The Havighurst Center

Young Researchers Conference

12th Annual International Young Researchers Conference

Orthodox Christianity in Russia and
Eastern Europe:
Historical and Contemporary Perspectives

Organizer: Scott Kenworthy

February 14-16, 2013

This interdisciplinary conference on religion will tap into a new wave of research on Orthodoxy in Russia and Eastern Europe. Before the collapse of communism, religion in Russia and Eastern Europe was rarely a topic of scholarly research. Since then, however, religion has reasserted itself in the public sphere in the former communist bloc, as well as in many other parts of the world.

Conference Schedule:

** These papers are drafts and are not for dissemination without the express written consent of the authors.**

Thursday, February 14
Keynote Lecture
Dr. Gregory Freeze, Brandeis University
De-Churching and Believing in Twentieth-Century Russia
Harrison Hall 111, 5:00-6:30pm

Friday, February 15
All panels in MacMillan Hall 212 (Great Room)

9:00 – 11:45am
Panel 1: Orthodoxy in Late Imperial Russia

Dan Scarborough, Georgetown University
Youth in Revolt: The Seminarian Protest Movement in Moscow and Tver

Jan Surer, Brandeis University
Perspectives on the West in the Orthodox Church Press of Kiev Diocese, 1900-1914

Aileen Friesen, University of Alberta
Fulfilling God’s plan: The Russian Orthodox Church and the East in the early 20th century

12:30 – 1:45pm:
Keynote Lecture
Lucian Turcescu, Concordia University
Between separation and establishment: church-state relations in Eastern Europe

2:30 – 4:30pm
Panel 2: Orthodoxy in the inter-war years

Joel Brady, University of Pittsburgh
East European Assimilation and (Re)Integration: The Interwar Legacies of Transatlantic Migration and ‘Russian’ Orthodox Conversion (1918-1939)

Alex Tudorie, University of Bucharest, Romania Church vs. State (academies vs. faculties): The Romanian Academic Theological Education in the Interwar Period (1926-1938)

Saturday, February 16:

9:00 – 11:45am
Panel 3: Transnational dimensions of Russian Orthodoxy

Denis Vovchenko, Northeastern State University Russians and Muslim Slavs: Brothers or Infidels? (1856-1914)

Monica Cognolato, University of Padua, Italy
Who wants to be an American Bishop?

Jesse Murray, University of Illinois
The Transformative Russian Empire and the Development of Lamaism and Shamanism as Categories of Buryat Religion

1:15 - 3:15pm
Panel 4: Orthodoxy in post-communist Eastern Europe

Iuliana Conovici, University of Bucharest, Romania Concepts of Church-State Relations in Romania: Beyond Symphonia and the ‘Privileged Orthodox Church’

Sorin Gog, University of Babes-Bolyai, Romania Secularization within Contemporary Orthodox Cultures: Eastern Christianity facing the Post-Communist Transformations

3:30-4:30pm: Final discussion