Slavic and East European Languages
2025 Streams
Eurasian Ecologies Past and Present
Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the Teaching and Learning of Slavic and Eurasian Languages, Literatures, and Cultures
Poetry and Translation
Slavic Languages in Contact: The Past and the Present
Teaching and Reading the Caucasus
Dissidence, Gender, and Sexuality in Slavic, Eastern European, and Central Asian Literatures and Cultures
Organizer: The Association for Women in Slavic Studies (AWSS)
The Association for Women in Slavic Studies (AWSS) is organizing a stream on intersections between dissidence, gender, and sexuality in Slavic, Eastern European, and Central Asian Literatures and Cultures. This stream of panels will interrogate how creative actors (writers, artists, performers, broadly defined) from this area of the world have used non-normative constructions of gender and sexuality to amplify dissident voices and points of view that run counter to the political status quo.
All time periods are welcome, as are interdisciplinary topics. Topics under discussion will include: producing and maintaining creative production in punitive environments and/or while under the threat of surveillance and coercion; the ways in which political ideology interacts with gender and sexuality; and the politicization of sex and identity. Additionally, the panel will also consider ways in which we can promote dissident themes, works, and authors in more mainstream classes and scholarly studies.
We encourage presentations focusing on creative production that feature alternative constructions of gender, sexuality, and personal identity to challenge prevailing systems of state and political power.
Eurasian Ecologies Past and Present
Organizers: Rose Fitzpatrick (Yale University), Sasha Karsavina (Yale University)
Presently, in the former Soviet Union, nature has once again emerged as a contested political category. The emergence of grassroots protest groups and inter-regional “green coalitions” has heightened public awareness regarding regional inequalities, with emphasis being placed on the continued exploitation of indigenous lands by governmental and corporate interests. Drawing on indigenous ecologies, Soviet earth science, and populist frameworks, these movements have emerged as sites of collective re-imagining, permitting new models of nature and environmentalism to emerge. In response to this emerging public discourse of climate justice, the Russian state has initiated a brutal crackdown against environmental activists, labeling them, and their climate-focused agenda, as being of “foreign” import. As these developments suggest, this region has always been home to disparate ecological imaginaries, be they literary, political, or scientific in nature. This stream seeks to excavate the alternative models of nature that have developed out of an Eurasian context over the last 200 years. Potential themes for discussion will include: environmental poetics, indigenous ecologies, energetic economies, nonhuman timescales, and histories of terraforming.
Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the Teaching and Learning of Slavic and Eurasian Languages, Literatures, and Cultures
Organizers: Molly T. Blasing (University of Kentucky), Liudmila Klimanova (University of Arizona), Kit Pribble (Wake Forest University)
Recent advancements in generative artificial intelligence (AI) have garnered significant attention across different disciplines. In the humanities, AI is often viewed as both a benefit and an affliction. Building on the momentum from the highly attended AI stream at the last AATSEEL conference, this year's stream will delve deeper into the latest developments in using AI for the study and research of Slavic and Eurasian languages, literatures, and cultures, assessing both its affordances and its drawbacks. The sessions will focus on research, materials development, and teaching methodologies related to generative AI. Presenters will consider the implications of machine perception, machine learning, and affective computing for AI-driven language acquisition, with special emphasis placed on the promotion of communicative competence. The use of AI-driven and text mining tools in literary research and the digital humanities will also be considered. Finally, discussions will touch on practical pedagogical considerations such as using AI to create course syllabi and instructional materials, navigating student privacy concerns, ensuring equitable access to technology, and maintaining academic integrity. By bringing together experts and practitioners from various programs and languages, this stream aims to forge pathways for shared knowledge and practical applications of AI in enhancing language and cultural education.
Poetry and Translation
Organizers: Sibelan Forrester (Swarthmore College), Maria Khotimsky (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Martha Kelly (University of Missouri)
This stream will include both traditional panels with scholarly papers about issues in the translation of poetry and two poetry readings.
I. One panel on poetry translation will involve elements of canon formation, poetic technique, translation theory and practice, and perhaps translation education. We propose the title “Poetry and Translation” in order to cover the broadest possible set of paper topics.
II. We hope that several of the poets whose translations are being read will be able to attend their session and participate (this has always been a wonderful aspect of the AATSEEL conference, whether or not there will be a featured poet who becomes part of this stream). We request two sessions day dedicated to bilingual readings (ideally with poet and translator) at quite different times of day aims to allow the timing to work both for poets and translators located in Eastern Europe (the titular region of our conference) and for poets and translators across North America and in other parts of the world (Australia; the Far East).
Slavic Languages in Contact: The Past and the Present
Organizers: Larisa Leisiö (University of Eastern Finland), Elena Bratishenko (University of Calgary)
Language change is constant, and its causes include contact between languages. We propose a stream of papers on topics surrounding the past and the present of contact phenomena in Slavic, and their cultural and political consequences.
Language maintenance and language shift through intense borrowing, pidginization and creolization – the features of all these processes first systematically analyzed by Thomason and Kaufman (1989), can also be observed and investigated in the languages of linguistic minorities, immigrants, and heritage speakers.
A discussion of the processes of language divergence and convergence in political differentiation and language contact, and more broadly, language change, has theoretical, practical and political significance. The lack of awareness of how languages, both genetically related and not, undergo divergence or convergence, provides grounds for anachronism and manipulation of history to politicians such as Putin who insists on the idea of Russkij mir and denies the existence of the Ukrainian language. This aspect of the topic can be discussed at one of the stream panels.
Our objectives are:
1. to better understand historical contact processes in Slavic, including in linguistic convergence zones;
2. to consider contact induced processes ongoing in the language of bilingual speakers;
3. to revisit the linguistic and social aspects of branching of Early East Slavic into separate languages.
Teaching and Reading the Caucasus
Organizer: Elena Pedigo Clark (Wake Forest University)
This stream will consist of two panels and a roundtable. The general focus of the stream will be the Caucasus as a topic of pedagogy and research. The roundtable will be on exploration and experiential learning in the Caucasus. One panel will be on teaching the Caucasus in the Anglophone classroom, preferably with a focus on the linguistic and geographical diversity of the region. The other panel will be on “reading the Caucasus,” with a focus on depictions of the Caucasus in literature. Papers on both literature about the Caucasus and literature from the Caucasus will be considered. The overall goal of this stream is to give an overview of the possibilities for experiencing, teaching, and researching this diverse and dynamic region.