The Future of Slavic Linguistics in America

(SLING2K)

SLING2K is funded by the U.S. Dept. of Education, and will take place all day on Friday, February 18, 2000.
Participants in this event include the following scholars:

Ronelle Alexander, Edna Andrews, John Bailyn, Christina Bethin, David Birnbaum, Catherine Chvany, Lenore Grenoble, Charles Gribble, Laura Janda, Maria Polinsky, Adam Przepiorkowski, Irina Sekerina, and Charles Townsend

The uncertain future of the field of Slavic linguistics has given rise to a number of productive discussions in the pages of journals such as the Journal of Slavic Linguistics and at the sessions of meetings such as the American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages. In the words of Olga Yokoyama, "the time has come to take a hard look at the future of our field as an occupation". The SLING2K workshop is designed to do just this. We are inviting a variety of experts to submit position papers, which will be posted as they are received by the authors. These are meant to serve as springboards for discussion, rebuttal, response, and debate. Position paper authors will summarize what they regard as the state of the field with respect to their particular subdiscipline(s). Papers should summarize past achievements and sketch out new directions. We hope that a realistic assessment of the viability of Slavic linguistics in the 21st century will emerge from the debate, and that the product of the workshop will be of considerable use to current and future graduate students in making informed decisions about the concentration of their academic energies. The workshop itself will take the form of an interactive forum, where all participants have read the position papers, and will ideally respond to one or more of them and participate in a vigorous give-and-take discussion and general brainstorming session. The workshop proceedings, including the full text of all position papers, selected responses, and edited transcripts of the discussions will be published by Slavica Publishers (the exact schedule and format of the volume to be shaped by the nature of the actual workshop). Web pages are located at: http://www.indiana.edu/~slavconf/SLING2K For further information about SLING2K contact George Fowler, as follows: