Subject
International Nabokov Society Report to the MLA (fwd)
Date
Body
From: JOHN BURT FOSTER <jfoster@osf1.gmu.edu>
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INTRODUCTORY NOTE - The following letter describing the
activities of the International Nabokov Society was sent to
the Modern Language Association in January 1995. We re-
cently received a letter back from the MLA indicating that
our status as an allied organization had been renewed for
another term of seven years. I'd like to acknowledge the
help of D. Barton Johnson, Charles Nicol, Stephen Jan
Parker, and Gene Barabtarlo, all of whom contributed prose
to the following letter. I also received useful advice from
Julian Connolly, Phyllis Roth, Samuel Schuman, and Beth
Sweeney, along with helpful comments from the members of the
society who attended the 1994 business meeting at the MLA.
John Burt Foster, Jr., President of the INS
* * * * *
Ms. Maribeth T. Kraus
Director of Convention Programs
Modern Language Association
10 Astor Place
New York, NY 10003
Dear Ms. Kraus:
On September 29, 1994, you wrote to inform me that the
Nabokov Society would have its seven-year review in May of
1995. This letter responds to your request for information
about the society. I will comment on the seven points
mentioned in your letter, providing cross-references to the
enclosed supporting documents when needed. The supporting
materials come in two packets: Packet I consists of
publications, while Packet II is a folder containing
photocopies and typescripts.
* * * * *
1. A brief history of the organization since it became an
allied organization and a self-evaluation, including a de-
scription of its programs at the MLA convention, and any
other relevant information.
After several years of probation, at a period when there was
also an MLA moratorium on new allied organizations, the In-
ternational Nabokov Society became an allied organization in
time for the 1983 MLA Convention in New York City. Since
then it has regularly sponsored paper-reading sessions at
the MLA; it has also organized similar sessions at the
American Association for Teachers of Slavic and Eastern
European Languages (AATSEEL), at the American Association
for the Advancement of Slavic Studies (AAASS), and for the
last couple of years at the American Literature Association
(ALA). The MLA, however, is the only one of these orga-
nizations whose membership includes both Americanists and
Slavists; it thus forms the best site for a society devoted
to an author with major works in both Russian and English.
With the Nabokov centenary looming in 1999, we look forward
to continuing this association.
The practice of encouraging close co-operation between Slav-
ists and Americanists dates back to the first years of the
Nabokov Society around 1980. When American Nabokov schol-
arship got its start in the later 1960s and the 1970s, the
Russian side of Nabokov's career was frequently ignored.
However, the MLA moratorium in the early 1980s had the
unexpected benefit of correcting this omission. Lacking
other venues, the Society began to sponsor a paper-reading
session at the annual AATSEEL convention, which often met
concurrently with the MLA. For the first time, Americanists
and Slavicists who shared an interest in Nabokov found them-
selves at the same meetings, and young Nabokov scholars in
American Literature could observe the still live connection
between our author and Russian language and literature. As
a result of this history, the Society alternates its presi-
dency between scholars based in English and Russian
departments (see item 5 below), and has taken a leading role
in integrating American and Russian studies of Nabokov.
Another result of this past experience is that AATSEEL now,
as a matter of policy, always holds its late-December meet-
ings in the same cities as the MLA. Formerly, the AATSEEL
policy was inconsistent. Members of the Nabokov Society who
belonged to both organizations found themselves faced with
the dilemma of having to be in two places at the same time,
and made suggestions to AATSEEL that played a certain role
(undoubtedly along with many other considerations) in ini-
tiating this policy change. Literary study in general has
benefited, since coverage of Slavic topics has tended to be
relatively thin at MLA conventions.
The Society's programs at the MLA have evolved in several
directions during its period as an allied organization.
>From 1983 to 1985 it sponsored a single session, focused on
a previously announced topic. Beginning in 1986, it
responded to the need to accomodate more papers by holding
two sessions, each with its own topic. Then in 1991, as a
result of giving new responsibilities to the vice-president
(see section 5 below), it was decided that one of the two
sessions should be an open one, thus making it a forum for
the best work on Nabokov from any perspective. Sessions
have regularly been well-attended, even when scheduled at
seemingly inconvenient hours; they have drawn a wide range
of participants (see item 3); and the society remains
satisfied that this side of its activities is helping to
increase scholarly understanding and appreciation for
Nabokov's work.
