Subject
Re: insanity in the Slavic Department
From
Date
Body
On 11Oct2006, at 9:19 PM, Carolyn Kunin wrote:
>
>
> > I can't imagine the college would sit by while someone who is
> clearly and openly
> > insane teaches there
>
>
> Dear MR,
>
> You may be surprised to learn that when I made this argument years
> ago, Don Johnson tried (seriously? it seemed so) to argue that in the
> fifties the quality of Russian/Slavic Departments was so low that he
> didn't think my argument was valid.
>
> Carolyn
I'm not (surprised, that is). I joined a Slavic Department in 1963 that
for a few years was something of a looney bin. Our university was
hastening at the time to take advantage of the post-Sputnik federal
support for Russian/Slavic studies, and went in the space of three
years from a one-woman Russian program within the Modern Languages
department to a full-fledged Oriental and Slavic Languages and
Literatures Department, with Russian, Polish, Serbo-Croatian and
Hungarian courses, and a PhD program plan in development stages. In
moving in this direction with sometimes less than deliberate speed, the
department made a few ill-advised hires. No one on the faculty was
clinically insane (I think), but a few were, in layman's terms,
somewhat bonkers.
In fairness to my alma mater, I should add that after these early
growing pains we evolved into a very respectable Slavic studies
program, staffed by individuals as sane as yours truly.
Earl Sampson
"The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious ... the
fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true
science." - Albert Einstein (1879-1955).
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm