Do any conference participants or attendees have a question they would like to ask another participant or about another topic or presentation? Leave them as a comment here, and we will get a blog post started!
Author: Eileen Kunkler
Midwest Slavic Association Meeting
Join us on Friday, April 16 at 5:15 PM EDT for the Midwest Slavic Association’s annual meeting! At the meeting, the association will be voting on new leadership for the association based upon the recently passed bylaws. Dr. Tim Pogacar, Bowling Green State University, is running for the position of president, and James McGavran, Kenyon College, is running for the position of vice-president. Join.
Two Student-Focused Special Events Added
One thing that we have heard over the past year is that as a result of the pandemic, many students don’t feel connected with each other, or that they have reduced opportunities to network and meet peers at other institutions. To that end, the Midwest Slavic Association will be hosting two student-centered events on the evenings of Friday, April 16 and Saturday, April 17. At 6PM EDT on Friday, April 16, we will host a roundtable for students to come and discuss their research interests, career goals, and/or their study strategies and networking approaches during the pandemic. Then on Saturday, April 17 at 6PM EDT as the conference wraps up, the Midwest Slavic Association will host an online student mixer to encourage students to relax, have fun, and mingle.
We hope to see some of you at these events!
2017 MWSC Student Mixer
Registration, panel schedule, and individual session information now available
We are excited to share a lot of information with you this week! Registration is now open for the conference. It is free and required for everyone to attend individual presentation or panel sessions. On the individual session page you will find much more detailed information about what to expect for these Friday afternoon sessions and a listing of presenters, papers, and session times. A panel schedule for Saturday is now published too. Please be advised that we have scheduled panels to allow for international participants to more easily participate, i.e. their panels have been scheduled for earlier in the day.
Photo by Phil Desforges on Unsplash
Information on Keynote and Registration Posted
You can now find a full abstract and the registration link for the Thursday, April 15 keynote address by Dr. Yvonne Howell. Dr. Howell’s talk, “The Geography of Joy: Alex Dubas, Voices of Russian Happiness, and the Art of Translation”, will officially open the conference, and its theme of happiness will then connect with the plenary panel scheduled for the morning of Friday, April 16. Both events will be held as Zoom webinars and are free and open to everyone. You must register in advance to receive the link and information on how to join the webinar.
Abstracts and registration are up for the Plenary Panel
Titles and abstracts are now up for the three presentations that will be part of the Friday, April 16 plenary panel. Hannah Chapman will discuss showmanship in contemporary Russian politics, Smoki Musaraj will talk about changing public perceptions of concrete architecture in Albania, while Karen Petrone will delve into memories of and connections with WWII in Russian entertainment and leisure.
The plenary is open to all, conference participants and the general public. It will be available through a Zoom webinar. All attendees will need to register for the plenary panel webinar individually. Please check the Special Events webpage for full abstracts and the registration link.
A WWII Veteran. Photo by Daniel Ioanu on Unsplash
A Commemorative Plate of Putin. Photo by Ignat Kushanrev on Unsplash
Plaza Hotel, Tirana, Albania. Photo by Mika on Unsplash
Working on details for the conference and events, more details very soon!
The conference committee has finished reviewing submissions and we’ve notified all participants.
We’ll publish the schedule for panels and presentations by March 22.
Please note that we have decided to shorten the conference. We will not be holding panels on Sunday, April 18. The conference will conclude on Saturday, April 17.
Stayed tuned! We’ll also have further details on the keynote, plenary, student events, and registration within the next week!
A throwback to the 2010 Midwest Slavic Conference at the Blackwell!
2021 Conference Committee
Thank you to this year’s conference committee for helping to review this year’s presentation proposals.
