Slavist

Slavic studies or Slavistics (borrowed from Russian славистика) is the academic field of area studies concerned with Slavic areas, Slavic languages, literature, history, and culture. Originally, a Slavist or Slavicist was primarily a linguist or philologist who researches Slavistics, a Slavic (AmE) or Slavonic (BrE) scholar. Increasingly historians and other humanists and social scientists who study Slavic area cultures and societies have been included in this rubric. Slavistics emerged in late 18th and early 19th century, simultaneously to the national revival among various nations of Slavic origins and failed ideological attempts to establish a common sense of Slavic community, exemplified by the Pan-Slavist movement. Among the first scholars to use the term was Josef Dobrovský. A Slavic specialist is also known as a Slavist (borrowed from Russian славист).

The history of Slavic studies is generally divided onto three periods. Until 1876 the early slavists concentrated on documentation and printing of monuments of Slavic languages, among them the first texts written in national languages. It was also then that the majority of Slavic languages received their first modern dictionaries, grammars and compendia. The second period, ending with World War I, was marked by fast development of Slavic philology and linguistics, most notably, outside of Slavic countries themselves, in the circle formed around August Schleicher and August Leskien at the University of Leipzig. After World War I Slavic studies scholars focused on dialectology, while the science continued to develop in countries with large populations having Slavic origins. After World War II centres of Slavic studies, and much greater expansion into other humanities and social science disciplines, were also formed in various universities around the world. Indeed, partly due to the political concerns in Western European and the United States about the Slavic world nurtured by the Cold War, Slavic studies flourished in the years from World War II into the 1990s and remains strong (though university enrollments in Slavic languages have declined since the nineties).

Areas of interest

• Belarus – Belarusian language – Belarusian literature – Belarusian culture – Belarusian history
• Bosnia and Herzegovina – Bosnian language – Bosnian literature – Bosnian culture – Bosnian history
• Bulgaria – Bulgarian language – Bulgarian literature – Bulgarian culture – Bulgarian history
• Croatia – Croatian language – Croatian literature – Croatian culture – Croatian history – Croatian studies
• Czech Republic – Czech language – Czech literature – Czech culture – Czech history – Czech studies
• Macedonia – Macedonian language – Macedonian literature – Macedonian culture – Macedonian history
• Montenegro – Montenegrin culture – Montenegrin history – Montenegrin language
• Poland – Polish language – Polish literature – Polish culture – Polish history – Kashubian language – Kashubian literature
• Russia – Russian language – Russian literature – Russian culture – Russian history – Russian studies
• Serbia – Serbian language – Serbian literature – Serbian culture – Serbian history
• Slovakia – Slovak language – Slovak literature – Slovak culture – Slovak history
• Slovenia – Slovene language – Slovene literature – Slovenian culture – Slovenian history
• Ukraine – Ukrainian language – Ukrainian literature – Ukrainian culture – Ukrainian history
• Upper Sorbian language
• Lower Sorbian language
• Kashubian language
• Polabian language
• Rusyn language
• Old Church Slavonic language

Slavists

Famous Slavists

• Johann Christoph Jordan, the author of an early scholarly work in Slavistics
• Josef Dobrovský (1753–1829) from Bohemia
• Alexander Vostokov (1781-1864) from Russia
• Pavel Jozef Šafárik (1795–1861) from Slovakia
• Franc Miklošič (1813–1891) from Slovenia
• Fyodor Buslaev (1818–1898) from Russia
• Anton Janežič (1828–1869) from Slovenia
• Vatroslav Jagić (1838–1923) from Croatia
• Jan Niecisław Baudouin de Courtenay (1845–1929) from Poland
• Aleksander Brückner (1856–1939) from eastern Galicia.
• Mykhaylo Maksymovych (1804–1873) from Ukraine
• Matija Murko (1861-1952) from Slovenia
• Blaže Koneski (1921–1993) from Macedonia
• Josip Tominšek (1872–1954) from Slovenia
• Max Vasmer (1886–1962) from Russia
• Josef Matl (1897–1974) from Austria
• Dmitry Likhachev (1906–1999) from Russia
• Jaroslav Rudnyckyj (1910–1995) from eastern Galicia
• Dmytro Chyzhevsky (1894–1977) from Ukraine
• Yuri Lotman (1922–1993) from Soviet Union/Estonia
• Thomas Schaub Noonan (1938–2001) from the United States
• Aleksey Shakhmatov (1864-1920) from Russia
• Jernej Kopitar (1780-1840) from Slovenia
• Izmail Sreznevsky (1812-1880) from Ukraine/Russia
• August Schleicher (1821 - 1868) from Germany
• George Shevelov (1908 - 2002) from Ukraine
• Oleksandr Potebnia (1835–91) from Ukraine/Russia
• August Leskien (1840–1916) from Germany
• Filipp Fortunatov (1848-1914) from Russia
• Antoine Meillet (1866-1936) from France
• Holger Pedersen (1867-1953) from Denmark
• André Mazon (1881–1967) from France
• André Vaillant (1890–1977) from France
• Roman Jakobson (1896–1982) from Russia/United States
• Vladislav Illich-Svitych (1934-1966), from Russia

Contemporary Slavists

• Stefan Brezinski (1932) from Bulgaria
• Radoslav Katičić (1930) from Croatia
• Nicholas V. Riasanovsky Russian-American
• Boris Uspensky (1937) from Russia
• Andrey Zaliznyak (1935) from Russia
• Frederik Kortlandt (1946) from Netherlands
• Vladimir Dybo (1930) from Russia
• Horace G. Lunt, from United States
• Alexander M. Schenker (1924), from United States
• Irwin Weil (1928), from United States
• Gary Saul Morson, from United States

Journals and book series

• Die Welt der Slaven ([1])
• International Journal of Slavic Linguistics and Poetics
• Journal of Slavic Linguistics
• The Russian Review
• Sarmatian Review
• Scando-Slavica
• Slavic and East European Journal, published by the American Association of Teachers of Slavic and Eastern European Languages
• Slavic Review, published by the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies
• Studies in Slavic and General Linguistics
• The Slavonic and East European Review
• Croatica et slavica iadertina
• Slovenski jezik/Slovene Linguistic Studies ([2])
• Russian Linguistics

Conferences

• Formal Approaches to Slavic Linguistics
• Perspectives on Slavistics

Schools and institutes

• School of Slavonic and East European Studies
• Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute
• Centre for Ukrainian Canadian Studies
• Collegium Russicum (Vatican)
• Old Church Slavonic Institute

See also

• Russian studies
• List of linguists
• List of Russian studies centers

External links

• Slavonic and East European studies: a guide to resources (British Library)
• Slavic Studies: A Research Guide (Harvard)
• Slavic Studies Guide (NYU)
• Slavic Studies Guide (Duke)
• Slavic & East European Collections (Yale)
• Slavic and East European Internet Resources (University of Illinois)
• List of Journals in Russian, Eurasian, and East European Studies at Slavic Review
• American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies (AAASS)
• Slavistik-Portal The Slavistics Portal (Germany)