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Fellows and Research Topics 2001-2002

A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N
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A

Name: Ms. Veronica Aplenc
Institution: Graduate Student, University of Pennsylvania, Folklore and Folklife
Country: Slovenia: Ljubljana
Funder: Department of State
Topic: Neither Private nor Public: Women's Domestic Spaces in Socialist Slovenia

Abstract: The 1950s Yugoslav labor camp of Sveti Grgur is today a near non-place in the physical landscape, as well as in the abstract landscape of Slovenian post-socialist views on the recent past. Using oral histories and ethnographic interviews, Aplenc plans to study how Slovenian former inmates interacted with the camp space through the beliefs and practices they created there. In this way, she intends to investigate how the physical space of this reeducation labor camp shaped former women inmates’ personal understandings of gender and citizenship in Tito’s new socialist order.

B

Name: Dr. Laada Bilaniuk
Institution: Assistant Professor, University of Washington, Department of Anthropology  
Country: Ukraine: Kyiv
Funder: Department of State
Topic: Discourses of gender and power in post-Soviet Ukraine

Abstract: This research will focus on gender and language to examine the construction of social identity and power in post-Soviet Ukraine. Her previous research on language politics in Ukraine has revealed that gender is a significant variable, shaping language ideologies, and in this study she will examine the linkages between gender, language, and ethnicity more directly. Bilaniuk will use discourse analysis methods to analyze data collected through taped discussions, interviews, a survey, and by sampling the media.

Name: Mr. Mieczyslaw Boduszynski
Institution: Graduate Student, University of California at Berkeley, Dept. of Political Science          
Country: Croatia: Zagreb
Funder: Department of State
Topic: The International Dimension of Democratization in Croatia

Abstract: Boduszynski’s project posits that democratization in post-communist East Central Europe must be understood with regard to its international dimension and develops this idea through an examination of the way in which various international forces have shaped the conditions in which regime change has occurred in post-communist Croatia. Domestic factors such as socioeconomic preconditions and culture alone do not provide a satisfying explanation of progress and backsliding in democratization given the major role external forces have played during the post-communist period and throughout the history of Croatia. The dependent variable is the process of democratization and its outcome, while the independent variable is the role of various international pressures.

Name: Ms. Martha Bojko
Institution: Graduate Student, University of Connecticut, Anthropology  
Country: Ukraine: Uzhhorod
Funder: Department of State
Topic: Young Women at Risk: Sexuality at a Time of Transition in Ukraine

Abstract: The purpose of this ethnographic research project is to assess the sexual adaptation and sexual risk of young women in Uzhhorod, Ukraine in the context of the changing political, social, and economic realities of Ukrainian society. The project proposes using a mix of qualitative and quantitative data collection methods to understand sexuality as a part of a young woman’s current position and future life aspirations within a transitional society and to identify and describe the nature and types of relationships that young women are forming to achieve their future goals. Understanding the dynamics of these relationships within specific cultural settings will assist in the development of appropriate women’s social and health policies and in the design and delivery of intervention programs, STD and HIV prevention efforts, and health care services focusing on young women.

Name: Ms. Kara Brown
Institution: Graduate Student, Indiana University, Education Policy 
Country: Estonia: Voru, Tartu, Tallinn
Funder: Department of State
Topic: Grassroots and Globalization: The Survival of the Voro Language

Abstract: Brown plans to research language practices and language policy in Estonia. She will investigate: 1) the strategies devised over the past eleven years to revive Võro (a regional language) and promote its legal status and cultural prestige in relation to Estonian (the state language), and 2) how southern Estonian schools have become entangled in larger debates over “language planning.” Specifically, Brown will examine the ideological underpinnings of the attitudes both for and against the Võro-language movement in schools and the ways these ideologies are historically rooted in Estonian and European political economies.

