Congress of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies in New Orleans

Alyaksei Lastouski, a staff member of the Political Sphere Institute, took part in the annual congress of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES), held on 21-24 November 2012 in New Orleans, USA. It is the largest association of researchers of the region, and its annual congress is a very large-scale event that brings together several thousand participants and hosts hundreds of thematic panels and round tables.

This year the Congress was devoted to “Borderlands”, and a natural continuation of the domestic intellectual discussions of previous decades was to consider Belarus itself as an example of a borderland, which was done at one of the panels. At that panel, Alyaksei Lastouski presented a paper on the specific features of the historical memory of Belarusian Poles, analyzing the influence of multi-aspect and multi-level memory on the preservation of this community’s distinct ethnic identity.

It should be noted that this year saw the most intensive Belarusian presence at ASEEES congresses so far: there were several dedicated panels on Belarusian topics, as well as individual papers in other sections. Unfortunately, researchers working in Belarus itself were represented very weakly, but this is due to the generally unfavorable situation with funding for academic visits by Belarusian scholars.
The ASEEES convention also included a meeting of the North American Association for Belarusian Studies, where cooperation with the Political Sphere Institute, the organization of joint events and publishing activity were discussed.