Events Archive | Russian, East European, and Eurasian Center at Illinois

Fall 2022

Fall 2022 Events

	REEEC Welcome Back Reception 2022 Date: Sep 14, 2022 Please join us at 4:30 pm on September 14th for the REEEC Welcome Back Reception in room 210 of the Levis Faculty Center. We are excited to kick off the new academic year by connecting in-person with our REEEC community and looking ahead to the coming year. Refreshments will be served. All are welcome! 210 Levis Faculty Center (919 W. Illinois St., Urbana, IL 61801)
	REEEC Noontime Scholars Lecture: Elizabeth Abosch Date: Sep 20, 2022 Song was a powerful tool for propagandizing socialist construction and for raising the level of cultural education of the new Soviet public. More accessible, versatile, and participatory than art music, song could reach the public through films, the radio, the estrada stage, the komsomol club, the amateur musicians’ circle, and the gramophone. As much as it was beneficial for the development of mass culture, the accessibility of song carried the risk that the not yet fully educated masses would fall victim to the harmful musical influence of “gypsy” song, criminal song, and other song genres associated with urban ills. State cultural organs considered the “musical front” the last stand for vestiges of the bourgeois past which permeated spaces of heathy socialist life and spread through nascent Soviet mass culture like a contagion. While cultural ideologues considered it important that citizens gain the knowledge and taste level to appreciate popular song and art music on the same level, song was particularly didactic and dangerous to emerging Soviet society and its intent to transform the bodies and minds of citizens. Press, literature, and archival documents from the late 1920s and early 1930s reveal the significant role of song in socialist construction and the development of mass culture, and the perceived risk of uncontrolled popular song.
	Bruce Rosenstock (Religion): “Antisemitism and Threats to Academic Freedom: The Association of Jewish Studies Working Report” (Hybrid Event) Date: Sep 21, 2022 After nearly a year of deliberations, the Task Force on Antisemitism and Academic Freedom of the Association of Jewish Studies released its Working Report in December 2021. Bruce Rosenstock was one of several AJS members who participated in the writing of the Working Report and serves on the Task Force today. The Task Force was formed because it had become apparent that the academic study of the history and nature of antisemitism diverged from the pro-Israel activism of many mainstream Jewish community organizations. Some Jewish Studies faculty members found themselves in disagreement with these organizations or with pro-Israel donors about what constitutes antisemitism. University administrators were caught between pro-Israel community pressure and their commitment to the academic freedom of their faculty members. In response to this growing set of problems, the Association of Jewish Studies decided to examine the issues and offer best practice recommendations about how to respond to mounting charges that university administrators were failing to protect pro-Israel students from what was claimed to be antisemitic harassment.
	Chicago Immigrant Orchestra Afternoon Pop-Up Concert Date: Sep 27, 2022 Please join us for an afternoon pop-up concert featuring the Chicago Immigrant Orchestra (CIO). This event is free and open to all and offers an opportunity to listen to and talk with the musicians. Refreshments will be served. The CIO is a world music ensemble founded in 1999 by the City of Chicago and now headed by guitarist Fareed Haque and oud player Wanees Zarour. Its instrumentalists and vocalists represent musical traditions from East, South, & Central Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Europe, and Latin America. Performances explore the differences and relationships among these traditions, creating a unique and cohesive tapestry of cultures. Co-Sponsored by: Center for African Studies; Center for Global Studies; Center for Latin American & Caribbean Studies; Center for Middle Eastern & South Asian Studies; Illinois Global Institute; Office of the Vice Provost for International Affairs and Global Strategies; Robert E. Brown Center for World Music; Russian, East European, and Eurasian Center; Women & Gender in Global Perspectives Program
	The Chicago Immigrant Orchestra Evening Concert Date: Sep 27, 2022 This performance is a co-presentation of Krannert Center and the International and Area Studies Library. This event is free to University of Illinois students, faculty, staff, and their guests, but tickets are required for all audience members. Dedicated to the authenticity and historicity of living musical traditions, the Chicago Immigrant Orchestra was established in 1999 by the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events to perform as part of the first annual Chicago World Music Festival. Directed by Willy Schwartz, the orchestra involved Chicago musicians from the immigrant community representing music from all over the globe. The project lasted through 2004 and had a lasting impact on the Chicago music scene. In 2019, the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events approached guitarist Fareed Haque and oud player Wanees Zarour to restart the Chicago Immigrant Orchestra and headline 2020’s Chicago World Music Festival. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the orchestra performed a critically acclaimed virtual concert in September 2020. The new CIO today is a 20-piece ensemble that consists of members of the Chicago immigrant community, representing musical traditions from all over the world. In this fresh approach under the direction of Haque and Zarour, Chicago Immigrant Orchestra musicians from the Far East to Western Europe, Africa and the Americas are thoroughly involved in the evolution of the musical ideas that are presented. One orchestra, a world of music. For more information and to reserve tickets, please visit https://krannertcenter.com/events/chicago-immigrant-orchestra.
	Ivan Krastev: "Russia's War in Ukraine: Reimagining the East-West Divide in Europe" Date: Oct 4, 2022 The war in Ukraine is having a dramatic impact on the political imagination of Europe. It has reframed the East-West divide by replacing the Cold War narrative of the past decades with one of decolonization and the threat for the sovereignty of the European nation states born out of the disintegration of the 20th century continental empires. The war does not simply change the borders of Europe but also the nature of EU's external borders. It increases the tensions between the imperative for geopolitical EU and the imperative to preserve the constitutional integrity of the Union. This lecture will be held in Levis Faculty Center Room 300, and it will also be livestreamed here: https://ensemble.illinois.edu/Watch/Krastev. "Russia's War in Ukraine: Reimagining the East-West Divide in Europe" is a part of the Illinois Global Institute's "Russia's War on Ukraine: An IGI Series on Global Responsibilities."
	College of Media: Reporting on Politics and Elections in 2022 Date: Oct 13, 2022 Four of the country's top political journalists will give a behind-the-scenes look at what it's like to cover politics in 2022. The panelists will weigh in on the upcoming midterm elections and potentials national outcomes, from the fate of of President Joe Biden to the control of Congress, and more. Panelists: - David Chalian, CNN Political Director - Domenico Montanaro, NPR Senior Political Editor - Vivian Salama, Wall Street Journal National Security Reporter - Alice Yin, Chicago Tribune City Hall Reporter - Moderator: Colleen King, Frank Center for Leadership and Innovation in Media Director and Clinical Assistant Professor of Journalism This event is presented by the Richard and Leslie Frank Center for Leadership and Innovation in Media. Zoom registration link: Webinar Registration - Zoom
	REEEC Noontime Scholars Lecture: Joanna Kula, "The North Caucasus On and Off the Beaten Track" Date: Oct 18, 2022 The North Caucasus is one of the most diverse regions of Russia in terms of ethnicity, language, religion and, last but not least, landscape. For over two hundred years it has remained part of the Russian state but has maintained its cultural distinction. Classical Russian literature of the 19th century (Pushkin, Lermontov, Tolstoy) created a mythologized image of the Caucasus. The negative portrayal of the 'gorets', 'abrek', 'rebel', 'traitor' or 'terrorist' has been generated and used by official propaganda created to satisfy current political needs. In fact, people in other regions of Russia and Europe know little about the North Caucasus beyond these portrayals. A scholar might find there a whole spectrum of historical, cultural and literary inspirations. 'Reading' the Caucasus requires field research and sensory experience - the Caucasus is color, sound and taste. Joanna Kula, PhD, is a scholar of Russian literature working in the Department of Slavic Studies at the University of Wroclaw (Poland). Her dissertation focused on the problem of a 'hero' in modern Russian prose (A Hero of the End of the 20th Century in Works by Vladimir Makanin, 2013). The main subject of her current research is the region of the Caucasus and its reflection in Russian literature from 19th to 21st century, both fiction and non-fiction. She studies the interaction of the two contrary ideas of geopolitics and geopoetics, colonial and postcolonial narrations, the question of Caucasian self-identity in a post-Soviet era.
	Illinois Global Institute 'Exploring International Music Night' Date: Oct 19, 2022 Please join the Illinois Global Institute for a night of international music as a part of this year's International Education Week. This performance will include sets by local Congolese rumba musician Jean Rene Balekita and his group Bomoyi, the Illinois Flamenco-Jazz Collective featuring David Chiriboga, and Afro-Brazilian percussion ensemble Bloco Gavião. This event is free and open to the public.
	Colonel Patrick M. Pascall, Professor Carol Leff, "Russia's War on Ukraine: 8 Months of War" Teach In Date: Oct 26, 2022 Colonel Patrick M. Pascall is an experienced military strategist with the United States military. He has planned and directed strategic, operational, and tactical military operations worldwide during combat and disaster response operations. Col. Pascall will assess the current military situation in Ukraine, give an update on Russian and Ukrainian military objectives, and explain strategic goals and tactics used in the war. Associate Professor Emerita Carol Leff specializes in Eastern European politics and has taught at the University of Illinois for three decades. In this teach-in, she will describe the impact of Russia's War on Ukraine and NATO, NATO's current response to the war, and how additional countries joining NATO will affect the European theater.
	Slavic Story Time at The Urbana Free Library Date: Oct 29, 2022 Join us to hear the story "The Girl Who Cried a Lake" from Tales Told in Tents: Stories from Central Asia by Sally Pomme Clayton & Sophie Herxheimer. Afterwards, we'll listen to a song and make a craft! For children of all ages and their caregivers.
