RUSSIAN & EAST EUROPEAN STUDIES CONSORTIUM
	Arizona State University • Tempe, AZ 85287-2601 • PH: 480/965-4188 • FAX: 480/965-0310

REESC Department Meeting-Thursday, October 25, 2:30, SS 318

While the terrorist attacks of September 11 may, for some, inspire nostalgic visions of a fortress America walled off from international danger, the attacks have instead demonstrated how limited is national sovereignty in the twenty-first century and how closely tied U.S. national security is to regional and international alliances. In this context, international area and language study, including study of less commonly taught languages, takes on renewed importance in American higher education.

This past summer we experienced at REESC offices how deeply American higher education and, in particular, area studies centers are likely to be drawn into the wider process of international development, especially in the "transitioning" countries of Eastern Europe and Eurasia. Shortly after hosting a World Learning-funded seminar for representatives of the Bulgarian Magistrate Training Center in July, the Consortium received word of its receipt of a State Department grant for collaboration with the University of Prishtina in the fields of business management and public administration. Immediately thereafter we were encouraged to respond to a further request for proposals from the American Council on Education and USAID for linkage with the newly founded Southern East European University (SEEU) at Tetovo. Both the University of Prishtina and SEEU at Tetovo are located in areas of recent interethnic conflict and violence in southeastern Europe. The unmistakable message from U.S. granting agencies is that institutional collaboration and professional/disciplinary exchanges not only help to internationalize higher education, but in the process may serve to overshadow, if not always overcome, engrained interethnic and intergenerational conflict. By engaging our overseas colleagues in mutual problems associated with economic restructuring, the rule of law, or the formulation of public policy, we can build assist our partner institutions as they seek to reform higher education and contribute to their own regional development.

These institutional linkages, including our longstanding exchange with the University of Ss. Kiril and Metodij (UKIM) in Skopje, Macedonia, are not without risk. Alongside the destabilizing impact of ethnic conflict in the region, many of our colleagues throughout Eastern Europe and Eurasia have become justifiably cynical about western agencies that would seek to impose a one-size-fits-all formula for "privatization" and "democratization"--the continuing buzz words in international development. We need to be sensitive to historical and cultural realities that have yielded very different institutional and educational practices in many parts of Eastern Europe and Eurasia.

But there are also great opportunities that can be opened with such institutional partnerships. Our research is enriched by the kind of access generated by these institutional linkages. And our students, including the first two ASU students (NSEP Fellows Eric Strachan and Andy Cocchia) to study in Kazan this year under auspices of the new ASU agreement with Kazan State University, benefit enormously from these ties. So, in this spirit of inter-institutional collaboration and exchange, Carol Withers and I salute those many REESC affiliates who have helped to expand the range of ASU institutional linkages in Eastern Europe and Eurasia. At the same time we salute our partner institutions and visiting East European colleagues who contribute so significantly to the internationalization of our own campus. We welcome, in particular, Emilija Georgievska (UKIM) and those Kosovar scholars who will be arriving this year and next under terms of the new State Department-funded ASU linkage with the University of Prishtina. Finally, a special word of welcome to Alexander Lingas, a new REESC affiliate and assistant professor in the School of Music (see below). Professor Lingas, an early music specialist will be speaking to the first REESC fall event on Friday, October 5.

Elizabeth Papp (graduate student, Religious Studies), Andy Cocchia (undergraduate major, Russian) and Janna Hunt (undergraduate major, History) participated in the ASU Russian Language Summer Program in Moscow (May 31- August 2) at Moscow State Linguistic University.

Andy Cocchia and Eric Strachan are currently in Tatarstan studying at Kazan State University. Andy will be there for fall semester only; Eric is staying for the full academic year. Both are enrolled in the same course of study and are concentrating on Tatar language, Russian language, and Tatar culture and history.

The Russian and East European Studies Consortium was awarded a grant of over $400,000 to link ASU with the University of Prishtina (UP) in the fields of Business Management and Public Administration. The project began on August 16 and will continue through August, 2003. The goal of the program is to encourage business development, training of future public sector employees and curricular reform through exchanges of faculty from UP over the next three semesters. Beginning in January 2002, faculty members from the fields of business management and public administration will arrive to study at ASU for a semester.