C

Name: Ms. Victoria Clement
Institution: Graduate Student, Ohio State University       
Country: Turkmenistan: Ashgabad; Russia: Moscow
Funder: Department of State
Topic: Language Politics and Turkmen National Identity Construction, 1880s-2000

Abstract: Through an examination of Turkmen language planning, policy, and reform, from the late nineteenth century to the recent past, this dissertation provides a new historical perspective on the role of language in the formation and expression of modern Turkmen identity. Turkmen language symbolism (alphabets, vocabulary, spelling) has been a highly politicized yet defining marker of Turkmen self-expression due both to colonial experience and the diverse memberships from which identity builders could draw (Islam, Caspian Sea oil producer, Soviet, Turkic, "modern"). Building upon works in Turkmen, Russian, Turkish, and English, this analysis will contribute to a new historical perspective on the formation of Turkmen identity and contemporary realities, our knowledge of the politicization of language in expressing and constructing self, and Eurasian historiography.

D

Name: Ms. Regina D’Amico
Institution: President and CEO, Patchwork Productions, Inc.
Country: Bulgaria: Sofia, Shopluk, Pirinsko, Velingradsko, Rodopa, Trakia, Strandzha, Dobrudzha, Miziya, Severozapad
Funder: National Endowment for the Humanities
Topic: A Multimedia Documentation of Bulgarian Folk Music

Abstract: The purpose of D’Amico’s research is to document Bulgaria's unique, rich, and rapidly changing folk music. The research will include a variety of villages and different musical traditions within Bulgaria's seven folkloric regions as articulated by a representative sample of elders living in these regions. The culmination of this field-initiated research will result in: a collection of CDs; written text drawn from scholarly resources as well as personal recollections and anecdotes by the elders; videotapes, and photographs, all of which will serve to place the music within a historic, cultural, and folkloric context.

Name: Dr. Stephen Dickey
Institution: Assistant Professor, University of Virginia, Slavic Languages and Literatures      
Country: Poland: Warsaw, Lublin; Czech Republic: Prague; Slovenia: Ljubljana
Funder: Scholar Support Fund
Topic: The Evolution of Slavic Aspect

Abstract: The project is a cross-Slavic historical analysis of Slavic verbal aspect. Currently existing differences between the Slavic languages in aspectual patterning will be shown to correspond to historically attested differences in verbal derivation. The historical importance of the semelfactive suffix no in Czech and Slovene (to a lesser extent in Polish) in the derivation of perfective verbs will be explained as an effect of German linguistic influence/contact.

Name: Mr. Alexander Diener
Institution: Graduate Student, University of Wisconsin at Madison, Dept. of Geography     
Country: Kazakhstan: Almaty, Astana, Karaganda, Temirtu, Aktau
Funder: Department of State
Topic: One Homeland or Two?: Territorialization of Identity and the Repatriation Decision Among the Mongolian-Kazakh Diaspora

Abstract: In this dissertation, Diener will explore the processes of de-territorialization and re-territorialization of ethno-national identity, homeland attachment, and the construction of transnational identities among second and third generation diaspora communities. This project focuses on the Mongolian-Kazakh diaspora, thereby constituting a comparative study requiring fieldwork in Kazakhstan, where returnees will be studied, and western Mongolia, where those choosing not to repatriate to the newly independent Kazakh homeland will be studied. Such research is significant not only to scholarly understanding of the relationship between territory, identity, and homeland psychology, but to the political development and civil stability of Kazakhstan, where Kazakh ethno-demographic predominance has only recently come to fruition and the state's multiethnic minority populations are reevaluating their future in an independent "Land of the Kazakhs."

G

Name: Mr. Scott Gehlbach
Institution: Graduate Student, University of California at Berkeley, Political Science & Economics      
Country: Russia: Moscow
Funder: Department of State
Topic: New Democratic Institutions and Corruption in Post-Communist Countries

Abstract: Gehlbach will investigate the relationship between the structure of new democratic institutions and corruption. He will do so by employing a trio of research methods: formal theoretical modeling, in-depth interviews of government officials, and analysis of quantitative data. He focuses his research on Russia, a country with considerable internal variation in democratic institutions.