	Live Q&A with the production team of "Song Searcher" Date: Oct 31, 2022 There will be a Live Q&A over Zoom with the production team of the film "Song Searcher" on Zoom at 12:00 PM Monday, October 31st. For information on accessing the Q&A Zoom, please see https://watch.showandtell.film/watch/song-searcher-movie-ui. The film is the story of a man’s lifelong search for authentic Yiddish folk music and of his unique archive, which was presumed to be lost forever. Moyshe Beregovsky, a musician and scholar, crisscrossed Ukraine with phonograph in hand during the most dramatic years of Soviet history in order to record and study the traditional music of Ukrainian Jewry. His work began in the 1920’s and led to his arrest and imprisonment in a Stalinist labor camp in 1950. Most of those he recorded on hundreds of fragile wax cylinders were shot by the Nazis and tossed into countless mass graves. Ultimately, Beregovsky succeeded in saving the musical heritage of the centuries-old Yiddish civilization. He rescued the Living Voice of his people from the flames of the Holocaust but paid for it with his life.
	Screening of "Song Searcher" Date: Nov 1, 2022 There will be a screening of the film "Song Searcher" on Tuesday, November 1 at 7:00 PM at Illini Hillel (503 E. John St., Champaign, IL 61820). The film will also be available for online screening through November 6 at https://watch.showandtell.film/watch/song-searcher-movie-ui.
	The Papashoy Klezmer Band Date: Nov 2, 2022 The Papashoy Klezmer Band will be performing Wednesday, November 2 at 7:00 PM at Room 300 Levis Faculty Center (919 W. Illinois St., Urbana, IL 61801). Papashoy Klezmer Band is a local band that plays old-time klezmer music in the style of the village bands of Ukraine. The ensemble includes Frances Harris (fiddle) and Amanda Ramey (fiddle), Rob Sweedler (accordion), Rob Krumm (guitar), and Charlie Harris (bass).
	Research and Language Learning: Kazakh Date: Nov 9, 2022 The Language Workshop at Indiana University, the Slavic Reference Service, and the Russian, East European, and Eurasian Center at the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign) are hosting an online discussion series - Research and Language Learning. We are inviting established scholars to discuss the role language proficiency plays in research, with examples from their own scholarly work. The initiative will be launch with the Turkic languages of Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Turkish, Uyghur, and Uzbek. We welcome language learners of all academic backgrounds to participate in these discussions.
	REEES Graduate Programs Information Session Date: Nov 16, 2022 Join Dr. John Randolph, Associate Professor of History and Director of the Russian, East European, and Eurasian Center (REEEC) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for an informal opportunity to learn about our graduate programs, including our MA in Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies (REEES) and our dual MA REEES/MS LIS degree in REEES and Library and Information Sciences. There will be plenty of chances to ask questions: all interested prospective students and applicants are welcome!
	Technology, Business, and War: The Role of IT Industries in Russia's War on Ukraine Date: Nov 17, 2022 In mid-October, Elon Musk announced his companies could no longer support Starlink services over Ukraine. This immediately threatened to sever communications systems on which Ukraine has depended since Russia’s invasion last February. Musk himself has also sought to intervene in geopolitics in other ways–reportedly consulting with Russian President Vladimir Putin before proposing his own thoughts on a Ukraine peace deal on Twitter. While Musk more recently said that Starlink services will continue, the incident highlights the mounting power of IT industries and their owners in all aspects of modern life, including war. As the Washington Post as recently noted, “With tech giants amassing stratospheric levels of influence over global affairs, they are morphing into a species of geopolitical actor, with uncertain long-term consequences.” This raises the question whether a new, “technopolar” world is emerging outside of states, transcending the geography of the post-Cold War era. This roundtable will explore these issues, with reference to the ongoing war in Ukraine as well as events across contemporary Eastern Europe and Eurasia. How are information technologies and industries shaping war and politics? What roles are being played by transnational information technologies and industries in the region,, and how has this evolved over the course of the war in Ukraine? What lessons does this experience have for the world at large, as it considers how to react to the rapid accumulation of money and power in the IT sector? Please join us for a Current Affairs Roundtable discussing these issues, with perspectives from both IT and area studies disciplines.
	FLAS Virtual Information Session I Date: Nov 28, 2022 Upcoming information session for students interested in applying for Summer 2023 and AY 2023-2024 Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) fellowships. Virtual Session I will be Monday, November 28, 2022, from 4:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. Undergraduate and graduate students are welcome. To register for Virtual Session 1, please visit: https://go.illinois.edu/FLASInfo1 Topics of discussion include eligibility and requirements, walking through the application, and answering questions about the application process and the fellowship. FLAS Coordinators from individual Centers will be in attendance and available to the students for questions and discussion in break-out sessions after the main presentation.
	REEES Graduate Programs Information Session Date: Nov 28, 2022 Join Dr. John Randolph, Associate Professor of History and Director of the Russian, East European, and Eurasian Center (REEEC) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for an informal opportunity to learn about our graduate programs, including our MA in Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies (REEES) and our dual MA REEES/MS LIS degree in REEES and Library and Information Sciences. There will be plenty of chances to ask questions: all interested prospective students and applicants are welcome!
	REEEC Noontime Scholars Lecture: Ailuna Utegenova, "Eurasian Integration After Russia's Invasion of Ukraine: Kazakhstan's Policy" Date: Nov 29, 2022 The Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) was established in 2014 and includes five states: Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan and Armenia. The Concept of Foreign Policy of Kazakhstan for 2020-2030 states that integration within the EAEU would be carried out only within the framework of the Treaty on the Establishment of the EAEU of May 29, 2014. However, processes within the EAEU have been going beyond the scope of the Treaty, spreading on more and more areas that are not considered in the Treaty of 2014. Thus, by 2025, the EAEU five member-countries plan to complete the formation of a common energy market, a common financial market, and the aim of creating a common educational space is also being discussed. After Russia's invasion of Ukraine, demands to withdraw from the EAEU have increased in Kazakhstan’s society. There had been protests against the EAEU in Kazakhstan at the time of signing the treaty in 2014, but this year the voices of opponents of Kazakhstan's participation in the EAEU gained a new impetus. In my research, I examine what policy Kazakhstan has been implementing within the framework of the EAEU. Despite the protests in Kazakhstani society, the processes in the EAEU are moving at their own pace, nullifying the aspirations of the country's authorities to limit integration to the provisions of the Treaty of 2014. Hundreds of amendments have already been made to the Treaty of 2014, which indicates the gradual loss of sovereignty by the authorities of the country. Ailuna Utegenova is an Assistant Professor at Almaty Management University (AlmaU), Kazakhstan. Currently she has an internship on “Pedagogy and Educational Technologies” at the UIUC. Her research includes Kazakhstan’s foreign policy strategy toward Russia and Kazakhstan’s policy in the EAEU.
	REEEC New Directions Lecture: Scott Gehlbach, "Contact, Threat, and Violence During Political Upheaval: Anti-Jewish Pogroms in the 1905 Russian Revolution" Date: Dec 2, 2022 What drives violent confrontation between groups in multi-ethnic and multi-confessional societies? Why do some communities in such societies experience conflict, while others remain peaceful? We explore these questions in the context of the 1905 Russian Revolution, which triggered numerous anti-Jewish pogroms. We show that the sharp increase in pogroms after October 1905, when publication of the October Manifesto and accompanying antisemitic propaganda increased feelings of political threat among many non-Jews, was smaller in settlements with relatively large Jewish populations. Our findings suggest that diversity can help to insulate communities from the violence that often accompanies momentous political change. Scott Gehlbach is a professor in the Department of Political Science and Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago. A political economist and comparativist, Gehlbach’s work is motivated by the contemporary and historical experience of Russia, Ukraine, and other postcommunist states. He has made numerous contributions to the study of autocracy, economic reform, political connections, and other important topics in political economy. Known for employing a wide range of methods in his research, Gehlbach has contributed to graduate education through his widely used textbook Formal Models of Domestic Politics. He is the author or coauthor of many articles in top journals, including the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, and the Journal of Politics; the award-winning monograph Representation Through Taxation: Revenue, Politics, and Development in Postcommunist States; and the forthcoming Cambridge Element Reform and Rebellion in Weak States.
	FLAS In-Person Information Session II Date: Dec 6, 2022 Upcoming information session for students interested in applying for Summer 2023 and AY 2023-2024 Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) fellowships. In-Person Session II will be Tuesday, December 6, 2022, from 4:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. CT in Gregory 321. Undergraduate and graduate students are welcome. Topics of discussion include eligibility and requirements, walking through the application, and answering questions about the application process and the fellowship. FLAS Coordinators from individual Centers will be in attendance and available to the students for questions and discussion in break-out sessions after the main presentation.
	REEEC Winter Reception Date: Dec 7, 2022 Please join us at 4:30 pm on December 7th for the REEEC Winter Reception to celebrate the end of the fall semester. Refreshments will be served. All are welcome! Wednesday, December 7th, 4:30-6:30 PM 300 Levis Faculty Center 919 W. Illinois St., Urbana, IL 61801

