From Michal Kovac, Regional Director, Euro-Atlantic Center, University of Economics in Bratislava

University of Economics in Bratislava announces the first year of its Summer School of Central European for Slovak as well as foreign students who are interested in advanced and more interactive study during the months of July and August.

The Czechoslovak Studies Association is pleased to announce again its prize for the Best Book in the Field of Czechoslovak Historical Studies. This prize was first awarded in 2007 to Pieter M. Judson for his Guardians of the Nation: Activists on the Language Frontiers of Imperial Austria (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006). This year’s award will be presented at the Czechoslovak Studies Association’s meeting at the AAASS Convention in Boston in November for works published in 2007 or 2008.

The Fulbright Scholar Program for Faculty and Professionals is offering a variety of opportunities for both area and non-area specialists to lecture, conduct research, or carry out both activities in the Baltic States, Central and Eastern Europe, and Eurasia for academic year 2010-11. The traditional Fulbright Scholar Program offers awards that range from 2 to 10 months. Scholars may conduct research independently or in collaboration with host country colleagues. Applications are welcome from scholars in a broad range of disciplines in the arts, humanities, social sciences and sciences. Opportunities also exist for professionals in such fields as law, public administration, conflict resolution, journalism, library science, and education. While many awards specify project and host institution, there are a number of open "All Discipline" awards that allow candidates to propose their own projects and determine their host institution affiliation.

SLOVAK GOVERNMENT OFFERS SCHOLARSHIP FOR SLOVAKS LIVING ABROAD.
APPLICATION DEADLINE IS MAY 30, 2009.

The Ministry of Education of the Slovak Republic sponsors a Government Scholarship Program. The details of the scholarship program are as follows:

Members may be interested in the call for papers listed below:

We appeal to you to help us advertise to academic communities in the United States, the Czech and Slovak Republics, and elsewhere an international scholarly symposium, Czech and Slovak Americans: International Perspectives from the Great Plains, April 7-10, 2010, sponsored by the Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln. This 2010 Symposium will address all aspects of the experience of Czech and Slovak immigrants and their descendants in the Great Plains region, as well as the relationships of these citizens with other Czech- and Slovak- Americans and with Czechs and Slovaks in Europe and in other parts of the world.

We recently received this request from Dr. Patrice M. Dabrowski:

I am looking for information on popular folk celebrations held in places such as Trencin and Turciansky Svaty Martin in the interwar period (circa 1930 or before), celebrations at which I gather various state dignitaries, including Masaryk, appeared. Can anyone suggest where I might look for such information? In addition, I would love to learn if anyone is working on, or has worked on, tourism in the Tatra Mountains. I myself am writing about what I call the "discovery" of the Carpathians from the northern and eastern sides (that is, by Poles and Ukrainians).

With thanks in advance for your help,
Dr. Patrice M. Dabrowski
Eugene and Daymel Shklar Fellow, 2008-9
Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute
34 Kirkland Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
617-495-4053
pmd{at}post{dot}harvardedu

We have received from the following from Slovakstudies member Brad Abrams:

"I'm putting together a panel for the next AAASS on the 1970s and 1980s in the CSSR, and I'm short one paper-giver. Our focus is on culture and everyday life, with my colleague Chris Harwood looking at Czech film (especially Vesnicko ma Strediskova) and representations of chatas, etc., and I will be talking about the reality of the chatas, etc., based on sociological research carried out in the 1970s and 1980s. I would very much like to have a Slovak angle to all this, since I have very interesting comparative Czech-Slovak data. Is there anyone out there who is looking for a panel and is working on some social aspect of normalization (hopefully based in literature or film, but that's not necessary)."
Happy New Year,
Brad Abrams, bfa4[at]columbia[dot]edu

A note from our counterparts at the Hungarian Studies Association:

I would like to ask you to share with your members the panel proposals made at the Philadelphia AAASS conference by the members of the Hungarian Studies Assoc. If one is interested in joining any of the panels, they can contact the person suggesting the panel directly or contact me. (glanzs@stjohns.edu). The proposals are from the newsletter. Our website is: http://www.hungarianstudies.info. If you want me to share your proposals you can email them to me and i will email it out to our members. Thanks!
Susan Glanz

The proposals: (The email addresses of those proposing the panels are in brackets. Please contact them directly if you would like to join the panel)

1. A nearly-complete panel: “Hungarians and Czecho-Slovaks in the Short Twentieth Century.” The panel needs a commentator and a chair. Contact Peter Pastor at pastorp@mail.montclair.edu

Thanks to all who attended our various events during the AAASS conference: the joint reception (at which we were well represented), the annual association meeting (also well attended). We will soon post our notes from the meeting and other important details. Thanks again. We will see each other again in 2009 in Boston (if not sooner).

Google Translate has recently added Slovak to its list of supported languages. It is possible to receive machine-translations of whole webpages from- and to- Slovak. While the translation is far from perfect, it can serve a variety of purposes for academic researchers. The simple address is: href="http://translate.google.com/"

To set the default for English->Slovak, use this address:
http://translate.google.com/translate_t?langpair=en|sk#

"Default" pre slovenský preklad je: