How to Be a Scholar

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

In an article on Boris Eikhenbaum’s scholarly works written between the 1930s and the 1950s, Evgeny Toddes argued that behind Eikhenbaum’s famous question “How to be a writer?” was another question that grew more pressing for the formalist himself as time went on: “How to be a literary scholar?” (kak byt’ literaturovedom) in the Soviet Union. For Toddes, the “answer” to this question was clear: the arbitrarily changing rules imposed on the scholarly world meant that literary scholars had to continuously adapt, and finally interiorize the Marxist-leninist ideologems.
This panel takes Toddes’ question as its starting point in the hope to open several alleys of inquiry beyond the dichotomy adaptation/interiorization and start a broad discussion of the byt of Soviet scholars. What were the material conditions regulating scholars’ everyday life and the production of scholarly knowledge, whether it be through official, institutional channels, or through unofficial or temporary structures and groups? What and how were scholars supposed to write (what genres and stylistical features did they use) and what space for maneuver (if any) did they scholars have in their academic output? And also, what were the channels through which a literary scholar could hope to reach out of academic confines and start talking to a broader public?

Sub Unit

• Literature: 20th Century

Chair

• Igor Pilshchikov, UCLA

Papers

• Philologists on TV - Lidia Tripiccione, Princeton U

• How to Disappear at the Right Time?: The Life and Adventures of Stepan Babookh - Peter Budrin, Queen Mary, U of London (UK)

Discussant

• Galina Babak, U Konstanz (Germany) / Masaryk Inst and Archives CAS (Czech Republic)