Name: Mr. Andrew Gilbert
Institution: Graduate Student, University of Chicago, Anthropology Department    
Country: Bosnia and Herzegovina: Prijedor, Sanski Most, Banja Luka
Funder: Department of State
Topic: State-breaking/State-making: Returning Refugees, NGOs, and the Political Geography of Bosnia and Herzegovina

Abstract: The recent dramatic increase in the number of Bosnian displaced persons returning to areas in which they are an ethnic minority has made the refugee return process a site of struggle between Bosnian separatists and the international community over the state of Bosnia's political future. By conducting ethnographic fieldwork among returning refugees and the international nongovernmental organizations facilitating their return, this study will reveal the ways that "refugee-ness" is defined, ascribed, represented, produced, and resisted in the struggle over the minority return process, thereby illuminating the practices through which "refugees" and "displaced persons" are discursively and institutionally constituted in ways which strengthen or undermine claims to sovereignty and territorial integrity. This examination of the refugee return process will address the viability of separatist state-building ideologies, the limits to international intervention, and contribute to the larger question of the possibilities for peace, justice and stability in a world of modern nation-states.

Name: Mr. James Goode
Institution: Graduate Student, University of Oxford, St. Antony's College, Dept. of Politics & International Relations   
Country: Russia: Moscow, Petrozavodsk, Kudymkar, Salekhard, Ulan-Ude
Funder: Department of State
Topic: Borderline Russian: Regional Boundaries and the Remapping of the Russian Federation

Abstract: This project addresses the relationship between ethno-federal institutions, regional identity, and institutional change in the Russian Federation. The central argument of this dissertation is that variation in the implementation of Putin’s regional policy can be accounted for by differences in the institutional and normative status of regional boundaries. Utilizing a combination of textual and discourse analysis, interviews, and regional archival materials, original fieldwork research will be conducted in four regions with distinctive territorial and cultural boundary issues: Karelia, Komi-Permyak, Yamal-Nenets, and Buryatia.

Name: Mr. Isaiah Gruber
Institution: Graduate Student, Georgetown University, History Department    
Country: Russia: Moscow; St. Petersburg, Novgorod
Funder: Scholar Support Fund
Topic: The Russian Orthodox Church During the Time of Troubles in the Early Seventeenth Century

Abstract: Gruber proposes to research and write an account, analysis, and interpretation of the Russian Orthodox Church during the Time of Troubles in the early seventeenth century. Through a consideration of the Church's political, economic, social, intellectual, and other roles, his dissertation will evaluate the extent to which it actually preserved the country during this tumultuous period. Especially important for this research project are documents preserved at RGADA (central archives) in Moscow, as well as the opportunity to consult with Ruslan Skrynnikov, Russia's foremost specialist on the Time of Troubles.

Name: Ms. Billur Gungoren
Institution: Graduate Student, Columbia University, Social Policy Analysis
Country: Kyrgyzstan: Bishkek, Osh, Jalal-Abad, Naryn, Talas, Cholpon-Ata
Funder: Department of State
Topic: Gender Differences in Labor Market Outcomes During the Early Phase of Transition: The Case of Kyrgyzstan

Abstract: Women consistently make up the majority of the unemployed in Kyrgyzstan since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. Do previous social policies render women "expensive labor" compared to men or does transition intensify previous forms of female disadvantage? As a first research on labor market in Kyrgyzstan, this dissertation will assess gender differences in employment outcomes, determinants of such outcomes, gender wage gap, and attitudes toward women’s work in light of human capital and life cycle models.

H

Name: Mr. John Hope
Institution: Graduate Student, University of Michigan, Slavic Languages and Literatures      
Country: Russia: St. Petersburg, Moscow
Funder: Department of State
Topic: Manifestations of Russian Literary Orientalism

Abstract: Hope’s dissertation will explore Russian orientalism as it relates to the formulation of Russian national identity and the exercise of power in the Near East. Taking Edward Said’s Orientalism as a theoretical tool, he will examine the Eastern-themed works of three influential Russian writers: Osip Senkovskij, Aleksandr Gribojedov, and Jakov Polonskij, in the context of Russia’s historical involvement with the Near East and the rise in Russia in the nineteenth century of orientalist scholarship based on European models. Hope will be working with Dr. Mikhail Rodionov and other faculty members of St. Petersburg University’s Oriental Studies Department, where he has been offered affiliation and aid in accessing archival materials.

