Slavic studies (North America), Slavonic studies (Britain and Ireland) or Slavistics (borrowed from Russian славистика or Polish slawistyka) is the academic field of area studies concerned with Slavic areas, Slavic languages, literature, history, and culture. Originally, a Slavist (from Russian славист or Polish slawista) or Slavicist was primarily a linguist or philologist researching 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 with national revivals among various nations of Slavic origins and with 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 (1753-1829).
The history of Slavic studies is generally divided into 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. At this time the majority of Slavic languages received their first modern dictionaries, grammars and compendia. The second period, ending with World War I, featured the rapid development of Slavic philology and linguistics, most notably outside of Slavic countries themselves, in the circle formed around August Schleicher (1821-1868) and around August Leskien (1840-1916) 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 there developed centres of Slavic studies, and much greater expansion into other humanities and social science disciplines 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 remain strong (though university enrollments in Slavic languages have declined since the 1990s).
Slavic countries and areas of interest
By country:
Belarus: language, literature, culture, history
Bosnia and Herzegovina: language, literature, culture, history
Bulgaria: language, literature, culture, history
Croatia: language, literature, culture, history
Czech Republic: language, literature, culture, history
Macedonia: language, literature, culture, history, Macedonistics
Montenegro: language, culture, history
Poland: languages (Polish, Kashubian, Silesian), literature (Polish, Kashubian), culture, history
Russia: language, literature, culture, history
Serbia: language, literature, culture, history (national and ethnic)
Slovakia: language, literature, culture, history
Slovenia: language, literature, culture, history
Ukraine: language, literature, culture, history
Other languages: Upper Sorbian, Lower Sorbian, Kashubian, Polabian, Rusyn, Old Church Slavonic
Historical
Contemporary
Journals and book series
Archiv für slavische Philologie
The Russian Review
Sarmatian Review
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
Scando-Slavica
American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies
Formal Approaches to Slavic Linguistics
Institutes and schools
Academic
Institute for Slavic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia
Jan Stanislav Institute of Slavistics, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Bratislava, Slovakia
Institute of Slavic Studies, Polish Academy of Sciences
University
Institute of Slavonic Philology, University of Silesia, Poland
Institute of Slavonic Studies, Jagiellonian University, Poland
Department of Slavic philology, University of Belgrade, Serbia
Department of Slavistics, University of Novi Sad, Serbia
UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, United Kingdom
Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, University of California at Berkeley, United States
Institute for Slavistics, University of Vienna, Austria
Institute for Slavistics, University of Graz, Austria
Department of Slavic Studies, University of Salzburg, Austria
Institute of Slavic Studies, Heidelberg University, Germany
Institute of Slavic Studies, University of Mainz, Germany
Institute of Slavistics, University of Potsdam, Germany
Institute for Slavic Studies, Humboldt University, Germany
Institute of Slavic Studies, Tbilisi State University, Georgia
Institute of Slavic Studies, University of Pécs, Hungary
Resource Center for Medieval Slavic Studies
Other
Old Church Slavonic Institute, Zagreb, Croatia
