2006 Recipient

The Beth Holmgren Graduate Student Essay Prize, established in 1990 and named in honor of Professor Holmgren in 2021, is awarded for an outstanding essay by a graduate student in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies.

Winner: Diana Mincyte, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Title: “The Pasteurization of Lithuania: Informal Food Markets and Globalization”

Dr. Mincyte’s paper “The Pasteurization of Lithuania: Informal Food Markets and Globalization,” won the graduate student essay competition held at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and is an extended version of a paper presented at the SOYUZ conference in March 2006. Examining widespread practices of raw milk distribution in Lithuania, Mincyte’s paper poses compelling theoretical questions about globalizing and rationalizing forces and their interaction with local processes in a postsocialist economy. Through a careful analysis of fieldwork findings, interviews, and comparative literature on globalization, Mincyte generates counterintuitive findings about both Europeanization and local habits. Mincyte’s dynamic and descriptively rich paper made the seemingly obscure topic of unpasteurized milk distribution quite intriguing.