A History of Slavic Studies in the United States

In this pioneering 1957 study, Manning chronicles the fraught, halting emergence of Slavic studies within American higher education, a field that had to fight for legitimacy in a culture dominated by classical and Western European traditions. The book traces how waves of Slavic immigration, particularly from the late nineteenth century onward, gradually forced American academia to reckon with languages, histories, and literatures it had largely ignored. Manning examines the individual scholars and immigrant communities who built this field from nothing, often against institutional indifference or outright hostility. He draws revealing comparisons between American Slavic studies and their European counterparts, arguing that the American experience was fundamentally shaped by immigration patterns and the unique challenge of integrating diverse Slavic cultures into a nation still defining itself. This work remains a vital snapshot of mid-century assumptions about cultural hierarchy and the politics of academic legitimacy, while offering genuine insight into how ethnic studies slowly won their place in American universities.