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Fellows and Research Topics 2004-2005

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B

Name: Max Bergholz, Predoctoral Candidate
Institution: University of Toronto
Country(ies): Belgrade, Serbia and Montenegro and Zagreb, Croatia
Funder: US Department of State Title VIII Program
Title: Making War Memories, Forging Socialist Yugoslavia

Abstract: My dissertation will examine how Yugoslavia's communist regime constructed and promoted an officially-sanctioned collective memory of the Second World War (1945-1990). My main question is: How did the communists transform the war, which had demonstrated extreme levels of inter-ethnic strife among the country's citizens, into a basis for a multi-ethnic socialist state? To answer this question I will conduct an in-depth study of The Union of National Liberation War Fighters (known as SUBNOR [Savez udruženja boraca narodnooslobodilacog rata]), the organization of veterans that was charged explicitly with constructing and promoting the regime's collective memory of the war.

Name: Danielle Berman, Master's Student
Institution: University of Wisconsin at Madison
Country(ies): Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Leningrad Oblast, Russia
Funder: US Department of State Title VIII Program
Title: Learning from Success: An Ethnographic Study of Russian Agriculture's Struggling Minority: the Private Farmer

Abstract: How do some private farmers in Russia manage to succeed despite tremendous financial, market, and legal constraints on private agriculture? This sociological study uses the tools of ethnography to analyze the production techniques, management strategies, alliances, and adaptations that enable private farmers in the Leningrad oblast of Russia to profit under these challenging conditions. Results will advance sociological theories of agricultural development in the post-Soviet transition, inform rural development and market transition policies, and provide micro-level empirical data on Russia's private farm sector.

Name: John Bowlt, Professor
Institution: University of Southern California
Country(ies): Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Saratov, Russia
Funder: National Endowment for the Humanities
Title: Lev Bakst and His Literary Heritage

Abstract: The purpose of my research project is to examine the literary heritage of the artist Lev Bakst. To this end I shall be approaching his articles, letters, interviews as explanations of, or commentaries on, his more celebrated studio paintings and stage designs. On the basis of my research, I hope to conclude that a) Bakst, acknowledged as being one of the greatest scenographers of the 20th century, was a perspicacious critic and an original author of creative prose; and b) Bakst's substantial literary legacy, much of it still unfamiliar and archival, is of major importance to our fuller understanding of the Russian Silver age.

Name: David Bridges, Predoctoral Candidate
Institution: University of Virginia
Country(ies): Moscow and Kaliningrad, Russia
Funder: US Department of State Title VIII Program
Title: In Moscow's Image? Constructing Soviet Identities in Kaliningrad Province: State and Society, 1945-1969

Abstract: This project narrates the history of the sovietization of Kaliningrad Province over the course of a generation, from its capture from the Germans by the Soviet Army in 1945 to the contested destruction of the remains of the Königsberg Royal Castle in 1969. Upon its founding, Kaliningrad was ethnically cleansed of its remaining Germans and reconstructed along Soviet lines. This study will use the case of Kaliningrad to demonstrate how the state's vision of "being Soviet" evolved during this period and how Kaliningraders employed their unique local identity to attempt to influence these designs.

Name: Justine Buck, Predoctoral Candidate
Institution: University of Chicago
Country(ies): Ulan-Ude, Chita, and Olkhon Island, Russia
Funder: US Department of State Title VIII Program
Title: The Identity of Religion: Practice, Belief and Nationality in Post-Soviet Buryatia

Abstract: This project examines the way in which religious identity (Orthodox Christian, Tibetan Buddhist, shamanist) intersects with national identity (Buryat and Russian) in the Buryat Republic in order to better theorize the relationship between religion and nationalism in the post-Soviet context. I argue that current theories of post-Soviet nationalism neither adequately explain inter-ethnic relations within Russia nor theorize how religion interacts with national identity and I suggest that a multicultural model may be more productive. My research will combine current fieldwork with archival research in order to examine how the history of Soviet anti-religious and nationality policy created local conceptions of religious and national identity and how the Soviet conceptions shape current understandings.