Name: Ms. Chia Yin Hsu
Institution: Graduate Student, New York University, Dept. of History
Country: Russia: St. Petersburg, Moscow
Funder: Department of State
Topic: Race, Modernity, and the Making of Russia's Europe in Harbin, 1898-1924

Abstract: Russian expansion into China in the late nineteenth century brought with it a new concern with the “racial” integrity of Russians, which was reflected in the prevalence of racialized constructions of differences between Russians and Chinese. This concern also fostered, in the colonial setting, a new Russian national identity that extended beyond earlier conceptions to include both Russian and non-Russian European ethnic minorities, thereby suggesting that colonialism, and the production of racial categories, served as a constitutive process in the formation of national consciousness. Drawing on cross-disciplinary approaches, her project will explore the relationship between race and modernity in the multiethnic urban environment of Harbin, and investigate how this relationship was shaped by Russian visions of Europe, the symbol of modernity, as well as by international colonial rivalry, and by long-standing US foreign policy interests in Manchuria.

K

Name: Dr. Christina Kiaer
Institution: Assistant Professor, Columbia University, Dept. of Art History
Country: Russia: Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kursk
Funder: National Endowment for the Humanities
Topic: Towards an Art History of Socialist Realism: Aleksandr Deineka as Case Study

Abstract: Western art history has largely ignored Socialist Realism, deeming it unworthy of the models of analysis developed by the discipline. Kiaer’s research project aims to produce a new, post-Cold War model of art history that will be adequate for comprehending Socialist Realism as part of the history of modernist art, rather than as its repressed East-bloc counterpart. She will take the successful Soviet painter Aleksandr Deineka (1899-1969) as a case study because despite his secure status as a Socialist Realist, his formally innovative and highly corporeal works are intensely compelling to modernist eyes.

Name: Ms. Maria Klemenc
Institution: Graduate Student, University of California at Berkeley, Department of Music  
Country: Slovenia: Ljubljana
Funder: Scholar Support Fund
Topic: Construction, Arrangement, Revival: Slovenian Vocal Music Practices and National Perception

Abstract: Klemenc will investigate how Slovenian folk music is constructed and represented in practice and scholarship, and how this influences perceptions of the nation and traditional musical practices. At the center of her investigation will be historical and contemporary composed arrangements of folk songs, showing how the processes involved in collecting and arranging folk songs reveal underlying attitudes toward national and cultural perception, a primary issue of cultural policy in Slovenia today. Klemenc’s research will involve both archival work (manuscripts of transcribed folk songs and composed scores, sound recordings, and documents on institutions influencing musical practices) and fieldwork (interviews with performers, music directors, and composers).

Name: Ms. Denise Kozikowski
Institution: Graduate Student, University of California at Los Angeles, Folklore and Mythology
Country: Czech Republic: Prague, Brno
Funder: Department of State
Topic: Why are So Many Czech Women Dying of Breast Cancer? A Cultural Approach to Understanding Illness, Detection, and Treatment in the Czech Republic

Abstract: In the Czech Republic, breast cancer is the most frequently diagnosed cancer and the leading cause of death among women with malignant tumor growths. As many as 45 percent of newly diagnosed breast cancer cases among women in the Czech Republic are discovered in the later stages, preventing therapies such as radiation, chemotherapy, and surgery from significantly increasing the chances of survival. Quantitative and qualitative research methods will assess the use of folk and alternative therapies in understanding coping strategies used by Czech women when diagnosed with breast cancer in the Czech Republic.

