RUSSIAN, CENTRAL EURASIAN, AND EAST EUROPEAN SPECIALTY GROUP
OF THE
ASSOCIATION OF AMERICAN GEOGRAPHERS
2007 Annual Report
Reporting on Activities and Expenses in:
Activity Year 2007 (from immediately after the 2007 AAG Annual Meeting through the
conclusion of the 2008 AAG Annual Meeting)
and
Financial Report from January 1 2007 through January 31 2008
Prepared by Shannon O’Lear President (serving 2007-2009)
1 May 2008
I. Specialty Group Mission Statement (no change)
The RCEEE Specialty group is a diverse community of researchers brought together by
regional interests in Eastern Europe, Russia,the Caucasus and Central Asia. Current and
past research has revolved around political, social, economic and cultural geography, as
well as regional research on issues of energy, environment or migration
II. 2004 Dues
Faculty: $8; Student: $0
III. Membership
The RCEEE SG includes 143 members of which 58 are student members. Previous annual
reports for our specialty group are not available, so we are unable to track changes in our
membership at this time.
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IV. Officers
Chair:
Prof. Shannon O'Lear
Department of Geography
1475 Jayhawk Blvd.
213 Lindley Hall
University of Kansas
Lawrence, KS 66045-7613
785.864.2141
olear@ku.edu
Vice Chair
Jessica Graybill
Department of Geography
Colgate University
10 Oak Drive
Hamilton, NY 13346
jgraybill@colgate.edu
Board Members:
Note: We are implementing a system that would have staggered representation on the Board.
As of the 2008 meeting:
Darren Purcell (to serve one more year)
Department of Geography
University of Oklahoma
Sarkeys Energy Center, Room 654
100 East Boyd Street
Norman, OK 73019-1008
405.325.9193
purcelldarren@ou.edu
Alexander C. Diener (to serve one more year)
International Studies & Languages Division
Pepperdine University
Malibu, CA 90263
310.506.7740
alexander.diener@pepperdine.edu
2
Andrey Petrov (to serve two years)
(address likely to change)
Department of Geography
100 St. George Street, Sidney Smith Hall, Rm 5047
University of Toronto
Toronto, Ontario CA MSS 3G3
andreyn.petrov@utoronto.ca
Grigory Ioffe (to serve two years)
Geography Department
P.O. Box 6938
Radford University
Radford VA 24142
gioffe@radford.edu
Student Board Members
Note: We are implementing a system that would have staggered student representation.
Megan Dixon (to serve one more year)
Department of Geography
University of Oregon
Eugene, OR 97403
mdixon@uo.edu
Ian Duncan (to serve one more year)
Department of Geography
University of Washington
Seattle, WA 98195-3550
rid@u.washington.edu
Stefanie Gray (to serve two years)
Hunter College, NY
(contact information not available)
Award Committee Members
Committee Chair: Joel Quam
Professor of Geography
College of DuPage
Quamjoel@cod.edu
Craig Young
Senior Lecturer in Human Geography
Manchester Metropolitan University
John Dalton Building
3
Chester Street
Manchester M1 5GD
c.young@mmu.ac.uk
Michael Bradshaw
Department of Geography
University of Leicester
LE1 7RH
Leicester, England
geog@le.ac.uk
Alexander Diener
International Studies & Langauges Division
Pepperdine University
Malibu, CA 90263
alexander.diener@pepperdine.edu
Darren Purcell
Department of Geography
University of Oklahoma
Sarkeys Energy Center, Room 654100
East Boyd Street
Norman, OK 73019-1008
purcelldarren@ou.edu
Lee Schwarz
U.S. Department of State
aclschwa@us-state.osis.gov
(Previous Chair of committee) Bella Bychkova Jordan
Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies & Department of Geography and the
Environment
University of Texas at Austin
1 University Station F360
Austin, TX 78712
belka@mail.texas.edu
V. Accomplishments & Activities of Activity Year 2007 (from immediately following 2007 AAG
Annual Meeting to conclusion of 2008 AAG Annual Meeting):
A. Updated RCEEE website.
Thanks to the work done by Jessica Graybill and server support at Colgate University, our group’s
website has been updated. The new URL is:
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http://www.rceeegeography.org/RCEEE.html
During the fall of 2007 when there were significant problems with the AAG online
communication system, our group used our website as an information source for proposed,
organized sessions. We still had a difficult time communicating about sessions for the Boston
AAG meeting. We ended up organizing and sponsoring fewer sessions than in previous years.
B. Specialty Group dinner at the AAG meeting in Boston
Continuing one of our specialty group’s traditions, we organized a dinner at a local restaurant. As
in the past, we arranged with the restaurant to prepare a dinner for our group for a flat fee (this
year, $35 per person), and the Specialty Group paid for student meals. Everyone paid for their
own drinks. Twenty-four people came to the dinner, and seven of them were students. This event
gives our members a chance to socialize and get to know other scholars working in the general area.
C. Awards Presented at 2008 AAG Annual Meeting
Our specialty group offers student awards in two categories:
1) Doctoral Enhancement Award, for $500; one is awarded each year depending on submissions.
2) Graduate student paper competition (including both MA and PhD students) with three awards
given each year, depending on submissions:
1st place - $100
2nd $75
3rd $50
This year, we had very few submissions (again, this is in part because we had difficulty
communicating to our group in the fall). We gave out only one Doctoral Enhancement Award to
Cristin Burke for her dissertation fieldwork in Kazakhstan.
