Founded on December 1, 1968, at the first conference on Baltic Studies at the University of Maryland, the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies (AABS) is an international educational and scholarly non-profit organization. It promotes research and education in Baltic Studies by sponsoring meetings and conferences, supporting publications, sustaining a program of scholarships, grants, and prizes, and disseminating news of current interest in Baltic Studies. Since 1991, it has been a constituent member of the American Council of Learned Societies.

Membership in the AABS is open to anyone wishing to support the scholarly purposes of the Association. AABS members receive a subscription to the quarterly Journal of Baltic Studies, reduced registration fees at AABS conferences, and an annual newsletter of the association’s activities.

The 2014 AABS-SASS Conference website is now online!

IMPORTANT NOTE - NOVEMBER 24, 2012: Due to a server upgrade, new announcements are not currently posting to the AABS website homepage. For the most recent announcements, click on Announcements in the menu above. A redesigned AABS website is coming soon!

BALSSI offers students in the U.S. the only summer opportunity to study intensively the languages of the Baltic countries. The 2011 Summer Institute will be held at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.
The deadline to apply is April 11.

This summer, courses in elementary and intermediate** Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian will be offered, as well as lectures (in English) on Baltic history and culture and a rich program of cultural events related to the Baltic countries.

Thanks to a generous grant from the American Council of Learned Societies, the program fee for first-year Estonian and for second-year Latvian will be waived for graduate students specializing in East European studies in any discipline. (Students will still be responsible for paying UW-Madison segregated fees.)

For further information about BALSSI 2011 and application materials, please visit the BALSSI web site or contact Nancy Heingartner, BALSSI program coordinator.

**Scheduling of classes at the intermediate level is contingent upon sufficient enrollment, and may be canceled due to low enrollment. Please apply as early as possible to help ensure your class will be offered.

Founded in the mid-1990s, BALSSI is sponsored by a consortium of twelve US universities with additional support from the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies.

The 9th Baltic Conference in Europe -- Transitions, Visions and Beyond -- will be held at Södertörn University, Huddinge, Stockholm on 12-15 June 2011.

It is time to take stock of the transition process, to reflect and summarize, but also to look ahead. The Baltic Sea region has found its place inside Europe. Since 2008, the economic crisis has been a dominating issue not only in the Baltic countries but in Europe as a whole. The implications of the crisis for politics, social life, culture and environment are widespread. Every country is developing its own strategy to overcome the crisis and we need to reflect upon the commonalities and differences in how the crisis is being handled. There is also a need to look ahead, beyond the problems at hand, and to discuss visions and opportunities. The conference "Transitions, Visions and Beyond" aims to bring together representatives of academic communities who share an interest in exploring the Baltic region from multiple perspectives. Baltic region studies are considered a particular historical, political, linguistic, social, cultural and ideological contact zone where the meanings of identities, languages and relationships are renegotiated.

For more information, contact Anne Kaun (anne.kaun@sh.se).

If you are a student or willing to be one, your heritage is Lithuanian but you live abroad, and you wish to forge closer ties to Lithuania either by improving your language skills or by learning more about Lithuanian culture and history, as well as social, economic, and political conditions, then this VMU Summer Course in July 2011 is for you. Vytautas Magnus University and the Lithuanian Emigration Institute extend an invitation to Lithuanians age 18 and older who live outside Lithuania to attend a summer course called REFRESH IN LITHUANIA. The purpose of the VMU Summer Course is to bring together Lithuanians from all over the world, especially those of student age, to help them establish or renew contact with their family's homeland and to learn more about what is going on in Lithuania today.

The deadline to submit an application is May 1, 2011. Information and the application form can be found at www.pasauliolietuviai.lt. For additional information, contact the Coordinator, Ms. Ingrida Celešiūtė, at pla@isc.vdu.lt

Volume 41, Issue 4 (2010) of the Journal of Baltic Studies, featuring the following articles, is now available.

The Saracens of the Baltic: Pagan and Christian Lithuanians in the Perception of English and French Crusaders to Late Medieval Prussia by Alan V. Murray

Landmarks of Old Livonia - Church Towers, Their Symbols and Meaning by Taavi Pae; Helen Soov li-Sepping; Egle Kaur

Defining Success in a Changing Society: Self-Evaluation and Social Reflections of a Coming Elite in the Baltic States by Raili Nugin; Eva-Clarita Onken

Modernizing the Estonian Farmhouse, Redefining the Family, 1880s-1930s by Marie-Alice L'Heureux

Learning from Latvia: Adoption, Adaptation, and Evidence-Based Justice Reform by J. Wheeldon

'In My Opinion, Work Would be in First Place and Family in Second': Young Women's Imagined Gender-Work Relations in Post-Soviet Lithuania by Herwig Reiter

AABS is already planning the 2012 conference, which will be held in Chicago. We hope you will join us!

Ilze Garoza, recipient of the 2009 Grundmanis Fellowship, gives AABS an update on her research in this post.

As a Grundmanis Fellow, my graduate studies were in Comparative and International Development Education Program in the Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy and Development, University of Minnesota. Due to the complexity of my master's thesis project, I am actually still working on my thesis writing. I currently hold a Graduate Fellow position at the Immigration History Research Center, University of Minnesota.
The Grundmanis Fellowship allowed me to pursue and advance my graduate studies and conduct research focusing on the Latvian diaspora in the United States.

Titled "Building bridges between two immigrant generations from Latvia: A case study of Latvian supplementary schools in the United States," my research focuses on relationships between Latvian Americans who came to the U.S. as a result of World War II and Latvians who have come to the U.S. in 1990 or later. Through this interdisciplinary case study I am trying to assess the existing relationships between Latvian Americans and recent immigrants from Latvia, what hampers and what promotes relationships between the two groups, and what role do Latvian supplementary schools in the United States play in bridging them. I plan to complete the research and defend my thesis by the end of this year.

With the help of Grundmanis fellowship, I have been able to finish up the required coursework to complete M.A. studies in the program of Comparative and International Development Education, as well as to start conducting my masters research, gather data, and participate in several academic conferences. The fellowship has been of extraordinary value in my process of graduate studies at the University of Minnesota. Thank you so much for that!

 

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