Bulgarian Studies in the United States

C. M. Vakareliyska

Eugene, Oregon, USA

In the United States, Bulgarian studies is considered a subfield of Russian/East European Studies; there are no formal Bulgarian studies programs or departments at American universities. Specialists in Bulgarian studies generally operate directly within the department of their general discipline, e. g., the department of history, economics, political science, anthropology, music, art, linguistics, or Slavic languages and literatures (philology). University courses devoted specifically to Bulgaria —or to any other specific European country besides Russia— are rare, but there are a few American universities that are viewed as centers for Bulgarian studies because they have a tradition of offering Bulgarian language courses, they have a sizable library collection on Bulgarian topics, and/or because they have more than one specialist in Bulgaria on their faculties. These include, among others, the University of Pittsburgh, The Ohio State University, the University at Albany (SUNY), the University of Chicago, the University of Arizona, and the University of Oregon.

The primary formal organization for Bulgarists in the United States is the Bulgarian Studies Association (BSA), which was established in 1973. According to its statement of purpose, the BSA „is a non-profit scholarly organization which promotes the study of and exchange of knowledge about all aspects of Bulgaria and Bulgarians: language, literature, culture, history, politics, economics and international relations." The BSA currently has approximately 250 individual and institutional members in 8 countries, and has developed into an international organization in scope. Membership in the BSA is free for residents of Bulgaria and other East European countries. The BSA has a Constitution and an Executive Council, consisting of a president, vice-president, and secretary/treasurer. The officers, who are nominated and elected by the membership, serve for two-year terms. The organization was founded in 1973 as the Bulgarian Studies Group, at the first Joint Meeting of Bulgarian and North American Scholars, held at the University of Wisconsin/Madison and organized by Thomas Butler. At that meeting Charles Moser was elected the Group's first president. The following are the past and present officers of the BSA:

1973_78: Charles Moser, President (literature)

Ernest Scatton, Secretary/Treasurer (linguistics)

1978_79: James Clarke, President (history)

Lubomir Dellin, Vice President (history)

Tom Butler, Secretary/Treasurer (literature)

Irwin Sanders, Honorary President (sociology)

1980_81: James Clarke, President

Fred Chary, Vice President (history)

Ernest Scatton, Secretary/Treasurer

Albert Lord, Honorary President (folklore)

1982_89: Fred Chary, President

Ernest Scatton, Vice President

Martha Forsyth, Secretary/Treasurer (ethnography)

1990_91: John Bell, President (history)

Howard Aronson, Vice President (linguistics)

Martha Forsyth, Secretary/Treasurer

1992_94: Dennis Hupchick, President (history)

Donald Dyer, Vice President (linguistics)

Martha Forsyth, Secretary/Treasurer

1995_97: Katia McClain, President (linguistics)

Grace Fielder, Vice President (linguistics)

Martha Forsyth, Secretary/Treasurer

1998_01: Cynthia Vakareliyska, President (linguistics)

Ernest Scatton, Vice President

Martha Forsyth, Secretary/Treasurer

2001_02: Charles Gribble, President (linguistics)

Kjetil Rе Hauge (linguistics)

Martha Forsyth, Secretary/Treasurer

Of particular note above are Martha Forsyth's generous service as Secretary/Treasurer from 1982 through the present, and the election in 2000 of Kjetil Rе Hauge, from Oslo University, Norway, as the BSA's first officer from outside the United States. The BSA holds its annual business meeting at the Conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, which takes place generally in November. Because of the significant geographical distance among its members, however, BSA business, including elections, is conducted primarily by mail ballots and by e-mail.

The BSA operates and maintains three news and informational networks for announcements concerning events and issues in Bulgarian studies: a webpage at http://www.pitt.edu/~bsa/, an e-mail list for members, and a quarterly Newsletter. The webpage contains an e-mail directory of members specializing in various areas of Bulgarian studies, who are willing to serve as consultants to the general public. The BSA Newsletter, which can also be found on-line through the webpage, is a scholarly bulletin that includes articles and book reviews by BSA members. The Newsletter was first issued in 1978, by General Editor Fred Chary. The subsequent general editors are Roger Whitaker (1982_90), Donald Dyer (1992_94), Bonka Boneva (1994_2000), and Philip Murphy (2001-present), with Donald Dyer also serving from 1999 through the present in the recently-established position of Academic Editor, in charge of scholarly articles and reviews.

The BSA also awards an annual John D. Bell Memorial Book Prize, for the best recent book in an area of Bulgarian studies. Nominations for the award are made by BSA members, and the award decision is made by a book prize committee consisting of specialists in areas represented by the nominated books. The BSA Book Prize was established in 1999, and two awards were made that first year: the regular Book Prize to Gerald Creed's Domesticating Revolution: From Socialist Reform to Ambivalent Transition in a Bulgarian Village (Penn State Univ. 1998), and a special prize to Thomas Butler's Monumenta Bulgarica: A Bilingual Anthology of Bulgarian Texts from the Ninth to the Nineteenth Centuries (Univ. of Michigan 1996), for Outstanding Contribution to the General Field of Bulgarian Studies. The 1999 prize went to Ali Eminov's Turkish and Other Muslim Minorities of Bulgaria (Routledge_New York 1997), and the 2000 prize to Kjetil RЕ Hauge's A Short Grammar of Contemporary Bulgarian (Slavica 2000).

The primary single activity of the BSA is organization of the North American delegation to the Joint Meeting of Bulgarian and North American Scholars, which is held every four years, in alternation between sites in Bulgaria and in North America. The most recent conference was in 1999, in Blagoevgrad, at the American University in Bulgaria. The BSA is currently organizing the upcoming 2003 Joint Meeting, which will be held at The Ohio State University, in Columbus, Ohio. Since, coincidentally, the conference will take place during the BSA's 30th anniversary year, the theme of the 2003 conference will be „30 Years of Bulgarian Studies in the U.S." We look forward to seeing and sharing ideas with our Bulgarian colleagues from BAN once again, when we meet in Columbus.

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