Another way to describe the society's programs at the MLA
Convention would be to comment on the nature of the topics
chosen. One area of emphasis has been the impact on Nabokov
criticism of changing methods and approaches in contemporary
literary study. From the start, the society has been
particularly responsive to the growing importance of
feminist approaches, as witnessed by its first program as an
allied organization, "Lovers, Muses, and Nymphets: Women in
the Art of Nabokov." It returned to this topic in 1991 with
a panel on "Feminist Approaches to Nabokov," which already
looks ahead to what is now called gender studies; and
feminist issues were also addressed in a 1989 panel on
"Sexuality in Nabokov's Narrative." Several other trends in
contemporary literary study were examined in the 1988
session on "Nabokov and Contemporary Literary Theory,"
including reader-response criticism. Issues of canonicity
were discussed in the 1989 session on "Approaches to
Teaching Nabokov."
A second major trend has involved placing Nabokov's achieve-
ment in cultural perspective. In the early 1980s, just
before the society's affiliation with the MLA, Nabokov's
lectures on both European and Russian fiction were
published, as well as his lively correspondence with Edmund
Wilson, the famous American critic. This wealth of new
material on Nabokov's literary opinions eventually sparked a
wide variety of studies and reassessments of his connections
with both his literary predecessors and his contemporaries.
Most notable in this regard was the 1988 session on "Nabokov
and Others - Affinities and Arguments," but the 1990 session
on "Nabokov and Romanticism" as well as several presenta-
tions in the 1992 General Session also follow this pattern.
The Society has thus provided a forum for work on Nabokov's
attitude toward and creative appropriation of Kafka, Proust,
Joyce, Flaubert, Melville, Poe, Wordsworth and Coleridge,
Pushkin, Cervantes, and Shakespeare. In a related vein
there have also been papers discussing Nabokov's impact on
later writers, ranging from Roberta Smoodin's INVENTING
IVANOV and David Thomson's SUSPECTS to his role as a
stylistic alternative to minimalist fiction in creative
writing programs or as a model for hypertext novels.
A third trend has been interdisciplinary, building on
Nabokov's own claim (based on his work as an entomologist)
to have bridged the gap between the two cultures of
literature and science, on the questions posed by his
extreme antipathy to psychoanalysis, and particularly on the
varied aesthetic, metaphysical, and religious issues raised
by his work. The first two topics were the subject of the
1984 session on "Nabokov and the Passion of Science" and the
1986 panel devoted to "Nabokov on Freud and Freud on
Nabokov," though the debate with psychoanalysis would
surface again in papers drawing on Lacan that were presented
in 1989 and 1992. The interlinked issues of Nabokov's
aesthetics, metaphysics, and religion have been an espe-
cially lively topic, in part because on the surface Nabokov
seems to violate the Russian tradition of using fiction to
address the "big questions," in part because his self-
proclaimed aestheticism is liable to misinterpretation in an
Anglo-American setting, and in part because his wife Vera
insisted on the crucial role in all his work of "potu-
storonnost'" (transcendence, or reaching toward another
world) in her preface to a posthumous collection of
Nabokov's Russian poetry (STIKHI, 1979). Following these
various impulses, the society has organized sessions on "Na-
bokov, Philosophy, and the Arts" in 1987, on "Nabokov and
Religion?" in 1993, and on Nabokov's provocative formula of
"Aesthetic Bliss" in 1994. The issue of interdisciplinarity
was also raised by a paper in the 1989 session on
"Approaches to Teaching Nabokov."
A fourth trend has ostensibly been commemorative, beginning
with the 1986 session on "LOLITA at Thirty," and continuing
in 1987 with "The Posthumous Nabokov," marking the tenth
anniversary of the author's death, and in 1992 with
"Nabokov's Discovery of America." In fact, however, these
panels (like the more recent general sessions) have normally
presented a variety of approaches, including the cultural
and interdisciplinary ones already discussed. But they have
also raised more specific questions of literary
interpretation, which provides another major focus for the
society's programs. Along with LOLITA, PALE FIRE is a
perennial favorite in this regard; but a 1986 panel was
devoted to "Nabokov and the Short Story," and a 1990 session
on "Nabokov as a Stylist" also included papers on his
autobiography SPEAK, MEMORY and on one of his short stories.
