The REECAS NW panel on Religion and Identity featured contributions from Matthew Cotton (UW History PhD student) and Anatoliy Klots (UW Slavic Studies PhD Student) on Jewish studies topics Odessa through the prism of Isaac Babel’s prose and the post-Soviet oeuvre of filmmakers like Dmitri Astrakhan and Aleksandr Proshkin. Jennifer Webster (UW History Lecturer) rounded out the panel with a consideration of Baqshy healer women in Kyrgyzstan as a means of exploring the relationship between Islam, ethnic and gender identity, and modernization in Central Asia.

by Indra Ekmanis Can the dream of a basketball team represent the dream of a country? Director Marius Markevicius, argues “yes” in The Other Dream Team, a colorful film that merges the fight for an Olympic title with the struggle for an independent Lithuania. The film follows the careers of five Lithuanian basketball players, four of whom (Šarūnas