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     Over the past five years, more than a dozen University at Albany faculty, staff and professionals have participated in a USIA-funded exchange program with Sofia University in Bulgaria.   A similar number of Bulgarians have come here to study our library system, conduct women's studies research, and teach courses ranging from English grammar to American immigrant literature.  Under the auspices of this program, I traveled twice to this small Balkan country, first to design a course in American drama, then in the spring 1999 semester to teach a writing seminar as well as a literature class entitled “Growing Up in America.” 
    Like most Americans, I had very little knowledge of this former member of the Soviet bloc, a country unfortunately best known for an assassination involving a poisoned umbrella.  I discovered that Bulgarians as a whole are among the warmest, friendliest, most generous and hospitable people I have ever met.  But they are also understandably wary and pessimistic - having spent many years under a totalitarian Communist regime and more recently watched their country deteriorate economically under a rapidly changing succession of governments of different stripes.   In a nation where the growing gap between rich and poor is already a chasm, Sofia's roads are clogged with 20-year-old Russian Ladas while black-marketeers drive shiny new Mercedes sedans. 
    Not surprisingly, these problems have taken their toll on Bulgaria's educational system, traditionally one of the best in the world.  Sofia University is the country's most prestigious institution of higher learning.   The faculty I met in the English Department (the only one about which I can really speak) were uniformly intelligent, very knowledgeable about a wide range of subjects, remarkably up-to-date on current trends in their fields, and dedicated to teaching and scholarship.  Dedication may be the most important element:  the average monthly salary for a Bulgarian university professor runs around $100, not even enough to feed a small family.  For this meager sum faculty are expected to teach three or four courses a semester, attend department meetings that can last up to five hours, devote Easter and summer “breaks” to preparing and grading university entrance exams, and - if they want to be promoted - still engage in research. 
    As far as I can tell, the one thing Bulgarian academics don't do is sleep.  Everyone holds down second and third jobs - interpreting, translating, tutoring -- just to survive. One colleague, a single mother, spends Saturday and Sunday mornings teaching English to computer experts headed for jobs in the U.S.;  in her “spare time” she is translating a popular medical manual from English into Bulgarian.   When an ailing faculty member recently offered to resign so the university could hire a replacement, the department chair turned her down - in a country where taxi drivers and bank clerks earn more than senior professors, new faculty are hard to find.
    My students, like their teachers, were extremely bright and very well educated.   Foreign language training starts early, and their English - both spoken and written - is comparable to that of our own students.  Compliments of MTV, CNN and the Internet, even their mastery of idioms is extraordinary.  Those students majoring in American studies have a knowledge of U.S. history and literature that would put most of us to shame:  they study the Constitution as well as the works of Mark Twain, the history of Native Americans as well the novels of Toni Morrison.  (In my first appearance as a living historical relic, I donned a patchwork vest and a peace symbol to give a guest lecture on the 1960s in an American culture class.)   I found it, quite frankly, embarrassing to see how much Bulgarians know about a country whose inhabitants would be hard-pressed to locate Bulgaria on a map. 
    The other side of the coin, however, is that many students have little motivation to do the assigned work or even attend class - it was weeks into the semester before I knew who was actually enrolled in my non-fiction prose workshop. A number of the students were simultaneously practice-teaching, taking a full load of courses, and working full-time to help support themselves and their families.  Still, a small core of dedicated writing students and I did establish a rhythm, even if we never knew exactly whose paper we'd be discussing on any given day.  Like their American counterparts, my young Bulgarian writers favored humorous, satirical essays.  Unlike students here, however, they were distinctly uncomfortable with the confessional writing that has come to dominate American non-fiction bestseller lists.  And it was a long while before even a few students were willing to offer honest critiques of their classmates' work - a pedagogical practice that is suspect in a country where not so long ago any public criticism of a friend could be seen as betrayal. 
    In the “Growing Up in America” seminar, we studied a variety of novels, poems and plays by writers from different ethnic and racial backgrounds.  The students seemed to enjoy most of them but clearly favored the books by Native Americans, a group for whom they felt great empathy.  Yet the history of White America's mistreatment of Native peoples didn't seem to dampen their enthusiasm for the United States.  One morning one of my students entered the classroom wearing a huge smile.  She had, she informed me, won the “lottery”:   her prize was a coveted green card.   In a year, after she has finished college and the requisite paperwork, she will move to Cleveland.  When I asked her whether she'd miss her family and friends in Bulgaria, she seemed unfazed - America is the land of opportunity and she is eager to get here. 