L

Name: Ms. Ekaterina Levintova
Institution: Graduate Student, Western Michigan University, Department of Political Science          
Country: Russia: Moscow, St. Petersburg
Funder: Department of State
Topic: Elite Intellectuals, Political Discourse and Public Opinion in Post-Communist Societies

Abstract: This project seeks to answer a two-fold question: 1) What explains ruptures in Russian post-Communist official discourse and 2) How do they manifest themselves in actual policies? By looking at both Russian public opinion and official discourse, Levintova will investigate whether the ruptures in official discourse reflect situational interests of the political elite and their ideologues (elite intellectuals) as they pursue political legitimization, or merely changes in public opinion. This project will also assess political implications of changes in official discourse.

Name: Dr. Howard Louthan
Institution: Assistant Professor, University of Notre Dame, Dept. of History
Country: Czech Republic: Prague
Funder: National Endowment for the Humanities
Topic: Creating a Cultural Identity: Religion and National Memory in Early Modern Bohemia

Abstract: Louthan’s project concerns the construction of a cultural identity in Bohemia in the century after the Habsburg victory at White Mountain (1620). While Czech scholars have traditionally maintained that this was an era of “darkness,” when a ruthless oppressor imposed a foreign culture and an alien faith on this conquered territory, Louthan argues that the reestablishment of Catholicism in Bohemia was far more complex and actually the first step in the creation of a Czech national identity. Toward this end, he will be examining the cultural and intellectual activity of seventeenth and eighteenth-century Bohemia.

M

Name: Ms. Natasha Margulis
Institution: Graduate Student, University of Cincinnati, Dept. of History
Country: Federal Republic of Yugoslavia: Podgorica and Cetinje, Montenegro; Beograd, Serbia
Funder: Department of State
Topic: Njegos's Montenegro and the Great Powers: 1830-1851

Abstract: Margulis intends to examine in her dissertation Montenegro's relations with the Great Powers during Petar II Petrovic Njegos’s rule as vladika (the hereditary prince/bishop ruler of Montenegro) from 1830 to 1851, and what steps he took (however successfully) to make Montenegro into a “modern European state.” Margulis intends to go beyond an examination of Njegoš's literary works (for which he is best known) by focusing instead on his political, social, and economic accomplishments and failures as Montenegro's ruler, as well as by analyzing his role as a statesman in nineteenth-century Europe. Because he had to maneuver politically between Russia, Austria, the Ottoman Empire, and other great powers with a growing interest in the Balkans, Njegoš, as sovereign of this small mountainous country, faced a formidable challenge in establishing an independent and politically viable Montenegro.

Name: Dr. Kelly McMann
Institution: postdoctoral researcher, Harvard University, Davis Center  
Country: Kazakhstan: Taraz (Zhambyl province), Karaganda, Almaty, Astana
Funder: National Endowment for the Humanities
Topic: Everyday Coping in Post-Soviet Central Asia: Ethnic Influences and Political Implications

Abstract: Through a combination of fieldwork and survey research in post-Soviet Central Asia, this project examines how ethnic identity shapes coping behaviors and how these practices, in turn, influence citizens’ relationships with their governments. While some studies have explored coping and others have considered state development, this investigation links the two ideas, revealing how survival strategies, particularly private provision of services, facilitate or impede effective governance. The fieldwork completed during the tenure of this grant will inform the design of a survey questionnaire to be administered in the region and will serve as the foundation for numerous publications on the interactions among ethnicity, coping, and state-building.

Name: Dr. Robert Metil
Institution: Adjunct Faculty, Chatham College, Department of Music  
Country: Slovakia: Presov, Bratislava
Funder: Department of State
Topic: Exhibitions and Prohibitions of Local Power and Identity: Rusyn Radio and the Politics of Accomodation and Resistance in Eastern Slovakia

Abstract: Metil proposes to study the contemporary and historical status of state-supported radio programming operated by and geared towards minority Rusyns in the multicultural Presov Region of Eastern Slovakia. Programming and audience reception will be analyzed, with attention to the current competition between Ukrainophile leftists and Rusynophile rightists in a region historically marked by a cultural survival crisis and tension between local Rusyn culture and “greater Ukrainian” nationalist ideology. The special role of Rusyn-dialect song and folklore as a rallying point in the media will be examined, and radio archives pertaining to this endangered transnational minority will be studied together with changing radio portrayals of Rusyn ethno-political identity.