Summer 2022

Summer 2022 Events

	REEES Policy Research Roundtable: Russia-Ukraine War Date: Jun 8, 2022 Join the Slavic Reference Service on June 8 at 2:00 p.m. CST for a roundtable discussion on policy research and projects related to the Russia-Ukraine War. Panelists for the discussion include David Satter of the Hudson Institute, Dr. Paul Stronski of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Dina Spechler of Indiana University, Bloomington.
	Russia and the Global Color Line Workshop Date: Jul 14-15, 2022 Workshop Organizers: Eugene M. Avrutin (Tobor Family Endowed Professor of Modern European Jewish History, University of Illinois) and Professor Valeria Sobol (Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of Illinois) Zoom registration link: https://illinois.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZMrcu6orDssGN3HsXsJerNdDaegFgeApRVA Probing the role of Russia in the global dimensions of the color line, this interdisciplinary workshop raises exploratory questions about the meanings and functions of racial identifications and categories; the relationship between race, whiteness, and geography; how Russia fits into the global dimensions of the color line; and when and why skin color emerged as an important element in the complex process of identity formation. This workshop is a part of this year’s Summer Research Laboratory (SRL) in Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and is sponsored by the Humanities Research Institute, the University of Illinois History Department, Slavic Languages & Literatures Department, Slavic Reference Service, and Russian, East European, and Eurasian Center (Ralph & Ruth Fisher Fund).
	Fisher Fellow Talk: "From Tver to Tashkent: Exploring Citizenship and Nation in 19th Century Russian Museums" (Albert Cavallaro, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor) Date: Jul 21, 2022 Cavallaro's dissertation forms two interlocking microhistories examining the intertwined trajectories of two 19th century Russian imperial museums: the Tver Historical Museum, which opened in provincial Tver in 1866, and the National Museum of Turkestan, which opened in colonial, Central Asian Tashkent in 1876. Following these museums from their founding to 1917, his research operates on three scales: the local, imperial, and global. At the local scale, he examines travelogues, newspapers, and exhibition materials to reconstruct the daily life of museums’ employees and visitors. At the imperial scale, he explores literary works and publications of archaeological and ethnographic societies to argue that intellectuals in Moscow and St. Petersburg apprehended provincial and colonial sites in remarkably similar terms: as places of exploitation, where raw materials could be collected and sent to the center. At the global scale, he considers how museums, a new European technology, were involved in networks of knowledge production beyond the empire. His dissertation shows these museums engaged in a single project to historicize and create proper models of Russian citizenship and nation. Imperial officials simultaneously claimed affinity with Europe and sought to “Europeanize” museum visitors, and, by extension, the empire itself. Albert Cavallaro received his Bachelor of Arts in History and English from The College of New Jersey in 2015. He then enjoyed a brief, two-year career as an "insurance archaeologist" before receiving a Master of Arts in Global Studies with a focus on Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill in 2019. He is currently a PhD Candidate in History at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
	Fisher Fellow Talk: "Materialising Soviet Selves: Letters, Loyalty and Gender, 1936-40" (Hannah Parker, University of Sussex) Date: Jul 28, 2022 ‘I am so anxiously sorry that I cannot show you in any way my gratitude, my desire to be of any use to you’, closed one letter from E.V. Krasnova in Southern Ukraine, in response to Molotov’s intervention in her pension application due to her late husband’s revolutionary merits. Krasnova’s letter can be read as an attempt to substantiate her gratitude, mitigating her distance from Molotov by traversing distance and rank. Critical to Soviet women’s sense of emotional ‘security’, (Tikhomirov, 2013), this paper contends that letters constituted vessels for the ‘productive entanglements’ by which Soviet people negotiated the self, feeling, belonging in dialogue with Soviet power, as the intensification of social and political control reached crescendo. These negotiations were deeply gendered, as women formulated and concretized their history and memory through discursive forms of women’s emancipation, education, and revolution. Hannah Parker is a historian of gender, selfhood, and letter-writing in Russia and the Soviet Union. After completing her PhD and a Teaching Associateship at the University of Sheffield, she held lectureships at the Universities of Gloucestershire and Sussex. Her research interests focus on gender, emotion, education, and selfhood, as well as letter-writing and materiality, in the early Soviet Union, and recent publications have addressed the emotions of female librarians in the early Soviet Union, the performance of loyalty and gratitude in letters to Soviet authorities during the Terror, and new scholarship in public history. She is currently developing these interests in pursuit of a community history project based in Sheffield.

