AABS Website

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.

Posted by AABS Administrator at 5:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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.

Posted by AABS Administrator at 4:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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.

Posted by AABS Administrator at 11:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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

Posted by AABS Administrator at 10:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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.

Posted by AABS Administrator at 10:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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.

Posted by AABS Administrator at 10:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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."

Posted by AABS Administrator at 11:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)