NAABS Officers: 2005-2009

President

Dr. Maria Paula Survilla   is Associate Professor of Music at Wartburg College where she coordinates the Music History core courses for the program. She is an ethnomusicologist specializing in the music of Belarus. Her research interests include the role of contemporary music (urban rock and popular genres as well as rural ritual music) in the construction of personal and national identities in post-Soviet Belarus. She began fieldwork in Eastern Europe in 1989 and was funded as a Fulbright-Hayes scholar in 1993. She presents her research throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe. Her book, Of Mermaids and Rock Singers: Placing the Self and Constructing the Nation Through Belarusan Contemporary Music was published by Routledge (Taylor and Francis Group) in 2002. Her article, "Ordinary Words: Sound, Music, and Meaning in Belarusan-Language Rock Music" appears in the book Global Pop, Local Talk: Language Choice in Popular Music Throughout the World (2003). In addition, she contributed the articles "Miensk" and "Belarus" to the Encyclopedia of Popular Music (Oxford, 2005). Dr. Survilla was invited to speak at the Harvard Symposium, The Arts, National Identity And Politics In Belarus (Harvard University, October 13-16, 2005) where she presented "'Back in the B.S.S.R.' or 'And the Beat Goes On': Adaptations in Sound and Vision in the Belarusan Rock Movement 1989-2005." She has also published articles on music and identity amongst the Belarusan Diaspora in central Canada and the eastern United States. She actively contributes to discourses in ethnomusicology and Slavic Studies.

Vice-President

David R. Marples   is professor of Russian and East European history at the University of Alberta. He received his PhD in Economic and Social History from the University of Sheffield in 1985. He is author of 11 books and over 100 major scholarly articles. He is a specialist on Belarus and Ukraine, and a member of the editorial boards of the journals Slavic Review, Canadian Slavonic Papers, Nationalities Papers, and Journal of Ukrainian Studies. He is an Executive Board member of the Association for the Study of Nationalities. He is also director of the Program for the Study of Contemporary Ukraine at the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies. He has served as a regular consultant on Belarus and Ukraine to a variety of government and non-government organizations including the US Department of State and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London. He was awarded the University of Alberta’s main research prize (J. Gordin Kaplan award for distinction in research) in 2003 and a Killam Annual Professorship in 2005 for research and teaching. His current research focuses on the Lukashenka years in Belarus, and a reassessment of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in light of new archival evidence.

Secretary/Treasurer

Curt Woolhiser   is a Preceptor in Russian, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures Faculty Associate, Davis Center, Harvard University. Dr. Woolhiser received his Ph.D. in Slavic linguistics from Indiana University in 1995. His dissertation, entitled: "Polish and Belarusian Dialects in Contact: A Study in Linguistic Convergence," examined contact-induced innovations in the Belarusian and Polish dialects of the Polish- Lithuanian-Belarusian borderlands from the standpoint of recent theories of language contact. He is currently preparing a revised version of his dissertation for publication, as well as a monograph on dialectal divergence in the contemporary Polish-Belarusian border region, based on field research funded by IREX, SSRC, ACLS and the University of Texas at Austin. In addition, he is editing a special issue of the International Journal of the Sociology of Language on sociolinguistics in Belarus. He has written articles on Belarusian, Russian and Polish historical linguistics, sociolinguistics and dialectology, including "Political Borders and Dialect Divergence/Convergence in Europe", to appear P. Auer, F. Hinskens and P. Kerswill (eds.), Dialect Change: The Convergence and Divergence of Dialects in Modern Societies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming), "Language Ideology and Language Conflict in Post-Soviet Belarus" (in C. O'Reilly (ed.), Language, Identity and the State (London: Palgrave, 2001), "Sociolinguistic Aspects of Dialect Divergence in the Polish-Belarusian Border Region" in Belarus and the World Community (Proceedings of the 3rd International Congress of Belarusianists) (Minsk, forthcoming), "The Phonological and Morphophonemic Evolution of the Common Slavic Prefixes *v=-, *u-, *j;z- and *s=- in Belarusian", Belaruskaja linhvistyka (Minsk, 2000), and "The Sociolinguistic Study of Language Contact and Bilingualism in the Former Soviet Union: The Case of Belarus'", in J. Harlig and C. Pleh (eds.), When East Met West: Sociolinguistics in the Former Socialist Bloc (Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1995). Dr. Woolhiser is Vice-President (for North America) of the International Association of Belarusianists (MAB), and is a member of AATSEEL, AAASS, ACTR, and the Association for the Study of Nationalities (ASN). He is also contributing editor of the "Belarusica" column in the AATSEEL Newsletter.

Newsletter Editor

Kern Lunde is a Program Analyst employed by Tri-Star Engineering, Inc. in support of the Distance Support Program at Naval Surface Warfare Center, Crane, Indiana. Mr. Lunde earned his B.A. in Russian from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1985. He earned his M.S. in Space Systems Engineering from the Naval Postgraduate School in 1996. A retired Naval Officer (having served for 20 years in the U.S. Navy), Mr. Lunde is a member of AATSEEL and ACTR. He is also enrolled as a graduate student in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Indiana University where his goal is to earn his Ph.D. in Slavic Linguistics, with a dissertation on some aspect of the Belarusian language.