The committee is:
Dr. Epp Annus, Ohio State University
Dr. Brian Baer, Kent State Univeristy
Dr. Nicholas Breyfogle, Ohio State University
Dr. Ljiljana Duraskovic, University of Pittsburgh
Dr. Venelin Ganev, Miami University
Dr. Marianna Klochko, Ohio State University
Dr. Stephen Norris, Miami University
Dr. Andrea Sims, Ohio State University
New Details on Keynote and Plenary
We are excited to announce details for the keynote and plenary for the 2021 conference! The theme of the keynote and plenary will be “happiness”. Professor Yvonne Howell will discuss her forthcoming book, a translation of Alex Dubas’s Moments of Happiness. Professors Hannah Chapman, Smoki Musaraj, and Karen Petrone will then discuss happiness or the pursuit of it based up on their own research and disciplinary fields.
2016 MWSC Keynote
Please check out the Special Events page for more details.
What do we mean by individual presentation options?
This year the Midwest Slavic Conference is offering two new participation options for individuals who are NOT submitting a proposal for a panel. Individual participants can submit proposals for either preparing a short, pre-recorded presentation OR posting a conference paper to the conference website.
Pre-recorded presentations: Participants who opt for this option will record themselves giving their presentation in advance. This can include speaking through a slide presentation. Any software may be used but the final file format submitted must be submitted as an MP4 file. Presentations must be no longer than 15 minutes, however, shorter lengths are encouraged to encourage more participants and audience members to view each other’s presentations.
Posting a conference paper: Participants who choose this option will prepare a traditional, written conference paper with a suggested length of 8-10 double-spaced pages, not inclusive of citations. The final file format must be a PDF. Speaking or recording will not be required for this option.
How individual presentations will take place: All individual presenters will be required to submit directly to CSEES their final video or paper file by Monday, April 5. We will then post all files to the conference website by Friday, April 9. These will be posted on a webpage that is password protected and only registered attendees will be able to access this page! Attendees will then have a week to view and/or read individual presentations at their leisure. Then on Friday, April 16 from 1PM EDT – 5PM EDT, there will be specific one-hour time slots based on disciplines (literature/culture/film, history, linguistics, and social sciences) in which attendees may log-in to discuss presentations with one another LIVE via blog postings and Zoom meeting rooms. These sessions will not have moderators or discussants but will be self-driven discussions based on the participants present. CSEES staff will help to start each session with some basic introductions and questions to get the conversations started.
For a refresher, take a second look at the full CFP and schedule for further details and timelines.
2017 MWSC Presenters
Help forming panels
For the 2021 Midwest Slavic Conference, participants can submit a proposal for a full panel OR present individually. This is different than prior years, when the conference accepted submissions from individual participants, and then the conference committee formed panels from these individual submissions. Please look for further posts on options for individual participants.
Panel presentations will be live, synchronous via Zoom on Saturday, April 17 and Sunday, April 18.
To help individuals network and connect with other potential collaborators, we encourage participants who want assistance forming a panel to use this blog as a way to post about their research and presentation ideas for the conference.
You can post comments and replies below! Click on the “Leave a Comment” link. And as always, you can contact us at csees@osu.edu!
2014 Midwest Slavic Conference Roundtable
Welcome to the 2021 MWSC
The Midwest Slavic Association (MWSA) and the Center for Slavic and East European Studies (CSEES) at The Ohio State University welcome undergraduate students, graduate students, faculty, and independent scholars from the Midwest and beyond to join us for the 2021 Midwest Slavic Conference, April 15-18, 2021. We are excited to host the conference for the first-time ever in an online, virtual format. The conference will take place over several days and include the same variety of panels, lectures, and networking events to foster a stimulating, diverse environment to further discussions and research about Eastern Europe and Eurasia.
Moving forward, this website and blog will be the online home for the conference. As we release details and planning items, all of that information you will be able to find here. We will create pages for the CFP, schedule, special events, panel sessions, and individual presentations. Blogs will open for potential participants to exchange information and ideas to encourage forming panels. As part of the conference, blogs will be dedicated to subject areas for the individual presentations. All special events, panel sessions, and online discussion rooms for the individual presentations will be conducted via Zoom. Registration and Zoom links will be provided for those via the schedule page.
This is a new endeavor for us, but we hope that you will find it to be an engaging, accessible, and professional way to maintain the conference and your professional work during this challenging time, and we hope to welcome you back to Columbus, Ohio for an in-person conference in 2022!
Participants from the 2018 MWSC