Over the years ADA and PNIN have also drawn repeated atten-
tion, but the Russian fiction is almost always underrepre-
sented despite the society's efforts to spread knowledge
about the whole of Nabokov's career. It should be noted,
however, that sessions at both the concurrent AATSEEL
meetings and at the November meetings of AAASS have stressed
the Russian works, with emphasis falling on INVITATION TO A
BEHEADING and THE GIFT. It should also be noted that so
long as the Society welcomes papers both from graduate
students drawn to Nabokov's best-known works and from senior
scholars who treat Nabokov not in himself but in the context
of such broader topics as literature and psychology, Ameri-
can fiction, or postmodernism, we will continue to get a
great number of submissions on LOLITA and PALE FIRE.
Other relevant information would include the fact that the
eleven years since the Society's affiliation with the MLA in
1983 have witnessed a major consolidation in Nabokov's in-
ternational reputation. Especially significant was the mo-
ment of glasnost in the former Soviet Union, when his works
were published for the first time in his native land; pre-
viously they could only be read in smuggled editions which
had to be passed from hand to hand on a day-to-day basis.
The glasnost-inspired rediscovery of Nabokov culminated in
1988, when Gorbachev authorized a five-volume edition of his
works, with a print-run of several hundred thousand copies.
Other less dramatic landmark events also occurred around
this time both in the United States, where Nabokov launched
a new career as an English writer after 1940, and in Germany
and France, where he had lived in the 1920s and 1930s as a
Russian emigre and where he had published some of his early
fiction in translation. Thus major translation projects
involving his works have been undertaken into both French
and German. A Pleiade edition is now in progress under the
supervision of Professor Maurice Couturier of the University
of Nice, and several volumes of a deluxe German editIon
have already been published at Rowohlt under the
direction of Dieter Zimmer, the cultural editor of DIE
ZEIT. Both Professor Couturier and Mr. Zimmer are
members of the Society. In the United States, the
rights to Nabokov's collected works were acquired in the
late 1980s by Knopf, where they now appear in the presti-
gious Vintage International series. Another key event
occurred in 1991 when, in a major acquisition, the Nabokov
archive was purchased by the Berg Collection at the New
York Public Library, thereby supplementing the substan-
tial collection of Nabokov materials already on deposit
at the Library of Congress. Finally, though most gaps
in Nabokov's multilingual career had been filled by the
early 1980s, THE ENCHANTER, a precursor to LOLITA that
was originally written in Russian in 1939, was translated
into English by Dmitri Nabokov in 1986. Nabokov's corre-
spondence with his sister Elena Sikorsky was published
in Russian in 1985, and his SELECTED LETTERS, 1940-1977
followed in 1989. Nabokov also made a television appear-
ance on PBS when Christopher Plummer re-enacted his lec-
ture on Kafka, originally presented to Cornell students
in the 1950s.
The period since 1983 has also been a time of harvest for
Nabokov scholarship, to which Society members have made
important contributions. Meaningful commentary on Nabokov
takes many forms, of course, not all of them connected with
our society. For example, the philosopher Richard Rorty's
CONTINGENCY, IRONY, AND SOLIDARITY (1989) includes a major
essay on Nabokov, and the physicist and human rights
activist Andrei Sakharov refers to Nabokov at a crucial
point in his MEMOIRS (1990). One whole section of John Up-
dike's ODD JOBS (1991) consists of essays on Nabokov, while
distinguished scholarly books like Paul John Eakin's
FICTIONS IN AUTOBIOGRAPHY (1985) or Matei Calinescu's
REREADING (1993) draw on Nabokov for crucial theoretical
insights.
