2020-2021 FLAS Fellows

We are happy to announce that REEEC was able to fund nine graduate FLAS fellows and two undergraduate FLAS fellows for the 2020-2021 academic year. This is a decidedly strong group of scholars who highlight the wide variety of interests held by our students. Please join us in congratulating the 2020-2021 FLAS fellows found below!

REEEC FLAS Fellows, 2020-2021

Graduate Students:
Justin Balcor (Musicology) – Georgian
Jacob Bell (History) – Russian
Melissa Bialecki (Musicology) – Ukrainian
Tabitha Cochran (REEES/LIS) – Ukrainian
Murad Jalilov (Slavic) – Turkish
David Louden (Slavic) – Ukrainian
Demetry Ogoltsev (Slavic) – Serbian
Danielle Sekel (Musicology) – Bulgarian
Brian Yang (Slavic) – Russian

Undergraduate Students:
Jasmine Jacome (REEES) – Russian
Haley Nelson (Political Science & REEES) – Turkish

Summer 2020 FLAS Fellows

We at the Russian, East European, and Eurasian Center are pleased to announce the awardees for this summer’s Foreign Language Area Studies Fellowship, funded by the U. S. Department of Education. This year six students from five different departments will be studying four different REEES languages and related area studies scholarship. We would like to extend our congratulations to the following students for the national recognition of their studies:

 

Graduate Students:

Justin Balcor (Musicology) – Georgian

Alex Karsavin (Slavic Languages and Literature) – Russian

Murad Jalilov (Slavic Languages and Literature) – Turkish

Quinn O’Dowd (Sociology) – Czech

Cassidy Ward (REEES/LIS) – Russian

 

Undergraduate Students:

Kameron Gausling (Astronomy) – Russian

 

REEEC Staff Profile: Danielle Sekel

Danielle Sekel is a third-year M.M. student in Ethnomusicology and a REEEC FLAS fellow for 2020-2021. Before coming to the University of Illinois, she received her bachelor’s degree in music and literary studies at Roanoke College and subsequently taught middle and high school music and English for two years in South Carolina. She aims to find a career in academia upon earning her degrees. Her M.M. paper focuses on the musical contributions of the Bosnian band Dubioza Kolektiv, and the ways in which they reference cultural artifacts, criticize the current state of the Balkans, and address individuals now living in diaspora.

As a REEEC FLAS fellow, Danielle has been able to study introductory Bosnian at the University of Pittsburgh during the summer of 2018 and advanced Bosnian in Sarajevo the following summer. She says that these language study opportunities have given her the ability to interact more comfortably with the musical texts and existing literature about this musical group and have also opened the door to many new research interests and new contacts in the field.

Currently a FLAS fellow with the European Union Center studying Bulgarian, Danielle will continue to study advanced Bulgarian as a REEEC FLAS fellow in the fall. Looking towards her doctoral research, Danielle hopes to work towards a multi-sited project focusing on LGBTQ vocal artists in Bosnia and Bulgaria. She says she is incredibly thankful for the plethora of language-learning opportunities and courses available through REEEC, as they have been instrumental in shaping and tuning her own research interests.

As a graduate assistant for REEEC, Danielle is also in charge of the outreach initiatives with the Champaign County Head Start, where she visits a group of 150 children ranging in ages from three to five years old monthly to teach them about countries in the REEE region. This academic year, children have been introduced to countries such as Turkey, Georgia, Uzbekistan, and Romania. Danielle says that “this is easily one of things I have enjoyed doing most during my time at UIUC thus far!”

FLAS Fellow Profile: Melissa Bialecki

Melissa Bialecki is a third-year Ph.D. student in Musicology with a minor in Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies, and a REEEC 2019-2020 FLAS fellow. Melissa received her Bachelor of Music degree in Cello Performance and Bachelor of Music Education from Central Michigan University in 2015. She received her Master of Music degree in Ethnomusicology in 2017 from Bowling Green State University. Melissa decided to combine musicology with Russian, East, European, and Eurasian studies after learning about a group of blind minstrels in Ukraine called kobzari during a seminar in music and disability studies. She began thinking about the role of folk music in Ukraine today, as the region becomes increasingly volatile. Her forthcoming dissertation will focus on the role of sound in shaping political thought on the Ukrainian conflict, musicians who engage in dialogues about Ukrainian sovereignty, and artists who shape narratives of Ukrainian-Russian relations in the current post-Soviet moment.

Melissa is studying advanced Ukrainian with her FLAS fellowship from REEEC. This summer, she will also study Russian through the University of Pittsburgh with a FLAS from the Center for Global Studies. She studies Ukrainian and Russian in order to facilitate her dissertation fieldwork, which includes accessing sources in both languages, and conducting field interviews. One such interview occurred last summer in Kyiv when she saw two women playing bandura on the street—an instrument which even today is still typically only played by men—and she was able to interview them thanks to her knowledge of Ukrainian and Russian.

At UIUC, Melissa was most excited to be able to study both Ukrainian and Russian, neither of which were offered in her master’s program, as well as to have access to our library’s extensive resources. Upon earning her degree, Melissa plans to continue on in academia by finding a teaching position.

FLAS Fellow Profile: Jacob Bell

Jacob Bell is a Ph.D. student in History at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and a 2019-2020 REEEC FLAS fellow. He received his B.A. in History and English from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2018 and his M.A. from the University of Illinois in 2019. He considers himself to be a historian of the global Middle Ages, Christian church history, mobility, and material culture, with a focus on the place of the Kievan Rus’ in the medieval Baltic world. Specifically, he studies the idea of “religious mobility” in what is now Russia from the tenth to the thirteenth centuries, especially pilgrimage culture and the veneration of non-Orthodox saints.

