Colleagues at the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies 2024 Annual Convention
The Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES) held its highly anticipated 56th Annual Convention in Boston from November 21–24, bringing together scholars and experts from around the globe for its premier event. This year’s theme, Liberation, built on the 2023 focus on decolonization, fostering rich discussions on freedom from oppression, inequality, and domination.
Among the participants were colleagues from the Blinken OSA Archivum, who contributed to the professional exchange of ideas and the fostering of new synergies in the field.
Oksana Sarkisova participated in the panel Radio, Television, Social Media: The Art of Transmission as Liberation, which examined the history and legacy of socialist media through individual presentations on Soviet and post-Soviet media culture. Her paper, Captured Broadcast: Archival (After) Lives of Soviet and Post-Soviet Television, delved into the archival TV monitoring collection at the Blinken OSA Archivum, recorded by the Research Institute of RFE/RL. She analyzed strategies for categorizing fragmented records and addressed the challenges of transitioning from analog to digital formats. Sarkisova paid special attention to the ways in which the collection can be used to explore the dynamics of live broadcasts that introduced new medial communicative scripts.
Ioana Toma-Macrea convened a panel with Andreea Deciu Ritivoi of Carnegie Mellon University and Mark G. Pomar, author of Cold War Radio: The Russian Broadcasts of the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Pomar, a former senior figure at RFE/RL and VOA, joined scholars in exploring the interplay between refugee perspectives on liberation and the institutional and political frameworks of the U.S. and the West. Toma-Macrea’s paper, Romanian RFE Editors Fighting ‘Totalitarianism’ after Stalinism: Outdatedness or Insightfulness? examined how these editors’ experiences reflected broader tensions between exile activism and Western policy.
