Mailing Address: AABS, University of Washington, Box 353420,
Seattle, WA 98195-3420 USA | aabs@uw.edu
Home | Announcements | Membership | Grants | Conferences | Journal | Publications | Organization | Links
AABS invites you to participate in our 23rd conference -- The Global Baltics: The Next Twenty Years -- which will be held at the University of Illinois at Chicago on April 26-28, 2012.
Program, registration, accommodation and conference site information can be found on the 2012 AABS Conference website. You can download the conference program and maps of the conference venues.
Visit the 2012 AABS Conference Abstracts website to read about all the panel presentations.
Confirmed Conference Plenary Session Speakers:
* Ambassadors to the United States, Marina Kaljurand (Estonia), Žygimantas Pavilionis (Lithuania) and Andrejs Pildegovičs (Latvia) have accepted the invitation to participate in a roundtable plenary session discussion about globalization and the Baltic countries in the next 20 years.
* Dr. Vjačeslavs Dombrovskis, an economist and a member of Latvia's Parliament, will address the topic of the current economic crisis in the Baltic countries.
* Linguist and translator, Università di Pisa professor, Dr. Pietro U. Dini, will discuss how Renaissance Europe looked at Baltic languages and the Baltic peoples (his most recent book in Italian is entitled ,,Aliletoescvr: linguistica baltica delle origini", published in Livorno by Books & Co.
Join in now! The 2012 AABS conference is on Facebook.
CALL FOR PAPERS: Turning Points in Baltic and Central East European Food History -
Knowledge, Consumption, and Production in Changing Environments
Tallinn, Estonia, 29-31 August 2012
The deadline for applications is April 15, 2012.
Together with global changes (climate change, colonialism, industrialisation etc.), the conference will focus in particular on the specific regional characteristics of the Baltic countries and Central East Europe. This is all the more necessary since, despite the complex inter-ethnic composition, class structures and trade relations in the Baltic area and Poland, there have only been a few comparative studies made of the historical and trans-cultural food culture of the region which draw upon the latest research in this field. The main focus of this international and interdisciplinary conference will be upon the continuities and discontinuities in Baltic food history and in contemporary Baltic food studies.
This conference constitutes the first in a small series of conferences on environmental history which are being organised in cooperation with the Herder Institute in Marburg and the Institute of History, Tallinn University. The aim of this series is, from a comparative perspective, to reach an appraisal of the state of current research on the environmental history of the Baltic region and Central Eastern Europe, and to draw impulses from this for further research. We therefore also welcome topics whose focus lies beyond the actual region itself, but which can still offer an important methodological contribution.
We will invite up to 15 academics to the conference. Presentations should be no longer than 20 minutes in length. Young academics are encouraged to present their research projects in poster presentations of around 10 minutes in length.
The language of the conference will be English, but presentations may also be made in German. The organisers will cover the costs of accommodation in Tallinn and if necessary a proportional takeover of the travel costs after (please contact the rganizers before).
Please send your abstracts (max. 500 words) to:
Heidi Hein-Kircher (heidi.hein-kircher@herder-institut.de) and Ulrike
Plath (ulrike@utkk.ee). The deadline for applications is April 15, 2012.
The Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies invites submissions for the upcoming 16th semi-annual conference on Baltic Studies in Australasia. The conference will be held on 29 September 2012. We welcome papers related to the Baltic region, its countries, and its populations both within those countries and their diasporas.
Contributions are encouraged from disciplines including, but not limited to, the following: anthropology, architecture, business, communication and media, cultural studies, demography, economics, education, environment, ethnic relations, film studies, fine arts, gender studies, geography, history, international relations, law, linguistics, literature, memory, political science, psychology, public health, religion, sociology, and advancing Baltic studies. Interdisciplinary and comparative work is particularly welcome.
Please send proposals (250 words) by 1 May to Delaney Skerrett, Chapter President and Conference Convenor at d.skerrett@uq.edu.au
AABS gratefully acknowledges the sponsorship of the School of Languages and Linguistics of the University of Melbourne.
Lee Savage, a Research Fellow at the University of Sussex in the Department of Politics and Contemporary European Studies, is currently working on a project which looks at government formation and duration in Central and Eastern Europe in comparative perspective.