Spring 2022

Spring 2022 Events

	ASEEES - Pitt Intersectionality in Focus Series: "Living Intersectionality in Academia: Emerging Scholars" Date: Jan 28, 2022 The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed and exacerbated pre-existing institutional, structural, and systemic discrimination and inequality in societies across the world. Furthermore, continued campaigns against gender and LGBTQ equity in Eastern Europe and Eurasia, racism in the United States, and the social protest movements that rose in response to such exclusionary projects have reinforced calls for intersectional approaches in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (SEEES). Class, ethnicity and race, dis/ability, gender and sexuality, and other identity markers interweave to produce inequality differently in Eastern Europe and Eurasia than in the Americas or Western Europe. Yet, it is these very differences that provide a rich ground for intellectual conversations in our field.
	ASEEES - Pitt Intersectionality in Focus Series: "Transforming the Academy: Intersectionality and Change in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies" Date: Feb 4, 2022 The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed and exacerbated pre-existing institutional, structural, and systemic discrimination and inequality in societies across the world. Furthermore, continued campaigns against gender and LGBTQ equity in Eastern Europe and Eurasia, racism in the United States, and the social protest movements that rose in response to such exclusionary projects have reinforced calls for intersectional approaches in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (SEEES). Class, ethnicity and race, dis/ability, gender and sexuality, and other identity markers interweave to produce inequality differently in Eastern Europe and Eurasia than in the Americas or Western Europe. Yet, it is these very differences that provide a rich ground for intellectual conversations in our field.
	ASEEES - Pitt Intersectionality in Focus Series: "Talking About Globalization: Gender, Race, Dis/ability and Politics" Date: Feb 11, 2022 The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed and exacerbated pre-existing institutional, structural, and systemic discrimination and inequality in societies across the world. Furthermore, continued campaigns against gender and LGBTQ equity in Eastern Europe and Eurasia, racism in the United States, and the social protest movements that rose in response to such exclusionary projects have reinforced calls for intersectional approaches in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (SEEES). Class, ethnicity and race, dis/ability, gender and sexuality, and other identity markers interweave to produce inequality differently in Eastern Europe and Eurasia than in the Americas or Western Europe. Yet, it is these very differences that provide a rich ground for intellectual conversations in our field.
	ASEEES - Pitt Intersectionality in Focus Series: "(Post-)Pandemic Eurasia: Why Intersectionality Matters" Date: Feb 25, 2022 The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed and exacerbated pre-existing institutional, structural, and systemic discrimination and inequality in societies across the world. Furthermore, continued campaigns against gender and LGBTQ equity in Eastern Europe and Eurasia, racism in the United States, and the social protest movements that rose in response to such exclusionary projects have reinforced calls for intersectional approaches in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (SEEES). Class, ethnicity and race, dis/ability, gender and sexuality, and other identity markers interweave to produce inequality differently in Eastern Europe and Eurasia than in the Americas or Western Europe. Yet, it is these very differences that provide a rich ground for intellectual conversations in our field.
	Presentation & Discussion: Eileen Kane, "Racial Segregation in Odessa, Early 1900s" Date: Mar 3, 2022 Eileen Kane is Associate Professor of History and Director of the Global Islamic Studies Program, Connecticut College. This event is part of the Humanities Research Institute research cluster “Russia and the Global Color Line“.
	"History as Convenient Pretext": The Use and Misuse of History in the Invasion of Ukraine Date: Mar 3, 2022 Join Stefan Djordjevic as we place Putin's pseudo-historical narratives into their context and work to understand how history can be misused and mobilized in the service of an expansionistic state.
	Africa, Race and the War in Ukraine: An Open Discussion Date: Mar 4, 2022
	Racism in Modern Russia: A short History Date: Mar 6, 2022 Concerned about recent antisemitism on campus and the situation in Ukraine? Join CUJF fo an online presentationand discussion with Prof. Eugene Avrutin based on his new book, Racism in Modern Russia.
	"The Ukrainian Crisis in Regional and Global Perspective: A Political Science Roundtable" Date: Mar 7, 2022
	International Women's Day Date: Mar 8, 2022 The Slavic Reference Service is hosting the International Women Day's recognition event. We will highlight collections, sources, and the contributions of scholars in the field. Moreover, we will share information on ways to support those affected by the war in Ukraine.
	REEEC Noontime Scholars Lecture: LeiAnna Hamel, “'The Abyss of Filth and Shame': Prostitution and Modernity in East European Jewish Culture" Date: Mar 8, 2022 The prostitute was a central figure in East European Jewish culture at the turn of the twentieth century. Diverse authors claimed that modernization processes like the development of individualism, secularism, capitalism, the global economy, and urbanization led to increasing rates of prostitution in imperial Russia and among the global Jewish diaspora. Jewish authors defended the Jewish community against the antisemitic claims that Jews controlled the sex trade and that prostitution was more widespread among Jews than other peoples. They also discussed the problems within the Jewish community that led to any Jewish people at all participating in the sex trade. My talk will explore how Yiddish and Russian authors who wrote fiction and nonfiction used a similar vocabulary of filth, pollution, and perdition to talk about the sex trade. I argue that, by doing so, they displace anxieties about modernity onto the body of the prostitute or, more broadly, the fallen woman. The writers whose works I explore had sympathy for sex workers and advocated for social reform that would improve women’s lot and help curtail the spread of prostitution. However, the literary writers created more ambivalent images—they wanted to help, but they were also intrigued by the aesthetic and erotic possibilities of sex workers’ bodies.
	Digital Activism and International Law in Ukraine Date: Mar 8, 2022 Join UIUC international law, social informatics, and finance experts for a virtual panel on "Digital Activism and International Law in Ukraine" this Tuesday, March 8th, at 12pm. Professors Tatyana Deryugina (Gies College of Business), Madelyn Sanfilippo (School of Information Sciences), and Patrick Keenan (College of Law) will shed light on digital activism, social media platform responses, online fundraising efforts to help people affected by the war, and legal issues, including war crimes, as these pertain to the current situation in Ukraine.
	Digital Activism and International Law in Ukraine Date: Mar 8, 2022 Join UIUC international law, social informatics, and finance experts for a virtual panel on "Digital Activism and International Law in Ukraine" this Tuesday, March 8th, at 12pm. Professors Tatyana Deryugina (Gies College of Business), Madelyn Sanfillipo (School of Information Sciences), and Patrick Keenan (College of Law) will shed light on digital activism, social media platform responses, online fundraising efforts to help people affected by the war, and legal issues, including war crimes, as these pertain to the current situation in Ukraine.
	NGOs at Work in Ukraine: Spotlight on Soleterre Date: Mar 10, 2022 In this conversation with the European Union Center, Stefano Oltolini Soleterre's Ukraine Emergency Coordinator, will speak about the organization's work in Ukraine, including evacuating families and children to Poland, supplying hospitals in Ukraine, and providing food, shelter, and psychological assistance to people traveling from eastern Ukraine to the western Ukrainian city of Lviv. This series of events features the work the NGOs are doing on the ground in Ukraine during the current crisis and how we can support their work.
	REEEC Noontime Scholars Lecture: Robert Geraci, "The Dream of a Russian Merchant Fleet and the Trope of Russian Commercial Inferiority" Date: Mar 22, 2022 Although Peter the Great famously expanded Russia's coastlines and began its development into a major naval power, he and his successors were much less successful in fostering Russian maritime trade. Virtually to the end of the tsarist era, most imports were delivered to St. Petersburg and other ports by foreign merchants on foreign ships, and most Russian exports left the same way. Though imperial expansion and immigration had resulted in minority and foreign communities on the empire's coasts who made their living through shipping (Greeks, Armenians, Germans, Jews, Britons, Persians, etc.), state officials never stopped complaining that the ethnic Russian core of the empire's merchantry had little expertise or interest in seafaring. Economists' analyses of Russia's untapped potential to win profits and prestige in foreign trade dwelled on this stereotype, which became a key facet of what Geraci calls a full-blown and pervasive "trope of Russian commercial inferiority" that arguably continues to haunt Russian consciousness even today. Using a wide variety of historical sources, Prof. Geraci will show the evolution of the discourse around maritime trade in 19th-century Russia before fixing attention on the Society for the Promotion of Russian Commercial Seafaring, a state-supported civic organization founded in 1873. The group championed the elimination of what it deemed to be the chief structural and legal obstacles to Russian maritime trade and took on the educational and cultural challenge of changing the mindset and skill set of Russian merchants and traders. Besides offering some provisional conclusions as to the relative success of these efforts, the talk will discuss in some detail a handful of the movement's key figures, whose views and activities stemmed from first-hand knowledge of demographic, social, and economic conditions in various ports such as Riga, Arkhangel'sk, St. Petersburg, Odessa, Baku, and Vladivostok.
	Virtual Open House for Admitted REEES MA Students Date: Mar 24, 2022
	REEEC Noontime Scholars Lecture: Yuliya Brel-Fournier, "Belarusian: from the Language Policy Failure to the Language of the New Belarusian Nation" Date: Mar 29, 2022 The Republic of Belarus, which used to be part of the Soviet Union, became an independent state in 1991. It was expected that Belarus would follow the same path in the way of its independent nation-building as the other former Soviet republics, i.e., it would promote its national identity and the use of the national language in the public and private spheres of life. The tentative attempt to introduce a new language policy that stipulated for a gradual switch to Belarusian as the sole state language first seemed quite successful. The referendum of 1995, however, reintroduced the Russian language as the second state language, which in practice meant squeezing Belarusian out of the public sphere, and going back to Belarus being a predominantly Russian-speaking country. The events of August 2020 (presidential election in Belarus and its aftermath) gave rise to a new interest in the Belarusian language. The use of Belarusian in public spaces, together with the white-red-white flag, became a symbol of the fight of the people against the dictatorial regime of President Lukashenko. Since the authorities in Belarus perceived the use of Belarusian and demonstration of the opposition flag as ideological threats to the regime, speaking the language and displaying the flag became the reason for severe repercussions against Belarusian citizens. It could be argued that that the new language policy of the 1990s failed because the national identity of Belarusians was still in its infancy by the time the Soviet Union collapsed. With the Russian language remaining the medium of urban dwellers’ communication and a means of upward social mobility since the times of the tsarist empire, the value of being fluent in Belarusian continued to be questionable for most of the Belarusian population. However, the egregious rigging of the voting results, the brutal crackdown on protesters, as well as on civil society and independent mass media after the election of 2020, created a new vision of the Belarusian nation: the one united by history, memory, traditions, ancient symbols, and the Belarusian language in its struggle for freedom and democracy.
	HRI Russia and the Global Color Line Lecture: Rossen Djagalov, "The End of the Affair: Reflecting on the Ruins of Soviet-Third-World Engagements" Date: Mar 29, 2022 The end of the Soviet bloc has been typically figured as a moment of opening for its citizens. Iconic images of Berlin youth breaking through the Wall (or Muscovities lining up for the first McDonald's) stand in for this new openness. However, such an account would only be true if we limit ourselves to the bloc's Western borders. From the point of view of "the East"--the numerous African and Asian societies with which the Soviet bloc engaged--1989 or 1991 was a moment of the Second World's (self-)provincialization, the near-total severing of cultural networks leading to anywhere but the West. Beyond offering an inventory of the ruins of these once-vibrant engagements, this talk will historicize one of their important legacies, namely, the racism of the contemporary Russian and East European intelligentsias. It emerged among certain anti-Soviet dissident millieus, as a negation of the official anti-racist propaganda, the support for Third-Worldist (Vietnamese, Palestinian, Angolan, etc.) forces or the Civil Rights movement in the U.S., and even the workings of Soviet affirmative action. This backlash built upon an older civilizational hierarchies (whose more innocent manifestations have been studied in recent scholarship as "the imaginary West"), in which the East or the South figured as backward spaces best avoided.
	Christina Crawford – “Spatial Revolution in Soviet Ukraine: Kharkiv, 1930 Date: Mar 30, 2022 Illinois Ricker Library has pulled together some publications and videos on our lecture guest. Please visit this link to view. Christina E. Crawford is an architectural and urban historian, a trained architect, and assistant professor of architectural history at Emory University, whose research focuses on the transnational exchange of ideas about housing and urban form in the twentieth century. Her research and publications have been supported the American Council of Learned Societies, the Getty Foundation, the Graham Foundation, and the College Art Association, among other institutions. She is the author of Spatial Revolution: Architecture and Planning in the Early Soviet Union (Cornell University Press, 2022), and co-editor of Detroit-Moscow-Detroit: An Architecture for Industrialization, 1917-1945 (MIT Press, 2023). She serves on the board of the Society of Historians of Eastern European, Eurasian and Russian Art and Architecture (SHERA).
