SRAS: Jury Award for Student Research Awarded

[Josh Wilson]

Dear Seelangers, 

SRAS is pleased to have issued our first-ever $200 Jury Award for student
research. Below is the official release for this. 

We will continue this award for our next issue - the call for papers
deadline is December 15! Details can be found here:
http://www.sras.org/call_for_papers_vestnik 

Also - the deadline for summer, 2011 enrolment in our Central Asian Studies
course is only a couple of days away! December 1 is the latest to apply for
this innovative travel-study program! 

 

For official release: 

The School of Russian and Asian Studies congratulates Luke Rodeheffer as the
recipient of the first-ever $200 Jury Award
<http://www.sras.org/call_for_papers_vestnik>  from Vestnik, The Journal of
Russian and Asian Studies.

Vestnik encourages students to study any subject related to the countries of
the former Soviet Union. Vestnik also encourages students to develop
original ideas on their subject matter and to back those ideas with solid
arguments and evidence drawn from original research.

In his work entitled "Ordinary
<http://www.sras.org/collaboration_resistance_ussr_wwii>  Men: Collaboration
and Resistance in Occupied Mogilevskaya Oblast," Mr. Rodeheffer provides a
detailed look at what life was like for the inhabitants of a small part of
Nazi-occupied Belarus during WWII. He draws upon a wide array of primary
source documents, including from both the Soviet and Nazi sides, and from
both government sources and individual memoirs. With this broad material and
a tight geographical focus, Mr. Rodeheffer achieves something that too few
histories do: he portrays the citizenry not as a background to a great event
and not as broad groups to be blamed, pitied, or romanticized, but rather as
thousands of individuals. Mr. Rodeheffer describes a specific region
populated with specific people, each with family, friends, and individual
concerns, and who are, for the most part, simply trying to live and follow
their principles as best they can under extraordinary circumstances.

The Vestnik Editorial Board applauds Luke Rodeheffer, currently an
undergraduate at Lewis and Clark College (USA), for his detailed and
multi-lingual research, part of which he conducted abroad in Russian
government archives in Moscow

The Vestnik Editorial Board would also like to recognize another
contributing author, Melissa Yael Jacobowitz, for a Jury Award honorable
mention. Her "Identity Fragmentation in Babel's 'Story of My Dovecote'
<http://www.sras.org/russian_jewish_identity_fragmentation_in_babel_dovecote
> " is a phenomenal example of literary criticism. Through meticulous
rhetorical and narrative analysis of both the original Russian text and its
English translation, Ms. Jacobowitz builds clear and powerful arguments that
impart to the reader not only a deeper understanding of Babel's story, but
also a deeper understanding of how minority identities can fracture in a
prejudiced society.  

The board thanks also thanks the other contributors of this eighth issue of
Vestnik, including Eliot Stempf, Eric M. Souder, Bradley Gorski, and Sarah
Beckham Hooff, for their hard work in working with the board and each other
to revise and improve their papers and create a very strong issue of
Vestnik, The Journal of Russian and Asian Studies.

The <http://www.sras.org/call_for_papers_vestnik>  Call for Papers for our
ninth issue is currently underway.

 

 

Josh Wilson
Assistant Director
The School of Russian and Asian Studies
Editor in Chief
Vestnik, The Journal of Russian and Asian Studies
SRAS.org 
jwilson at sras.org

 


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