12:45-1:30 p.m.

Session 11. Saturday, 1:30-3:00 p.m.

Church Politics and Identity

Abraham Terian, St. Nersess Seminary, Chair

* Paul Werth, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, "Rumors and Projects

of Ecclesiastical Union: Armenians, Orthodoxy, and the Problem of

Confessional Distinctions in Imperial Russia"

* Ara Sanjian, University of Michigan-Dearborn, "The British Foreign

Office, the Church of England, and the Crisis in the Armenian Church

at Antelias, 1956-1963"

* Marlen Eordegian, Vanderbilt University, "Straddling Religion and

Politics: The Case of the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem"

 

Session 12. Saturday, 3:15-5:45 p.m.

Armenians, World War II, and Repatriation Barbara Merguerian, Armenian International Women's Association, Chair

 

* Vartan Matiossian, Hovnanian School, New Jersey, "'White' Armenians, 'Aryan' Armenians: Combating Racial Views during the First Half of the 20th Century"

* Gregory Aftandilian, Washington, D.C., "World War II as an Enhancer of Armenian-American Second Generation Identity"

* Levon Thomassian, California State University-Northridge, "Summer of '42"

* Astrig Atamian, National Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilizations, Paris, "Being an Armenian Communist in France during the Cold War"

* Sevan Yousefian, UCLA, "The Formation of Soviet Armenian Immigration Policy: Diaspora Networks, Armenian Cadres, and the Postwar Repatriation Campaign"

* Joanne Laycock, University of Manchester, "'Belongings': People and Possessions in the Armenian Repatriations, 1947-1949"

 

Concluding Comments and Discussion, 5:45-6:00 p.m.

Architectural Exhibit by US Chapter of Armenian Architects Association

Conference Sponsors: Society for Armenian Studies UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies UCLA Center for European and Eurasian Studies USC Institute of Armenian Studies National Association for Armenian Studies and Research and The Armenian Studies Programs of Armenian Center, Columbia University Armenian Research Center, University of Michigan-Dearborn California State University-Fresno California State University-Northridge University of California, Los Angeles University of Michigan-Ann Arbor

 

Thirty-Fifth Anniversary Banquet, Taghlyan Center 1201 N. Vine Street, Hollywood, California, 7:30 p.m.

Banquet Sponsor: Armenian Educational Foundation

 

 

 

 

The U.S. State department releases "2008 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices

The U.S. State Department has issued its annual report assessing human rights around the world during 2008
.


The report was released on February 25, 2009. The full text of the report for all countries can be found at the State Department site.


Russia


Belarus


Romania


Ukraine

CFP: Central Europe 1989: Lessons and Legacies

Central Europe 1989: Lessons and Legacies
October 16-18, 2009
Call for Papers

As part of a semester-long commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the fall of Communism in East Central Europe, the Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies at the University of Kansas announces a conference, "Central Europe 1989: Lessons and Legacies," to be held in Lawrence, KS, October 16-18, 2009. We invite 250-word abstracts dealing with the question of transition and change in Central Europe as it relates to discourses, narratives, myths of identity in a variety of areas, including but not exclusively culture, literature and film, gender, ethnicity, civil and state structures, environment, economy.  Historical and political contextualizations of the "Turn" are also welcome. Please email your abstract by May 1, 2009, to: crees@ku.edu (and put "CE1989" in the subject line), or mail to: CE1989, CREES, University of Kansas, 320 Bailey Hall, 1440 Jayhawk Blvd., Lawrence, KS  66045.

Possible topics include:

1. meanings of revolution (society, arts, science, technology, environment, etc.)

2. Transition (and its discontents)

3. Myths of identity

4. Discourses of change

5. Thinking and rethinking history

6. (Re)defining Central Europe

7. Stocktaking on the transition

8. Structures of political change

9. Institutional design

CEES-UCLA Lecture: The Last Soviet Dreamer: Conversations with Leonid Potemkin

A public lecture by JOCHEN HELLBECK, Rutgers University, History

Thursday, March 12, 2009
12:00 PM - 2:00 PM
10383 Bunche Hall

UCLA

 

Soviet diaries from the 1930s offer striking insights into the personal and inner dimensions of the Bolshevik revolution. In contrast to popular belief that Soviet citizens sought to cultivate a private existence in contradistinction to the totalitarian communist ideology, many of those who kept diaries during the Stalin period used them to instill their personal lives with the values of the unfolding revolution. They dreamed the Soviet dream, a dream that promised fulfillment in the act of making history and joining the vanguard of humanity. Leonid Potemkin, a student of geology in the 1930s and an avid diarist, survives to the present day. Video interviews with Potemkin conducted in 2004 and 2005 address the memory of the Stalin era today and the continued commitments on the part of a surviving diarist from that age. The interviews also showcase the epistemological and ethical problems that accrue from the investigation of intimate personal accounts in the presence of their surviving author.

