Cornell Dept. of Russ. Lit.

[E. Wayles Browne]

>Dr. Browne:
>        I have read about the proposed closing of the Dept. of Russian Lit.
>at Cornell.  Is there a Dept. of RUssian Language at Cornell that will stay
>open?  What will happen to the professors of the Lit. Dept.?  Is there
>opposition to this closing?  What are the reasons for this closing?  Maybe
>you could post your answers on SEELANGS, since everyone is very alarmed.  I
>would have imagined that such closings were a threat only at minor
>universities.  Sincerely, Vlad Tumanov.

Russian Language is taught in the Department of Modern Languages.
The language program has become rather well known through the
teaching materials authored by Leed, Nakhimovsky, and the present
Senior Lecturers, Slava and Lora Paperno. It will presumably
continue to exist. Linguistics courses connected with Russian
(Old Church Slavonic, Structure of Russian, etc.) are taught
in the Linguistics Department. (From 1946 to 1995 languages and
linguistics were all together in the Department of Modern Languages
and Linguistics, an arrangement which aroused some interest at
other institutions and was sometimes called "the Cornell model."
However the administration separated them two years ago.)

Cornell's connections with Russia go back to the 1890's, when
Andrew D. White, the first President of Cornell, became American
minister (ambassador) in St.Petersburg.
Russian literature teaching at Cornell can be traced to Vladimir
Nabokov in the 1940s. The Russian Literature department was formed
about 1960, and has been an important link in the North American
and world-wide network of scholarship. Many of its graduates are
among the readers of this list. It has brought a significant
number of scholars from Russia and other countries to the U.S.
for exchange visits. The Cornell University Library has one of
the best collections in the U.S. in Russian and Slavic languages
and literatures, and is specially strong in Russian emigre literature.
There is an interdisciplinary Institute for European Studies,
one of the two parts of which is the Slavic and East European
program.

The Russian Literature Department at present has 5 tenured
professors. The plan of the administration, as I understand it,
is that the more senior ones should retire and the more junior
ones should be placed in the Department of Comparative Literature.

There is opposition to this closing. Faculty members who deal with
Russian topics in other departments have written to the administration
to protest.

The reasons for the sudden closing are not entirely clear but are partly
due to low numbers of students in the undergraduate and graduate
majors. Concerning the graduate program, in which I work together
with my Russian Literature colleagues, I can say that we have
indeed been permitted to admit in recent years only
a small number of applicants, although a greater number of qualified
applicants could have come had there been financial support for
them. Financial reasons are customarily cited as a justification
for closing programs in universities, but should always be scrutinized
carefully; thus, one of the present professors is the holder of an
endowed chair, and the presence of the Department has in the past
qualified the University to receive government grants.


Wayles Browne, Assoc. Prof. of Linguistics
Department of Linguistics
Morrill Hall, Cornell University
Ithaca, New York 14853, U.S.A.

tel. 607-255-0712 (o), 607-273-3009 (h)
fax 607-255-2044 (write FOR W. BROWNE)
e-mail ewb2 at cornell.edu