Nonetheless, this period has witnessed a variety of notewor-
thy publications by members of the Nabokov Society. In 1984
Phyllis Roth brought out the first anthology of major
critical essays on Nabokov; Michael Juliar's new
bibliography of his much-scattered writings, involving major
breakthroughs in both accuracy and scope, appeared in 1986;
Brian Boyd's impressively documented two-volume biography
and critical study was published by Princeton in 1990 and
1991; and A SMALL ALPINE FORM (1993), edited by Charles
Nicol and Gene Barabtarlo, was the first attempt to assess
Nabokov as a writer of short fiction. D. Barton Johnson
studied the complex reflexivity of Nabokov's fiction in
WORLDS IN REGRESSION (1985) and also edited a special issue
of CANADIAN-AMERICAN SLAVIC STUDIES devoted to European
scholarship on Nabokov. Aspects of Nabokov's relations with
his contemporaries are discussed in Geoffrey Green's FREUD
AND NABOKOV (1988), in a forum edited by Dale Peterson in
the SLAVIC AND EAST EUROPEAN JOURNAL (1989), and in John
Foster's NABOKOV'S ART OF MEORY AND EUROPEAN MODERNISM
(1993), while the role of his metaphysical interests is
explored in NABOKOV'S OTHERWORLD (1991) by Vladimir Alex-
androv, who also edited the GARLAND COMPANION TO NABOKOV
(1994), with 75 article-length entries (over 40 of them by
society members) which present the current state-of-the-art
in Nabokov studies and thus provide a basis for future
research. Other notable scholarship by society members in-
cludes two general overviews of Nabokov's career (David
Rampton's VLADIMIR NABOKOV in 1984, and Stephen Jan Parker's
UNDERSTANDING NABOKOV, 1987), two detailed studies of
particular novels (Priscilla Meyer's FIND WHAT THE SAILOR
HAD HIDDEN on PALE FIRE, 1988, and Gene Barabtarlo's PHANTOM
OF FACT on PNIN, 1989), and three thematically oriented
critical studies (Leona Toker's NABOKOV: THE MYSTERY OF
LITERARY STRUCTURE, 1989, Julian Connolly's NABOKOV'S EARLY
FICTION, 1992, and Gene Barabtarlo's AERIAL VIEW, on
Nabokov's art and philosophy, 1993). Further testimony to
the society's vitality as a scholarly organization would be
the even greater number of articles and reviews published by
its members, but they are too numerous to mention here.
* * * * *
2. Evidence of ongoing activity, for example,
publications and official communications to members.
THE NABOKOVIAN (known until Fall 1984 as the VLADIMIR
NABOKOV RESEARCH NEWSLETTER) has been the official organ of
the society since it was founded in 1978. It circulates
semi-annually under the editorship of Professor Stephen Jan
Parker, a professor of Russian at The University of Kansas
and the secretary-treasurer of the organization. This
journal is indexed in the MLA INTERNATIONAL BIBLIOGRAPHY and
its thirty-fourth issue, dated Spring 1995, will be
appearing shortly. Four sample issues from the period under
review have been enclosed for Program Committee's inspection
(see Packet I).
Regular departments in the journal include a series of news
items about Nabokov and the Nabokov Society by Professor
Parker, an Annotation and Queries section, an Annual
Bibliography (in the Fall issue), and selected abstracts of
papers read at meetings sponsored by the Society. The
journal often includes special features as well, and the
four enclosed issues have been chosen to reflect some of the
possibilities. Thus Number 23 (Fall 1989) publishes a
series of items connected with the unbanning of Nabokov's
works in the former Soviet Union along with a valuable
preliminary list of publications (compiled by Russia-based
scholars) that mentioned Nabokov's name or works in the
Soviet Union in the period from 1922 to 1970. Number 27
(Fall 1991) discusses the acquisition of the Nabokov Archive
by the Berg Collection of the New York Public Library, along
with an article by Brian Boyd (Nabokov's recent biographer)
who before these papers passed to the Berg had had sole
access to the archive. Number 28 (Spring 1992) features a
translation of the short story "Wingstroke," originally
written in Russian by Nabokov in 1923 and here rendered into
English for the first time by Nabokov's son; "Wingstroke"
was published simultaneously by the YALE REVIEW. Number 31
(Fall 1993) is notable both for its index to the first
thirty issues, which provide a convenient overview of the
journal's entire activity until last year, and for the on-
going project of annotating ADA, which Brian Boyd is sharing
with the Nabokov Society both for the members' edification
and for helpful input as he prepares the Pleiade edition of
that novel in France.
In addition to THE NABOKOVIAN, the society has recently un-
dertaken two new projects intended to enhance scholarly
communication about Nabokov. One is the annual journal
NABOKOV STUDIES whose first volume appeared this fall after
an unfortunate delay caused by the Los Angeles earthquake
(the journal is published at the University of Southern
California); the other is the list-server NABOKV-L, which
is based at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
NABOKOV STUDIES offers a forum for longer, more specialized
articles on Nabokov that might not find a venue in other
scholarly publications; it also plans to inform its readers
about Nabokov criticism outside the Anglo-American realm of
literary discourse that dominates perceptions of his work in
the United States. This journal thus complements THE
NABOKOVIAN, with its focus on bibliographical listings,
annotations of difficult passages, and information about
conferences and other developments throughout the world.
