On March 17-19, the History Department at the University of Alabama sponsored the Annual Meeting of the Southern Conference on Slavic Studies. As the oldest and largest of all the regional Slavic conferences, the meeting drew more than two hundred scholars of Slavic and Eastern European history, literature, and language to Tuscaloosa. Over the course of three days, scholars met to discuss topics ranging from the war in Ukraine to the legacy of Stalin in Russia to the relationship between Soviet and Mexican cinema in the 1930s. The nation’s
Undergraduate history majors studying in Dr. Margaret Peacock’s Soviet History course (HY 362) attended panels and the keynote address. They staffed the registration desk and went on the field trip to see the special collections at the Moundville Archeological Park (which, according to the conference-goers, was the highlight of the weekend). “I never knew that studying history could be so much fun,” Heath Isom (a senior) reported to a conference-goer as he was driving back from Moundville. Rachel LeComte, a junior, remarked to Dr. Peacock at the end of the conference that now she knew “this is what I want to do.”