AAASS 2007
By Sean at 21 November, 2007, 12:52 am
I attended the AAASS National Convention this past weekend in New Orleans. I participated on two panels. A roundtable titled “Youth’s ‘Janus-Face Nature’: Youth and History in Russia/Soviet/Russia” and a panel called “Looking into the Past, Preparing for the Future: Civil War, Generations, and the Militarization of Soviet Youth, 1918-1941.” (The convention’s full program can be found here.) I co-organized both with Matthias Neumann, a young scholar who works on the Komsomol from University of East Anglia in Britain. Both panels were well received, though not well attended. This is expected since each of the conference’s twelve sessions, which spanned from Thursday afternoon to Sunday noon, had so many panels, that low attendance is a given unless you are a big name or work on some ultra-trendy topic. There was a visible increase in panels on media–film, television, and radio. Panels on Imperial Russian history were few. The Soviet period dominated in history. Predictably, the those that featured gore and ultra-violence were heavily attended. Panels on the Terror, Collectivization, and violence in Russia in general were packed. Especially if scholars like Lynne Viola, Ronald Suny, Norman Naimark, Sheila Fitzpatrick, J. Arch Getty, and other “celebrity” scholars.
Academic conferences are odd places. You really get a sense of how small the Slavic scholar community really is. More importantly, you realize how compartmentalized it is in regard to period, topic, theme and discipline. Panels are rarely multidisciplinary. Eastern Europe, the Baltics, and Russia tend to not cross paths. There is a growing Central Asian and Caucuses contingent but they seem to still be looking for where they fit in all this. Many of them go to the Middle East Studies Association conference, which is unfortunately at the same time as AAASS. Though general attendance was probably well over 1000, you quickly realize that the topics are either so specialized or esoteric that they could only appeal to experts. Conferences in general are probably one of the few places were so many people with shared interests, though with divergent opinions, are concentrated in one place. But I guess that is the point.
There is nothing too exciting to report. The conference is far to large to give an overall impression. Plus the whole thing is quite exhausting. Though it was nice to see some friends that I only get to see this time of year, I’m glad that such an event is only once a year. One high point was Sunday morning at the book exhibits. Despite promises that I wouldn’t buy any books, I took advantage of 50% discounts many publishers offer on the last day of the convention. Of the several books I bought, the ones that excite me the most are Alexander Rabinowitch’s third installment to his trilogy on the Russian Revolution, The Bolsheviks in Power: The First Year of Soviet Rule in Petrograd, Abby Shrader’s Languages of the Lash: Corporal Punishment and Identity in Imperial Russia, and Douglas Weiner’s Models Of Nature: Ecology, Conservation, and Cultural Revolution in Soviet Russia.
As for New Orleans itself, time didn’t permit me to take in the city as much as I hoped. However, a walk through the French Quarter is enough to see that the city is still recovering from Katrina. The city is depopulated. Many restaurants and shops in the Quarter still remain shut down or open intermittently. When and if they are open, they tend to be empty. I thought of going on a “disaster tour” but refrained because I couldn’t morally justify paying money to view misery. The few looks I did get of the city, it made me want to read Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism even more.
At any rate, a shout out to all my friends. And apologies to all the people I didn’t see or didn’t give ample time. See ya all next year in Philly.
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Hey buddy!
Great bloggin!
Keep it up yo!
Later,
Billy!
A whole convention dedicated to Eng.lang.mASS? AWESOME!
my appreciated freind and fellow colleague –
i wonder which central asian or caucasus scholar you actually talked to. i know not one who is “looking where they fit in.” you wish there was more interdisciplinary things, well, that is these scholars. they are not limited to slavic studies, but can move around and have a greater dialog with more diverse people. perhaps a trip to the central eurasian studies conference would give you a better idea where we fit in. this is our specific conference, and while not as large as aaass, this year it did cover three floors of a building at u washington. or the association for the study of nationalities, every year at columbia. so there are four conferences that i could go to any year and fit in. i go every year to aaass, because that is where i feel i fit in the most, both among scholars and friends.
but then where else but the aaass panel would you see a panel on islam in azerbaijan, kyrgyzstan, and bosnia? (my panel, by the way). russian, central asian, caucasus, eastern european, and islamic history all together. sure, all historians, but is that multi-disciplnary enough? if one only hangs at the russian panels, you won’t see this. i’m also reminded of my panel last year, which covered tsarist, revolutionary, and soviet periods, no limit to time period.
you seem to be an example of what you complain. where are the youth orgs from central asia or eastern europe on your panels? why were both of your panels on verily the same topic, with the same person? if you want greater dialog across disciplines, maybe you should join it.
you seem to be an example of what you complain. where are the youth orgs from central asia or eastern europe on your panels? why were both of your panels on verily the same topic, with the same person? if you want greater dialog across disciplines, maybe you should join it.
Well I wasn’t complaining. I was making an observation. I freely admit that I could be wrong and you are right. I also admit that I could be contributing to the very problem I’ve observed.
Are there working people on youth orgs in Central Asia etc? If there are, I would like to know their names so I can do panels like you suggest. Because a quick search for “youth” in this year’s program appears on the two panels I did, another on Soviet representations of youth, and one paper on Orthodox Jewish youth. I would appreciate that anyone working on non-Russia youth contact me. Or perhaps I will learn more in the near future since I joined the Society for the History of Children and Youth. A group that I didn’t know existed until last Friday.
When did “youth” become popular contemporary English to refer to young people? It sounds archaic to me.
“When did “youth” become popular contemporary English to refer to young people?”
It became popular since the time of “My Cousin Vinny”.
It became popular since the time of “My Cousin Vinny”.
That was yoots. Two of them.
What word were you suggesting as a substitute? Young people? Teenagers? Should remember we aren’t talking about colloquial speech – these are academics. In any kind of business writing, academic writing, or technical writing, you would use youths over less formal or more verbose terms.
johnnie b. needs to discover the caps key.damn hard to read that rant.
I’m not suggesting any alternative — it just jars on my ears and sounds stiff.
Why limit yourself to youth groups? What other themes do you address? Expand.
“Why limit yourself to youth groups?”
They don’t trust anyone over 30. The times they are a ‘changin’, man, and Nashi’s gonna show us the way!
Hyperspecialization is what acadenics do. If I had stayed in academia, I would probably be the nec plus ultra expert in some obscure corner of Heidegger Studies. One of one profs in grad school was an expert in theories of light in the late Roman Empire, mostly stuff about how light actualized the potentiality of transparency in air. Now being a petriotic Roman, it makes me happy that people are still studying this stuff, but you have to admit that that is a pretty narrow specialization.
my take on the conference is on registan.net