American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies

National Convention

One of the core activities of the Association is the annual national convention. Held in the fall, the convention takes place each year in a different city and is generally hosted by one of the Association's regional affiliates. This national forum makes possible a broad exchange of information and ideas, stimulating further work and sustaining the intellectual vitality of the field.

2009 Convention

The 41st National Convention of the Association will be held at the Marriott Copley Place in Boston, MA, from Thursday, November 12 through Sunday, November 15, 2009.

If you are interested in learning more about the historic city of Boston, please visit the Greater Boston Convention and Visitors Bureau at www.bostonusa.com for more information.

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2009 Convention Schedule

For all of you who plan on attending the 2009 Convention at the Boston Marriott Copley Place this November, please note the following:

We have received a record number of panel and roundtable proposals and a large number of meeting requests (over 550 total - an increase of 90 requests and proposals over last year). Fortunately, we have enough meeting space but scheduling will be very tight.

In order to accept the maximum number of panels and roundtables we have planned the following:

2009 Convention Program

Donwload the Preliminary Program for the 2009 convention in pdf.

Please note that in order to save on printing and mailing costs and to reduce the Association's environmental impact, the AAASS Executive Committee has decided that the preliminary program for the 2009 convention will not be printed in the NewsNet.

Members who wish to have the program sent to them by mail may contact Emily Falkenstein at aaass@fas.harvard.edu or 617-495-0677 to request that a copy be mailed to them.

Deadline for changes for the final program will be August 14, 2009. You may make changes using the online system or e-mail your changes to Wendy Walker, walker@fas.harvard.edu.

2009 Convention Hotel Information

The Association's special group rate for convention participants is $165 per night, single or double. If you have not yet booked your hotel room, please do so as soon as possible. We have already sold 50% of our room block and we will sell out.

To make your reservations, please go to: https://resweb.passkey.com/go/AAASS2009 - this link will automatically enter the group rate. If you wish to reserve by phone, please call 1 800-266-9432. You must say you are with Slavic Studies 2009 Convention to get the discounted rate.

We are sorry but we have sold out of graduate student rooms.

2009 Convention Pre-Registration

You can register for the 2009 AAASS Convention online through our “Members Only / Registered Users” site, www.aaassmembers.org. If you prefer not to register online, you can download the 2009 pre-registration form and mail or fax it to us. The pre-registration form will also be published in the upcoming issues of NewsNet. Please remember that the first pre-registration deadline that allows the lowest pre-registration rates is August 15, 2009. ... more ...

2009 "Unconference" Sessions

This year the AAASS will be experimenting in a limited way with a new format for several conference sessions. This format, most commonly known as an “unconference” is a loosely structured and participant driven set of sessions around topics suggested by those who will participate. Instead of the standard panel or roundtable, the three unconference sessions, which will take place on Thursday, Friday and Saturday afternoons, will be facilitated discussions of the topics with the highest level of interest from those planning to take part in the sessions.

Those who intend to take part in the unconference track will be asked to submit one or more possible topics to a wiki set up for this purpose. The organizers of the unconference track, Mills Kelly (George Mason University) and Kevin Krause (Wayne State University) will aggregate all of the suggestions and in the weeks prior to the conference will establish a schedule for the three sessions. Those suggesting topics may be asked to serve as either facilitator or secretary for the session (notes will be published online for those who could not take part). It is important to note that only the topic of the session and the name of the facilitator will be listed in the program.

One of the advantages of the unconference format is that sessions are participant-driven discussions of a topic of interest to those who attend, rather than formal presentations, thereby allowing a free flow of ideas among the participants in a more transdisciplinary manner. Another advantage is that, because the topics will be selected close to the date of the conference, the sessions can be responsive to something new that may have arisen in the discipline.

The wiki for the unconference sessions can be found at: http://aaassunconference.pbwiki.com. Those interested in taking part in the unconference sessions should use this wiki to add ideas for sessions, to register their own interest in (and enthusiasm for) particular topics already there, and to volunteer to be a facilitator.