NABOKV-L, which was established in February 1993, brings e-
mail technology to bear on the problem of encouraging more
frequent scholarly exchange throughout the year. It is
owned and edited by D. Barton Johnson, the current Vice
President of the Society, and editor of NABOKOV STUDIES. At
present there are about 130 "subscribers," including many,
if not the majority, of the most prominent people in the
field. Nearly twenty have published books on Nabokov, and
many of the remainder have written articles and/or
dissertations about him. There are also a number of under-
graduates and a surprising number of non-academic
subscribers. Eight different countries are represented.
NABOKV-L is a refereed listserver, in the sense that all
contributions must first be approved by Professor Johnson.
Originally intended as an adjunct to NABOKOV STUDIES whereby
readers and contributors could discuss articles, NABOKV-L
quickly expanded to fill a much wider range of functions.
Some representative activities have been:
1. Perhaps most important is the creation of an
electronic network of specialists in constant interaction,
sharing their information with other interested parties.
This process is more informal, "interactive," and infinitely
faster than book and journal publication. Typical topics
have ranged from requests for highly specific facts to
discussions of literary (and other) allusions in the oeuvre,
and to a wide-ranging discussion of LOLITA and European
romanticism. Aside from its "public" function, NABOKV-L
also provides a framework for person-to-person professional
contacts. The E-mail addresses of all subscribers are
available and many students and younger scholars are able to
direct their queries to senior specialists, thus
facilitating mentoring relationships within the
organization. Questions range from "what should I read
next?" to possible dissertation topics.
2. NABOKV-L provides bibliographical information on
current and older Nabokov criticism along with description
of their contents in some cases. Some book reviews are
presented. Information on conferences and work-in-progress
is also available.
3. One of NABOKV-L's monthly features is the
substantial "VN Collation" prepared by Suellen Stringer-Hye
(Texas A&M) which gathers Nabokoviana culled from the world
press.
4. One of NABOKV-L's more venturesome features is a
weekly excerpt from Roy Johnson's book manuscript on
Nabokov's short stories (Johnson is on the faculty at the
University of Manchester in the United Kingdom). Presented
chronologically, one story is analyzed each week. The
intent of the series is to encourage discussion of the
stories (which are relatively neglected) by Nabokov readers.
5. NABOKV-L also presents occasional short essays. A
representative sample would include the following items:
"Nabokov in Germany," by Dieter Zimmer (a well-known
editor with DIE ZEIT, the German newsweekly), who is in
charge of the Rowohlt VLADIMIR NABOKOV. GESAMMELTE WERKE and
Nabokov's first bibliographer. This article surveys
Nabokov's publication and reception in Germany from 1921 to
the present.
"Meeting Nabokov," by David R. Slavitt, a novelist and
former book and film editor at NEWSWEEK, describes his 1958
interview with Nabokov and, some years later, his cover
story on the author.
"`Guilty of Killing Quilty': the Central Dilemma of Na-
bokov's Lolita," by Barbara Wyllie, a graduate student at
the London School of Slavonic Studies, explores the
hypothesis that murdering Quilty is mad Humbert's
hallucination.
"VN and `Tokalosh,'" by D. Barton Johnson--an
examination of the evidence for and against VN's authorship
of a Russian short story of the early twenties.
A copy of NABOKOV STUDIES has been enclosed in Packet I for
the Program Committee's inspection. Also enclosed in Packet
II is the subscription list for NABOKV-L, and an example of
a communication over the listserver -- the article by Dieter
Zimmer.
* * * * *
3. Evidence that the organization has involved a diverse
portion of its membership in its activities, including
convention programs.
The organization has always tried to encourage the broadest
possible involvement, both from its own members and from the
MLA as a whole. Topics for sessions are chosen at the MLA
convention itself, with the participation of the audience.
They are then announced in the February issue of the MLA
NEWSLETTER, on the NABOKV-L listserver, and in THE
NABOKOVIAN.