	ACDIS Teach-in: Ukraine “The Military Situation in Ukraine and its Implications for Nuclear Security and Safety" Date: Mar 31, 2022 Speakers: Professor Nicholas Grossman, Political Science. Professor Tomasz Kozlowski, NPRE. Professor Frederick Lamb, Physics. Dr. Grossman will assess the current military situation in Ukraine, including the history of the conflict, Russian and Ukrainian military objectives, strategic goals and tactics used, the importance of Western military support, possible reasons for Russia's slow progress, and the consequences that this conflict can entail. Dr. Kozlowski will summarize the nuclear industry in Ukraine, state the risks of conventional warfare to the safe operation of nuclear facilities, describe the impact of a possible nuclear accident caused by the war, and what can be done to uphold nuclear safety during the war. Dr. Lamb will cover nuclear security in Europe in light of Russia’s war on Ukraine, including a summary of the past nuclear disarmament in Ukraine, the history of the Budapest Memorandum, broader implications of the war for non-proliferation efforts, stated Russian concerns of possible nuclear armed missiles in Ukraine, and if a new Intermediate-Range Nuclear Force Treaty could contribute to the resolution of the conflict. Part of IGI's series “Russia’s War on Ukraine"
	Insulted. Belarus(sia) Date: Mar 31, 2022 Spurlock Museum is hosting a screening of Andrei Kureichik’s Insulted. Belarus(sia), with a following talkback with Andrei Kureichik, George A Miller Visiting Artist, and Dr. Maria Ignatieva, OSU. Hosted by: Department of Theatre and Russia, East European and Eurasian Center; US Department of Education Title VI NRC program In conjunction with: Department of Dance, Department of history, Department of Journalism, Department of Religion, Department of Slavic Languages & Literatures, European Union Center, Humanities Research Institute (HRI), Illinois Global Institute (IGI), INNER VOICES Social Theatre program, Krannert Art Museum, Krannert Center for the Performing Ares, Spurlock Museum
	Discussion/Q&A with a Scholar/Journalist Currently in the Eastern European Region Date: Apr 1, 2022 This is a discussion and Q&A on the war in Ukraine with a scholar/journalist based in the region. Registration will be capped at 50. If you would like to share questions in advance, please email them to eucenter@illinois.edu.
	Ukrainian Music Hour with WEFT Date: Apr 6, 2022 Join us on Wednesday, April 6th at 2:05pm (CDT) for a special hour of Ukrainian popular music on WEFT 90.1 FM’s weekly beat blender, featuring works by Ukrainian pop, hip hop, and EDM artists, as well as informal conversation with REEEC grad student and Ukrainian music specialist, Melissa Bialecki Miller. Listen via radio in Champaign at 90.1FM, or online at http://new.weft.org/listen/ The show will also be available on an on-demand basis via Spintron for 14 days after airing at http://new.weft.org/spins/
	Legal Humanities Lecture: Anthony Ray Hinton Date: Apr 13, 2022 Anthony Ray Hinton from the Equal Justice Initiative will deliver a public lecture. Hinton spent more than 30 years on death row in Alabama for a crime he didn't commit, before being exonerated by a legal team led by Bryan Stevenson. His story was featured in the film "Just Mercy." Hinton is also the author of The Sun Does Shine: How I found Life, Freedom, and Justice.
	Performing Resistance to Authoritarianism (MillerComm 2022) Date: Apr 14, 2022 Andrei Kureichik, an internationally celebrated theatre artist and filmmaker from Belarus, had to flee the country following the brutal crackdown against the pro-democracy opposition in August 2020. His play, Insulted. Belarus(sia), a documentary-style play written in exile about the fraudulent Belarusian elections and violent suppression of dissent, was presented over 120 times worldwide (from Hong Kong, Nigeria, across the EU, the UK, and North America) in 21 languages from Sept. 2020-Aug. 2021. Many professional and academic performance groups around the world found the work resonant with their own concerns about diminishing democracy, police brutality and State violence, and disinformation campaigns. In this talk, Kureichik will discuss the ways he has leveraged his writing in exile to help mobilize citizens fighting for democratic freedoms and to bring international awareness to human rights violations. As Freedom House reported, 2020 marked a 15-year democratic decline which has only accelerated around the globe. Political rights and civil liberties in all regime types have been deteriorating, and “ethnic, religious, and other minority groups have borne the brunt of government abuses in both democracies and authoritarian states” (https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2020/leaderless-struggle-democracy). Kureichik offers ways to use art as a means of combatting these abuses, building solidarity, and raising awareness of global democratic decline.
	2022 Slavic Graduate Student Association Conference: "Shifting Grounds: Changing Models of Nature in the Former Soviet Sphere" Date: Apr 15, 2022 This interdisciplinary conference is intended to explore the movement of disparate models of nature as they circulate through and coalesce into larger ideas about Post-Soviet and Eurasian existence. Political models of nature found in Soviet ecology hold continued relevance in our current age: any study of Eurasian histories or culture reveals itself as cut through by long environmental and geographic shifts. As climate change and environmental injustice takes a toll on Northern indigenous populations, how can we synthesize these historical threads and point towards new models of Post-Soviet ecologies?
	Midwest Russian History Workshop Date: Apr 15, 2022 Organized by John Randolph and Jacob Spinger. Friday, April 15, 4:00 PM-7:00 PM Saturday, April 16, 9:00 AM-5:00 PM
	International Careers with the U.S. Government Date: Apr 18, 2022 Meet with panelists from Peace Corps, the State Department, U.S. Agency for International Development, Foreign Agriculture Service and U.S. Commercial Service to learn about opportunities for living and working abroad.
	IGI Series on Global Responsibilities: Russia's War on Ukraine \| A Conversation with Illinois Alumnus Journalist Terrell Jermaine Starr Date: Apr 19, 2022 Please join the Russian, East European, and Eurasian Center as we welcome alumnus journalist Terrell Jermaine Starr for a Q&A session. In-person: Auditorium, Campus Instructional Facility, 1405 Springfield Ave, Urbana Online (Zoom webinar): https://go.illinois.edu/QAWithTerrellJermaineStarr This event is free and open to the public. Sponsored by Russia, East European, and Eurasian Center. Co-sponsored by Illinois Global Institute, Department of African American Studies, Department of Journalism, College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, The Offices of the Provost and Chancellor
	Performing Resistance to Authoritarianism with Andrei Kureichik Date: Apr 21, 2022 Andrei Kureichik, an internationally celebrated theatre artist and filmmaker from Belarus, had to flee the country following the brutal crackdown against the pro-democracy opposition in August 2020. His play, Insulted. Belarus(sia), a documentary-style play written in exile about the fraudulent Belarusian elections and violent suppression of dissent, was presented over 120 times worldwide (from Hong Kong, Nigeria, across the EU, the UK, and North America) in 21 languages from Sept. 2020-Aug. 2021. Many professional and academic performance groups around the world found the work resonant with their own concerns about diminishing democracy, police brutality and State violence, and disinformation campaigns. In this talk, Kureichik will discuss the ways he has leveraged his writing in exile to help mobilize citizens fighting for democratic freedoms and to bring international awareness to human rights violations. As Freedom House reported, 2020 marked a 15-year democratic decline which has only accelerated around the globe. Political rights and civil liberties in all regime types have been deteriorating, and “ethnic, religious, and other minority groups have borne the brunt of government abuses in both democracies and authoritarian states. Kureichik offers ways to use art as a means of combatting these abuses, building solidarity, and raising awareness of global democratic decline.
	REEEC New Directions Lecture: Neringa Klumbyte, "Authoritarian Laughter: Political Humor and Soviet Dystopia in Lithuania" Date: Apr 21, 2022 While we do not usually think of laughter as a tool of statecraft and social engineering, the Soviet authorities did. In the Soviet Union, official satire and humor had to serve the Communist Party and involve people in co-governance of the regime. By focusing on the Soviet Lithuanian satire and humor magazine Broom, Professor Klumbytė explores how the Soviet project of laughter was implemented in Lithuania in late socialism. She argues that Soviet Lithuanian laughter was multidirectional, ideologically correct and oppositional. Intrinsic ambiguity of humor, artists’ and writers’ transgressions, absence of clearly articulated ideological censorship rules, critical audiences, and changing cultural landscapes shaped multidirectional laughter in late socialism. Soviet Lithuanian official satire and humor increasingly created dystopian visions of Soviet modernity and were a forum for a critical public that was mobilized in anti-Soviet revolutionary laughter in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Neringa Klumbytė is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Russian and Post-Soviet Studies and Director of the Lithuania Program at the Havighurst Center for Russian and Post-Soviet Studies, Miami University. Her research and teaching interests center on the USSR, Russia and Eastern Europe. Her articles have explored various topics in Soviet or post-Soviet Lithuania, including politics of memory and historical justice, ethnic conflict and nationalism, political participation in authoritarian and democratic regimes, populist electoral politics and nostalgia for socialism, censorship, and political marketing. She is a co-author of Social and Historical Justice in Multiethnic Lithuania (2018, with Monika Frėjutė-Rakauskienė, Andrius Marcinkevičius, and Kristina Šliavaitė, in Lithuanian) and co-editor of Soviet Society in the Era of Late Socialism, 1964–85 (with Gulnaz Sharafutdinova), 2012. Her book Authoritarian Laughter: Political Humor and Soviet Dystopia in Lithuania is forthcoming with Cornell University Press.
	Material Culture and the Armenian Diaspora Date: Apr 25, 2022 Sato Moughalian’s highly-lauded book A Feast of Ashes (2019) gathers family archives together with historical and art historical research to tell the story of Moughalian’s grandfather, David Ohannessian. Moughalian set out in this project to follow the “breadcrumbs” she could find through family stories about the ceramic art her grandfather founded in Jerusalem in 1919. In this talk, she will describe the moving contrasts and echoes she experienced between the legacies inherited from the children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors and the “high-voltage fence” that had blocked off her own family’s legacy of surviving the Armenian genocide.
	For Ukraine: An Artistic Tribute Date: Apr 26, 2022
	Voices of the New Belarus, Play by Andrei Kureichik Date: Apr 28, 2022 George A. Miller Visiting Artist, Playwright Andrei Kureichik will be at KAM for a reading of his play Voices of the New Belarus by University of Illinois performers. Seating is limited for this initial engagement, by invitation only. A future opportunity to screen this performance at KAM will be made available to the general public. The staged reading of exiled playwright Andrei Kureichik’s Voices of the New Belarus, a documentary play about the experiences of political prisoners in Belarus following the fraudulent 2020 Belarusian presidential elections, is an interdisciplinary project featuring performers from across campus. Forced to flee the country following the elections, Kureichik, George A. Miller Visiting Artist, leveraged his creative energy to produce the documentary play, Insulted. Belarus., about the elections, subsequent protests, and violent crackdown by Aliaksandr Lukashenka’s regime in Belarus. The play has been translated into 21 languages and received 120 readings, performances, and films across the globe (including Hong Kong, Nigeria, throughout the EU, UK, and North America). It was featured on BBC Radio’s “The Cultural Frontline,” Russia’s Rain TV, and the HowlRound Theatre Commons. Voices is his second documentary piece about these events, which is gaining international recognition and building a global pro-democracy network of artists and advocates.
	The State of South Caucasus Language Instruction in the U.S.: A Virtual Workshop Date: May 3, 2022 It has become increasingly important and necessary for researchers studying the South Caucasus to know the languages of Armenian, Azerbaijani, and Georgian. Not only can Russian no longer be relied upon as a lingua franca serving as the language of scholarly publication and facilitating communication in-country, but in order to incorporate local perspectives and utilize original source material, students and scholars need to develop a working knowledge of the local languages. Yet learning Armenian, Azerbaijani, and Georgian pose several challenges for U.S. researchers, including access to language courses (particularly in-person or synchronous instruction), sustaining language study that is necessary to reach proficiency, and the potential challenge of studying multiple languages needed for comparative and transnational research. Of the three titular languages of the South Caucasus, Armenian is taught the most regularly, at several types of institutions of higher education (IHE) across the country, but is still limited in reach and support compared to other Less Commonly Taught Languages (LCTLs) and is also divided between Eastern and Western instruction, with the latter now considered by many an endangered language. Azerbaijani and Georgian are only offered irregularly and intermittently in the U.S. and at fewer institutions, and in the last few years sometimes only at summer institutes. What factors and structures might be behind these low levels of language instruction in the U.S.? What opportunities for development are available to researchers and institutions? Are there actionable steps that we as a community might take to support and facilitate expertise in Armenian, Azerbaijani, and Georgian? This virtual panel brings together instructors of Armenian, Azerbaijani, and Georgian with researchers, educators, and administrators to discuss the state of South Caucasus language instruction in the U.S. The language instructors will first share their experiences and perspectives and the discussion will then be opened up to all participants to discuss the challenges, opportunities, and future direction of language instruction.
	REEEC Spring Reception 2022 Date: May 5, 2022 Please join us at 5:00 pm on May 5th for the REEEC Spring Reception in the Lucy Ellis Lounge of the Foreign Languages Building. We will celebrate the end of the spring semester, connect with members of our REEEC community, celebrate graduating students and their achievements, and look ahead to the rest of the year. Refreshments will be served. All are welcome!
	Russian, E. European & Eurasian Center: Films Date: May 11, 2022 This is a filmed version of the reading of Voices of the New Belarus at KAM featuring many faculty, students and alumni from across campus.
	Andrei Kureichik Talk Date: May 12, 2022 Andrei Kureichik will be giving a talk at The Literary. More details TBA.
	REEES Policy Research Roundtable: Russia-Ukraine War Date: Jun 8, 2022 Join the Slavic Reference Service on June 8 at 2:00 p.m. CST for a roundtable discussion on policy research and projects related to the Russia-Ukraine War. Panelists for the discussion include David Satter of the Hudson Institute, Dr. Paul Stronski of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Dina Spechler of Indiana University, Bloomington.