C

Name: Timothy Cheek, Assistant Professor
Institution: University of Michigan
Country(ies): Prague, Czech Republic
Funder: National Endowment for the Humanities
Title: The Songs of Antonin Dvorak: Czech Culture, Style, and Performance

Abstract: The one-hundred and twelve songs of Czech composer Antonin Dvorak constitute a body of work that reflects the culture of the times, both in terms of its musical style and in terms of its poetry, which spans over three-hundred years of Czech history. The songs should have the international acclaim of most of Dvorak's music, but the language barrier and the interference of Zdenek Nejedly, Minister of Culture in the 1950's, dampened study of these works. This project seeks to examine the songs textually, culturally, and stylistically to give them the renown and accessibility they deserve, and to display them as the mirror of Czech culture that they are.

Name: Kelley Cormier, Predoctoral Candidate
Institution: University of Wisconsin at Madison
Country(ies): Bishkek, Osh, Naryn, and Talas, Kyrgyzstan
Funder: US Department of State Title VIII Program
Title: Institutional Change and Innovation in Kyrgyz Agriculture: Understanding Variation in Farm Performance

Abstract: Privatized farms in Kyrgyzstan have responded in different ways to rapid and broad institutional changes in the agricultural sector. This study evaluates what institutional innovations emerged from decollectivization, how farm performance outcomes varied between 1999 and 2004, distinctions in characteristics across institutional innovations, and policy implications of institutional innovations in the Kyrgyz agriculture. A mixed methods research approach is applied that includes quantitative analysis of panel data and a qualitative multi-case study.

G

Name: Ryan Gingeras, Predoctoral Candidate
Institution: University of Toronto
Country(ies): Skopje, Macedonia
Funder: US Department of State Title VIII Program
Title: Notorious Subjects, Invisible Citizens: Albanian Migrants in Turkey

Abstract: This dissertation explores the theme of migration in Turkish history through the settlement and integration of Albanian immigrants in Anatolia between 1912 and 1960. As a population seen as intrinsically "disloyal" to the state in the aftermath of the Balkan Wars, Albanian refugees and immigrants settled in Anatolia came under fierce pressure by Ottoman and Turkish nationalist authorities to abandon their language and customs. Despite Turkish assimilationist policies, a "Albanian-Turkish" identity began to emerge in the 1950s, amalgamating both Turkish nationalism and Albanian localism.

Name: Emily Greble, Predoctoral Candidate
Institution: Stanford University
Country(ies): Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Zagreb, Croatia
Funder: US Department of State Title VIII Program
Title: Wartime Sarajevo (1941-1945): Communities, Identities, Experiences

Abstract: My dissertation will examine the social and political history of Sarajevo during World War II. Sarajevo, a symbol of war and ethnic tension throughout the twentieth century, is the best starting point to explore questions of identity, community, inter-communal relations, occupation, collaboration, and resistance in wartime Yugoslavia. On a macro-level, my research will examine questions of identity and nationalism in 20th century Eastern Europe and the effects of war and occupation on society in the Balkans.

H

Name: Robin Haarr, Associate Professor
Institution: Arizona State University
Country(ies): Dushanbe, Tajikistan
Funder: US Department of State Title VIII Program
Title: Wife Abuse in Tajikistan

Abstract: This purpose of this ethnographic field research project is to analyze degrees of variation of wife abuse and the relevance of family and marriage, social and economic structures, culture and religion, and socio-political variables (civil war/post-civil war environments) in explaining patterns of wife abuse in urban, Dushanbe and rural, Khatlon Region Tajik families. Integrated into this analysis is a focus on exploring the internal cultural constraints (kin, friends, dependency on marital household) and external structural barriers (police, courts, law) that battered women confront in Tajikistan, and which contribute to the violence perpetrated against these women (including female suicide by poisoning or setting fire to oneself) through their deliberate silence, unresponsiveness, or active participation in the violence. This research also examines the emergence of NGOs in Tajikistan that address issues of violence against women, and the role they play in reaching out to and serving the special needs of urban and rural women who live in violent relationships, and shaping the national political agenda to address violence against women.