Webmaster

Peter Kasaty is an information technologist in San Diego, California, USA. Mr. Kasaty's Belarus-related activities are mostly on the Internet, where he is the primary list-owner of the Belarus e-mail list, co-moderator of the usenet newsgroup, soc.culture.belarus, and maintainer of a Web site, A Belarus Miscellany. A special aspect of that Web site is the collaboration with Vera Rich, British poet, journalist, and translator of Belarusian literature (esp. poetry), into English. Mr. Kasaty was the first country director of the Internet Access and Training Program, Belarus (IATP), 1997-98. He was also an English language curriculum consultant at RGPU in St. Petersburg, Russia in 1992. His Belarus-related interests are eclectic and include Belarusian language and culture (especially folk music, folk-based popular music, & literature in English translation), the Internet in Belarus, civil society, human rights, and environmental issues.

Executive Council

Thomas E. Bird is Coordinator of the Russian Studies Program at Queens College, City University of New York. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Syracuse University's Maxwell School, he did his Master's studies at Middlebury College, and completed his doctoral studies at Princeton University. He has pursued post-graduate studies at Warsaw University and received an honorary doctorate from the Ukrainian Free University in Munich. Prof. Bird is a regular contributor to and editor (1983-present) of Zapisy/Annals, the annual published by the Belarusan Institute of Arts and Sciences; and a founding member and Vice-President of the International Association of Belarusan Studies (Minsk). He contributed the entry on "Belarusan Literature" to the Encyclopedia of World Literature in the 20th Century (1981, 1999) and is a contributor to Belaruskija pis'menniki. He has published articles and reviews on Belarusan topics in Belarus (New York), Niva (Bialystok), Skarynich (Minsk), Albaruthenica (Minsk), Der christliche Osten (Wuerzburg), and in the volume Janka Kupala i 'Nasha Niva. His current research interest is the newspaper, Nasha Niva.

Alicja Boruta-Sadkowski is an instructor in the Department of Modern Languages at the University of Northern Iowa, where she teaches Russian and occasionally Polish. She received her Ph.D. in Slavic linguistics from the University of Michigan in 1997. Her dissertation was entitled: The Development of Twentieth Century Standard Belarusian: Russian and Polish Influences on the Belarusian Language Variants of Vilnia, Mensk, and Horadnia, 1918-1939. She is a member of AATSEEL, AAASS, ACTR, and MAB. Her articles on the development of the Belarusian language in the early twentieth century have appeared in: The Belarusian Enlightenment: Achievements of a Millennium. Proceedings from the International Congress (Minsk 20-21 Oct. 1998), Proceedings from the International Congress (Minsk 17-19 May 2000), Book I; Belarus and the World Community: Interaction and Mutual Enrichment of Cultures as a Manifestation of the Culture and Peace (Minsk, forthcoming, 2001). She is currently working on two other articles on the Belarusian language.

Zina Gimpelevich is Associate Professor of Slavic languages and literatures at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. She was born in Miensk, Belarus', and received her diploma from Miensk Pedagogical University and her MA and Ph.D. in Slavic Studies from University of Ottawa, Canada. Dr. Gimpelevich has written two books: What Millennium Is Out There?, 1991 (in English), and Intelligentsia v romanakh 'Doctor Zhivago' i 'Master i Margarita', 1988. Together with R. Karpiak and I. Scarycz she wrote the manual Basic Russian for Business, 2000. Of the eighteen articles written by Dr. Gimpelevich, ten are related to Belarusan Studies. Her chapter: "Uladzimir Karatkevich" was included in a book, published in Miensk in 2001. Prof. Gimpelevich's current project is a critical biography of Vasil Bykau.

Vitaut Kipel is the Director of the Belarusan Institute of Arts and Sciences (Belaruski instytut navuki i mastactva, BINiM) in New York and is a member of the editorial board of the Institute's journal, Annals/Zapisy. Dr. Kipel received his education at the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium, and worked in the Baltic and Slavic Division of the New York Public Library until his retirement in 1985. He has published numerous articles on Belarusian history and culture, and is author of Belarusans in the United States (New York, 1999) and editor (with Z. Kipel) of the volume Byelorussian Statehood: Reader and Bibliography (New York, 1988).

Jan Zaprudnik is a member of the Board of Directors of the Belarusan Institute of Arts and Sciences (BINiM) in New York. Dr. Zaprudnik spent thirty-seven years with Radio Liberty as a commentator on Soviet and international politics. A graduate of the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium (Licencie en sciences historiques, cum laude, 1954), he received his doctorate in history from New York University (1969). He taught Russian and Soviet history at Queens College of the City University of New York (1970-1975). He is the author of Belarus: At a Crossroads in History (1993) and the Historical Dictionary of Belarus (1998). Among the publications to which he contributed chapters or articles on Belarus are Handbook of Major Soviet Nationalities, Nationalism in the USSR and Eastern Europe, Encyclopedia of World Literature in the 20th Century, Belarusian Review, Zapisy: Annals of the Belarusan Institute of Arts and Sciences, Problems of Communism, and Nations and Politics in the Soviet Successor States.