Fall 2021

Fall 2021 Events

	REEEC New Directions Lecture: Amanda Gregg, "Beyond 'Backwardness': New Research on Firms in Imperial Russia" Date: Sep 30, 2021 Firms in Imperial Russia faced institutional barriers to firm formation and a relatively small financial sector, yet Russian industry grew rapidly around the turn of the twentieth century. This talk presents results from several studies using newly collected firm-level and corporation-level data from the Russian Empire that reconcile the dynamism of the Russian industrial economy with remaining obstacles, thus permitting a more nuanced assessment of economic development under the Tsars. Amanda Gregg is an Assistant Professor in the Middlebury College Department of Economics, which she joined in the fall of 2015 after completing her Ph.D. in Economics at Yale University. Her fields of study are economic history and economic development, and her research concerns industrial development, productivity, and commercial law in Late Imperial Russia. Recent publications include “Factory Productivity and the Concession System of Incorporation in Late Imperial Russia" in the American Economic Review and “Capital Structure and Corporate Performance in Late Imperial Russia” with Steven Nafziger in the European Review of Economic History.
	ASEEES - Pitt Intersectionality in Focus Series: "Addressing Intersectionality Through Course Design" Date: Oct 8, 2021 The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed and exacerbated pre-existing institutional, structural, and systemic discrimination and inequality in societies across the world. Furthermore, continued campaigns against gender and LGBTQ equity in Eastern Europe and Eurasia, racism in the United States, and the social protest movements that rose in response to such exclusionary projects have reinforced calls for intersectional approaches in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (SEEES). Class, ethnicity and race, dis/ability, gender and sexuality, and other identity markers interweave to produce inequality differently in Eastern Europe and Eurasia than in the Americas or Western Europe. Yet, it is these very differences that provide a rich ground for intellectual conversations in our field.
	REEEC New Directions Lecture: Sunnie Rucker-Chang, "The Chinese in Serbia as 'Perpetual Foreigners'" Date: Oct 14, 2021 The novel phenomenon of the Chinese in Serbia, a community that Professor Rucker-Chang once termed “transitory” and a “vastly different Other” (Rucker-Chang, 2012), has endured in both urban and rural settings in Serbia for over 20 years (Korać, 2013). With China’s “rise” (Bergsten et al. 2008), the transnational associations with “China” and “Chinese” continue to change and reflect an outward manifestation of the reach of Chinese power. Nevertheless, in Serbia, the Chinese remain outsiders and primarily defined by the categories of migrant, merchant, and student—therefore transitory. To explore the position of the Chinese in Serbia, Professor Rucker-Chang engages with the Asian American Studies concept of “perpetual foreigner.” Situating the term in Serbia reveals important insights into regional racial formations as they relate to the position of the Chinese community. In turn, this concept also provides insights into the situatedness of other groups such as those who are called “Black” as opposed to those who remain unmarked, ostensibly the “Serbs.” Sunnie Rucker-Chang is Associate Professor of Slavic and East European Studies at the University of Cincinnati where she is also on the leadership team of the Institute for Research in Sensing and Program Director of UC STARTALK Workforce Media Development and Year-Long Russian Immersion Programs.
	ASEEES - Pitt Intersectionality in Focus Series: "Challenges and Creative Practices in the Classroom" Date: Oct 15, 2021 The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed and exacerbated pre-existing institutional, structural, and systemic discrimination and inequality in societies across the world. Furthermore, continued campaigns against gender and LGBTQ equity in Eastern Europe and Eurasia, racism in the United States, and the social protest movements that rose in response to such exclusionary projects have reinforced calls for intersectional approaches in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (SEEES). Class, ethnicity and race, dis/ability, gender and sexuality, and other identity markers interweave to produce inequality differently in Eastern Europe and Eurasia than in the Americas or Western Europe. Yet, it is these very differences that provide a rich ground for intellectual conversations in our field.
	ASEEES - Pitt Intersectionality in Focus Series: "Queer Studies" Date: Oct 22, 2021 The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed and exacerbated pre-existing institutional, structural, and systemic discrimination and inequality in societies across the world. Furthermore, continued campaigns against gender and LGBTQ equity in Eastern Europe and Eurasia, racism in the United States, and the social protest movements that rose in response to such exclusionary projects have reinforced calls for intersectional approaches in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (SEEES). Class, ethnicity and race, dis/ability, gender and sexuality, and other identity markers interweave to produce inequality differently in Eastern Europe and Eurasia than in the Americas or Western Europe. Yet, it is these very differences that provide a rich ground for intellectual conversations in our field.
	ASEEES - Pitt Intersectionality in Focus Series: "Imperial Pasts in the Present: Affect, Indigeneity, and Memory" Date: Oct 29, 2021 The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed and exacerbated pre-existing institutional, structural, and systemic discrimination and inequality in societies across the world. Furthermore, continued campaigns against gender and LGBTQ equity in Eastern Europe and Eurasia, racism in the United States, and the social protest movements that rose in response to such exclusionary projects have reinforced calls for intersectional approaches in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (SEEES). Class, ethnicity and race, dis/ability, gender and sexuality, and other identity markers interweave to produce inequality differently in Eastern Europe and Eurasia than in the Americas or Western Europe. Yet, it is these very differences that provide a rich ground for intellectual conversations in our field.
	REEEC Noontime Scholars Lecture: Yuri Frantsuz, "The Impact of Sociopolitical Instabilities on Demographic Behavior: The Case Study of USSR/Russia" Date: Nov 2, 2021 The problem of short-term fluctuations in fertility has yet to receive an unambiguous and adequate explanation. Some of the short-term fluctuations in fertility could be related to various societal instabilities. Dr. Frantsuz attempts to investigate the impact of sociopolitical instability on fertility by developing a model linking macro-level instability with its perceptions as uncertainty at micro-level that, in turn, impact decision-making on fertility outcomes. This model is based on a modified version of the rational choice-based uncertainty reduction theory. According to the uncertainty reduction theory, higher fertility rates may counterintuitively reflect people’s effort to reduce uncertainty at periods of higher instability. Dr. Frantsuz tests and partially confirms this hypothesis by the application of an APC analysis to fertility data from Soviet and post-Soviet Russia from 1959 through 1998, a period marked by various kinds of instability. The model helps to explain some of the sudden short-term fluctuations in fertility during the period of research that other social and demographic theories failed to interpret. These findings have led to certain suggestions in refining the uncertainty reduction theory. Furthermore, the model relates various types, intensities, and magnitudes of instabilities to fertility outcomes. Yuri Frantsuz is a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at the University of New Mexico and a Research Fellow at the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He is also a faculty member at the Smolny College of Liberal Arts and Science and the St. Petersburg University of Humanities and Social Sciences. He received his PhD in Sociology from the University of Minnesota. His areas of research interest include social and political demography, sociology of health, and social inequality and health.
	REEEC New Directions Lecture: Krista Goff, "The Possibilities and Challenges of Oral History Methodology in the History of the Caucasus" Date: Nov 11, 2021 Krista Goff will discuss what can be gained through oral history methodology, as well as related ethical, practical, and research concerns. Goff has conducted more than 100 oral histories in Azerbaijan, Dagestan, Georgia, and Moscow, and will draw on these experiences and excerpts from her new book, Nested Nationalism: Making and Unmaking Nations in the Soviet Caucasus, in this talk. Krista Goff is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Miami and co-editor of the journal Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History. She specializes in the study of nationalism, empire, ethnic conflict, oral history, and the North and South Caucasus. She is the author of Nested Nationalism: Making and Unmaking Nations in the Soviet Caucasus and co-editor of Empire and Belonging in the Eurasian Borderlands.
	REEEC Noontime Scholars Lecture: Nora Webb Williams, "Colonial Policy, Social Trust, and Economic Resilience: The Long-Term Impacts of Imperial Russian Settlement in Southern Kazakhstan" Date: Nov 30, 2021 Social trust is a driver of many important political and economic processes and outcomes, including democracy and economic development. In this project, Professor Webb Williams asks two questions about social trust: How do colonial legacies shape social trust? And how does the level and type of social trust present in a community affect the resilience that community will demonstrate in the face of unexpected disasters? She addresses these two questions by analyzing the politics, economics, and history of Kazakhstan. Bringing to bear a wide variety of data sources, including historical records, surveys, images shared on social media, nighttime lights satellite imagery, and interviews, she finds that geographic patterns of social trust in southern Kazakhstan are linked to Imperial Russian policy decisions about colonial settlement. In Almaty oblast, where 19th and early 20th century colonial settlement was relatively intense compared to neighboring Jambyl oblast and was coupled with higher rates of Kazakh land displacement, she finds lower rates of social trust in formal state institutions in the early 21^st century. Those social trust patterns also map on to variation in rural village resilience after the collapse of the Soviet Union. On average, communities in Almaty oblast, with lower vertical trust, were better able to rebound after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.
	FLAS Information Session Date: Nov 30, 2021 Information session for students interested in applying for 2022-2023 FLAS will be held in two sections. Virtual Session I will be Monday, November 15, 2021, from 4:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. CT. Virtual Session II will be Tuesday, November 30, 2021, from 4:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. CT. Undergraduate and graduate students are welcome at either session. Both sessions will be recorded if you are unable to attend at the appropriate time. To register for Virtual Session 1, please visit: https://go.illinois.edu/FLAS2022-23InfoSession1 To register for Virtual Session 2, please visit: https://go.illinois.edu/FLAS2022-23InfoSession2 Topics of discussion include eligibility and requirements, walking through the application, and answering questions about the application process and the fellowship. FLAS Coordinators from individual Centers will be in attendance and available to the students for questions and discussion in break-out sessions after the main presentation.
	Turkish Program Event: Popular Turkish Cinema as a Consensus Narrative Date: Dec 1, 2021 Join the Turkish Program for a lecture by Dr. Mesut Bostan on "Popular Turkish Cinema as a Consensus Narrative". Event link: https://tinyurl.com/2vxrva7b
	REEEC Winter Reception 2021 Date: Dec 9, 2021 Please join us at 4:00 pm on December 9th for the REEEC Winter Reception in room 210 of the Levis Faculty Center. We will celebrate the end of the fall semester, connect with members of our REEEC community, and look ahead to 2022. Refreshments will be served. All are welcome!