Name: Desiree Hopkins, Predoctoral Candidate
Institution: University of Virginia
Country(ies): Moscow and St. Petersburg, Russia
Funder: US Department of State Title VIII Program
Title: Sacred Places or Soviet Places? Contending with Religious Spaces in Urban Landscape, 1917-1941

Abstract: This project will examine the Soviet regime's policies regarding the use of religious spaces - churches, monasteries and cemeteries - in Moscow and Leningrad during the first twenty-five years of Soviet power. In the context of the Bolsheviks' efforts to construct a new Soviet culture, such decisions exposed the tensions between those who wished to jettison the culture of the past (iconoclasts), and those who found aesthetic and/or practical value in certain cultural artifacts or practices (preservationists). That the urban landscapes of Moscow and Leningrad remained dense with religious structures long after the Revolution of 1917 raises the important question of how the Soviets reconciled the existence of such spaces with their ideological visions of Soviet modernity.

J

Name: Kirsten Jelic, Master's Student
Institution: University of Texas at Austin
Country(ies): Zagreb, Croatia; Belgrade and Nis, Serbia and Montenegro; Pristina, Kosovo; and Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Funder: US Department of State Title VIII Program
Title: Women and Election Law: Civil Society Development in the Balkans

Abstract: This research project examines women and minority participation in electoral politics in the Yugoslav successor states. Perceptions of local women and minority groups will be compiled through interviews, surveys, and questionnaires addressing implications for civil society development resulting from election law biases toward women and/or minorities. Qualitative data will be analyzed and this research will further understanding of the interconnectedness of international aid, institution building, local government activities, and civil society development in terms of nonprofits and grassroots activism.

K

Name: Robert Kaiser, Professor
Institution: University of Wisconsin - Madison
Country(ies): Ivangorod, Pskov, and St. Petersburg, Russia and Narva and Tartu, Estonia
Funder: US Department of State Title VIII Program
Title: The Cultural Politics of Scale and the Rescaling of Place and Identity in the Estonian-Russian Borderlands

Abstract: This research project investigates the cultural politics of scale-defined as the politically contested process through which cultural places and identities are rescaled-in the geopolitically sensitive region of the Estonian-Russian borderlands, which have experienced intensive rescaling pressures from local efforts at reterritorialization, state-scale nationalization of space and interstate-scale transnationalization with the coming of the EU and NATO. This research has been ongoing since summer 2002, and has involved an analysis of the changing cultural and political border landscapes in Estonia and Russia-in particular the new representations of place and identity visible in museum exhibitions, new monuments and commemorative sites, and new cultural events and festivals-the impact of new border and customs regimes on transborder places and identities, content analysis of official documents, programs and textbooks designed to rescale cultural places and identities, in-depth interviews with state-scale officials, representatives of interstate organizations, and local activists as well as local non-activist community members. Through an investigation of the rescaling of place and identity, and the new scalar disjunctures and conjunctures between place and identity that are being created in the Estonian-Russian borderlands, this research assesses the destabilization of power, place and identity resulting from the cultural politics of scale in the Estonian-Russian borderlands, and explores the potential utility of the cultural politics of scale to restabilize power relations, identity politics and territorial connection and control in this and other geopolitically sensitive regions in post-socialist space and beyond.

Name: Karen Kapusta-Pofahl, Predoctoral Candidate
Institution: University of Minnesota
Country(ies): Prague and Brno, Czech Republic
Funder: US Department of State Title VIII Program
Title: Equality from the Top Down? Discourses of Gender Equality and Czech Societal Transformation

Abstract: My research investigates the reasons for the apparent reticence of Czech society to embrace policies and programs designed to promote equality between women and men through a study of the production, circulation and contestation of discourses of gender equality in the Czech Republic. By discourses of gender equality, I mean not only the debates surrounding, and varying usages of, the term "gender equality," but also the concrete effects of these debates on the individuals involved in the discussions as well as on culturally specific practices of negotiation and contestation. What on the surface appears to be a concerted effort, with accompanying common definitions, aims, and desired outcomes, upon closer inspection reveals itself to be a site of struggles and interactions among diverse interests, priorities and assumptions.

