Annual Newsletter of the Slavic Research Center, Hokkaido University
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English News  No.7 , December 1999
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From the Director
 Foreign Visiting Fellowship Program
 Symposia
 Our Current Staff
 Research Funded by the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture
Guest Lectures from Abroad
 Visitors from Abroad
 Awards for SRC Staff
 Publications (1998-1999)
 The Library
Essays by Foreign Fellows
Cynthia H. Whittaker
 Isabel Tirado
 Kuili Liu
 John P. LeDonne
Foreign Visiting Fellowship Program
1999-2000:
The SRC has invited three renowned scholars, Cynthia Whittaker (Baruch College and Graduate Center, City University of New York), Kuili Liu (Institute of Ethnic Minorities' Literature, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing) and Ekaterina Nikova (Institute of Balkan Studies, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia) as foreign visiting fellows for 1999-2000. These three scholars will stay in Sapporo until the end of March 2000.
Dr. Cynthia Whittaker is an historian who specializes in 18th and 19th century Russian political and cultural history. Her first book, The Origins of Modern Russian Education: An Intellectual Biography of Count Sergei Uvarov (1984), has just been translated into Russian and published by the Akademicheskii proekt in St. Petersburg. She intends to complete her third book in Sapporo, entitled The Idea of Monarchy in Eighteenth-Century Russia.
Dr. Kuili Liu is a specialist in the field of Russian folklore. His works are based upon field research that he conducted in various regions of Russia, including: Vologda, Ivanovo, Vladimir and Karelia. He is now writing a comprehensive history of Russian folklore and is recognized as China's leading scholar in international folklore studies.
Dr. Ekaterina Nikova specializes in Balkan economic history in the post-war period. She is the first Bulgarian scholar ever invited by the Slavic Research Center as a foreign visiting fellow. During her stay at the SRC, she is conducting a comparative analysis of economic development in South East Europe and South East Asia.
In addition, the SRC accepted three COE (Center of Excellence) visiting fellows, Isabel Tirado (History Department, William Paterson University, New Jersey), Jeffrey Hahn (Political Science Department, Villanova University, Pennsylvania) and Igor' Krupnik (Arctic Studies Center, Department of Anthropology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.).
Dr. Isabel Tirado is an historian specializing in the Komsomol and the Russian peasantry during the 1920s. At the SRC, she is engaged in research on the rural Komsomol at the end of the NEP. She will stay in Sapporo until late December 1999, returning in January to participate in the SRC's winter symposium.
Dr. Jeffrey Hahn is a political scientist whose focus is on federal relations, local self-government and political culture in Russia. He plans to conduct research at the SRC on prospects for democracy in Russia's Far Eastern regions. He will stay in Sapporo from mid-December 1999 until the end of March 2000.
Dr. Igor' Krupnik is an anthropologist specializing in Arctic native peoples. During his three-month stay at the SRC, he completed a volume of oral histories of aboriginal peoples collected through several years of field research in Siberia.
2000-2001:
Three scholars have been selected as foreign visiting fellows for 2000-2001: Arbakhan Magomedov (Department of History and Culture, Ul'ianovsk State Technical University, Russia); RenŽo Lukic (Department of History, Laval University, Quebec, Canada); and Boris Lanin (Institute for Information in Education, Russian Academy of Education, Moscow).
Dr. Arbakhan Magomedov is a well-known specialist on Russia's regional politics. During his stay at the SRC, he plans to conduct research on the political incentives and behavior of Russian local power elites along the transportation routes of "Big Oil" from the Caspian Sea to Novorossiisk.
Dr. Reneko Lukic specializes in Russian and East European history and international relations. His research project at the SRC will examine "ethno-federal post-communist states" in Europe based on case studies of the Russian Federation and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
Dr. Boris Lanin is a Russian literature specialist specializing in Russian ŽmigrŽ literature and 20th century Russian literature. At the SRC, he will study "irony and satire" in 20th century Russian literature.
2001-2002:
The SRC invites applications for the Foreign Visiting Fellowship Program from Slavic studies specialists in the fields of literature, history, international relations, economics, political science, sociology, geography, and ethnology, tenable for nine to ten months between June 2001 and March 2002. Three Fellowships are available. Knowledge of Japanese is not required; all academic staff speak English and Russian, and seminars with foreign participants are conducted in those languages. Previous awardees indicate that the program particularly suits scholars wishing to complete research prepared to an extent.
Hokkaido University has over 130,000 items on Russian and East European affairs in languages other than Japanese, and receives 590 relevant periodicals and journals. It also has 4,500 Ph.D. theses from American, Canadian and British universities, the personal collections of Leon Bernstein, George Vernadsky, Boris Souvarine, Fritz Epstein, Alexander Lensen, Henryk Gierszynski and other large scale collections.
Conditions of Awards
The awardee must conduct research at the SRC, including limited professional travel in Japan. (Travel abroad must be approved by the Director and taken as paid leave). There are no teaching duties, but participants are expected to be available for consultation with staff and graduate students, give at least two presentations on topics of their choice, participate in seminars as their schedule permits, write an article during their stay for publication in the Acta Slavica Iaponica on a topic of their choice, and submit a report on the program at the end of their stay.
The SRC provides:
  1. One round-trip air ticket (economy class) between the awardee's place of work and Sapporo. (Families are welcome, but at the awardee's expense.)
  2. A living allowance of between 498,000 yen and 774,000 yen per month depending on the awardee's age, career, and academic experience.
  3. 100,000 yen for business-related travel in Japan.
  4. Inexpensive accommodation at the University's Foreign Scholars' Residence. The current rates are 6,800 yen (single), 19,000 yen (twin) and 37,000 yen (family) per month.
  5. An office at the Center (with the use of a personal computer) and access to all University and library facilities. (except for secretarial services.)
  6. National medical insurance, covering 70% of medical expenses, will be available at the visiting scholar's expense. (1,400 yen a person or 2,200 yen per family.)

Application Procedure
The SRC will forward application forms on request. Applicants should also have at least two letters of reference sent directly to the SRC, one from the institution with which applicants are affiliated certifying that they will be free to take up a Fellowship if awarded, the other from a recognized specialist in their field.
Applications and letters of reference must arrive at the SRC by March 31, 2000.
Notification
Applicants will be informed of selection results by mid-July, 2000.
Correspondence
Correspondence concerning this program should be addressed to:
Head, Foreign Visiting Fellowship Program, Slavic Research Center, Hokkaido University, Kita-9, Nishi-7, Kita-ku, Sapporo 060-0809, Japan Tel: (81)11-706-2388, Fax: (81)11-706-4952
*Application forms for the FVFP and information on the SRC are available via the Internet: http://src-h.slav.hokudai.ac.jp/index-e.html
Application forms and information on the COE Foreign Visiting Fellowship Program will be available from May 2000; applications will be accepted until September 30, 2000. The tenure of the COE award is for three to five months between June 2001 and March 2002.

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