Kathleen Parthé: “On: The (Sorry) State of the Field (JRL #18, Jan. 24, 2023)”

Bookcase file photo, adapted from image at nlm.nih.gov

Subject: On: The (Sorry) State of the Field (JRL #18, Jan. 24, 2023)
Date: Tue, 24 Jan 2023
From: Parthe, Kathleen <kparthe@ur.rochester.edu>

Dear David,

I thought that Vladimir Golstein’s contributions on the war have been poorly-argued and mean-spirited. Now I see that he has company on the other side of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict in Victoria Donovan, who is more sophisticated, but makes up for that in her disapproving tone about the state of her field.

She claims that “hierarchical, extractivist, and exclusionary values” are expressed in the “exploitation of local partners” who do the ‘sweaty work’ and are only mentioned in the list of acknowledgements. It sounds terrible, but how does she know this to be true? Is there no evidence of non-exploitive research relationships past or present?

Donovan laments the “fetishization of the single-authored monograph” because it exploits the work of others and demonstrates “a lack of appreciation for cross-border collaborative work.” Guess what? Both kinds of writing have value, and are not mutually exclusive. Not publishing monographs will not get the Russian troops out of Ukraine, or rebuild that suffering country afterwards.

Donovan explains a feeling of awkwardness in teaching 19th century Russian literature, history and culture when bombs are falling on the innocent, and she bemoans academia’s “analytical abstraction.”

Teaching need not be unfeeling or abstract – many of us have taught courses over the past few decades on dangerous texts and other kinds of dissent from Pushkin to the Putin era, on the politics of identity in the Russian and Soviet empires, and other topics that pay close attention to the often disastrous ways power has been exercised by the Russian empire’s leaders to the detriment of both majority and minority populations.

Does Professor Donovan really believe that up to now the field has been simply one of great privilege, producing research that is “detached and professionally self-serving”? From my first class in Russian through many years as a non-tenure track lecturer, to my life now as an emeritus professor and still-active researcher, I have observed and taken part in many pedagogical and scholarly enterprises, both individually and with others. What Victoria Donovan describes as a “moment of toxic opportunity” requires, more than ever, accurate assessments of what the poison is, and where the antidote can be found.

Kathleen Parthé
Princeton, NJ
Professor Emerita of Russian. University of Rochester

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