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March 2021
ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT

UW-Madison REECAS MA alumnus Joshua Dufour '15 shared the news with CREECA that he has accepted a new opportunity with Teach For America, his next professional move after completing a Fulbright Teaching Assistantship in Kazakhstan in 2020. Dufour sees these two formative experiences as fueling a long-term trajectory toward a career in foreign service with the U.S. State Department. Learn more about Dufour's Fulbright experience here.

The American Society of International Law (ASIL) has awarded UW-Madison Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor of History Francine Hirsch the 2021 Certificate of Merit for a Preeminent Contribution to Creative Scholarship for her recently published book Soviet Judgment at Nuremberg: A New History of the International Military Tribunal after World War II (Oxford University Press, 2020). Read more about the award and Professor Hirsch's archival research here.

CREECA remembers Rachel F. Brenner, the Elaine Marks WARF Professor of Jewish Studies at UW-Madison, who died on Thursday, February 4 in Madison at age 74. As a CREECA faculty member, Professor Brenner was a familiar face at CREECA lectures on Poland and Eastern Europe, and her 2012 talk is available in our archive. In 2015, her book The Ethics of Witnessing: The Holocaust in Polish Writers' Diaries from Warsaw, 1939-1945 won a prestigious book prize for outstanding monograph published on the REECA region in literacy and cultural studies. Read about Professor Brenner's life and legacy in her obituary, a tribute from H-Net, and a remembrance from the Mosse/Weinstein Center for Jewish Studies.


Announcements
 
Wisconsin Russia Project -  Postdoctoral Fellowship Opportunity
Social scientists of Russia are invited to apply for a 2021-2022 postdoctoral research fellowship at UW-Madison by March 31.

Language Services Directory for Translation & Interpretation
CREECA members are invited to add (or update) their contact information to the CREECA language services directory, which helps serve the linguistic needs of the community.

CREECA Lecture Series -  Thursday, March 11, 4 pm CST
Join us for "Mixed Messages: Mediating Native Belonging in Asian Russia" with Kathryn Graber, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Indiana University Bloomington. Abstract and registration here.


Welcome to CREECA!
 
Özlem Eren is the new Wisconsin Russia Project graduate assistant. As a PhD student in the Department of Art History, she studies Byzantine and Medieval Art, focusing on Medieval Russia. Her primary interest is the architecture of Kievan Rus’. Eren holds a PhD and MA in Economics from UW-Milwaukee and a BS in Economics from the METU in Ankara, Turkey. She speaks Turkish, Russian, and German and is working on Ukrainian and Old Church Slavonic.
 
Amanda Gatewood (Population Health Institute) is the newest CREECA associate! Dr. Gatewood is a public health epidemiologist and academic staff in the UW School of Medicine and Public Health where she researches health equity, especially among people who are racialized and economically disenfranchised. As a speaker of Uzbek, she lived and worked in Central Asia for two years (Kashgar, E. Turkestan / Xinjiang, China 2007-2008 and Arslanbob, Kyrgyz Republic 2012-2013). As a Fulbright scholar to Kyrgyzstan, she completed public health research on breastfeeding and early childhood stunting and wasting in minority enclaves of Central Asia using UNICEF data on the Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Kazakstan. Dr. Gatewood is delighted to serve as a resource for faculty and students interested in researching or working on public health or medical research projects in Central Asia.

Community Updates
 
Alumni
Paul Goode (MA, Political Science) has been named McMillan Chair in Russian Studies of the Institute of European, Russian and Eurasian Studies (EURUS) at Carleton University. Learn more about his new appointment and research in the full story.

Colleen Lucey (PhD, Slavic Languages and Literature) has co-authored the chapterOral History in the Russian Language Curriculum: A Transformative Learning Experience” that appears in The Art of Teaching Russian, edited by Evgeny Dengub, Irina Dubinina, and Jason Merrill (Georgetown University Press).

Lauren McCarthy (PhD, Political Science) co-edited a special issue of Europe-Asia Studies (2021, Volume 73, Issue 1) on law and society and Eurasia. It has contributions from McCarthy and several scholars who have been associated with CREECA over the years.

Faculty and Academic Staff
Krzysztof Borowski’s (GNS+) students from last fall’s Polish American Experience course have created digital storytelling projects highlighting Polish migration to the Americas. Check out several of these projects on the GNS+ Polish page to learn more about the rich history of Polish migration in the U.S. and the Americas.

Kathryn Ciancia (History) was interviewed for the New Books Network podcast for her book, On Civilization's Edge: A Polish Borderland in the Interwar World (Oxford University Press). You can listen to her chat with host Steven Seegel (University of Northern Colorado) here.

Kathryn Hendley (Law School) was featured in University Communications’ 2020 photo essay, “Moments in Time 2020: A Year of Resilience.” The candid shows Hendley lecturing on the first day of the fall semester during her first-year interest group fig entitled, “Law and Disorder in Russia.” Check out the snapshot of Hendley (#37) and other stunning photos here.

Congratulations to Yoshiko Herrera (Political Science) and Sunny Yudkoff (GNS+), who have been chosen to receive this year’s Distinguished Teaching Awards, an honor that started in 1953 to recognize the UW-Madison's finest educators. Read the full story here.

In the latest episode of the “Ask a Historian” podcast from the Department of History, Francine Hirsch explains how primary sources reveal both facts and perspectives and what falsified evidence can tell us about the past. The episode, “HISTORY LAB 3: How do historians determine what’s true when working with primary sources?” is available here.

Nâlân Erbil (GNS+) was featured in the Turkish-language newspaper Önce Vatan Gazetesi as part of an interview series with influential Turkish-Americans in Turkey and the U.S. In the interview, Erbil discussed teaching Turkish at UW-Madison, students’ motivations to learn Russian, and the popularity of Turkish TV shows in the U.S. that inspired her to offer a new course on Turkish shows. The interviews, translated into English, can be found here.

S.A. Karpukhin (GNS+) published "Lost in Transition: Can Inclusivity Cross a Language Barrier?" in BLARB, the Blog of the Los Angeles Review of Books. The piece centers on the Russian debates on political correctness and trans*-inclusive language; it is an attempt to come to terms with the cognitive dissonance as a speaker of Russian and American English.

Russian Flagship Program assistant director Laura Marshall interviewed UW-Madison alumnus Tim Butler on how his Russian-language study helped him land his dream job with the National Hockey League. The interview appeared in the December issue of the L&S newsletter, Sift & Winnow.

News to share? Write to us at communications@creeca.wisc.edu.

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Private gifts ensure that CREECA maintains its excellence as one of the leading centers for the study of Central and Eastern Europe, Russia, and Eurasia. Donations support research grants for graduate students, training in critical world languages, and lectures and cultural events that impact the wider community. Gifts of any size are most welcome and gratefully appreciated. To donate, please visit this site.
Copyright © 2021 Center for Russia, East Europe, and Central Asia (CREECA), All rights reserved.
Newsletter design: Ryan Goble
Editor-in-chief: Jennifer Tishler


Contact:
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communications@creeca.wisc.edu
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Website: creeca.wisc.edu