D. Business Meeting. The RCEEE SG Annual Business Meeting was held at the Annual AAG
meeting in Boston, MA. Chair Shannon O’Lear moderated the meeting. Approximately 15 people
were in attendance. Elections for new officers were held with a new plan to elect two board
members each year to serve two-year terms. This will provide overlap as the board members’ terms
of service will be staggered. Also at the business meeting, several announcements were made, and
RCEEE business matters were discussed.
VI. 2008 Annual Meeting
There were 11 paper and panel sessions at the 2008 AAG meeting in Boston that were sponsored
or co-sponsored by the RCEEE SG. Due to the problems with the AAG online communication
system mentioned above in section V.A, the number of sessions organized and sponsored by our
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group was down quite significantly from previous years. The sessions that we organized and
sponsored were:
* Author meets critics: Rebecca Kay's "Men in Contemporary Russia: The Fallen Heroes of Postsoviet Change?"
* How to study post-Soviet space II: issues of transition across regions and states
* How to study post-Soviet space: new categories and theoretical explorations
* New Geopolitics of the Arctic Region
* New Spaces and New Governance? Challenges for Central and Eastern Europe
* New Spaces and New Governance? Challenges for Central and Eastern Europe
* Russia and new urban life - policy and conflict
* Russia and the Circumpolar World: Transforming Nations, Contested Frontiers-I (Culture,
Environment and Space)
* Russia and the Circumpolar World: Transforming Nations, Contested Frontiers-II (Economy,
Politics and Space)
* Russian borders imagined and enacted through migration
* Russian, Central Eurasian, and East European Specialty Group Business Meeting
* The Pamir Mountains of Central Asia
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VII. Financial Report from January 1 2007 through January 31 2008
Date
Description
Receipts
Disbursements
$
2,580.93
8/31/06 Balance forward
9/30/06 Dues collected for September 2006
Balance
96.00
2,676.93
10/31/06 Dues collected for October 2006
160.00
2,836.93
11/30/06 Dues collected for November 2006
120.00
2,956.93
12/31/06 Dues collected for December 2006
68.00
3,024.93
1/31/07 Dues collected for January 2007
60.00
3,084.93
2/28/07 Dues collected for February 2007
120.00
3,204.93
3/31/07 Dues collected for March 2007
76.00
3,280.93
4/10/07 Petrov - 1st place dissertation enhancement
(500.00) 2,780.93
4/10/07 Connor - 2nd place dissertation enhancement
(150.00) 2,630.93
4/10/07 Taff - 1st place graduate student paper
(100.00) 2,530.93
4/19/07 Pavlovskaya - RCEEE dinner reimb
(728.57) 1,802.36
4/30/07 Dues collected for April 2007
44.00
1,846.36
5/31/07 Dues collected for May 2007
6/30/07 Dues collected for June 2007
1,846.36
16.00
1,862.36
7/31/07 Graybill - Website maintenance
(166.80) 1,695.56
7/31/07 Dues collected for July 2007
4.00
1,699.56
8/31/07 Dues collected for August 2007
65.00
1,764.56
8/31/07 Final audited balance for FYE 2007
$
1,764.56
8/31/07 Balance forward
$
1,764.56
9/30/07 Dues collected for September 2007
69.00
1,833.56
10/31/07 Dues collected for October 2007
11/30/07 Dues collected for November 2007
212.00
36.00
2,045.56
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2,081.56
12/31/07 Dues collected for December 2007
40.00
2,121.56
1/31/08 Dues collected for January 2008
120.00
2,241.56
2/29/08 Dues collected for February 2008
48.00
2,289.56
3/31/08 Dues collected for March 2008
44.00
2,333.56
3/31/08 Balance
$
2,333.56
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VIII. Future Directions
Discussion at the business meeting in San Francisco included the following items:
1. Plans for sessions at next year’s annual meeting in Las Vegas -- 2009 will mark the 20th
anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall. Our group is planning to organize sessions that consider
what we have learned in these 20 years and how we can understand “our” region now and in the
future. Chad Staddon will be the main point of contact for these sessions, and he has offered to
organize a book project to follow up these sessions.
2. The issue of better co-ordination of announcing the student awards was raised. We had very
few submissions this year and hope to increase awareness of and interest in our awards. The newly
formed Student Awards Committee may need to adjust the deadlines for the paper submissions – a
matter to be discussed by the committee in the coming year.
3. Jessica Graybill, our current webmaster, has spent considerable time and effort on the group’s
website, and she needs assistance. We would like to involve the student representatives in basic
website support to ease the burden on Prof. Graybill.
4. One of our members, Joel Quam (College of DuPage), is putting together an e-textbook on the
geography of Russia, and he has asked for short contributions from our membership to provide
insightful, current introductions to key topics so that students would have a collection of daily
readings for his class. This e-text may be more widely available once he has it up and running.
VIX. Special Requests for the Council
We continue to enjoy working with Teri Martin who has been very helpful in assisting us with
financial matters.
As mentioned a few times in this report, we had considerable difficulty with the AAG online
communication system during the critical late summer and early fall months when much of the
planning for the spring annual meeting is done. We are delighted to know that the AAG has
already signed a contract to move to a new software system (although we are aware that most of
the problems we had were due to the AAG server being blocked by university e-mail systems). We
hope that this new system is more user-friendly (i.e., allows users to respond directly to messages
without having to login to the AAG website, allows hot links to be included in postings, etc.).
It would be a significant bonus if the new system could support specialty group websites!
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