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Brian Vetruba - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.

Miroljub Ruzic - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.

Heather J. Coleman - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.

  • Watson Kirkconnell on “The place of Slavic Studies in Canada”: a 1957 speech to the Canadian Association of Slavists
    Canadian Slavonic Papers, 2016
    Co-Authors: Heather J. Coleman
    Abstract:

    In 2016, the Canadian Association of Slavists (CAS) marked two important milestones. At our annual conference in Calgary, we celebrated both the 70th anniversary since the Association's predecessor, the Canadian branch of the Association of American Teachers of Slavonic and East European Languages, was established in Toronto in May 1946, and the 60th anniversary of the founding of this journal, Canadian Slavonic Papers/Revue canadienne des slavistes, in 1956.1 (A couple of years were missed in the first decade, and so this note appears in the last issue of Volume 58, rather than 60...)In honour of these anniversaries, Canadian Slavonic Papers/Revue canadienne des slavistes, with the kind permission of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences in Canada, reprints below the address by Professor Watson Kirkconnell to the annual meeting of the Canadian Association of Slavists in Ottawa, on 10 June 1957.2 In it, he recounts his own personal encounter with Slavic Studies and his involvement in the early development of the field in Canada.Watson Kirkconnell (1895-1977), an influential Canadian scholar, university administrator, and prodigious translator of verse from the 1920s through the 1960s, played a significant role in the development of Slavic and East European Studies in Canada and in laying the foundation for Canadian multiculturalism.3 Kirkconnell was trained in classics and economics at Queen's University and then at Oxford. In 1922, he accepted a position in the English Department at Wesley College (now the University of Winnipeg), where he remained for 18 years. Between 1940 and 1948, he served as head of English at McMaster University. In this period, he was deeply involved in politics, both in defence of Canadian Eastern European immigrant communities and in warning against alleged Soviet attempts to infiltrate them. In 1943, he was appointed by the Royal Society of Canada to organize and then chair the Humanities Research Council of Canada, the forerunner of today's Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences of Canada (of which CAS has been a member since 1954). An 18-year stint as President of Acadia University capped Kirkconnell's distinguished academic career.4Personal tragedy and life in the ethnically diverse Winnipeg of the 1920s sowed the seeds that would make this Scottish-Canadian Baptist with no formal training in Slavic Studies into their champion. Bereaved when his wife died in childbirth in 1925, Kirkconnell drowned his sorrows in poetry, setting for himself the unlikely goal of translating verse from across Europe. Armed with only his enthusiasm and a personal collection of over 80 dictionaries in 60 languages, he translated poems from 50 languages. When his publisher questioned the ability of a single person to accomplish such a task, he sent his efforts to various specialists in Britain and the United States for approval. The volume was finally published as European Elegies in 1928.5 Kirkconnell would go on to translate 20 volumes of verse.6 No wonder a later commentator noted that Kirkconnell had "nullified the curse of Babel"!7As Nandor Dreisziger notes, Kirkconnell's translation activities would open up for him new acquaintances among scholars and writers in Britain, the United States, and in numerous European countries; they would also lead to a lifelong association with various immigrant communities in Canada and to a discovery of those groups' contribution to Canadian literature.8 Indeed, in 1935, he published his first volume of translations of Icelandic, Swedish, Norwegian, Hungarian, Italian, Greek, and Ukrainian poetry written in Canada, Canadian Overtones. From 1937 to 1965, he contributed an annual survey of non-English and non-French books written in Canada to the University of Toronto Quarterly.9 Meanwhile, in his activities as a prominent Canadian Baptist in these same years, he emerged as a "prophet of multiculturalism", dedicated to re-imagining that faith's communities and outlook for an ethnically plural Canada. …

  • Twenty Years On: Slavic Studies since the Collapse of the Soviet Union. Editor's Introduction
    Canadian Slavonic Papers, 2011
    Co-Authors: Heather J. Coleman
    Abstract:

