The Baltic Center for North-American Studies at the University of Tartu

In 1993, at the initiative of the University of Tartu's Department of English in collaboration with Fulbright Professor George Eisen and with the active support of the then US Ambassador to Estonia, by now legendary Robert C. Frasure, the University of Tartu created the Baltic Center for North American Studies. From its very inception, the Center has been both interdisciplinary and multifunctional in character. However, the Department of English has retained a special role in the activities of the Center. While many of the original members of the Center have been attracted by the admittedly very important area of Estonian Eurointegration, members of the Department of English have extended their qualifications with a view of carrying out interdisciplinary research and teaching which combines cultural studies with sociology, politics, and other related fields. Thus, the tasks of the Center have included

• research into North America from a variety of angles: cultural, sociological, political, economic, etc.
• offering a Minor in North American Studies to students from all faculties of the university,
• arranging community outreach programs designed to promote a better understanding of the U.S. in Estonia.

The Center has been successful in all the areas. Its scholars and publications are internationally recognized, the Minor is popular among students - all courses have remarkably high attendance rates, and American Studies have been well represented in in-service courses arranged by the university. The Center has seen as part of its mission offering an effective counterbalance to the predominantly EU-orientation of Estonia.

Foremost among the successes of the Center have been its biennial international conferences (1994, 1995, 1997, 1999) which from the very beginning attracted presenters both from North America and Europe and which have over the past years won increasing international recognition and been attended by wide audiences both from the academia and outside. The importance of the conferences has been manifold: they have presented a meeting place for American Studies scholars from all over the world and thus made their contribution to the ongoing dialogue in the field, they have provided Estonian public with an opportunity to hear of the latest developments in North American Studies, and, perhaps most significantly, they have stimulated the research of members of the Center which takes advantage of the comparative perspective to highlight developments both in North America and Estonia and their complex interactions.

The proceedings of the 1997 and 1999 conferences - "Negotiating Spaces on the Common Ground - were published in 2000 by Tartu University Press. There are still copies available (for obtaining a copy, one should contact the Department of English).

Click here for the Table of Contents of the publication.

The last, Fifth International Tartu Conference on North-American Studies, dedicated to a large extent to the role of America in the increasingly globalizing world. Presenters included eminent scholars from leading universities from 11 countries the world over: a testimony of the growing international recognition of the Center.

All the conferences as well as publications of the Center have been supported by generous grants of the USIA and the US State Department. These institutions have also provided numerous grants to members of the Center, including three Fulbright, two IREX and many other minor scholarships for research and study.

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