Author to Participate in Scholarly Roundtable "The Carpatho-Rusyn Global Village" at ASEEES Convention

This year's annual convention of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES - formerly AAASS) will take place from November 17-20, 2016 in Washington, D.C. Your author will be a participant on a roundtable discussion, "The Carpatho-Rusyn Global Village."

Panelist discussants will be:

• Bogdan Horbal (New York Public Library)
• Joel C. Brady (University of Pittsburgh)
• Richard D. Custer (Independent Scholar)
• Maria Silvestri (John and Helen Timo Foundation)
• Kristina Marie Cantin (University of Tennessee)
• Elaine Rusinko (University of Maryland, Baltimore County), Chair

Date: Thursday, November 17th
Time: 5:00 to 6:45 pm
Location: Mezzanine, Truman, Wardman DC Marriott

In my allotted time I plan to discuss how the first waves of Carpatho-Rusyn immigrants in the U.S. expressed their "village consciousness"  -- in print (the Rusyn immigrant press, and publications for public consumption within and outside of the Rusyn community) and in other ways: tombstones, stained glass windows, other monuments, village reunions, village-native clubs, and collections of funds to support home villages.

I will also give insight into the seeming mid-century loss of village consciousness -- the disappearance of geographic identifiers in published historical narratives -- and how village consciousness has resurfaced in recent decades, especially through increased travel to the homeland, genealogy, print media, and the manifestation of virtual village communities on the web and social media.

The full slate of Carpatho-Rusyn panels/roundtables and events at the ASEEES convention is as follows.

You can see the most up-to-date scheduling/location information at the ASEEES online convention program (search for "rusyn"; there is also a panel on Lemkos -- search for "lemko"). (All attendees are supposed to register for the conference, but this is not always strictly enforced. Just sayin'.)

I will post a summary of the roundtable here sometime in the days after the event.

Original material is © by the author, Richard D. Custer; all rights reserved.