Summer 2021

Summer 2021 Events

	Freedom of the Press at the Borders of Europe: Turkey and the Mediterranean (2021 Turkish Studies Symposium) Date: Jun 28, 2021 The European Union Center's 14th annual Turkish Studies Symposium, "Freedom of the Press at the Borders of Europe: Turkey and the Mediterranean," brings together three journalists who have reported extensively on migrants and refugees in Turkey and beyond to discuss the state of the freedom of the press in Turkey and the Mediterranean today.
	VSRL Dissertation Research Discussion Date: Jul 7, 2021 Please join the Slavic Reference Service on Wednesday, July 7 at 2pm CDT for our Dissertation Research Discussion. This event is a part of our peering mentoring program for students in REEES, and will feature an informal presentation by current REEES PhD candidates on their research.
	VSRL Meet the Editors and Publishers Date: Jul 9, 2021 Are you interested in publishing your manuscript? Meet with editors and publishers to discuss the publishing process. They will be offering tips and suggestions to prepare your manuscript for publication.
	A Woman's Work is Never Done: Female Life and Labor across the Imperial, Soviet and Post-Soviet Eras Date: Jul 10, 2021 - Jul 11, 2021 The politics surrounding women's labor in the Russian and Soviet space have long fascinated scholars. Historically, women's activism for professional, political, and educational equality in the region has been strikingly checkered and, in some ways, more extreme in terms of setbacks and successes, than in the west.
	VSRL Fisher Fellow Brown Bag Lecture: Andrey Shlyakhter, "Backs to the USSR: Explaining the Growth of the Soviet Border Guard, 1917-1939" Date: Jul 13, 2021 By the eve of the Second World War, the Soviet Union boasted the world's most stringent system of border control, successfully established along the world's longest border. Indeed, the consensus is that "the Soviet Union created one of the most effective border systems in terms of holding its people in that any country had ever constructed."
	Media Culture in Balkan and Eurasian Muslim Communities Date: Jul 15, 2021 - Jul 16, 2021 This workshop will explore recent changes in media, media literacy, communications, and publishing in contemporary Muslim communities across the East European and Eurasian region, and how these changes affect sociopolitical trends, personal beliefs and identities.
	UIUC IGI Summer 2021 Global Educators Workshop: "Education in Uncertain Times: How to Prepare for the New Normal Around the World" Date: Jul 20, 2021 - Jul 22, 2021 UIUC IGI Summer 2021 Global Educator Workshop - 3 days of round-table discussions around the context of migration, education, and health with the theme of "Education in Uncertain Times: How to Prepare for the New Normal Around the World"
	VSRL Fisher Fellow Brown Bag Lecture: Kristina Poznan, "The U.S. Census, the Paris Settlement, and the Forging of Eastern European Ethnic Categories and Immigration Quotas: An Exercise in 'Guesswork'" Date: Jul 21, 2021 After the First World War, two factors drastically changed how Eastern Europeans might migrate to America: first, new geopolitical borders in the region, outlined in the Paris Settlement treaties; and second, restrictive immigration legislation in the United States.
	Spurlock Museum Family Program: "Wooden Treasures: Instruments and Toys of the Caucasus Region" Date: Jul 25, 2021 Among the items in the touchables area will be examples of hand-carved toys with parts that move. One of the most popular figures on these toys are bears, a favorite in Russian fairy tales.

