Seminary Represented at 39 th National Convention of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies

Holy Trinity Seminary was represented at the 39 th National Convention of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies (AAASS) in New Orleans, Louisiana, between November 15 and 18, 2007. This annual scholarly forum offers panels in literature, linguistics, history, political science, and religion.

Dcn. Vladimir Tsurikov, Assistant Dean of Holy Trinity Seminary and Instructor of Church Slavonic, participated in a roundtable entitled "Religious Education in Modern Russia: Where the Church Meets the Public." This well-attended roundtable was chaired by Lara McCoy Roslof ( Russia Profile ) and also included presentations by Irina Papkova (Central European University, Budapest), and Andrei Zolotov (Editor, Russia Profile ). The discussion focused on the proposed introduction of a curriculum on the Principles of Orthodox Culture in public schools in Russia, which has already been adapted by several schools, and on the curricular and organizational reforms of theological education in the Russian Orthodox Church.

Dcn. Vladimir Tsurikov also participated at the annual meeting of the Association for the Study of Eastern Christianity and Culture, and presented a paper - "Home at Last: The Long Awaited Return of a Russian Émigré" - at a panel entitled "'Sacred Union': 'First Wave' of Russian Emigration on the Cultural Crossroads of the Twentieth Century."

Overall, this year's convention featured 416 panels and roundtables. Among them were panels dedicated to "The Kyiv Caves Monastery Printing House and its Readers during the Seventeenth-Century Orthodox Revival," "Defining Pilgrimage: Popular Piety and Religious Authority in Imperial Russian and Greece," "The Cyril-Methodius Brotherhood, Its Legacy and Roots," "Sergius Bulgakov: The Ongoing Discussion," "Religious Biographies in Late Imperial Russia," "The Politics of the Russian Orthodox Church," "Church and State in East Central Europe in the Communist Era," "Religion and Empire in Medieval and Pre-Modern Russia," "Unmaking the Orthodox Russian Empire: Problems of Cultural Identification, Religious Politics and the End of Imperial Discourse, 1750-1917," and others.

The 40th National Convention of the AAASS will be held at the Philadelphia Marriott in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, from Thursday, November 20 through Sunday, November 23, 2008. For more information, please visit the AAASS' official website.