ASN 2015 WORLD CONVENTION PROGRAM

159 PANELS, including 17 BOOK PANELS, 15 NEW FILMS, and 5 SPECIAL EVENTS

The final program of the ASN 2015 World Convention can be downloaded at http://nationalities.org/uploads/documents/ASN_Final_Program_2015.pdf. The Convention, sponsored by the Harriman Institute, will be held at Columbia University, New York, on April 23-25, 2015.

Since the preliminary program was announced last month, a number of special events were added to the lineup:

*Jose Manuel Barroso, former President of the European Commission (2004-2014), will deliver a keynote address, “The European Union and the Challenge of the Russia-Ukraine Conflict” (Saturday 5.10 PM, Room 1512).

*John Crosby and Ursula Froese, of the OSCE Vienna office, will speak on the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission in Ukraine (Friday 2.50 PM, Room 1512).

*Five scholars will take part in a roundtable on “The Greece-Europe Crisis: End of the Road or Turning Point?” (Thursday 6.00 PM, Room 1027).

An exceptional lineup of 15 new international documentaries will be announced shortly. Three of the films, which have yet to premiere in New York, will be shown as sneak previews and can be revealed only during the Convention. This is in addition to a roundtable on the Oscar-nominated Russian feature film Leviathan (Saturday 2.50 PM, Harriman Institute Atrium, 12th Floor).

ASN 2015 will be held on the 100th Anniversary of the Ottoman Government's decision to deport the leadership of the Armenian community from Istanbul on April 24, 1915, the day on which the Medz Yeghern (“Great Crime”) is commemorated. To observe the centennial, Ron Suny’s “They Can Live in the Desert but Nowhere Else”: A History of the Armenian Genocide (Princeton 2015) and Tom de Waal’s Great Catastrophe: Armenians and Turks in the Shadow of Genocide (Oxford 2015) were added to a distinguished roster of 17 book panels. Also added were Madeleine Reeves’ Border Work: Spatial Lives of the State in Rural Central Asia (Cornell 2014), a finalist for the ASN Harriman Book Prize, and Charles King’s Midnight at the Pera Palace: The Birth of Modern Istanbul (Norton 2014).

A dozen panels/events will touch on the extraordinary events that have engulfed Ukraine and Russia in the past year. In addition to the Barroso keynote and the OSCE roundtable, the Convention will screen Sergei Loznitsa’s Maidan (Ukraine/Netherlands 2014) and Anthony Butts’ The Donetsk Peoples’ Republic or the Curious Tale of the Handmade Country (UK 2015) and feature up to eight scholarly panels on Maidan, the war in Donbas, NATO, the far right and political/economic reforms in Ukraine.

The Convention runs from Thursday, April 23, 11 AM to Saturday, April 25, 7.10 PM. All panels/events will be held on various floors of the International Affairs Building (IAB), 420 W. 118th St. (and in the adjacent Faculty House on Thursday). The opening reception, celebrating the Convention’s 20th Anniversary, will be held on the IAB 15th Floor on Thursday April 23 at 8.00 PM. The closing reception, in the same location on Saturday April 25 at 7.15 PM, will feature the announcements of the ASN Harriman Book Prize, the Best Doctoral Students Papers Awards and the Award for Best Documentary.

Registration fees are $100 for ASN members, $130 for nonmembers, $60 for students (and a special rate of $30 for nonpanelist graduate students enrolled in New York area universities). For registration information, please contact Registration Manager Kelsey Davis (asnreg2015@gmail.com). During the Convention, the registration desk will be located on the IAB 15th floor, Central Space.

For general and practical Convention information, please contact ASN Executive Director Ryan Kreider (rk2780@columbia.edu, 212 854 2514).

For questions regarding the program, contact ASN Convention Academic Director Dominique Arel (darel@uottawa.ca).

We look forward to seeing you at the Convention! 

Cordially,
Dominique Arel

On behalf of the Organizing Committee and Program Committee