Name: Leyla Keough, Predoctoral Candidate
Institution: University of Massachusetts at Amherst
Country(ies): Komrat and Chisinau, Moldova
Funder: US Department of State Title VIII Program
Title: The Traffic in Gagauz Moldovan Women to Turkey: Experience and Impact in Moldova

Abstract: Trafficking in women in Eastern Europe is on the rise. One of the newest trafficking routes identified is between Moldova and Turkey. From fieldwork conducted in 2002 with Moldovan women of the Turkic-Gagauz ethnic group in Turkey, it is clear that one reason for the persistence of this trafficking is that women are voluntarily and routinely using illegal networks to commute to work abroad to help their families survive. This ethnographic study asks these women themselves why they choose to use trafficking networks and analyzes the precise impact of their migration on households in Moldova. It also will collect data on governmental and non-governmental agendas regarding women in traffic and help identify how best to address trafficking through policy initiatives.

L

Name: Thomas Lahusen, Professor
Institution: University of Toronto
Country(ies): Riazan and Moscow, Russia
Funder: National Endowment for the Humanities
Title: Filming Riazan: The History of Cinefication in a Russian Province

Abstract: Filming Riazan is a book and documentary film project feeding on each other to describe the "cinefication" of Riazan province. Sources include the archives of central and local film distribution, interviews of movie house directors, projectionists, and viewers. The project seeks to contribute to the history of Soviet cinema and of the Soviet propaganda machine trapped within the theory of "plans", and the reality of country roads and a viewing public who have their own ideas about the role of cinema in their lives.

M

Name: David Montgomery, Predoctoral Candidate
Institution: Boston University
Country(ies): Bishkek, Osh, Jalal-Abad, Uzgen, and the Fergana Valley, Kyrgyzstan and Kokand, Andijan, Fergana, and Namangan, Uzbekistan
Funder: US Department of State Title VIII Program
Title: An Anthropological Study of Religious Knowledge and Transmission Among the Uzbek-Kyrgyzstanis

Abstract: This project seeks to understand how the religious contribution to cultural identity is negotiated in response to internal needs of and external influences on ethnic Uzbeks living in Kyrgyzstan. By conducting an anthropological study of religious knowledge and its transmission among the Uzbek-Kyrgyzstanis, with special attention given to observing the relationship between identity, ritual, political marginalization, and Islamism, opportunities for tolerance and the minimization of violent conflict can be better understood. My study will address the gap of knowledge between the contribution of religion to identity and action on an individual, collective, and political level, as well as the implications religion has for a construction of identity that encounters external hardships and valuated offerings, be it marginalization or Islamism.

Name: Mirjana Morosini-Dominick, Predoctoral Candidate
Institution: Georgetown University
Country(ies): Zagreb, Rovinj, Pazin, and Pula, Croatia
Funder: US Department of State Title VIII Program
Title: A Tormented Land: The Italian Exodus from Istria after World War II, A Case Study of Pola

Abstract: This study will examine the Italian exodus from Pola after World War II by exploring the formation and transformation of ethno-national identities of its citizens after the fall of fascist Italy in 1943. The project will focus not only on the "event" of the exodus, but also on the structural trends in ethnicity, national identity, and cultural and political change from the city's origins in 1850s, as an outpost of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, to its fate after the Second World War in the hands of Allied administrators and its subsequent incorporation into the Yugoslav state.

