The Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies held its 47th annual meeting in Philadelphia last week (November 19–22). This year the conference theme was “Fact”, and to some extent the conference sessions tried to address the debates about history and memory in post-socialist Eurasia and Eastern Europe, the current and past “information wars” in the region and other problems related to the broader theme.

The 47th Annual ASEEES Convention was attended by more than 1,000 scholars from North America, Europe and Eastern Europe. Bulgaria was represented at the convention through academic papers by several famous researchers, such as Maria Todorova, Тhеоdоrа Dragostinova, Vessela Warner, Daniela Ivanova-Nyberg and other Bulgarian authors. Separately, papers on Bulgarian topics were delivered by a few foreign authors, such as Cristofer Scarboro, Laura Olsen Osterman, Cameron Garvin and Mary Neuburger.

This year the American Research Center was the proud organizer of the only two sessions dedicated strictly to Bulgarian issues and attended by a large number of Bulgarian scholars. The first panel was entitled “Communist Legacy and Post-Communist Reality: Historical Memory and Political Culture,” and the second was called “Studying and Musealizing State Socialism in Bulgaria. Debates and Interpretations”.

The papers in the first Bulgarian session presented different techniques for examining the communist legacy in Bulgaria during its 26 years of democracy: the approach of a historian, Prof. Evelina Kelbetcheva from the American University in Bulgaria, AUBG; a political scientist, Dr. Emilia Zankina, also from the AUBG; and a journalist, Mrs. Nassya Kralevska-Owens, the author of ARCS’ first academic publication, “Communism vs. Democracy. Bulgaria 1944-1997”. All of presenters also dealt with the subject of the collective memory of the communist past and its reflection on the present and the future. In this regard, the panel provided interdisciplinary insight into the multi-nuanced life of post-communist Bulgarian society. The chair and discussant of the panel was Dr. Dilyana Ivanova from the American Research Center in Sofia and Research Associate at The Field Museum in Chicago.

The second Bulgarian session that was organized by the American Research Center discussed the various research approaches towards the period of state socialism, as well as the presentation and conceptualization of the period in contemporary Bulgarian museums, galleries and other premises. The panel aimed to discuss the interpretations and ongoing debates about the socialist legacy in Bulgaria after the fall of communism in 1989. Presenters in this session included Dr. Nikolay Nenov, director of the Rousse Regional Museum of History in Bulgaria, and Dr. Dilyana Ivanova from the American Research Center in Sofia, whose papers on the topic of the communist past in the town of Rousse presented new approaches and thematic discourses based on study and museum exhibitions about communism in Bulgaria. The chair of the panel was Dr. Vessela Warner from the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and the discussant of the session was Dr. Chap Kusimba of the American University in Washington, DC. Romanian scholars from the Institute for the Investigation of Communist Crimes and the Memory of the Romanian Exile were especially interested in this panel, as they are currently working on a project to create a Museum of Communism in Romania. The Romanian and Bulgarian researchers had a very productive discussion of the current and future study and muzealization of the communist regimes in Bulgaria and Romania, and they also talked about future collaboration between their institute in Romania and the American Research Center in Sofia and the Rousse Regional Museum of History in Bulgaria.

The 47th Annual ASEEES Convention was marked by another Bulgarian event, the annual meeting of the Bulgarian Studies Association (BSA). Among other items on the agenda, the attendees discussed the upcoming BSA conference in Bulgaria, which will be held at the Rousse Regional Museum of History with logistical (and other) support from the museum, the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Study with Ethnographic Museum of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, and the American Research Center in Sofia.

Finally, the American Research Center in Sofia held a small reception in a local bar in Philadelphia, which friends and supporters of the Center attended. This was the third consecutive year that the Center held such a get-together party at the ASEEES convention for its friends, fellows, alumni and sponsors at the meeting. These receptions have become well-attended and much anticipated events at the ASEEES meeting, where friends and researchers of not only the Center, but also Bulgaria can celebrate their mutual respect and affection for Bulgarian history, culture and heritage.