Mr. Savage invited experts in politics to participate in a survey on party policy positions. The questionnaires should take no longer than 30 minutes to complete. They can be found at the following URLs together with instructions for completion:
Estonia: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/estoniapolicysurvey
Latvia: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/latviapolicysurvey
Lithuania: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/lithuaniapolicysurvey
For further information, please contact Mr. Savage by email. A pdf description of the project can be downloaded here: Savage baltics politics survey March 2012.pdf
In response to an invitation by professor Guntis Šmidchens, I am sharing a few observations about the development of the Journal of Baltic Studies. These are personal reflections of a regular reader and contributor...The noteworthy activities include the exchange of scholarly views, and the dissemination of knowledge, with the purpose of advancing the accumulation of knowledge of all aspects of the Baltic Sea region...I am also reminded of the debates that preceded the journal. There were questions of strategic principles. Would a journal generate respectable research about the Baltics? Or, would it be a publication of the last resort for marginal explorations? Would it help raise the scholarly reputation of the AABS and its members?
To read Dr. King's full comments on the Journal of Baltic Studies, please download Gundar King JBS discussion.pdf We welcome your comments on the Journal of Baltic Studies. Comments and responses can be sent to Amanda Swain, newsletter editor.
In 2011, Dr. Amy Bryzgel was awarded an AABS Emerging Scholar Award to assist with the completion of her book, Performing the East: Performance Art in Russia, Latvia and Poland since 1980. The book dedicates one chapter to an analysis of performance art in Latvia as viewed through the works of contemporary artists Miervaldis Polis and Gints Gabrans. The funding was utilised to offset the cost of copy-editing and indexing of the final manuscript.
Performing the East examines the phenomenon of performance art as it emerged in Eastern Europe by examining distinct case-studies of artists working in Russia, Latvia and Poland. While Performance Art is a thoroughly theorised and codified genre within the Western Art Historical canon, there has yet to emerge a comprehensive study of the meaning and significance of this art form to artists and audiences in the 'East,' where it emerged under entirely different socio-historical conditions. This book is one of the first efforts to fill that gap in the scholarship.
The chapter on Performance Art in Latvia focuses on two artists working nearly two decades apart. Miervaldis Polis, the painter-turned-performer, embarked on a series of performance in the 1980s as the Bronze Man, wherein he walked around the streets of Soviet Riga covered from head to toe in bronze paint. Nearly 20 years later, after Latvia had already regained its independence and was about to enter a new Union - the EU - artist and set designer Gints Gabrans selected a homeless man from the streets of Riga and turned him into a TV star by giving him a makeover and finding as many opportunities as possible for him to appear on TV. Both performances confront the viewer with visceral manifestations of self-made (or re-made) men, and challenge him to question the truth behind appearances presented. While Polis' performance functioned in concert with similar disputes being raised by citizens during the Soviet period, Gabrans's reinvents this question during a period when Latvia was just gaining its footing in a free-market democracy.
From 2004-2009, Dr. Bryzgel lived in Riga while completing research for her PhD dissertation on the resurgence of the avant-garde in Eastern Europe after the Thaw. Since 2009, she has been a Lecturer at the University of Aberdeen, where she specialises in Modern and Contemporary Art from Eastern Europe and Russia.
Three AABS members -Toivo Raun, Guntis Šmidchens and Mare Taagepera - have been awarded state decorations by the Republic of Estonia for services to the state.
From the official press release of the Office of the President of the Republic of Estonia:
"As the Head of State, I consider the decorations of the Republic of Estonia to be the highest gratitude and acknowledgement of the Republic of Estonia to people from Estonia and other countries, whose work and activities have contributed to a better, safer and richer Estonia and, in a number of cases, the nominees of the decorations have expressed special personal courage. They have done more that their work would have assumed them to do," told President Ilves. "The number of receivers of decorations is not large and this should enhance the value and significance of each and every one of them."
"The Order of the White Star, 3rd class, is being awarded to the promoter of discovery-based learning, initiator and contributor to the Forest University in Estonia, Mare Taagepera."
"The Republic of Estonia acknowledges the keepers of its history. The Order of the White Star is being awarded to Professor Toivo Ülo Raun, researcher of the history of the Baltic countries and Finland at the University of Indiana in the United States of America."
"Estonia thanks its friends and supporters aboard. Orders of the Cross of Terra Mariana is awarded to one of the founders of the Baltic study programme at the University of Washington, Professor Guntis Šmidchens."
