Schedule

Session 1
Track 3: Literature

Chair: Mark Conliffe

Session 1
Track 2: History

Chair: Nigel Raab

Session 2
Track 2: History

Chair: Jars Balan

Session 2
Track 2: History

Chair: Serhy Yekelchyk

Session 2
Track 1: Culture

Chair: Luc Beaudoin

Light lunch will be served, compliments of the Shevchenko Scientific Society of Canada and the Department of Modern Languages and Cultural Studies, University of Alberta. Location: Arts and Convocation building, Main floor Foyer. Join us for Shevchenko Scientific Society of Canada Presentation: 12:15 pm, Arts and Convocation Building, Main Floor, Student Lounge. Join us for the Exhibit Opening: Our Life Behind Barbed Wire: Photographs of Ukrainian Ostarbeiters in Nazi Germany. Curated by Alex Averbuch: 12:45 pm, Arts and Convocation Building, Main Floor, Student Lounge. This exhibit showcases rare photographs of Ukrainians brought to Nazi Germany as forced labourers (Ostarbeiters) during World War II, accompanied by excerpts from their letters to relatives back in Soviet Ukraine. Presented within the context of official visual and textual propaganda, these personal materials are explored as carriers of news, covert messages, and creative resistance under totalitarian rule. Highlighting the historical and emotional weight of firsthand accounts, the exhibit challenges the prevailing notion that Ostarbeiters left no cultural or artistic record.

Session 3
Track 1: Culture

Chair: Alex Averbuch

Session 3
Track 5: Publishing

Bringing together editors from a variety of perspectives, this panel offers an excellent way to understand the state of the field and new directions in research. The Canadian Association of Slavists covers a large multi-ethnic territory, thus regional focuses impact research . Have we seen publishing trends favor distinct regions while others drift into the shadows? In light of the war in Ukraine, has military and diplomatic history risen in importance or does cultural history still dominate? As Artificial Intelligence gathers steam, are works in the digital humanities on the rise or has this wave not hit the Slavic world? Have recent technological innovations changed the publishing process in important methodological or intellectual ways? What gaps in scholarship have emerged? The panel will offer scholars constructive insights into recent publishing trends. Michaela Jacques, Acquisitions Editor, McGill-Queen's University Press James Krapfl, Co-Editor, Canadian Slavonic Papers Stephen Shapiro, Acquisitions Editor, University of Toronto Press Marco Stech, Director, CIUS Press and Scholarly Publications Chair: Nigel Raab, Loyola Marymount University

Session 3
Track 2: History

Chair: Maria Dyczok

Session 4
Track 1: Culture

Chair: Natalia Kanenko-Friesen, University of Alberta

Session 4
Roundtable

Discussant: Marko Stech Chair: Tania Plawuszczak-Stech

Session 4
Track 6: Linguistics

Chair: Piotr Kajak

Join us for a powerful performance featuring poet Alex Averbuch and musician and composer Olga Zaitseva-Herz — an immersive blend of poetry, music, and storytelling that offers a profound meditation on war, memory, and resilience. Averbuch will read from his original Ukrainian poetry and its English translations, weaving together voices from past and present wars. Through his pages, a Babylonian mix of peoples, restlessly and torturously displaced, speaks in a multitude of voices — revealing Ukraine’s horrors and inspirations. His work evokes the trauma of war through poeticized documentary materials — from WWII Ostarbeiters and Holocaust survivors to those enduring Russian aggression against Ukraine, currently unfolding in Averbuch’s home region of Luhansk. Accompanied by Olga Zaitseva-Herz's haunting melodies and song, the performance paints a poignant portrait of uprooted lives — registering the stories of those captured, deported, or lost to violence, alongside reflections on people and objects left behind in occupied territories.

All participants are invited. Sponsored by the Department of History, Classics, and Religion.