This semester, project participants Stephen Batalden, Shahin Berisha (GateWay Community College), Robert Denhardt (School of Public Administration), Nancy Roberts (College of Business), and Carol Withers are coordinating with faculty at the University of Prishtina to select participants for the visits to ASU in spring semester 2002. Batalden and Berisha will visit Prishtina in early October to launch the program. Berisha will return to Kosova in November to conduct a needs assessment. He will be joined by Carol Withers to implement the selection process.

Sarah Isakson (CLI, Macedonian) was awarded a Fulbright grant and is studying in Slovenia during fall semester 2001.

Stephanie Larsen (ASU Journalism major, CLI and Macedonia study abroad participant) received an NSEP award to partially support her summer internship in Bulgaria. Building on her NSEP experience in Macedonia two years ago, she interned with the State Department at the embassy in Sofia, Bulgaria, this summer. Stephanie writes that, "it was a great experience and an exciting time to be there -- the parliamentary elections took place in June. I worked in the political/economic section covering issues pertaining to human rights. I also served as an election observer and helped coordinate the visit of a former ambassador. It was a great learning experience and I really enjoyed my summer. I would definitely recommend pursuing an internship with the State Department to anyone."

Alex Agadjanian is teaching the course "Religion in Russia" for the Department of Religious Studies. He published "Revising Pandora's Gift: Religious and National Identities in the Post-Soviet Societal Fabric" in Europe-Asia Studies (vol. 53, no.3, 2001), "Public Religion in Russia and the Quest for National Ideology: Russia's Media Discourse" in the Journal of Social Scientific Study of Religion (vol. 40, no.3, September 2001), and "Religious Pluralism and National Identity in Russia" in the Journal of Multicultural Societies, UNESCO vol.2, no.2, available at http://www.unesco.org/most/vl2n2aga_en.htm

Victor Agadjanian presented a paper with Ekaterina Makarova, "Soviet Modernization, Reinvention of Tradition, and Market Reforms: Understanding Nuptiality and Fertility Dynamics in Central Asia," at the American Sociological Association's annual meeting, Anaheim, CA, August 2001.

Josef Brada's paper, "The Convergence of Monetary Policy between Candidate Countries and the European Union," was awarded a prize of 1000 Euros by the European Association for Comparative Economics as the best paper on European integration. The paper will be published by Economic Systems this fall. He also participated in a State Department workshop on "Economic Stability and Independence in Critical Transition States." Brada was awarded a grant from the State Department for research on the costs of economic instability in the Balkans. In addition he gave papers at the University of Bonn, University of Thessaly, and the CEPR-Davidson Institute Conference on Transition in Portoroz, Slovenia.

Judge Charles G. Case, II, of the Sixth District U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Phoenix, spent much of April in Prishtina preparing new bankruptcy legislation for introduction in Kosova. Case was recently appointed by the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences to the post of adjunct professor in the Russian and East European Studies Consortium. Congratulations, Judge Case. We are delighted to have you join us as a colleague.

Lee Croft had three articles on Russian generals Suvorov, Kutuzov, and Budyonny published in the World Encyclopedia of Military History. He has been named a review editor of the new e-journal Linguistic Iconism. Currently, Croft is researching the life of George Anton Schaeffer (1779-1836), who was involved in Napoleon's 1812 invasion of Russia, in Hawaiian politics during the reign of Kamehameha I, and in the German settlement of southern Brazil.

Aleksandra Gruzinska's article, "[Anti]Semitism 1890/1990: Octave Mirbeau and E. M. Cioran," appeared in the RMMLA.

Ileana Orlich was awarded a CLAS travel grant to present "Political Subversion in the Romanian Short Fiction of the Cold War Period" at the conference on American-Romanian Relations: 1940-Our Days, Days of Turmoil, hosted by Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj, Romania.

Clifford Shultz currently serves as PI for a project funded by the US Department of Education, with contributions from the Department of State, the STAR Center, the Desert Wheat Grower's Cooperative, the Croatian Ministry of Science and Education, and several universities and NGOs in Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Slovenia, and Greece. It is administered through ASU East's Morrison School of Agribusiness and Resource Management. The primary objectives are to increase understanding of the food marketing and agribusiness systems in the region, enhance trade, and investigations include produce beneficial outcomes for vested interests in the region. The empirical channel mapping and ethnographic study of consumer interests and supply-chain management. A field experiment is being administered to determine consumer perceptions about product quality, price sensitivities, country-of-origin effects, and intentions to buy American and other countries' food products. ASU community members and others interested in this project are welcome to visit the project website: http://www.east.asu.edu/balkans or http://agb.east.asu.edu/cjs. Shultz also leads a team of international scholars that is conducting a longitudinal study on the plight of refugees and displaced persons created by the wars in Croatia, Bosnia-Hercegovina, and Kosova. Community members with interest in this and other projects are encouraged to contact Dr. Shultz.

Danko Sipka, CLI Serbian/Croatian instructor and associate professor in the Slavic Department of Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, Poland, has been asked to develop a curriculum for the five-year MA program and three-year BA Serbian/Croatian program at his university. See the preliminary version (in Serbian/Croatian) at: http://main.amu.edu.pl/~sipkadan/pozpdf.htm. Sipka is also a senior linguist and project manager in the Language Research Center of McNeil Technologies, headquartered in Washington D.C.. His current projects include: Dictionary of New Words in Serbo-Croatian (Serbian, Croatian, and Bosnian Muslim); Kurmanji - English Glossary (with Saadoun Midas); SGML tagging of several Serbian/Croatian and Russian dictionaries; and a Serbian/Croatian Grammar for English Learners.

Eric Thor hosted a group from Pakistan as part of the Emerging Markets in the Asia Pacific Economic Region program.

Alexander Lingas joined ASU as Assistant Professor of Music History in the School of Music this fall. He is a Fellow of the University of Oxford's European Humanities Research Centre. He is also the founder and director of Cappella Romana (www.cappellaromana.org), a professional vocal ensemble based in the Pacific Northwest. After receiving a B.A. with a double major in Music (Composition) and Russian Language from Portland State University, he continued his studies at the University of British Columbia, where he received a Ph.D. in Historical Musicology. Lingas has received a number of academic awards, including Fulbright and Onassis grants for musical studies in Greece with noted cantor Lycourgos Angelopoulos, a Junior Fellowship in Byzantine Studies at Harvard University's Dumbarton Oaks Research Center in Washington, D.C., and a two-year Postdoctoral Fellowship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for study in Oxford under Bishop Kallistos (Ware) of Diokleia. From Michaelmas Term 1998 until Trinity Term 2001 he was British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Oxford University's St. Peter's College. He has also served as a lecturer and advisor for the Institute of Orthodox Christian Studies at the University of Cambridge. He has spoken on BBC Radio 3 and lectured at Yale University, the Liszt Academy in Budapest, Hungary, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. In addition to publishing, Dr Lingas has also composed music for the Orthodox Church, and has served as a cantor in Portland, San Francisco, Vancouver, B.C., and Oxford. Last May, he collaborated with Ioannis Arvanitis, Lycourgos Angelopoulos and the Greek Byzantine Choir on the first celebration in 500 years of Vespers according to the ancient Rite of Hagia Sophia, which was held at the chapel of St. Peter's College. His upcoming projects include books on Sunday Matins in the Rite of Hagia Sophia and Byzantine experiments in polyphony for Overseas Publishing Associates, as well as a general introduction to Byzantine Chant for Yale University Press. His research interests include Eastern Orthodox music, liturgy and theology, especially Byzantine chant and Russian eighteenth century polyphony.