     I cannot think of any nicer, more gracious people than the Bulgarians, but Bulgaria is in many ways a sad place.  The country's population is declining - a serious problem in a nation that numbers barely over eight million - and as young people of child-bearing age migrate to the U.S., England and Western Europe, the population will continue to shrink.   The West applauded the downfall of Communism in Europe, but we have done shamefully little to help countries like Bulgaria make the difficult transition to a new way of life.   Via the Internet, several of my Sofia University students and a group of University at Albany undergraduates are now sharing their thoughts as well as information about their respective countries.  Perhaps this exchange will be a step toward educating Americans about a part of the world we have neglected far too long.

    Thanks to a recent UAlbany conference, historians and archivists should find it a little easier to work together to document and preserve New York's history.
    Researching New York: Perspectives on Empire State History, sponsored by the History Graduate Student Organization and the Department of History, brought together participants from institutions throughout the state, as well as from colleges and universities in Vermont, Maryland, Connecticut, and Italy.  The Nov. 19 program had its genesis last spring, when graduate students Laurie Kozakiewicz, Tod Ottman, Laura Wittern-Keller, and Susan McCormick “decided it would be interesting and useful to do a conference where we could talk to one another, as well as to others, about New York State history topics,” recalled McCormick. “One of the things that made this conference really unique was that we have made a point of talking about the link between historians and archivists. We wanted people in libraries and archives to share with us the resources they have that historians might use. All of us need to know better how to access those materials.”
    As a follow-up to that conversation, the planners put out a call for papers, did some mailings, and created a Web page. McCormick remembered: “The response from our own faculty was really great. History department chair Dan White and professors Gerald Zahavi and Richard Hamm were very encouraging to us as we planned the event. President Karen Hitchcock and Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Judy Genshaft sent us very nice letters. College of Arts and Sciences Dean Richard Hoffmann and Vice President for Research Christopher D'Elia attended the luncheon, and Provost Genshaft came to the reception at the end of the day. We were very pleased by that show of support.”
    Response from potential participants at other educational institutions - including SUNY Brockport, Binghamton, the Sage Colleges, Columbia, New York University, and the University of Rochester - was also great. In addition, representatives from the New York State Archives, the New York State Museum, the state education department, “and a lot of archives, libraries, and historical societies throughout the Capital Region registered and participated in the conference,” said McCormick.
    The daylong conference opened with a workshop, From Attics to Archives: Locating Archival Resources in New York State, and a discussion. Three concurrent panels - on colonial Albany, patriotism and citizenship in New York, and local histories in the state - concluded the morning program. After lunch, two more sessions of concurrent panels focused on the state's waterways; 20th-century politics and labor; justice and citizenship; and the influence of New York City newspapers.
    During the 90-minute presentation Voicing New York: Multimedia Approaches to New York State History, McCormick and fellow graduate student Jane Ladouceur offered an overview of how sound, pictures, and other audiovisual enhancements can enliven history. Ladouceur's portion of the program, “Listening to the Voices: The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire,” afforded listeners a dramatic audio retelling - by survivors - of the 1911 tragedy that claimed 146 lives.
    McCormick, meanwhile, employed computer-generated audio-video resources to give an account of the work of Fulton County's glovemakers. Richard Hamm of the Department of History served as facilitator for the panel, while Bennington College professor David Phillips offered commentary.
    Conference organizers are delighted with the “really enthusiastic response” to the program, according to McCormick. Planners had “just expected it would be a small conference, with 50 to 70 people participating”; however, the actual attendance was about 135. Feedback from the participants has been overwhelmingly favorable. In fact, she added, “we've already put out the call for papers for next year's conference.” There should be no shortage of topics, because “New York is such a large state, and so much happens here in terms of politics, immigration, labor, education, and so many other things.” 
    Added planner Laurie Kozakiewicz: “With its strong doctoral program in history, the University at Albany is the most logical site for presenting such conferences and capitalizing on the resources available to the pursuit of New York State history.”