Mon Jan 16 16:50:58 UTC 2006

"HELP -- Russian Studies Threatened in Israel."

Dear Colleagues and Friends! 

I am Helen Tolstoy, a literary scholar teaching Russian literature at the
Hebrew University of Jerusalem. As many others in Israel, I am deeply
concerned about the fate of the Universitys Slavic scholars. 

There are about 1.200.000 Israelis who came from the former Soviet Union,
most of them in the 1990s. Their mother tongue is Russian. They constitute
about one-fifth of the population of Israel. As a group they are highly
educated (60% with academic degrees) and envision higher education for their
children. 

There are about 60 chairs of Russian studies in the US and 24 in Italy where
there are no Russian-speaking population whereas in Israel with over one
million Russian native speakers there is but one small department of Russian
studies at the Hebrew University founded in the 1970s by a group of
brilliant émigré Jewish-Russian scholars.  For twenty years it was denied
any opportunity of growth. And, according to some pronouncements on the part
of the authorities, now it is doomed. 

For 30 years it has been presenting Russian classic literature to the
Israeli students who have no command of Russian. Secondly, it has been
instructing bilingual new repatriant students in Russian literature and
culture as part of their B.A., M.A., or post-graduate programs, thus
performing an important social role of encouraging second- generation
repatriant social mobility and also creating new Israeli elite who would
have roots in two cultures.

Our faculty is composed of several highly active first-rate scholars who
enjoy international fame. They are invited to teach at American and European
universities and take part in international projects.  Among them are
Professors Roman Timenchik, Moshe Taube, Michael Weisskopf, Vladimir Hazan,
Helen Tolstoy. 

In recent years our Russian department established itself as an important
world center of Russian studies. Here are the facts: the journal, Slavica
Hierosolymitana (1978-1988), became one of the best academic periodicals in
the world which united Israeli, major international Slavists, and, in
defiance of the still working prohibitions, prominent Soviet scholars.  The
journal demonstrated a taste for innovation and great intellectual daring.
Its contributors are now the cream of international Slavic studies.
Slavica was followed by a series of collections of articles Jews and
Slavs (Vol. 16 is to appear soon). A number of our scholars launched an
international Russian-language journal Solnechnoe Spletenie (1998-2004,
www.plexus.org.il) which is a unique combination of a highbrow academic
publication and an avant-garde literary project.

The international congresses organized by the department have established
Hebrew University among the leaders of European Slavic studies: April 2001.
Pilgrimage in Slavic Cultures  62 participants from 16 countries;
December 2002. Anti-Semitism and Filo-Semitism in Russian Culture  79
participants from 20 countries; May 2003. Russian Symbolism  38 scholars
from 6 countries; December 2004. The Russian Word in the Land of Israel 
40 scholars from 12 countries; April 2005. Messianism in Slavic and Jewish
Cultures  80 scholars from 12 countries. 

Israel is a unique place where Eastern European expertise meets Western
thinking. Israeli archives contain unique documents pertaining to the
cultural history of cosmopolitan Russian Jews, an extremely mobile group,
acting in Russia, Europe, Israel and the US.

To sum up: it would be a humanly devastating, socially insulting, and
completely senseless blow, to teachers, students and to world research in
humanities, if the University destroys its Russian studies unit. 

I am turning to international Slavists for a clarification of the status and
rating of our scholars worldwide. Please help us! 

All is needed is to send an e-mail with some words of support to our
President, to Chairman of the External Commission, with CC to me so I could
monitor the volume of your responses: 

To: Professor Menachem Magidor
President, Hebrew University
[hupres at cc.huji.ac.il]

To: Professor John Gager,
Chairman of the External Commission for reform of HU
[gager at Princeton.EDU]

With hopes of support,

Dr. Helen Tolstoy, 
Lecturer in Russian literature, 
Russian Studies, Hebrew University.  
Mt. Scopus, Jerusalem, Israel.  
Tel. 972-2-6232852 
e-mail address: tolstoy at mscc.huji.ac.il

-----Original Message-----
From: Slavic & East European Languages and Literature list
[mailto:SEELANGS at LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU] On Behalf Of Philip Bullock
Sent: 11 January 2006 21:51
To: SEELANGS at LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU
Subject: [SEELANGS] BASEES Study Group for Literature of the Twentieth
Century and Beyond

Dear Colleagues,

Dr Stephen Hutchings and Dr Philip Bullock, the current co-convenors of the
Study Group for Literature of the Twentieth Century and Beyond of the
British 
Association of Slavonic and East European Studies, are stepping down this
year 
to be replaced by Dr Carol Adlam and Dr Alastair Renfrew, both of the 
University of Exeter. Stephen and Philip have greatly enjoyed working with
the 
study group over the past few years, and are delighted that Carol and
Alastair 
have agreed to take over. For further information about BASEES in general
and 
the C20 Study Group in particular, see http://www.basees.org.uk/ and 
http://www.basees.org.uk/sg20.html respectively.

As discussed at the 2005 meeting, the theme for the 2006 Meeting (to be held
at Mansfield College, Oxford, 13-14 September) will be the poetry of the
'long' twentieth century. Papers (of 20 minutes) are invited on any aspect
of Russian poetry of twentieth century and beyond, including:

reexamining the canon;
modernism and post-modernism;
movements;
self-fashioning;
gender and sexuality;
the novelization of poetry;
poetry and the mass media;
performance;
poetry and the representation of history;
theories of verse.

Proposals of around 100 words should be sent to Carol Adlam
[c.adlam at exeter.ac.uk] or Alastair Renfrew [a.m.renfrew at exeter.ac.uk], no
later than Friday 7 April (i.e. the week after the main BASEES conference).
We would also be delighted to receive proposals for themed panels and/or
roundtables involving up to four speakers; such proposals should be sent
together by the panel organizer.

There are limited funds to support the participation of post-graduate
speakers.

Please forward this call for papers to anyone who may potentially be
interested in the conference and the work of the group in general.

Further details regarding registration will be available in due course.

Dr Carol Adlam
Department of Russian
School of Modern Languages
University of Exeter

Tel. 01392 264310
Fax. 01392 264300
www.ex.ac.uk/russian

-- 
Dr Philip Ross Bullock
School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London,
Gower Street, LONDON WC1E 6BT
Tel: 020 7679 8734 Fax: 020 7679 8777 Email: p.bullock at ssees.ucl.ac.uk

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