Please note: If you are already listed in the annual meeting program twice, you cannot serve as a facilitator of one of these sessions but you are of course welcome to participate in the session. Submitting a topic proposal for one of these sessions will not guarantee that your proposal will be accepted. We will also not be able to schedule these panels to avoid individual conflicts.

Instructions for using the wiki can be found on the wiki itself. If you prefer to contribute an idea or two, but don’t want to use the wiki, feel free to send an email to the organizers at tkelly7@gmu.edu or kdk@wayne.edu. If you send an e-mail, please use the subject line “AAASS Unconference.”

The deadline for submissions is September 1, 2009.

We are excited about this experiment and hope you will take part by suggesting topics and by attending one or more of the unconference sessions.

T. Mills Kelly
Deptartment of History
George Mason University
tkelly7@gmu.edu

Kevin Deegan Krause
Department of Political Science
Wayne State University
kdk@wayne.edu

Note for 2009 Convention Participants

Panel organizers may edit their panel proposals and paper presenters may edit their paper titles at any time on our Members Only / Registered Users site. After logging in, the organizer will be able to view any proposal they have submitted if they click on "Edit Proposal(s)". There is a link in the upper left hand corner marked Instructions if you need further information.

If you have not yet entered your cv in our database through the Members Only / Registered Users site, please do so as soon as possible. Please note that foreing scholars and scholars outside the field should be able to submit their CVs online even if they are not members.

When you get to our Members Only / Registered Users site, if you are not a member and do not have a user name and password, please click on "Not registered/Forgot my user name and password." The system will ask you to identify your record, and will then email you with a user name and password. Once you have the user name and password, log into the system and select "my profile," and choose "update my CV" from the pull down list. The CV form is very concise so please make your entries accordingly.

Once your CV is in our system, you may update it as needed and it will automatically attach to any future panel or roundtable proposals containing your name, sparing panelists and organizers the hassle of having to chase the paperwork every year. We cannot store hard copies of CVs from year to year due to lack of storage space.

General Rules for Convention Participants

All participants who are Slavic scholars living in the U.S. must be current AAASS members. Only foreigners and scholars outside the field of Slavic studies do not need to join AAASS. If you are not currently a member or have not renewed your membership for the 2009 calendar year, please go to our Members Only / Registered Users site (www.aaassmembers.org) and click on “Membership Form” to activate your 2009 membership.

All participants on panels/roundtables, members and non-members, must preregister by the deadline and pay the registration fee.

If you agree to participate in the AAASS Convention, you are agreeing to be scheduled during any of the planned sessions. We will honor specific scheduling requests only for religious reasons.

Panels can only have: one Chair; maximum of 3 papers; maximum of 2 discussants. Roundtables can only have: one Chair; maximum of 5 participants.

Each participant may only have one role on a panel or roundtable, may only appear on two panels or roundtables during the convention, and only present one paper during the convention. You may organize as many panels or roundtables as you wish and you may give a paper on one panel and be the chair, or a discussant, or a participant on one other, but you cannot be chair and discussant or chair and give a paper on the same panel, and you CAN NOT sign up for more than two panels/roundtables.

Affiliate organizations of the AAASS are each allowed one panel/roundtable, which must be specified on the proposal form. Each affiliate-sponsored panel/roundtable will be screened in the usual manner by the Program Committee; we will not accept unscreened proposals.

2009 Convention Exhibitors and Advertisers

Exhibitors who have already obtained booths may get an exhibitors kit by going to the Vista Convention Services website at www.vistacs.com - once you are on the website, click on the exhibitor login. The user name is AAASS2009 and the password is 2009BOSTON. Please note that these are case sensitive. ... more ...

Child Care at the Convention

Unfortunately, the AAASS Parent Co-op will not be able to offer on-site child care at the 2009 AAASS national convention in Boston due to the prohibitive cost of renting adequate space for child care at this facility. We hope to be able to offer this service in future years.

Contact

For all issues relating to the AAASS National Convention, please contact:

Wendy Walker
AAASS Convention Coordinator
phone: 617-495-0678
e-mail: walker@fas.harvard.edu