Seventeenth-Century East Slavic Intellectual and Political Thought: Three Case Studies

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

Traditionally, seventeenth-century East Slavic intellectual and political thought has been studied through the prism of its contemporary European counterpart. As a result, some of the unique characteristics of Ukrainian and Muscovite political philosophy have been overlooked. This panel starts by asking the following questions. What do we understand to be intellectual and political thought in seventeenth-century East Slavic territory? What have been its defining characteristics? To what extent does recent research have an impact on our understanding of those characteristics and perhaps introduced new ones? This panel seeks to answer those questions at least in part by focusing on three specific case studies: the clerics of the Mohyla Academy, Semën Shakhovskoi, and Pseudo-Kurbskii, spanning the length of the seventeenth century and encompassing the broader East Slavic spaces. The panel will suggest a way Ukrainian and Muscovite intellectual life can be investigated on its own terms, rather than in reference to Western antecedents or parallels.

Sub Unit

• Early Slavic Studies

Chair

• Erika L. Monahan, U of New Mexico

Papers

• Learned Monks and Wandering Scholars in Muscovy in the Second Half of the Seventeenth Century - Donald Ostrowski, Harvard U

• Man of God, Man of Words: Semën Shakhovskoi as an Author of Liturgical Texts - Russell Edward Martin, Westminster College

Discussant

• Nancy S. Kollmann, Stanford U