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The Association for the Study of Eastern Christian History and Culture, Inc. (ASEC) announces its ninth biennial conference to be held at The Ohio State University, November 3-5, 2022 (with a banquet on November 5). The theme is Eastern Christianity in New Worlds, broadly conceived to address the impact on Eastern Christianity of relocation outside its traditional homelands—and its own impact on its new environments, whether through pluralism, globalization, or other trends.
Our keynote speaker, Aram G. Sarkisian, is a historian of religion, immigration, and labor in the twentieth-century United States. Blending methodologies of social history and the academic study of religion, his research probes the everyday lived experiences of Russian Orthodox Christians in the industrial United States, exploring how believers’ religious worlds helped them to navigate their neighborhoods and workplaces, the assimilationist pressures of nativism, and the tumults of geopolitical change. He is currently completing his first book manuscript, A Helper and Protector: Russian Orthodox Christians in the United States, 1893-1924, which explores how the Russian Orthodox Church built a wide-reaching, transnational network of spiritual and material aid for working-class immigrant believers at the turn of the twentieth century, only for those efforts to be challenged both by the Russian Revolutions of 1917 and the United States’ first Red Scare. A native of the Detroit area, he completed his PhD in History at Northwestern University in 2019 and has since taught history at Northwestern, as well as at National Louis University in Chicago.
Dr. Sarkisian will speak on:
“What are you going to do about it?” Excavating Histories of Orthodox Christianity in North America.
REGISTRATION: To participate in the conference, all panelists must be members of ASEC and must register and pay the appropriate fee by 15 October. Until 15 October, the registration fee is $50; after that date, the fee increases to $75; although registration is still required, there is no fee for graduate students or affiliates of The Ohio State University. Register via Eventbrite. The conference registration fee does not include the closing night banquet, which is $50 for all participants. Advance registration and pre-payment for the banquet is required via Eventbrite.
LODGING: Accommodation is reserved at The Blackwell Inn & Conference Center on The Ohio State University campus in Columbus, Ohio. The guest rate is $162.00 plus taxes and parking (if applicable) for 1 King bed. Reservations are made on an individual basis and must be guaranteed with a credit card. Reservations should be made by the designated cutoff date (October 1, 2022) in order to take advantage of the special group rate. To receive the negotiated group rate, participants should identify themselves as being with the Association for the Study of Eastern Christian History and Culture program (or ASEC 2022) when making reservations. Individuals should cancel reservations prior to 4:00 PM the day before their scheduled arrival to avoid one night’s room and tax charge to the credit card on file.
SCHEDULE: The conference opens with a reception on the evening of Thursday 3 November. The first panel begins at 8:45 AM on Friday, and the last panel ends at 6:45 PM on Saturday. The conference closes with a banquet at 7 PM, shortly after the final panel. All sessions are plenary.
Limited funding is available to provide graduate students with assistance for travel expenses. For graduate students who would like to receive financial assistance for travel, please contact Nadieszda Kizenko (nkizenko AT albany.edu) and copy M.A. “Pasha” Johnson with your request that includes a budget of your travel expenses.
Local conference co-sponsors include the Hilandar Research Library (HRL), the Resource Center for Medieval Slavic Studies (RCMSS), the departments of Classics, History, and Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, the Center for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies, and University Libraries.
For more information on the conference and its venue, contact HRL curator and RCMSS director Mary-Allen “Pasha” Johnson (hilandar@osu.edu).