Name: Ms. Susan Murati
Institution: Graduate Student, Alliant University, California School of Professional Psychology, Dept. of Culture and Human Behavior         
Country: Albania: Tirana, Shkodra, Pogradec, Durres, Mammuras
Funder: Department of State
Topic: A Cultural Psychological Study of the Narratives of the Ex-Politically Persecuted People of Albania: Toward a National Narrative

Abstract: The proposed study will explore the narratives of the ex-political prisoners who were persecuted under the Communist regime of Enver Hoxha from 1944 to 1991. The study will take place in four Albanian cities and will use interviews, focus groups, and interpretive inquiries to analyze themes. Given the perspective of cultural psychology, the Albanian culture will be maintained as central, using the input of cultural informants and participants for all phases of the study.

O

Name: Ms. Dana Ohren
Institution: Graduate Student, Indiana University, Department of History
Country: Russia: Moscow, St. Petersburg
Funder: Department of State
Topic: All the Tsars' Men: Minorities and the Russian Imperial Army, 1874-1905

Abstract: The tsarist regime conscripted certain minorities, under its 1874 ‘universal’ conscription laws, not to boost its military strength, but to facilitate administrative assimilation of these subject peoples. New conscription policies were designed to strengthen the state’s presence in the ‘near peripheries,’ such as the western provinces and the Volga region, by taking over the administrative functions previously held by community leaders. Through a study of the intersection between tsarist minority and military policies, US foreign policymakers today will better understand the foundations of contemporary ethnic and religious tensions in the Russian Federation and respond more effectively to these often-explosive relationships in Russia and throughout the world.

P

Name: Dr. Kevin Platt
Institution: Assistant Professor, Pomona College, Dept. of German and Russian   
Country: Russia: Moscow, St. Petersburg
Funder: National Endowment for the Humanities
Topic: The Imaginary Past: Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great in Russian Nationalist Historical Mythologies

Abstract: Platt’s project is focused on the fabric of historical belief supported by art, literature, historiography, and political rhetoric—what has been called “historical mythology.” He is studying the nature and the evolution over the last two centuries of the historical mythology surrounding two figures of primary importance for Russian national identity: Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great. His work allows him to describe how national identity, nationalist politics, and the modern vision of history have related to one another in Russia over the last two centuries, in circumstances as diverse as the official nationalism of Nicholas I, the nationalist revival under Stalin, and the recent era of imperial nostalgia under Boris Yeltsin.

Name: Mr. Sean Pollock
Institution: Graduate Student, Harvard University, History Department    
Country: Russia: Moscow; Georgia: Tbilisi
Funder: Department of State
Topic: Empire by Invitation: Russian Political Patronage, Frontier Diplomacy and Imperial Rivalries in the Caucasus, 1774-1825

Abstract: A case study of Russian imperial expansion, Pollock’s dissertation examines the diplomatic practices of imperial and local political entrepreneurs in the Caucasus during the reigns of Catherine II and Alexander I. He seeks to explain why Russia’s ruling elite chose to move from constructing an empire of patronage under Catherine to establishing an empire of land through territorial conquest and administrative integration under Alexander. The dissertation will contribute to our understanding of how the Russian Empire expanded into the important Caucasus region, and it will be the first study to give full attention to the complex patron-client, kinship, and bureaucratic interrelationships between representatives of Russian power and local notables.