O

Name: Laura Olson, Assistant Professor
Institution: University of Colorado
Country(ies): Moscow, St. Petersburg, Belozersk, Riazan' obl., and Belgorod obl., Russia
Funder: National Endowment for the Humanities
Title: Carrying On: Russian Rural Women, Tradition, and Transgression

Abstract: Using archival and field research in Russia, this book-length project will examine the history of the process in which rural women have been celebrated, "institutionalized" and stigmatized as the carriers of national tradition and Russian identity, and will investigate the impact of this process on middle-aged and elderly women whose views of self and nation have been shaped by the responsibility of embodying -- all too imperfectly -- national tradition. I plan to examine published studies and archived field notes of scholars from the late nineteenth century to the present in order to understand the ways that women's folk culture has been construed, to determine what kinds of folk materials were attributed to rural women and how the situation has changed or remained constant today, and eventually to establish a historical basis for the study of Russian folk culture as gendered. The field research will enable me to counter reigning stereotypes of rural women's guardianship of folk tradition, and to suggest that the repertoire choices of female villagers create identities (including gendered ones), represent an archive of memory, establish relationships within the community, and provide a forum for self-expression.

Name: Jill Owczarzak, Predoctoral Candidate
Institution: University of Kentucky
Country(ies): Warsaw, Poland
Funder: US Department of State Title VIII Program
Title: Mapping HIV Prevention in Poland: Contested Citizenship and the Struggle for Health after Socialism

Abstract: This research project uses HIV prevention programs of two politically active organizations in Warsaw, Poland to explore the concurrent processes of democratization and privatization as Poland begins European Union accession. As inherently political public health interventions, HIV prevention programs invoke discussions of risk and responsibility, and visions of the moral social order; therefore, they can be used to understand the ways in which politically and socially marginalized populations invoke claims to citizenship status through attention to health issues. I ask how claims of vulnerability to HIV infection by women and homosexual men advance or hinder their political agendas, and how these claims articulate with changing governmental policies towards health.

P

Name: Nadya Peterson, Associate Professor
Institution: Hunter College, City University of New York
Country(ies): Moscow, St. Petersburg, Riazan, and Voronezh, Russia
Funder: National Endowment for the Humanities
Title: Teaching Literature in the New Russian School: The Modernization Initiative

Abstract: The initiative to modernize Russian education by 2010, officially sanctioned by the government of the Russian Federation in 2001, embraces all areas of the educational process and establishes far-reaching and momentous goals. The concrete measures related to the implementation of modernization in Russian education today, and the practical outcome of these measures, are the focus of my research. More narrowly, my investigation will concentrate on teaching literature in the Russian general (obshcheobrazovatel'naia) high school and will address four interrelated areas of the modernization process. These are: 1. new educational state standards--the content minimum, requirements for graduation, and time allotted for teaching the subject; 2. testing, including the new state exam for high school graduates; 3. textbooks--publishing, financing, Ministry of Education recommendation and adoption; 4. classroom teaching. A close look at the way Russian literature is taught in the modernized Russian school is an expedient means of identifying the alignment of social forces responsible for the creation of cultural canons and elucidating the ongoing social transformation.

S

Name: Dana Sherry, Predoctoral Candidate
Institution: University of California - Davis
Country(ies): Tbilisi, Georgia; Baku, Azerbaijan; and Moscow and St. Petersburg, Russia
Funder: US Department of State Title VIII Program
Title: Kavkaztsy: Islam and Empire in the Caucasus, 1845-1864

Abstract: I am applying for an IARO fellowship to support my research for my dissertation, which examines Russian-Muslim relations in the Caucasus during the mid-nineteenth century and explores the connections between public discourse and policies that structured colonial relations in the Caucasus. First, I examine how long-term colonial officials, the self-proclaimed kavkaztsy, posited the relationship between the European and the Asiatic in the colonial setting, drawing on policies that established the rights and obligations of elite and educated Muslims and that determined the duties of the Islamic clergy (ulema). Second, I will ask how the colonial government shifted from a pragmatic civilizing mission in the late 1840s, during the Viceroyalty of Prince Vorontsov (1845-1854), to the mass expulsions of Muslims from the North Caucasus during the late 1850-early 1860s under Vorontsov's former protégé, Viceroy A.I. Bariatinsky (1854-1864).