Perhaps the best evidence of broad involvement by the mem-
bership appears in the index to the first fifteen years of
THE NABOKOVIAN, which was published in the Fall 1993 issue
of the journal (included in Packet I). Since only members
can publish in this forum, the 134 author names that appear
in the index suggest that a high proportion of the
membership has in fact taken part in the society's activi-
ties. Similarly, in the 16 MLA sessions sponsored by the
society since 1987 (see the list provided in Packet II), 49
different people (22 women and 27 men) have occupied the 75
slots that are available if we include the session
organizers along with the paper presenters. Moreover, since
sessions are normally organized either by officers of the
society, or by paper presenters from the previous year,
there is some unavoidable repetition caused by the need to
ensure organizational continuity from year to year. Thus if
papers alone are counted, 47 different people occupied the
59 available slots.
These participants have ranged in rank from senior pro-
fessors like Thomas Woodson or Ralph Ciancio, through junior
faculty like James English and Susan Sweeney, to graduate
students like Brenda Marshall or Jeanne Ewert.
Institutional affiliation ranges from public research
universities like Virginia or California to private research
universities like Rice or Brandeis, from liberal arts
colleges like Davidson or Williams to regional universities
like Grand Valley State or Youngstown State, and from
schools with religious affiliations like California Baptist
or Santa Clara to an engineering school like Worcester Poly-
technic. Several panelists have been foreign nationals
(Leona Toker from Israel and Antje Thole from Finland),
while U. S. participants have come from almost every re-
gion -- from the South, the Mid-Atlantic, the North East,
the Middle West, the South West, and the Pacific West
(including Alaska). The only major geographical gap that I
have found is the Rocky Mountain West.
* * * * *
4. A statement of the organization's purpose, and the
date the organization was founded.
The following statement of purpose appears in the original
bylaws: "The Vladimir Nabokov Society is dedicated to the
appreciation of the writings of Vladimir Nabokov, to the
exchange of views and information concerning these writings,
and to the fellowship of their readers." A further
statement appears in every issue of the organization's
journal: "THE NABOKOVIAN serves to report and stimulate
Nabokov scholarship and to create a link between Nabokov
scholars both in the USA and abroad."
Under its original name of the Vladimir Nabokov Society, the
International Nabokov Society was founded on December 29,
1978, about a year and a half after the author's death.
Establishment of the society and election of its officers
took place at its first business meeting, following a
special Nabokov session sponsored by the MLA. But the
decision to found the society had been taken the previous
year, after another MLA special session on December 27,
1977; and Stephen Parker had already published the first
issue of THE VLADIMIR NABOKOV NEWSLETTER in the Fall of
1978, using a mailing list gathered from participants at the
1977 special session and at a similar special session in
1976.
* * * * *
5. A copy of the organization's constitution or bylaws
showing the date of adoption.
A copy of the bylaws, taken from the Spring 1991 issue of
THE NABOKOVIAN (Number 26), has been enclosed. As noted in
the preface to the bylaws, they were originally adopted in
December 1979. Since Spring 1991 there have two significant
amendments of the bylaws which should be mentioned. At the
December 1991 meeting of the society it was decided to
eliminate the position of Program Director and to give the
Vice President (who previously had little to do) some of
these responsibilities. The Vice President is now charged
with organizing an open session on Vladimir Nabokov at every
MLA Convention; these sessions, which were chaired by John
Burt Foster, Jr. in 1992 and 1993 and by D. Barton Johnson
in 1994, have proved to be very successful, both for
initiating the Vice President into the scholarly business of
the organization (the Vice President normally becomes the
next President) and for offering a forum for the widest
possible variety of ongoing Nabokov scholarship within the
society and within the Modern Language Association.
The second amendment, adopted at the December 1992 meeting
of the society, involved a name change, from the Vladimir
Nabokov Society to the International Nabokov Society. The
society has always had international members; but with the
breakup of the Soviet Union and the easing of the
prohibition on Nabokov's writings, it has now become
possible to have a significant Russian membership. Members
also come from Canada, France, the United Kingdom, Germany,
the Netherlands, Switzerland, Spain, Croatia, Slovenia, the
Czech Republic, Poland, Sweden, Finland, Israel, New
Zealand, Japan, and India. In recent years members of the
society have participated in Nabokov conferences in St. Pe-
tersburg, Russia and Nice, France, and they will also take
part in a Nabokov session at the World Conference of
Slavists in Warsaw later this year.
