Vagaries of (Academic) Identity in Contemporary Fiction

Authors

  • Oksana Blashkiv Faculty of Humanities Siedlce University of Natural Sciences and Humanities Konarskiego 2, 08-110 Siedlce, Poland

Keywords:

academic identity, academic novel, Ukrainian literature, Igor Yosypiv, Anatoliy Dnistrovyj

Abstract

Aim. The article attempts to look at question of academic identities through the prism the academic novel. This literary genre emerged in English and American literature in early 1950s and centers on the image of the professor. In Slavic literatures the genre of the academic novel appears roughly in early 1990s, which is directly connected with the change of the political order following the fall of the Berlin Wall and disbanding of the Soviet Union. Contemporary Ukrainian literature with its post-Soviet heritage presents a unique source for the study of academic discourse.

Methods. An interdisciplinary approach which combines sociological investigation of academic identity (Henkel 2005) and hermeneutic literary analysis is used for this study. In this respect three novels from the contemporary Ukrainian literature –University” (2007) and “Kaleidoscope” (2009) by Igor Yosypiv, and “Drosophila over a Volume of Kant” (2010) by Anatoliy Dnistrovyj – are chosen for analysis.

Results. Analysis of the novels shows that the literary representation of academics’ lives goes in line with the sociological findings, which, in defining a successful academic, put a strong accent on a discipline and academic institution. The interpretation of Yosypiv’s novels about a Ukrainian nephrologist at the American Medical School suggests that protagonist’s academic success is rooted in the field of applied science as well as an American institution of higher education, while Dnistrovyj’s novel sees a failure of a philosophy professor in the crisis of the Humanities as survived in post-Soviet Ukraine.

Conclusion. The given novels of Igor Yosypiv and Anatoliy Dnistrovyj show that in case of academic identity theme, the academic novels support sociological studies, i.e. the discipline (Applied Sciences and Humanities) as well as the university rank (American vs. post-Soviet) play a decisive role in scholars’ academic life. This in its turn proves that the academic novel, like in the time of its emergence in the 1950s, continues to be a literary chronicler of higher education.

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Author Biography

  • Oksana Blashkiv, Faculty of Humanities Siedlce University of Natural Sciences and Humanities Konarskiego 2, 08-110 Siedlce, Poland

    Dr. Oksana Blashkiv, an assistant professor at Siedlce University of Natural Sciences and Humanities, Poland. Dr. Blashkiv received her MA degree from National University Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, Ukraine in 2002 and PhD in Slavic Literary Criticism from Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin, Poland in 2009. She is authored two monographs: Czech and Slovak Culture in Dmytro Čyževs’kyj’s Life and Intellectual Heritage (Poland 2010) and Dmitrij Tschižewsky versus Roman Jakobson (2016, co-author Roman Mnich). She is an author of numerous articles published in Ukraine, Poland, Slovakia, and Czech Republic. Over the past several years her research has expended into Cultural Studies, contemporary cultural theories, and the academic novel.

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Published

2018-06-27

How to Cite

Blashkiv, O. (2018). Vagaries of (Academic) Identity in Contemporary Fiction. Journal of Education Culture and Society, 9(1), 151-160. https://jecs.pl/index.php/jecs/article/view/10.15503jecs20181.151.160