With support from FLAS, Jacob is currently taking advanced Russian in order to improve his reading and conversation abilities to assist with his research and enable collaboration with other scholars. He also feels that a high level of Russian proficiency can open doors across the Baltic Sea and Eastern Europe. Jacob hopes to use this knowledge after earning his doctorate by teaching—hopefully at the university level—and to share with others his love for this language and its culture.

REEES M.A. Student Profile: Megan Carpenter

Megan Carpenter is a second-year M.A. student in Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies. She is currently studying 4^th year Russian as a 2019-2020 FLAS fellow. Before coming to the University of Illinois, she received her bachelor’s degree in Political Science and Russian from the University of California, Davis. Her research interests include Soviet and post-Soviet politics, Soviet propaganda, and Russian women’s history. She is currently working on her MA project, in which she is writing about the connections between Soviet behaviors and policies towards the satellite states, and present-day Russia’s behaviors towards Eastern and Central European countries, such as election interference and aggressive actions.  Megan says what she has liked the most about the REEES program at the University of Illinois is the diverse array of classes she has had the opportunity to take here. Megan is currently looking for a job as a political analyst and plans on using her Russian language skills in her future career.

FLAS Fellow Profile: Elizabeth Abosch

Elizabeth Abosch is a third-year PhD student in History, and a REEEC FLAS fellow for 2019-2020. Before coming to the University of Illinois, she received her bachelor’s degree in history at the University of Maryland College Park, and her master’s degree in global, international, and comparative history at Georgetown University. Her doctoral research concerns the history of a genre of Soviet song known as blatnaia pesnia (criminal or underground song), from 1920 to 1970. The genre is still popular today in Russia, and has its origins in pre-revolutionary street song, urban lower-class Jewish culture, and folklore of the city of Odessa. As she prepares to embark on a research year in Russia and Ukraine, she will be investigating the genre’s staying power that reflects on such themes as the construction of the Soviet self; exchanges between high and low cultures; and the enshrinement of the criminal subculture through ethnography.

As part of her FLAS fellowship, Elizabeth is studying advanced Russian which is aiding her in understanding the jargon and comical turns of phrase in her sources that reference films, obscure historical figures, and Soviet modernist literature. In addition to Russian, she also studies Yiddish and Ukrainian, both of which play a role in her research. Elizabeth aims to find a career in academia after receiving her doctorate.

 

 

 

Academic Year FLAS Fellows for 2017-18

REEEC congratulates the Academic Year 2017-18 FLAS fellows, who will be studying the languages below in order to enhance the knowledge of their respective disciplines, which range from literature to advertising. Their language study will also help them engage in a vast array of area studies courses in disciplines ranging from history to international law.

Graduate Students:
Madeline Artibee (REEEC) – Croatian
Benjamin Bamberger (History) – Georgian
Tyler Dolan (Slavic) – Ukrainian
Kathleen Gergely (REEEC) – Russian
Jacob Goldsmith (Slavic) – Russian
Sydney Lazarus (REEEC) – Russian
Lucy Pakhnyuk (REEEC) – Ukrainian
Morgan Shafter (Slavic) – Polish
Victoria Sobolev (Advertising) – Ukrainian

Undergraduate Students:
Jamie Hendrickson (REEES) – Russian
Monika Pendurkova (Psychology) – Bulgarian
Justin Tomczyk (Political Science) – Russian

Student News

REEEC congratulates the following student award winners and the Summer 2017 FLAS fellows:

2017 Yaro Skalnik Prize for the Best Graduate Essay in Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies:

• Felix Cowan (PhD Student in History) for his essay, “Beyond Urban Boundaries: The Penny Press and Lower-Class Integration in the Russian Empire”
• Daria Semenova (PhD Student in Slavic Languages and Literatures) for her essay, “A Robinson for an awakening nation: a case study on a translation which is not one”

Summer 2017 FLAS Fellows:

• Tyler Dolan (PhD Student in Slavic Languages and Literatures) for Russian
• Jacob Goldsmith (PhD Student in Slavic Languages and Literatures) for Russian
• LeiAnna Hamel (PhD Candidate in Slavic Languages and Literatures) for Yiddish
• Douglas Heintz (MS Candidate in Library and Information Science) for Russian
• Marco Jaimes (PhD Candidate in History) for Czech
• Jennifer Jenson (PhD Student in German Studies) for Russian
• Benjamin Krupp (PhD Student in Anthropology) for Russian
• Thornton Miller (PhD Candidate in Musicology) for Russian
• Hannah Werner (PhD Student in History) for Yiddish

FLAS Fellow Benjamin Wheeler Starts a Radio Show in Tbilisi, Georgia

Benjamin Wheeler

REEEC FLAS Fellow Benjamin Wheeler (PhD Candidate in Ethnomusicology) has spent the 2016-2017 academic year in Tbilisi, Georgia, studying Georgian and Anthropology at Tbilisi State University. While attending classes at a local university, he has started an English-language radio show on the university’s radio channel (GIPA FM 94.3) called “Caucasus All Frequency,” which plays music from the Caucasus region and explores “the many meanings and unique stories behind the music.”

Check out Ben’s show at: https://soundcloud.com/radiogipa/caucasus-all-frequency