On this episode, Cullan speaks with sociology professor Lisa Wisniewski of Goodwin University about her new book exploring the lived experiences of Slavic Americans and the cultural, political, and emotional landscapes they navigate as immigrants. Drawing from personal narratives and interdisciplinary research, Dr. Wisniewski unpacks how migration shapes identity, memory, and belonging in both Eastern and Western contexts. This was a compelling and important conversation on diaspora, displacement, and the buried stories that are part of our recent past which connect us across borders and across generations. Thanks for listening!

Read more about Dr. Wisniewski's work: https://www.goodwin.edu/enews/navigating-american-education-as-eastern-european-immigrant/

About the Guest

Dr. Lisa Wisniewski is a professor of Sociology at Goodwin University. Lisa completed her Doctor of Education (Ed.D.) focused on Educational Leadership from the University of Hartford in 2017. Her research has focused on immigrant students, first-generation college students, and effective teaching practices using Universal Design for Learning. Dr. Wisniewski presents regionally, nationally, and internationally. Most recently she served as the State Chair for the Connecticut American Council on Education Women’s Network. Her work in the community focused on the immigrant experience has led to invitations to the White House and the Polish Consulate of New York City. As an advocate for college access for first-generation students, she has worked with several groups and organizations throughout Connecticut to support students navigate the college process. Lisa created and hosts a lecture series called Community Conversations that began the conversation on the war in Ukraine and presents lectures on immigration, citizenship, democracy, social issues, and globalization that has garnered a national and international audience. In addition, she serves as the host of Goodwin Teaches: Universal Design for Learning Stories in Higher Education podcast.

In this episode, we sit down with Russian-born author Yaroslav Barsukov, whose life and work are deeply intertwined with the political upheavals of modern Russia. Growing up in the Soviet Union and post-Soviet Russia, Barsukov witnessed firsthand the rise of Vladimir Putin before immigrating to Vienna in 2005. From there, he observed as Russia's trajectory culminated in the full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022.

We discuss Barsukov’s personal experiences with Russian propaganda, his insights into the manipulation of truth, and how his experience-informed writing tends to forecast dystopian reality in eerily accurate ways.

About the Guest

Yaroslav Barsukov, an author with a unique background in physics and software engineering, has emerged as a distinctive voice in the realm of speculative fiction. Born in Cold War-era Moscow and educated at the Moscow Engineering Physics Institute and Austria's Vienna University of Technology, Barsukov initially pursued a career in software engineering. His entry into the literary world was serendipitous, stemming from his involvement in game development where he translated a companion tale to a game's mythology. This experience marked the beginning of his journey as a writer, and he started crafting short stories in English around 2014. Barsukov's work is celebrated for its innovative blend of fantasy and science fiction elements, diverging from the traditional hard-science SF model. His acclaimed novella "Tower of Mud and Straw" was shortlisted for the Nebula Award and received a Kirkus Star, demonstrating his prowess in weaving narratives that explore the human condition through a speculative lens. His stories, characterized by high-fantasy filigree and physics reminiscent of alchemy, have appeared in renowned publications such as Galaxy's Edge, Nature: Futures, and StarShipSofa. Barsukov's literary influences span from Russian maestros like Leo Tolstoy to American science fiction authors, shaping his unique storytelling style that transcends genre boundaries.

PRODUCER'S NOTE: This episode was recorded on February 28, 2024 via Zoom. If you have questions, comments, or would like to be a guest on the show, please email slavx@connexions.ai and we will be in touch!

PRODUCTION CREDITS

Host: Michelle Daniel

Associate Producer: Cullan Bendig

Associate Producer: Basil Fedun

Associate Producer: Sergio Glajar

Background music by Ben Geraci, Denys Brodovskyi, Alex Productions. Closing Theme by Charlie Harper. Executive Producer & Creator: Michelle Daniel www.msdaniel.com

#Russia #Ukraine #Putin #Disinformation #SpeculativeFiction #Propaganda #YaroslavBarsukov #TheSlavicConnexion

What was life like for Russian women under serfdom? In this episode, Cullan talks with the expert on this subject, Dr. Tracy Dennison, a historian and professor at Caltech. Based on her talk by the same name, Tracy explores how societal structures shaped and limited women's choices, opportunities, and constraints under different ruling families. Thanks for listening, and Happy 2025!

About the Guest

Tracy Dennison studies institutions and their effects on long-term growth and development. She is especially interested in the roots of economic divergence between east and west Europe, and uses serfdom as a lens through which to examine institutional change over time. Dennison is interested in how specific societies worked in the past – how societal rules and norms affected human behavior and how and why this varied over space and time.
Dennison's research to date has focused on these questions at the micro level, using local sources to investigate the ways that pre-modern entities like states, landlords, communities, and households influenced the economic, social, and demographic behavior of people in their everyday lives. In particular, she has studied estate policies and practices in imperial Russia, and the way that quasi-formal legal systems established by some wealthy landlords made it possible for their serfs to conduct property and credit transactions despite their ambiguous legal status. This was the subject of her 2011 book, The Institutional Framework of Russian Serfdom (Cambridge University Press), in which she argued that these micro-level practices had significant implications for the longer-term economic development of Russia.

In her current project, Dennison is investigating these questions from a top-down perspective rather than the bottom-up approach taken previously. Comparing the abolition of serfdom in Prussia and in Russia, this research explores larger questions of political economy and state capacity and their implications for institutions and institutional change. How did the institutional structure of serfdom in central Europe differ from that in Russia and how did these differences matter to the process and outcomes of reform in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries?

Dennison has also published on institutions and demographic behavior, comparative systems of serfdom, and on the importance of history and historical context in social science research. She is a regular contributor to Broadstreet Blog, an interdisciplinary forum which aims to bring research in historical political economy to a wider audience.

PRODUCER'S NOTE: This episode was recorded in November 11, 2022 in Chicago, Illinois. If you have questions, comments, or would like to be a guest on the show, please email slavx@connexions.ai and we will be in touch!

PRODUCTION CREDITS

Host/Associate Producer: Cullan Bendig

Associate Producer: Basil Fedun

Associate Producer: Sergio Glajar

Background music by Denys Brodovskyi, Alex Productions. Closing Theme by Charlie Harper Executive Producer & Creator: Michelle Daniel www.msdaniel.com