Stefan Donecker," An Itinerant Sheep, and The Origins of The Livonians: Friedrich Menius's Syntagma De Origine Livonorum (1635)"
During the 1630s, Friedrich Menius, professor of history at the University of Dorpat, was the first scholar to investigate the ethnic origins and the ancestry of Estonians and Latvians at an academic level. His treatise, entitled Syntagma de origine Livonorum, has nevertheless been largely ignored by later generations. This is mainly due to Menius's bad reputation as an academic adventurer and notorious troublemaker. The present paper intends to examine Menius's theories, place them in the context of early modern intellectual history, and interpret them as an expression of the worldview and mindset of a seventeenth-century Livonian scholar.
Epp Annus, "The Problem of Soviet Colonialism in the Baltics"
This essay works through some of the necessary preliminary questions in thinking about Soviet colonialism in the Baltics. It opens by tracing the prehistory of critical thinking about Soviet colonialism in the 1960s and considers why the topic of Soviet colonialism has not (or not yet) become a dominant way to understand Soviet history. The central question posed by the article is whether one can speak about the Soviet invasions of the Baltic States as 'colonization'. It proposes that, initially, communist Russia did not in fact seek to colonize the Baltic States and instead 'occupied' them; however, this initial period of occupation later developed into a period of a colonial rule.
Li Bennich- Bjőrkman and Branka Likić-Brborić, "Successful But Different: Deliberative Identity and the Consensus-Driven Transition to Capitalism in Estonia and Slovenia"
Praised by international organizations, Estonia and Slovenia have long been considered among the most successful post-communist states. Estonia quickly transformed itself into one of the most liberal economies in the world, whereas Slovenia opted for a social justice-oriented market economy. Still, the roots of their success coincide in that consensus played a crucial role. We argue that the public sphere was never as repressed in Estonia and Slovenia during the communist period as it was elsewhere. Distinct national identities continued to be formed and re-formed by intellectuals during the decades of communist rule, who assumed roles as political leaders when the transition started. Consensus based on these national identities legitimized reform policies for the entire decade of the 1990s.
Cecilia Mőller, "Gendered Entrepreneurship in Rural Latvia: Exploring Femininities, Work, and Livelihood Within Rural Tourism"
This article explores different geographies of tourism, femininities and livelihood in post-socialist rural Latvia, with a focus on women's entrepreneurship within rural tourism. Based on a case study in the Cēsis district, its aim is to analyze women's livelihood strategies, including both economic and lifestyle-oriented motives behind entrepreneurship within tourism. The study illustrates women's day-to-day livelihood practices and how they organize their lives in time and space. The article reveals how women negotiate their 'livelihood action space', which includes a number of paradoxes between the quest for independence while facing both economic and social restrictions.
Stefan Ewert, Higher Education Cooperation and Networks in the Baltic Sea Region: A Basis for Regionalization and Region Building?
This article examines academic cooperation in the Baltic Sea Region. Academic networks are being discussed as indicators of regionalization, but research on the empirical basis is scarce. In the article, the regional networks of 70 higher education institutions in the Baltic States and the German federal state Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania are analyzed. The analysis shows a heterogeneous pattern for the regional higher education area. Regional embedding depends on the focus of an academy and its participation in regional networks. The article concludes with a discussion of options to be considered by regional organizations in order to strengthen regional academic cooperation.
Anu Toots and Tõnu Idnurm, "Does the Context Matter? Attitudes Towards Cosmopolitanism Among Russian-Speaking Students in Estonia, Latvia and the Russian Federation"
The increase of multiculturalism in European societies poses challenges to citizenship education, which, in formal education, relies on national values and neglects the emergence of cosmopolitanism. This article compares the patriotic and cosmopolitan values of Russian-speaking students in Estonia, Latvia and the Russian Federation using the data of two large surveys. The analysis revealed that Russian-speaking adolescents in Estonia and Latvia demonstrate higher support of cosmopolitan values than the Estonians, Latvians, and students in the Russian Federation. A worrisome finding is that students in the cosmopolitan cluster do not firmly favor democratic values and are not interested in improving their civic knowledge.
Check out these articles in the most recent issue of the Journal of Baltic Studies:
"Evicting the Speaking Subject: A Critique of Latvian Concepts of Language" by Sergei Kruk
"Estonian Folklore as A Source of Baltic-German Poetry" by Liina Lukas
"The Evolution of Innovation Policy Governance Systems and Policy Capacities in the Baltic States" by Erkki Karo
"Developments in Usage and Acquisitions of Scientific Information in the Baltic States' Leading Technical University Libraries: Past Trends and Current Challenges" by Kate-Riin Kont
The most recent issue of the Journal of Baltic Studies features the following articles:
Iurii Samarin's Baltic Escapade by Richard Pipes
The Institutional Roots of Anti-Corruption Policies: Comparing the Three Baltic States by Lars Johannsen and Karin Hilmer Pederson
An Intriguing Document: 583 Headwords in Search of a Lexicographer by Kristina Brazaitis
Small- and Medium-Sized Businesses' Growth Expectations and Financial Performance in Latvia: Does Ethnicity Matter? by Ruta Aidis, Tomasz Marek Mickiewicz and Arnis Sauka
The Impact of the European Union on Sub-National Mobilization in a Unitary State: The Case of Estonia by Merit Tartar
Pleasures of Late Socialism in Soviet Lithuania: Strategies of Resistance and Dissent by Rasa Baločkaitė
The Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies (AABS) and the Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Studies (SASS) will once again hold a joint conference on March 13-15, 2014. The conference will be hosted by the European Studies Council at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. For more information about the conference, please contact Bradley Woodworth.
Sődertőn University in Stockholm hosted the 2011 Baltic Studies in Europe Conference on June 12-15. The 230 participants came from Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Russia, Sweden, UK, USA, and even two participants from Japan. In addition to panel presentations, the conference featured three key note speakers. Bengt Jacobsson, Sődertőn University, opened the conference with a talk on "Changes in Governance: Europeanization and the Baltic States." Valdis Muktupavels, University of Latvia, presented case studies of Latvian musical instruments to discuss local, regional and continental components of national musical culture. Tiina Kirss, Tallinn University, addressed post-Soviet "memory work" in her talk "Writing Baltic Lives: Continuities and Caesuras."
A highlight of the conference was a concert by the Hans Antehads Quartet, which performed jazz arrangements of traditional and contemporary Latvian songs. The concert, held at the historical Konserthuset, was followed by a reception hosted by the Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian embassies in Sweden. On Sunday evening, the Estonian House hosted a reception with a performance by The Lavettes, a 1960s music Stockholm band comprised primarily of doctoral students. Despite a heavy rain that forced a move inside from the Blåporten restaurant's courtyard, the conference dinner was an opportunity to enjoy Swedish food and conversation with colleagues.
The 2013 Baltic Studies Conference in Europe will be held in Tallinn, Estonia.
The current issue of the Journal of Baltic Studies features the following articles:
Koreinik, Kadri. Public Discourse of (De)legitimation: The Case of South Estonian Language.
Mölder, Holger. The Cooperative Security Dilemma in the Baltic Sea Region.
Taagepera, Rein. Albert, Martin, and Peter Too: Their Roles in Creating the Estonian and Latvian Nations.
Velmet, Aro. Occupied Identities: National Narratives in Baltic Museums of Occupations.
Ehala, Martin and Anastassia Zabrodskaja. Interethnic discordance and stability in Estonia.
Rohtmets, Helen. The repatriation of Estonians from Soviet Russia in 1920-1923: a test of Estonian citizenship and immigration policy.
Parutis, Violetta. White, European, and Hardworking: East European Migrants' Relationships with Other Communities in London.
Since 2008, both Vilnius and Riga have witnessed a growth in farmers' markets and other alternative systems of food provision. Consumers and farmers are experimenting with non-conventional food supply chains, for example, by adapting models of Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) to local conditions. Renata Blumberg, a PhD student in the Department of Geography at the University of Minnesota, is conducting research on these networks between producers and consumers in both Latvia and Lithuania. Renata uses quantitative and qualitative research methods and her project examines both the impact that participation in these networks has on farmer livelihoods and consumer practices. Localized food supply chains have emerged as a recent academic and political focus of the sustainable food movement because scholars claim that they unite consumers and producers in a manner that contributes to sustainable rural development. However, little empirical evidence outside of Western Europe and the USA exists to support this claim. Renata's research is designed to redress this gap.
An AABS dissertation research grant allowed Renata to conduct a month of participant observation in alternative food networks during the summer of 2010. As a participant observer, she followed the links of the supply chain from the agricultural field to the market. This experience gave her firsthand empirical data, which compliments her interview and survey materials.
Renata has presented her preliminary research results at Association of American Geographers' annual conference as part of a special session on "Subversive and Interstitial Food Spaces." She also presented at an international workshop on "Ethical Foods and Food Movements in Postsocialist Settings" held at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.
She is very grateful for her award!
The 23rd AABS Conference -- The Global Baltics: The Next Twenty Years -- will be held in Chicago, 26-28 April 2012. Deadline for proposals: October 1, 2011.
Keep up-to-date with conference plans by joining the 2012 AABS Conference group on Facebook.
AABS welcomes papers, panels, and roundtable presentations in fields related to the Baltic region, its countries, and populations within those countries, including minorities. Contributions are encouraged from disciplines including, but not limited to, the following: anthropology, architecture, business, communication and media, cultural studies, demography, economics, education, environment, ethnic relations, film studies, fine arts, gender studies, geography, history, international relations, law, linguistics, literature, memory, political science, psychology, public health, religion, sociology, and advancing Baltic studies. Interdisciplinary and comparative work is welcome.
Graduate students, both Master and Ph.D., are encouraged to submit proposal.
Paper and panel proposals must include an abstract of no more than 250 words and a one- to two-page curriculum vitae. These materials should be sent to the appropriate divisional chair. For additional information, please download the call for papers. 1st Call for Papers AABS CHICAGO April 26-28 2012.pdf
As a Saltups fellow, Inta Mierina was working on a research paper called "Learning political helplessness: the vicious cycle of political socialization in Latvia" that is part of my doctoral thesis. Her doctoral thesis "Social Capital and Development of Political Attitudes in Post-Communist Countries" investigates the sources of political alienation in post-communist countries. On the basis of quantitative micro-level analysis -- structural equation modeling and an original technique of cohort analysis -- it tests the assumptions of cultural theories (the legacy of the communist regime), institutional theories (the negative effects of the poor performance and unresponsiveness of institutions), and social capital theories (the importance of trust and associational membership). The paper offers new insights into state-society relations in post-communist countries, as well as the mechanisms behind the evolution or persistence of certain political attitudes.
During her research visit, she greatly benefitted from access to the wide selection of books and journals available at the UIC library. She presented my work at the Department of Political Science, receiving valuable suggestions and encouraging comments from other doctoral students and professors. She also met and discussed my work with other Latvian students in Chicago. She was honoured to be invited to present her work at the Latvian Community Center in Chicago -- a presentation that turned into a very fruitful and exciting discussion about politics in Latvia in general.
The Saltups scholarship has also advanced her academic career. She successfully submitted her PhD thesis at the University of Latvia, and was recently employed as a research assistant at the European Commission funded project "Public Goods through Private Eyes: Exploring Citizens' Attitudes towards Public Goods and the State in Central Eastern Europe", allowing her to continue working in the area of post-communist studies.
I would like to express my biggest gratitude to the AABS for the Mudite I. Zilite Saltups scholarship that supported my research visit to the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) in the summer of 2010. With best wishes, Inta Mierina PhD candidate and researcher
The 2010 Emerging Scholars Award assisted Dr. McKenzie in financing his travel to Tallinn, Riga, and Vilnius to conduct field research about Dark Tourism. The field studies in Estonia included interviews with owners of a firm that provides Soviet Tours in Tallinn; an interview with a tour guide who conducts Soviet Tours in Tallinn; and an interview with a representative of the Tallinn tourism bureau. In Riga, he conducted an interview with a representative of the Latvian Institute to discuss the role of Soviet tourism in Latvia and an interview with a representative from the Latvian Tourism Development Agency. In Vilnius, he conducted an interview, and a tour, with a guide at the Museum of Genocide Victims, an interview with a tourist who visited Grūto parkas ("Stalin World"), and an interview with a representative of the Lithuanian tourism bureau.
To date, in addition to his presentation, "Remembrance versus Nostalgia: 'Dark' Tourism in the Baltic States", at the 2010 Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies Conference, Dr. McKenzie has conducted a seminar at the Estonian Business School in Tallinn, "Country/Destination Branding: 'Dark' Tourism in the Baltic States"; a presentation at Tartu University, "Conscience to Commerce: 'Soviet' Tourism in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania." His paper entitled "Soviet Tourism in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania: Ethics versus Experiences" will be presented at the 2011 TTRA (Travel, Tourism, Research Association) Europe Conference in France.
Dr. Brent McKenzie is an Associate Professor in the Department of Marketing and Consumer Studies, in the College of Management and Economics, at the University of Guelph, in Guelph, Ontario, Canada. He is a leading Canadian expert on the retail sector and shopping behaviour in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, as well as his current research into the study of Dark Tourism in the Baltic States.