Childhood in Eastern Europe, Eurasia, and Russia (ChEEER) Annual Meeting
Thu, October 13, 5:00 to 6:45pm CDT (5:00 to 6:45pm CDT)
ASEEES 2022 Virtual Convention, VR10
2022 Meeting Agenda
Moderator: Julie deGraffenried
Attending: Marina Balina, Olga Bukhina, Lilya Dashevski, Sharifa Djurabaeva, Kelly Herold, Polina Popova, Anastasiya Smith
Welcome
- In 2010, Marina Balina & Larissa Rudova led the movement to create an ASEEES-affiliated working group for scholars of children’s literature, culture, film, and history. Its title was the Working Group on Russian Children’s Literature and Culture. I can still vividly remember the excitement in the atmosphere in the room – it felt like we were embarking on a new adventure, and I know I met people that day who would dramatically influence my career and work.
- As the group grew, a new name was adopted to reflect the regional and multi-disciplinary focus of the working group: ChEEER – Childhood in Eastern Europe, Eurasia, and Russia.
- Our group has been key as a collaborative space for scholars of childhood in many disciplines who study our region. It has spawned conference panels, book projects, edited collections, institutional relationships, book talks, and, I think its safe to say, collegial friendships. (I’m not sure that this counts for much in academia, but it’s certainly the nicest and most supportive working group I’ve been a part of.)
- I’m very happy to welcome you to our annual meeting, on behalf of Anastasia Kostetskaya.
Introductions
Each person introduced themselves and talked about their research interests and current projects.
Announcements
- ChEEER-sponsored panel: New Scholarship on Contemporary Russian Literature and Culture for Children and Teens – Ainsley Morse, Olga Bukhina, Kelly Herold, Jenny Kaminer, Andrea Lanoux
*Fri, November 11, 4:15 to 6:00pm CST (4:15 to 6:00pm CST), The Palmer House Hilton, Floor: 7th Floor, Burnham 4
- It was suggested that we try to have coffee together at ASEEES.
- other panels of interest at ASEEES – list provided on HCommons site (https://cheeer.hcommons.org/), link on our FB page – also posted in chat for download
- 2022 Bibliography (posted in chat for download) – additions can be sent to Julie
- CFPs/Upcoming Conferences – members share
SHCY Biennial Conference – June 8-10, 2023 – Univ of Guelph, Ontario, Canada
Children’s History Society – UK – biennial conf – was this past summer, online, in
2022, so the next one will be in 2024 – look for 2023 CFP
Society for the Study of Childhood in the Past is about to hold its annual conference
in Madrid at the U of Alcala; 2023 conference is in Buenos Aires, Argentina,
hosted by the Universidad Nacional de La Plata – 2024 is in Europe
Social Science History Association has a “Childhood & Youth Network,” so their
conferences are also fair game – 2022 in Chicago
Sara Pankenier Weld sent an announcement about IRSCL 2023 Congress at UC-Santa Barbara. She will be co-hosting with Larissa Rudova on Ecologies of Childhood. The website is https://irscl2023.org. It is August 12-17, 2023. Abstract submission is now open (until 12/1). Sara hopes that we make it an opportunity to get together!
Children’s Literature Association – will be June 2023
Marina mentioned several other conferences that are available on the meeting recording, including The Child and the Book, which she hopes we will consider in the future.
Further, Marina encouraged us all to be more aggressive in seeking opportunities to bring children’s literature and childhood to conferences that may seem “beyond” our field, because we bring a unique and important perspective on the significance of age as a category of analysis that is often disregarded or forgotten. Our work is important, and we should look for chances to increase its exposure.
- ChEEER Panel Sponsorship for ASEEES 2023 in Philadelphia – Julie explained the process and asked interested members to send emails once Anastasia & Mateusz put out a call for proposals in early 2023.
- We completed the process of migrating ChEEER from the ASEEES Commons (which no longer exists) to the H-Commons site. You can find it at https://cheeer.hcommons.org/. I’ve been posting annual meeting minutes, ASEEES panel info, and our annual meeting agendas there.
Old Business
- ChEEER Book/Dissertation Talks
- At last year’s meeting, we voted to initiate ChEEER book talks, as a way of helping members get their work in front of a larger audience, and as a way to build community between annual meetings by capitalizing on everyone’s new expertise in Zoom technology. We aimed for 4-5/year, and envisioned these as 1-hr sessions where an author would talk for about 20 minutes, then the remainder of the time would be for q&a with the attendees.
- We held two ChEEER book talks this year:
- April 1, 6 pm ET – Ainsley Morse – Word Play: Experimental Poetry and Soviet Children’s Literature
- April 29, 6:30 pm ET – Olga Bukhina, Andrea Lanoux, and Kelly Herold – Growing Out of Communism: Russian Literature for Children and Teens, 1991-2017
- These went very well and were very well-received. Conversations were lively and fun, and the opportunity to informally discuss a colleague’s work was invaluable for all. Members agreed this is a good thing to continue in the future, and that springs seem best suited for book talks.
- We had two book talks scheduled for this fall that will be rescheduled for spring. Our primary issue was timing: August felt too early, and with ASEEES being in both October and November, it somehow felt wrong to squash in a book talk between them.
- So, in the spring, we will have Jenny Kaminer & Haunted Dreams: Fantasies of Adolescence in Post-Soviet Culture, and Megan Swift & Picturing the Page.
- We’d like to reiterate that this is also a great forum for a dissertation talk or a dissertation chapter talk! We welcome grad students. This would be a good, supportive environment for feedback.
New Business
- Leadership Position in ChEEER
- Many of you know that we announced at the last annual meeting that it is time for Julie to step down as a co-executive officer. We feel strongly that rotating executive officers is good for the health of the working group and increases ownership among members. We are happy to announce that Mateusz Świetlicki will be our new co-executive officer, serving with Anastasia Kostetskaya in this capacity.
- The members present approved unanimously. They very kindly thanked Julie for her service.
Adjournment at 5:55 p.m.