R

Name: Dr. Jeffrey Rossman
Institution: Assistant Professor, University of Virginia, Dept. of History        
Country: Russia: Moscow, Ivanovo, Cheliabinsk
Funder: National Endowment for the Humanities
Topic: Soviet Society at War: Social Identity and the State during the Great Fatherland War, 1941-1945

Abstract: How did the Soviet Union manage to prevail over Nazi Germany in the Second World War? To answer this question, Rossman intends to research and write the first narrative history of the Soviet home front to be based on the “new” Russian archival sources. He has chosen as his case studies two industrial regions—Ivanovo and Cheliabinsk—that played a crucial role in the Soviet wartime economy. He proposes to carry out ten months of research on this topic in Moscow, Ivanovo, and Cheliabinsk during the 2001-02 academic year.

S

Name: Dr. Rimgaila Salys
Institution: Professor, University of Colorado at Boulder, Dept. of Germanic & Slavic Languages & Literatures         
Country: Russia: Moscow, Belye Stolby
Funder: National Endowment for the Humanities
Topic: Clowns and Combines: The Musical Films of Grigorii Aleksandrov and Ivan Pyr'ev (1934-1950)

Abstract: Although the musical films of Grigorii Aleksandrov and Ivan Pyr’ev were among the most popular cinematic works of the Stalin era, there is no full-length study of the corpus nor have the films been studied as a discrete cinematic genre. Salys’s book on the musicals will focus on the history of the creation of the films, their intersection with theoretical models of established western genres, assimilation of native and foreign genre/extra-generic influences, cultural context, and narrative and stylistic systems. Research in public and private archives and libraries in Moscow and Kiev, and interviews with family members of directors and composers will enable Salys to write the history of the making and reception of these films, the first part of the larger book project.

Name: Dr. Elena Sokol
Institution: Professor, The College of Wooster, Department of Russian Studies           
Country: Czech Republic: Prague, Olomouc, Ceske Budejovice, Plzen
Funder: National Endowment for the Humanities
Topic: Three Generations of Czech Women Writing

Abstract: The aim of this project is a book-length study of the fictional writing of twelve contemporary Czech women authors, from Eva Kant Ûrková (born in 1930) to Iva Pekárková (born in 1965). A systematic introduction for Anglophone readers to an important yet little explored aspect of modern Czech literature, this work will examine both universal and gender-specific themes, including childhood/memory, home/exile, and sexuality/motherhood. Analysis and interpretation of the writers’ stories and novels will demonstrate how these literary texts are marked by the personal (as revealed in several interviews with each writer) as well as the larger cultural context(s) (both Czech and émigré) in which they were created.

Name: Dr. John Swanson
Institution: Assistant Professor, Utica College of Syracuse University, Department of History
Country: Hungary: Budapest, Pecs, Szekszard
Funder: Scholar Support Fund
Topic: "A People with Two Souls": The Dual Identity of the Germans in Hungary, 1918-1944

Abstract: This project examines how the Hungarian-Germans combined their ethnic and civic identity—how they defined their sense of nationness as both German and Hungarian. After World War I, Jakob Bleyer and other urban Germans took on the role of educators for the peasant Germans, who only then were developing a sense of national identity outside their villages. The concept of a dual identity was very strong among all classes of Germans in the 1920s, but it languished in the 1930s after confronting chauvinistic Magyar nationalism and Nazi propaganda.

T

Name: Dr. Oleg Timofeyev
Institution: Instructor, University of Iowa, Dept. of Russian      
Country: Russia: Moscow, Smolensk, St. Petersburg, Tiumen', Irkutsk
Funder: National Endowment for the Humanities
Topic: The Golden Age of the Russian Guitar: The repertoire, performance practice, and social function of the Russian seven-string guitar music, 1800-1850.

Abstract: The years 1800-1850 were the heyday of the Russian guitar, which, unlike its Western-European counterpart, has seven strings and a unique tuning. During that time, many excellent composers/guitarists published sophisticated music for this instrument, and a wealth of contemporary depictions in paintings, literature, and memoirs testify to the Russian guitar’s prominence in Russian culture. Timofeyev is applying for a IARO grant to fund additional research that is necessary for reworking his pioneering 1999 PhD dissertation on the Russian guitar into a book.