The Institute Selection Committee has named twenty-five Summer Scholars to take part in this June’s “America’s Russian-Speaking Immigrants & Refugees,” a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute for College & University Teachers, Co-Directed by Robert Davis of Global Studies and Edward Kasinec of the Harriman Institute.  The Institute takes place on the campus of Columbia University from June 9 to June 29, 2013.

Selected from a large pool of more than eighty candidates, Summer Scholars hail from fifteen states and a wide variety of  institutions: Vitaly Chernetsky, Miami University (Ohio); Tanya Chebotarev, Columbia University; David Chroust, Texas A & M; Phyllis Conn, St. John’s University (New York); Elena Dubinets, Seattle Symphony; Andrew Janco, University of Chicago; Bettina Jungen, Amherst College; Scott Kenworthy, Miami University (Ohio); Yakov Klots, Williams College; Natasha Kolchevska, University of New Mexico; Margarita Levantovskaya, University of California, San Diego; Matthew Miller, Northwestern College; Suzanne Orr, Sam Houston State University; Tatiana Osipovich, Lewis & Clark College; Karen Rosenberg, Independent Scholar; Claudia Sadowski-Smith, Arizona State University; Margaret Samu, Yeshiva University/Stern College; Erik Scott, University of Kansas; Vladimir von Tsurikov, Holy Trinity Orthodox Seminary (New York); Kristen Welsh, Hobart & William Smith Colleges; Anna Winestein, Boston University; Natalie Zelensky, Colby College; and graduate students Michael Darnell, Columbia University; Jay Oppenheim, CUNY Graduate Center; and Roman Utkin, Yale University..

Over a three-week period, this select group will engage in a lively dialogue with an extraordinary array of upwards of fifty master teachers, scholars, and social services and community representatives of the last three waves of emigration (and with the children of the first).  The Summer Scholars will consider the substance of the terms “diaspora,” “transnational,” “accommodation,” and “memory” through the specific prism of the four distinct waves—First (1917-40), Second (1947-55), Third (1967-89), and Fourth (1989 to the present)— of Russian-speaking immigrants to America.  Can we create a sophisticated narrative synthesis of the “Russophone Experience” in America that could be integrated into broader courses on American politics and immigration, sociology, anthropology, and ethnic studies?  Could this synthesis be applied to the experience of other immigrant groups?

A full description, daily schedule, and application information is found at: NEHsummerinst.Columbia.edu  This site will be constantly updated in the weeks leading up to, and following the Institute period, and will eventually include video of daily roundtable presentations.