    Throughout the year of 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed; in its wake the Cold War ended and fifteen new countries took their place on the world stage. At the time, no one would have questioned that a revolution of dramatic significance had occurred. Yet, in its May 2011 issue, the international Russian-language magazine Snob asked whether 1991 should be marked as a jubilee or simply noted as a regular anniversary.1 Of the three Slavic countries that emerged from the ruins of the USSR, only Ukraine officially celebrated twenty years of independence. In Russia, the great events of that year have gone largely unmarked - although, as we do the final work of assembling this issue, the largest crowds since 1991 are back in Russia's streets demanding political change, something no one would have foreseen in the summer when the anniversary of the failure of the August 1991 attempted coup against Mikhail Gorbachev passed without official commemoration. And the anniversary of Belarus's 25 August 1991 declaration of independence is not a national holiday; instead, "Independence Day" is marked on 3 July, the date of the Red Army's liberation of Belarus from Nazi occupation in 1944.If official celebrations have been limited and populations in Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine remain ambivalent about the end of the Soviet Union, 1991 stands as a critical year in twentieth-century history and a milestone in the evolution of the field of Slavic Studies. Anniversaries provide an opportunity to take stock, as well as to chart new directions for the future. With this in mind, we are pleased to present a special triple issue devoted to exploring the implications of the collapse of the USSR and the evolution of Slavic Studies in the two decades since.The research presented here examines not so much the actual events of 1991 - although David Marples, who has written extensively on the late Soviet era, provides us with a helpful reconsideration of the causes of the collapse2 - as their long-term significance in post-Soviet politics, culture, and scholarly life and letters. Five articles, selected from many submitted following a call for papers, present new work that explores the collapse of the Soviet Union and post-Soviet transformations from the perspectives of political science, cultural Studies, history, art history, and literary Studies. They are followed by a series of commissioned review essays that survey the state of various important subfields of Slavic Studies twenty years on. Slavic Studies encompass, of course, the history, politics, and culture of the eastern, western, and southern Slavs; nevertheless, I am convinced that these articles centred on the Slavs of the former USSR will provide the opportunity to learn about developments across our disciplines as a whole and offer material for fruitful comparison. It has been suggested that "the collapse" has been fetishized - that scholars have made too much of the transformative effect on their research of the manner in which the USSR dissolved and the new intellectual playing field that dissolution opened up. …

Aaron Trehub - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.

  • “Slavic Studies and Slavic Librarianship” Revisited: Notes of a Former Slavic Librarian
    Slavic & East European Information Resources, 2009
    Co-Authors: Aaron Trehub
    Abstract:

    This article revisits the author's essay in Solanus on the state of Slavic librarianship at the turn of the twenty‐first century in order to assess how the profession has changed in the interim. Trehub notes that the single most important effect of the proliferation of new library information technologies has been a gradual shift in emphasis from curation to creation. The library may no longer be the first stop in a student's research, but it remains the preferred venue for study, collaboration, social interaction, Internet use, and access to and help with specialized resources. The job of librarians—including Slavic librarians—is to build on their comparative advantage in these areas and re‐integrate libraries into the students' information workflow. The author suggests that the best way to maintain Slavic Studies' viability as a discipline is to participate more fully and be represented more prominently in the technology‐driven scholarly digital initiatives that are transforming librarianship in general.

  • Slavic Studies and Slavic Librarianship in the United States: A Post-Cold War Perspective (Excerpts)
    Slavic & East European Information Resources, 2009
    Co-Authors: Aaron Trehub
    Abstract:

    This article reprints excerpts from Aaron Trehub's piece about the relationship between Slavic Studies and Slavic librarianship in the United States in the immediate aftermath of the end of the Cold War. The author, who at the time was Slavic librarian and bibliographer (and former Soviet affairs analyst), notes that through a curious quirk of history, the collapse of communism coincided with the birth of a powerful new communications medium (the World Wide Web). Together, these geopolitical and technological developments have fundamentally changed librarianship in general and Slavic librarianship in particular. Trehub's discussion of the various day‐to‐day difficulties experienced by Slavic librarians in the post‐Cold War period pays special attention to the challenges that new information technologies create for patrons, as well as the instructional burden that this places on librarians. He suggests that excessive reliance on the Web may erode the capacity to reason critically, but admits that the long‐...

Amauri Serrano - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.