Spring 2021

Fall 2020

Fall 2020 Events

	On a Personal Note: A Conversation with Violinists Yulia Ziskel & Joe Deninzon Date: Aug 31, 2020 A conversation about their journey from their Russian-Jewish roots to current positions and relationship with Jewishness/ Judaism and how that has evolved over the years.
	Race and Racism in Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies: A Roundtable Date: Sep 3, 2020 As a Kickoff Event for this year's New Directions Series, the Russian, East European, and Eurasian Center invites you to join a roundtable discussion on the role of race and racism in our region and scholarly field.
	Area Studies Showcase Lecture Series: Rawi Abdelal (Harvard University), "Imagining the Next Global Economy" Date: Sep 15, 2020 There is no going back to the beginning. The emerging global economy will not resemble the system that came before. That pre-pandemic system was already fragile. Now we have an opportunity to imagine a new global economy.
	REEEC New Directions Lecture: Emily Wang and Korey Garibaldi, "Interrogating the Declining Significance of Pushkin's Blackness: Henry James, Ivan Turgenev, and Literary Nationalism" Date: Sep 17, 2020 Though most scholarship on Pushkin's reception in the United States focuses on twentieth-century African American literature, the origins of this encounter remain poorly understood. In fact, nineteenth-century commentators on both sides of the Atlantic were obsessed with Pushkin's racial heritage-as both a Russian, and as a canonical European writer of African descent.
	Area Studies Showcase Lecture Series: Harsha Ram (UC Berkeley), "The Caucasus: From Geopolitics to Geopoetics" Date: Sep 22, 2020 The Caucasus is primarily seen as a contested territory, an interregional space caught between rival empires as well as local polities. At the same time its topographic and ethnolinguistic diversity has captured the imagination of travelers over the centuries.
	The Crisis in Belarus: A Discussion with Natalya Chernyshova Date: Sep 25, 2020 Dr. Natalya Chernyshova is Senior Lecturer in Modern History at the University of Winchester. She specializes in late Soviet history, with a focus on Belarus, and is the author of Soviet Consumer Culture in the Brezhnev Era (Routledge, 2013).
	Area Studies Showcase Lecture Series: David Cooper (University of Illinois), "Anatomy of a Successful Forgery: The Czech Manuscripts" Date: Sep 29, 2020 For over five decades from the moment of their appearance in 1817 and 1818, the Queen's Court and Green Mountain Manuscripts were considered by the vast majority of the international scholarly community to be genuine monuments of medieval Czech literature.
	Insulted. Belarus(sia) Play Reading Date: Oct 1, 2020 You are invited to an Illinois Theatre Zoom Reading for the UIUC community of the new play Insulted. Belarus(sia) by Andrei Kureichik about the current events taking place in Belarus.
	Weapons of Mass Destruction - Proliferation: Challenges, Opportunities & Careers Date: Oct 1, 2020 The international community faces no shortage of challenges when it comes to preventing the spread of nuclear weapons. The crisis in US-Russia relations, the slow pace of nuclear disarmarment, the future of North Korea's nuclear weapons program, and the emergence of new technologies with military applications - theses are just a few of the issues that nuclear policy professionals are working to address today.
	The Global and Its Worlds Lecture: Arjun Appadurai (New York University), "The Volatile Market for Globalization" Date: Oct 2, 2020 In this presentation, titled "The Volatile Market for Globalization," Professor Arjun Appadurai will address the recent debates about the rebirth of the nation-state in the era of pandamic disease, and about whether globalization is about to be rolled back or marginalized.
	ASEEES - Pitt Race in Focus Series: Webinar - Teaching about Race and Racism: Your Syllabus 2.0 Date: Oct 2, 2020 This event is part of the series "Race in Focus: From Critical Pedagogies to Research Practice and Public Engagement in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies." This series is designed to elevate conversations about teaching on race and continued disparities in our field while also bringing research by scholars and/or on communities of color to the center stage.
	Area Studies Showcase Lecture Series: Sarah Phillips (Indiana University), "American Literary and Cultural Diplomacy during during the Cold War: Kurt Vonnegut in the USSR" Date: Oct 7, 2020 This talk explores a fascinating yet little-known chapter in the history of literary and cultural diplomacy during the Cold War - the popularity of the American author Kurt Vonnegut in the Soviet Union during the 1970s.
	2020 Baltic Sea Region Forum Date: Oct 8, 2020 The Baltic Sea Region is home to nine countries that represent numerous cultures and societies. Through interdisciplinary scholarly discussions, the Slavic Reference Service seeks to highlight original research and facilitate thematic discussions on the countries of this world region.
	HRI Medical Humanities Event: "Global Spread: COVID in the World" (Roundtable on Zoom) Date: Oct 8, 2020 Speakers include Professors Maimouna Barro (African Studies), Rini Bhattachyra (Comparative and World Literature), Shao Dan (East Asian Languages and Cultures), Jerry Davila (Illinois Global Institute), Linda Herrera (Education Policy), Emanuel Rota (European Union Center), Valeria Sobol (Slavic Languages and Literatures), and Robert Tierney (East Asian Languages and Cultures).
	ASEEES - Pitt Race in Focus Series: Webinar - Engaging with Race and Racism in the Classroom Date: Oct 9, 2020 This event is part of the series "Race in Focus: From Critical Pedagogies to Research Practice and Public Engagement in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies." This series is designed to elevate conversations about teaching on race and continued disparities in our field while also bringing research by scholars and/or on communities of color to the center stage.
	Area Studies Showcase Lecture Series: Jessica Robbins (Wayne State University), "Aging Nationally in Contemporary Poland: Memory, Kinship, and Personhood" Date: Oct 14, 2020 Active aging programs that encourage older adults to practice health-promoting behaviors are proliferating worldwide. In Poland, the meanings and ideals of these programs have become caught up in the socialcultural and political-economic changes that have occured during the lifetimes of the oldest generations - most visibly, the transition from socialism to capitalism.
	REEC New Directions Lecture: Diana Kurkovsky West, "From 'Big Data' Socialism to Digital Utopianism: Lessons from the Soviet Past for the Post-Covid-19 Future" Date: Oct 15, 2020 Diana Kurkovsky West received her Ph.D. from the Princeton University School of Architecture, and has served as a Postdoctoral Fellow in Science and Human Culture at Northwestern University and Director of Science and Technology Studies Center at the European University at St. Petersburg, Russia.
	ASEEES - Pitt Race in Focus Series: Lightning Round - Emerging Scholars of Color Abroad Date: Oct 16, 2020 This event is part of the series "Race in Focus: From Critical Pedagogies to Research Practice and Public Engagement in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies."
	The Conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh: A Conversation Date: Oct 16, 2020 Professors Anna Ohanyan and Erik Herron will address what is most important to know about the current conflict surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh, and also how we should understand it in relation to larger patterns of conflict across the post-Soviet space (and the world more generally) today.
	IGI International Music & Dance Event Date: Oct 19, 2020 This event is organized by the Illinois Global Institute's area studies centers as part of Illinois International Week 2020 (Oct. 19-23).
	Nina Jankowicz, "How to Lose the Information War: Lessons from Central and Eastern Europe" Date: Oct 20, 2020 The Kremlin, as well as other state actors and far-right groups, divide and deceive populations around the world using social media and other online warfare tactics. The Western world has finally begun to wake up to this threat, but Central and Eastern European states have been aware, and reacting, for years.
	Museums During COVID-19 Date: Oct 21, 2020 Since the COVID-29 outbreak, museums from around the world have developed strategies to offset the impact of the global pandemic on funding, programs, and services as well as curation of collections.
	International Literature Discussion Date: Oct 21, 2020 Fiction in the time of a pandemic? The Slavic Reference Service is holding its second International Literature discussion on Oct. 21st at 12:00 P.M. (CST)
	Area Studies Showcase Lecture Series: Chelsi West Ohueri (UT Austin), "Outsiders, Others, and Outcasts: Examining antiziganism and race-making in Albania" Date: Oct 21, 2020 In this lecture, Professor West Ohueri explores the contours of antiziganism, conceptualized as racism and prejudice against Romani people groups, in Albania and the Balkan region. Part one of the presentation considers the theoretical framings of antiziganism and asks how analyses of antiblackness can allow scholars to think through contemporary manifestations of antiziganism in the Balkan region.
	Illinois Global Institute Career Day Date: Oct 23, 2020 Current and recent graduate students are invited to a career diversity day focusing on using foreign language, area studies, and thematic studies in the job market.
	Are European Human Rights and Rule of Law in Crisis?: Roundtable and Discussion Date: Oct 27, 2020 Join us for a roundtable and discussion about different challenges to human rights and rule of law in contemporary Europe.
	Area Studies Showcase Lecture Series: Marianne Kamp (Indiana University), "Jobs for Orphans, Taxes for Kulaks, and Love of Tractors: Collectivization Oral Histories from Uzbekistan" Date: Oct 28, 2020 This lecture series is a collaborative effort to showcase an area studies specialist from each center focusing on the Russian, East European, and Central Asian world region.
	Slavic Story Time Date: Nov 1, 2020 At this story time, enjoy Patricia Polacco's Luba and the Wren. Luba, a young girl, rescues a wren who can grant wishes. Once her parents learn of this, they make Luba ask the wren for more and more.
	D.I.N.E: Diversity & Inclusion Networking Exchange Date: Nov 4, 2020 Engage with employers who value diversity in the workplace. Practice networking with company representatives in a virtual setting. Hear what employers look for in new hires. Learn what questions you can ask to determine if an organization meets your needs.
	75 Years After Hiroshima: A New Nuclear Arms Race? Date: Nov 4, 2020 On Auguest 6 and 9, 1945, over 120,000 people were killed by the atomic bombs dropped over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Decade by decade, the billions of people at risk from direct and indirect effects of nuclear war continue to grow.
	Area Studies Showcase Lecture Series: Maria Sonevytsky (UC Berkeley), "Musical Evolution and The Other: State-Sponsored Musical Evolutionism in the USSR and the Conundrum of Post-Soviet Crimean Tatar Indigenous Music" Date: Nov 5, 2020 In the Soviet Union, logics of teleological evalutionism undergirded the Communist party-state's interventions into many aspects of Soviet life, including the realm of "folk music." In this lecture, Professor Sonevytsky draws on the example of the Soviet institutionalization of a Crimean Tatar folk orchestra to demonstrate how Soviet musical evolutionism ordered and constrained vernacular musical practices in ways that have had long-term political consequences, especially with regard to the politics of post-Soviet indigeneity.
	Legacies of WWII: 75 Years After Date: Nov 5, 2020 The Department of History and Phi Alpha Theta are hosting a special panel commemorating 75 years since the end of the Second World War on Thursday.
	Graduate Student Workshop: "Writing Effective Fellowship Proposals" Date: Nov 6, 2020 These events are free and open to any University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Graduate Student.
	Info Session on Joint MA/REEES and MS/LIS Program at Illinois Date: Nov 10, 2020 This information session will be led by John Randolph (Director, Russian, East European, and Eurasian Center) and Moises Orozco Villicana (Director of Enrollment Management, iSchool).
	75 Years After Hiroshima: A New Nuclear Arms Race? Date: Nov 11, 2020 On August 6 and 9, 1945, over 120,000 people were killed by the atomic bombs dropped over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Decade by decade, the billions of people at risk from direct and indirect effects of nuclear war continue to grow.
	The New Speed of Politics: Technology and Sustainability in the EU Date: Nov 12, 2020 Countries of the European Union have collectively offered a leading global voice on the use of technology for local and planetary sustainability. This panel brings together two Former Members of the European Parliament with comparative experience in urban politics and corporate governance, from experience in the national politics of older and newer member states.
	Area Studies Showcase Lecture Series: Trevor Erlacher (University of Pittsburgh), "Ukrainian Nationalism in the Age of Extremes" Date: Nov 12, 2020 This lecture series is a collaborative effort to showcase an area studies specialist from each center focusing on the Russian, East European, and Central Asian world region.
	Language Teaching Workshop: "Motivate Your Students with Real-Life Tasks and Scenarios" Date: Nov 12, 2020 This event is co-sponsored by the Russian, East European, and Eurasian Center; European Union Center; Center for East Asian & Pacific Studies; and Center for Global Studies through support from the US Department of Education's Title VI NRC Program.
	FLAS Information Session (Virtual Session I for Undergraduates) Date: Nov 17, 2020 Topics of discussion include eligibility and requirements, walking through the application, and answering questions about the application process and the fellowship. FLAS Coordinators from individual Centers will be in attendance and available to the students for questions and discussion in break-out sessions after the main presentation.
	75 Years After Hiroshima: A New Nuclear Arms Race? Date: Nov 18, 2020 On August 6 and 9, 1945, over 120,000 people were killed by the atomic bombs dropped over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Decade by decade, the billions of people at risk from direct and indirect effects of nuclear war continue to grow.
	Area Studies Showcase Lecture Series: Francine Hirsch (University of Wisconsin), "Soviet Judgment at Nuremberg: Revisiting the International Military Tribunal on its 75th Anniversary" Date: Nov 19, 2020 This lecture series is a collaborative effort to showcase an area studies specialist from each center focusing on the Russian, East European, and Central Asian world region.
	FLAS Information Session (Virtual Session II for Graduate Students) Date: Dec 2, 2020 Topics of discussion include eligibility and requirements, walking through the application, and answering questions about the application process and the fellowship. FLAS Coordinators from individual Centers will be in attendance and available to the students for questions and discussion in break-out sessions after the main presentation.
	Area Studies Showcase Lecture Series: Faith Hillis (University of Chicago), "Utopia's Discontents: Russian Emigres and the Quest for Freedom" Date: Dec 3, 2020 In the last fifry years of the tsarist regime, large and boisterous settlements of Russian exiles emerged across the European continet. Called "Russian colonies" by their residents, these communities hosted the leaders of virtually every revolutionary party and produced most of the illegal literature that circulated in late imperial Russia.
	REEEC Virtual Winter Reception Date: Dec 9, 2020 Please join us on December 9th at 4:30 PM CST for the REEEC Virtual Winter REception. We will be celebrating the end of the fall semester and looking ahead to 2021.
	Area Studies Showcase Lecture Series: Theodora Dragostinova (Ohio State University), "The Cold War from the Margins: Socialist Bulgaria on the Global Cultural Scene" Date: Dec 10, 2020 Presenting Bulgaria's cultural engagements with multiple actors in the Third World, this talk highlights the global reach of state socialism, demonstrates the existence of vibrant partnerships along an East-South axis during the 1970s, and challenges notions of late socialism as the prelude to communist collapse in eastern Europe.