 
 

Jochen Hellbeck is an Associate Professor of History at Rutgers University.  He is the author of Revolution on My Mind: Writing a Diary under Stalin (Harvard University Press, 2006), and the co-editor of Autobiographical Practices in Russia (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2004). His research focuses on autobiographical accounts and people's self-understandings in historical perspective. 

Summer Study in Moscow-American Council for International Education

American Councils for International Education: ACTR/ACCELS is pleased to announce an exciting opportunity for summer study in Moscow, Russia open to U.S. Elementary- and Secondary-School Teachers, Graduate Students, and Undergraduate Students. A five-week program focusing on area studies, Contemporary Russia offers courses in Russian economics, politics, and culture; all content-based classes are taught in English by faculty of the State University: Higher School of Economics, one of Russia's most prestigious centers for the study of social sciences. Program participants also receive six hours per week of Russian-language instruction. No prior knowledge of Russian is required -- we can accommodate students of ALL proficiency levels. A full-time U.S. resident director oversees the program; assists participants with academic and personal matters; and serves as a liaison between university faculty, administrators, host families, and participants.

 

Other program features include room and board with Russian families; weekly cultural excursions; Russian peer tutors; eight semester-hours of academic credit through Bryn Mawr College; and pre-departure orientation in Washington, D.C. Program fees include round-trip international travel from Washington, D.C. to Moscow, room and board, international health insurance, and Russian visas. We anticipate the availability of a substantial level of financial aid through the U.S. Department of Education Fulbright-Hays Program (expected notification date: March 2009).

 

Area-studies courses conducted in English:

*Russian Politics Today: domestic and foreign policy, major political parties and actors, the war in Chechnya, Russia's relations with the West.

*Russian Economics in Transition: the transition from communism to the current economy, problems of corruption and organized crime.

*Russian Contemporary Culture: pop culture and mass media, Russia's cultural and social mores, historical background.

 

Program dates: June 24 - July 30, 2009

 

Application Deadline: March 15, 2009. Applications are available at www.acrussiaabroad.org.

 

For more information and an application, please contact:

 

Russian and Eurasian Outbound Programs

American Councils for International Education: ACTR/ACCELS

1776 Massachusetts Ave., NW, Suite 700

Washington, DC 20036

Telephone: (202) 833-7522

Email: outbound@americancouncils.org

Website: www.acrussiaabroad.org

     www.americancouncils.org

Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship Program

Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship Program

 

Fall 2009/Academic Year 2009-2010 Application Open - Deadline: April 7,

2009

 

The Gilman International Scholarship Program provides awards of up to $5,000 for U.S. undergraduate students to study abroad for up to one academic year. The program aims to diversify the kinds of student who study abroad and the countries and regions where they go. The program serves students who have been under-represented in study abroad which includes but is not limited to: students with high financial need, community college students, students in under-represented fields such as the sciences and engineering, students from diverse ethnic backgrounds, students attending minority-serving institutions, and students with disabilities. The Gilman Program seeks to assist students from a diverse range and type of two-year and four-year public and private institutions from all 50 states.

 

The Gilman Program is pleased to be able to offer over 1200 scholarships during the Academic Year 2009-2010. Additionally, an increased number of $3000 Critical Need Language Supplements are available for students studying a critical need language for a total possible award of $8000.

A list of eligible languages can be found on the Gilman website at http://www.iie.org/gilman. There has never been a better time to apply for a Gilman Scholarship!

 

Eligibility: Students must be receiving a Federal Pell Grant at the time of application or during the time they are studying abroad and cannot be studying abroad in a country currently under a U.S. Department of State Travel Warning or in Cuba.

 

The Gilman International Scholarship Program is sponsored by the U.S.

Department of State, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and administered by the Institute of International Education.

 

For more information, full eligibility criteria and the online application visit: http://www.iie.org/gilman

 

Source:

Gilman International Scholarship Program

Institute of International Education

Houston, TX

Contact for Applicants:

Email: gilman@iie.org

Phone: 1-888-887-5939, ext 25

 

 

Весна на Заречной улице -Food For Thought!