Please join us in welcoming Emilija Georgievska who is this semester's exchangee from UKIM where she teaches Modern English language, current usage, and translation to first-year students. She completed her postgraduate studies at the University of Belgrade in linguistics. She holds an MA from the University of Durham, England, in the field of cultural dimensions of teaching English as a foreign language. At ASU she is affiliated with the Department of English and is attending classes in Research Methods and Pragmatics and Discourse Analysis. She plans to conduct research on teaching English as a foreign language. She arrived in Tempe on August 10 with her husband Petar and two sons, Hristijan and Ognen, who are attending high school. This is their first visit to the U.S. and to Arizona.

Agnes Kefeli-Clay is currently teaching in the Department of History. She will be a visiting lecturer in the Department of Religious Studies for the spring semester. Hans Risser (B.A. German, ASU, CLI Macedonian/Ohrid practicum participant) was awarded an internship at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation in Skopje. Robert Schoenfeld is working in Navy intelligence.

Many thanks are in order to all who paid tribute to David R. Roberts by making memorial contributions to the Mary Choncoff Fund for Macedonian-American Understanding and Exchange. David, a nephew of Mary Choncoff, passed away suddenly early this summer. His mother, Lillian Roberts, and uncle and aunt, Chris and Joyce Choncoff, are trustees of the Choncoff Fund. The Choncoff Fund supports our annual Choncoff lecture and provides short-term assistance to our UKIM exchangees when they arrive at ASU. Our thoughts are with the family during this difficult time. The need to continue to support Macedonian-American understanding and exchange continues to be great.

Much appreciation goes to Carolyn Johnson for her donation of books and reference materials related to Russia and Eurasia.

NSEP applications are due at the Office of National Scholarship Advisement (ONSA) by Wednesday, November 28, 2001. Application forms are available in Irish Hall A, Room 222. Early preparation of the application is crucial. If interested contact Dr. John Lynch, ONSA Director, 480-965-5894 or john.lynch@asu.edu. REESC will hold a special planning session the week of October 29 for applicants who will be working in the Eastern Europe/Eurasian area.

With funding support from World Learning/TRANSIT EUROPE, REESC conducted a one-week seminar in July for delegates from the Bulgarian Magistrate Training Center. The central goal was to introduce the Bulgarian delegates to state-of-the-art management, curricular development, and evaluation practices in state and local judicial training centers. Judicial educators from the Arizona Supreme Court's Educational Services Division and its Judicial College of Arizona, as well as the Maricopa County Superior Court's Training and Education Department and its Trial Court Leadership Center, hosted sessions and conducted workshops. Project facilitator Paul Biderman, Director of the Judicial Education Center in New Mexico, addressed issues of judicial education in other states. USAIDobserver and judicial education specialist, Virginia Leavitt, traveled with the MTC delegates. This one-week seminar at ASU was followed by a second week at the National Judicial College (NJC) in Reno.

World Learning projects enable REESC to renew ties with the community as we call upon professionals with interests in Eastern Europe and Eurasia to share their expertise with delegates. The sessions also provide contacts in Eastern Europe in order to expand research and academic exchange opportunities.

Summer 2001 - The institute concluded another successful summer on July 26. This year 42 students took coursework in Macedonian, Serbian/Croatian and Tatar at either the elementary or intermediate level. As a follow-up to their Serbian/Croatian language training, Ivan Susak traveled to Zagreb and Luke Ritchie participated in the practicum in Novi Sad.

Summer 2002 - CLI faculty Danko Sipka (Serbian/Croatian), Agnes Kefeli-Clay (Tatar) and Ljupco Spasovski (Macedonian) will teach again in summer 2002. REESC has applied for a continuation of funding from the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) for Macedonian and Serbian/Croatian. In December, REESC will once again apply to the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) for support to continue and enrich our instruction in Eurasian languages. The summer 2002 Critical Languages Institute will be held June 3 through July 26. In addition to Macedonian, Serbian/Croatian, and Tatar, elementary Armenian will be offered. There will be a practicum in Yerevan from July 29 to August 16 for Armenian language students. In November, Victor Agadjanian will travel to Yerevan to make arrangements for the language instruction and the practicum. Summer 2002 language study applications will be available in November with a due date of April 30, 2002. Applications will be available on the REESC website or in the REESC office.