Name: Maria Shrager, Predoctoral Candidate
Institution: Indiana University
Country(ies): Moscow, Tver, Torzhok, Selizharovo, Zapadnaja Dvina, and Pskov, Russia
Funder: IREX Scholar Support Fund
Title: The Prosodic System of Northwest Russian Dialects

Abstract: The aim of this research is to record and analyze the dialects spoken in remote rural areas in northwest Russia. In particular, this study will focus on the prosodic systems of these dialects. The analysis will be done in the frameworks of historical comparative linguistics and will be complemented by acoustical phonetic study.

Name: Charles Speal, Master's Student
Institution: State University of New York at Albany
Country(ies): Belgrade and Stari Kostolace, Serbia and Montenegro
Funder: US Department of State Title VIII Program
Title: The Biocultural Impacts of State Expansionism: Provincial Roman Political Economy and the Conservation of Serbian Cultural Resources

Abstract: The line of study proposed here concerns the human skeletal assemblage recovered from excavations at the Roman site complex of Viminacium, Serbia. It looks to gain insight on the social processes at work among the living population of an ancient imperial provincial capital through bioarchaeological analysis of the skeletal material from a nearby cemetery. The project also aims at fostering exchange in principles of cultural resource conservation with Serbian officials, administrators, and practicing archaeologists, thereby contributing to the economic saliency of the nation through an increase in tourism.

Name: Mark Steinberg, Professor
Institution: University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign
Country(ies): St. Petersburg and Moscow, Russia
Funder: National Endowment for the Humanities
Title: St. Petersburg Fin de Siecle

Abstract: This study is an interdisciplinary historical inquiry into the experience and meanings of the fin de siecle in Russia through the prism of the imperial capital St. Petersburg. This is a story about streets and urban public spaces, the diverse people who inhabited these spaces, and discourses (in texts as diverse as boulevard newspapers, intellectual journals, fiction, poetry, photographs, and art) about the city and, by extension, about issues constitutive of this era and of the meanings of the modern -- order and flux, identities and unsettling uncertainty about self and other, rationality and feeling, progress and degeneration, and morality and evil. At the center of attention is the idea of the fin de siecle, not merely as a retrospective historical category (the "last years" before the old political, social, and cultural order fell, which it did, in Russia, with more suddenness and violence than anywhere else) but as a political, social, and especially cultural moment of characteristically modern crisis and possibility.

Name: R. Stefan Szwed, Predoctoral Candidate
Institution: Oxford University
Country(ies): Warsaw, Poznan, and Szczecin, Poland
Funder: US Department of State Title VIII Program
Title: The Reorientation of Polish Defense and Security Policy with regard to Germany, 1989-1999: A European or an Atlantic Option?

Abstract: From the antagonism reflected in both bilateral and multilateral relations (the border question and collective memory of German occupation on the one hand, and the existence of two hostile power blocs in Europe on the other) by the end of the 1990s Germany was Poland's closest European ally. This paradigmatic shift in Polish defense and security thinking was both structurally determined by Poland's turn to the West in response to the geopolitical changes, and a function of the new governing élites' identity and ideas about independent Poland's place in Europe. Reconciliation with Germany was viewed both as a material necessity as a crucial prerequisite for Poland's 'return to Europe' (in short for joining NATO and the EU) and an end in itself, that is a goal driven by ideational factors about reconciliation, democracy, peace and good neighborly relations.

W

Name: James Ward, Predoctoral Candidate
Institution: Stanford University
Country(ies): Bratislava, Nitra, Martin, and Bytca, Slovakia
Funder: US Department of State Title VIII Program
Title: Multiple Lives: Jozef Tiso and His Histories, 1887-2004

Abstract: Jozef Tiso, the priest-president of the 1939-1945 pro-German Slovak state, is too often understood as either a war criminal or a Slovak martyr. Through new archival research in Slovakia, I will resolve central questions about his life, counter reductionist interpretations of him, and demonstrate the impact his historiography has had on Slovak social and political doscourse. Last, but not least, my work will fill a debilitating lacuna in the literature on Slovakia.