Northern Vermont University Faculty Present at International Conferences

Northern Vermont University faculty presented at international conferences this spring and additional presentations are planned for summer.

Professor of History Alexandre Strokanov presented virtually at the Plenary Session of the International Research Conference — “Intellectual Potential of an Educational Organization and Socio-Economic Development of Regions” — held April 16 at Yaroslavl University’s International Academy of Business and New Technologies in Yaroslavl, Russia. His presentation was titled “The role of university in socio-economic and cultural development of the region. The case study: Northern Vermont University and Northeast Kingdom.” The conference explored the need to work closer with the region in which educational institutions are based, and the importance of increasing student opportunities for practical application of learning, Strokanov said.

Professor Strokanov also presented virtually at “Conformism vs. Freedom in personal, social, cultural dimensions: Searching for the personal world and communal accord” on April 29 in Ufa, Russia. This international conference was organized by Bashkir State University (Ufa, Russia) and the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation (Berlin, Germany). Strokanov’s talk, titled “Conformism vs. Freedom: The reflection of the theme in Russian literature published abroad in the 20th and 21st centuries,” explored the emigree experience as presented in eight novels published by Russian emigrees between 1926 and 2017.

This summer, Strokanov will present in person at the International Scientific Conference “Language in the Coordinates of the Mass Media,” to be held at St. Petersburg University (St. Petersburg, Russia) June 30-July3. His talk will explore “Humor in Media,” specifically the use of humor in commentaries discussing articles written about political protests in Russia in early 2021.

Associate Professor Sean Clute and part-time faculty Otto Muller, collaboratively known as the Rural Noise Ensemble, were selected to perform at the New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME) conference June 14-18 in Shanghai, China. Clute, Muller, and collaborator Leif Hunneman will show, via livestream, a new work created for the conference — “Summer (blackflies and other bugs).” The work is an improvisation for homemade electronic instruments that explores the seasonal temporality of rural space in northern Vermont. The performance employs amplified rustic objects, live-animation, stochastic composition, and digital signal processing to interrogate the experience of summer through models of human-insect interaction. Of the piece, Clute and Muller say: “From the emergence of the blackflies and June bugs through mosquito-filled evenings to the cicadas and crickets of August, this work playfully explores the phenomenology of summer through our varied encounters with its invertebrate inhabitants, in search of new, more-than-human understandings of time, temperature, and season.”