Roman Jakobson and American Slavic Studies: The First Postwar Decade

Scholars who have assessed Roman Jakobson’s legacy have concentrated on his contributions to various scientific disciplines, while those who knew him, who had been his students or his colleagues, have written about his rhetorical virtuosity, his impact as a lecturer. The present article focuses on a little-studied aspect of his professional biography: the ways in which, during the period mid-1940s to mid-1950s, the émigré scholar carried out an ambitious project to develop Slavic studies (Slavistics, slavistika) as a discipline in the United States. Jakobson’s institution-building activities, conceptualized while he was teaching at Columbia University, were implemented following his move in 1949 to the new Slavic Department at Harvard University. A private group, the Committee for Advanced Slavic Cultural Studies, with which he was closely connected, played a significant role in supporting the Harvard program, and, more broadly, helping develop American Slavistics as a discipline.

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Support for the American Welfare State: The Views of Congress and the Public. By Fay Lomax Cook and Edith J. Barrett. New York: Columbia University Press, 1992. 329p. $49.50 cloth, $16.50 paper. - Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States. By Theda Skocpol. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992. 714p. $34.95.

American Political Science Review ◽

10.2307/2938778 ◽

1993 ◽

Vol 87 (3) ◽

pp. 790-791 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Frances Fox Piven

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

New York ◽

Social Policy ◽

Welfare State ◽

The United States ◽

Harvard University ◽

The Political ◽

Columbia University ◽

The Public ◽

Political Origins

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The Religious Right in the United States and Canada: Evangelical Communities, Critical Junctures, and Institutional Infrastructures

10.31235/osf.io/z324u ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Tina Fetner

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Comparative Analysis ◽

The United States ◽

Religious Right ◽

Historical Institutionalism ◽

Institution Building ◽

Christian Communities ◽

Critical Junctures ◽

Building Activities ◽

Historical Comparative

Why has the religious right been more influential in the United States than in Canada? Traditional approaches to the study of social movements focus only on the life of the movement, from emergence to decline. Instead, I conduct a historical, comparative analysis on the pre-movement activities of evangelical Christian communities in these two countries from 1925-1975. Employing insights from historical institutionalism, I identify two critical junctures in the historical development of evangelical communities that suppressed the entrepreneurship and institution-building activities of Canadian evangelicals relative to those in the United States. I find that these divergences in institution building affected the size and strength of the institutional infrastructures—supportive organizations, networks, and resources—of the religious right movements in these countries. I argue that historical, comparative analysis in general, and historical institutionalism in particular, is useful to social movement scholarship's understanding of cross-national movement comparisons.

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THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT IN THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA: EVANGELICAL COMMUNITIES, CRITICAL JUNCTURES, AND INSTITUTIONAL INFRASTRUCTURES*

Mobilization An International Quarterly ◽

10.17813/1086-671x-24-1-95 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 24 (1) ◽

pp. 95-113

Author(s):

Tina Fetner

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Comparative Analysis ◽

The United States ◽

Religious Right ◽

Historical Institutionalism ◽

Institution Building ◽

Christian Communities ◽

Critical Junctures ◽

Building Activities ◽

Historical Comparative

Why has the religious right been more influential in the United States than in Canada? Traditional approaches to the study of social movements focus only on the life of the movement, from emergence to decline. Instead, I conduct a historical, comparative analysis on the premovement activities of evangelical Christian communities in these two countries from 1925–1975. Employing insights from historical institutionalism, I identify two critical junctures in the historical development of evangelical communities that suppressed the entrepreneurship and institution-building activities of Canadian evangelicals relative to those in the United States. I find that these divergences in institution building affected the size and strength of the institutional infrastructures—supportive organizations, networks, and resources—of the religious right movements in these countries. I argue that historical, comparative analysis in general, and historical institutionalism in particular, is useful to social movement scholarship's understanding of crossnational movement comparisons.

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