Though it is not expressly stated in the by-laws, it should
be added that due to the multilingual nature of Nabokov's
career, the organization rotates the leadership positions
among its members in English and in Slavic departments. As
a result, the Presidency and Vice-Presidency alternate so
that one position is always held by an English-language
scholar and the other by a person based in Russian.
The current officers of the organization are as follows:
President: John Burt Foster, Jr.
Professor of English and
Cultural Studies
George Mason University.
Vice-President: D. Barton Johnson
Professor of Russian, Emeritus
University of California, Santa
Barbara.
Secretary-
Treasurer: Steven Jan Parker
Professor of Russian
The University of Kansas.
Directors: Gennadi Alexis Barabtarlo
Professor of Russian
University of Missouri,
Columbia
Susan Elizabeth Sweeney
Associate Professor of English
College of the Holy Cross
Julian Connolly
Professor of Russian
University of Virginia
Phyllis Roth
Professor of English
Skidmore College
Samuel Schuman
Professor of Language and
Literature
University of North Carolina,
Asheville
* * * * *
6. Current membership numbers and a sample membership
application.
Individual Members, in the USA - 128
Individual Members, abroad - 66
Institutional Members, in the USA - 69
Institutional Members, abroad - 23
TOTAL MEMBERSHIP - 286
The figures are valid as of January 6, 1995.
Members join the Society by subscribing to THE NABOKOVIAN,
so that there is no membership application as such.
* * * * *
7. A description of the dues structure.
The dues are synonymous with a subscription to THE
NABOKOVIAN, which currently costs $11 per year for
individuals and $14 per year for institutions. Higher rates
apply to international members.
Respectfully submitted,
John Burt Foster, Jr.
President, International
Nabokov Society.
Enclosures:
Packet I
Nabokov Studies 1 (1994)
The Nabokovian 31 (Fall 1993)
The Nabokovian 28 (Spring 1992)
The Nabokovian 27 (Fall 1991)
The Nabokovian 23 (Fall 1989)
Packet II
Nabokov Society Programs at the MLA, 1987-94
Nabokov Society Bylaws
NABOKV-L Listserver, Description and Subscribers
"Rowohlt's Nabokov Edition," by Dieter Zimmer
John Foster
English / George Mason University
Email Address: "jfoster@gmu.edu"
(Please note address change)
-----------------------------------
INTRODUCTORY NOTE - The following letter describing the
activities of the International Nabokov Society was sent to
the Modern Language Association in January 1995. We re-
cently received a letter back from the MLA indicating that
our status as an allied organization had been renewed for
another term of seven years. I'd like to acknowledge the
help of D. Barton Johnson, Charles Nicol, Stephen Jan
Parker, and Gene Barabtarlo, all of whom contributed prose
to the following letter. I also received useful advice from
Julian Connolly, Phyllis Roth, Samuel Schuman, and Beth
Sweeney, along with helpful comments from the members of the
society who attended the 1994 business meeting at the MLA.
John Burt Foster, Jr., President of the INS
* * * * *
Ms. Maribeth T. Kraus
Director of Convention Programs
Modern Language Association
10 Astor Place
New York, NY 10003
Dear Ms. Kraus:
On September 29, 1994, you wrote to inform me that the
Nabokov Society would have its seven-year review in May of
1995. This letter responds to your request for information
about the society. I will comment on the seven points
mentioned in your letter, providing cross-references to the
enclosed supporting documents when needed. The supporting
materials come in two packets: Packet I consists of
publications, while Packet II is a folder containing
photocopies and typescripts.
* * * * *
1. A brief history of the organization since it became an
allied organization and a self-evaluation, including a de-
scription of its programs at the MLA convention, and any
other relevant information.
After several years of probation, at a period when there was
also an MLA moratorium on new allied organizations, the In-
ternational Nabokov Society became an allied organization in
time for the 1983 MLA Convention in New York City. Since
then it has regularly sponsored paper-reading sessions at
the MLA; it has also organized similar sessions at the
American Association for Teachers of Slavic and Eastern
European Languages (AATSEEL), at the American Association
for the Advancement of Slavic Studies (AAASS), and for the
last couple of years at the American Literature Association
(ALA). The MLA, however, is the only one of these orga-
nizations whose membership includes both Americanists and
Slavists; it thus forms the best site for a society devoted
to an author with major works in both Russian and English.
With the Nabokov centenary looming in 1999, we look forward
to continuing this association.
The practice of encouraging close co-operation between Slav-
ists and Americanists dates back to the first years of the
Nabokov Society around 1980. When American Nabokov schol-
arship got its start in the later 1960s and the 1970s, the
Russian side of Nabokov's career was frequently ignored.
However, the MLA moratorium in the early 1980s had the
unexpected benefit of correcting this omission. Lacking
other venues, the Society began to sponsor a paper-reading
session at the annual AATSEEL convention, which often met
concurrently with the MLA. For the first time, Americanists
and Slavicists who shared an interest in Nabokov found them-
selves at the same meetings, and young Nabokov scholars in
American Literature could observe the still live connection
between our author and Russian language and literature. As
a result of this history, the Society alternates its presi-
dency between scholars based in English and Russian
departments (see item 5 below), and has taken a leading role
in integrating American and Russian studies of Nabokov.
Another result of this past experience is that AATSEEL now,
as a matter of policy, always holds its late-December meet-
ings in the same cities as the MLA. Formerly, the AATSEEL
policy was inconsistent. Members of the Nabokov Society who
belonged to both organizations found themselves faced with
the dilemma of having to be in two places at the same time,
and made suggestions to AATSEEL that played a certain role
(undoubtedly along with many other considerations) in ini-
tiating this policy change. Literary study in general has
benefited, since coverage of Slavic topics has tended to be
relatively thin at MLA conventions.
The Society's programs at the MLA have evolved in several
directions during its period as an allied organization.
>From 1983 to 1985 it sponsored a single session, focused on
a previously announced topic. Beginning in 1986, it
responded to the need to accomodate more papers by holding
two sessions, each with its own topic. Then in 1991, as a
result of giving new responsibilities to the vice-president
(see section 5 below), it was decided that one of the two
sessions should be an open one, thus making it a forum for
the best work on Nabokov from any perspective. Sessions
have regularly been well-attended, even when scheduled at
seemingly inconvenient hours; they have drawn a wide range
of participants (see item 3); and the society remains
satisfied that this side of its activities is helping to
increase scholarly understanding and appreciation for
Nabokov's work.
Another way to describe the society's programs at the MLA
Convention would be to comment on the nature of the topics
chosen. One area of emphasis has been the impact on Nabokov
criticism of changing methods and approaches in contemporary
literary study. From the start, the society has been
particularly responsive to the growing importance of
feminist approaches, as witnessed by its first program as an
allied organization, "Lovers, Muses, and Nymphets: Women in
the Art of Nabokov." It returned to this topic in 1991 with
a panel on "Feminist Approaches to Nabokov," which already
looks ahead to what is now called gender studies; and
feminist issues were also addressed in a 1989 panel on
"Sexuality in Nabokov's Narrative." Several other trends in
contemporary literary study were examined in the 1988
session on "Nabokov and Contemporary Literary Theory,"
including reader-response criticism. Issues of canonicity
were discussed in the 1989 session on "Approaches to
Teaching Nabokov."
A second major trend has involved placing Nabokov's achieve-
ment in cultural perspective. In the early 1980s, just
before the society's affiliation with the MLA, Nabokov's
lectures on both European and Russian fiction were
published, as well as his lively correspondence with Edmund
Wilson, the famous American critic. This wealth of new
material on Nabokov's literary opinions eventually sparked a
wide variety of studies and reassessments of his connections
with both his literary predecessors and his contemporaries.
Most notable in this regard was the 1988 session on "Nabokov
and Others - Affinities and Arguments," but the 1990 session
on "Nabokov and Romanticism" as well as several presenta-
tions in the 1992 General Session also follow this pattern.
The Society has thus provided a forum for work on Nabokov's
attitude toward and creative appropriation of Kafka, Proust,
Joyce, Flaubert, Melville, Poe, Wordsworth and Coleridge,
Pushkin, Cervantes, and Shakespeare. In a related vein
there have also been papers discussing Nabokov's impact on
later writers, ranging from Roberta Smoodin's INVENTING
IVANOV and David Thomson's SUSPECTS to his role as a
stylistic alternative to minimalist fiction in creative
writing programs or as a model for hypertext novels.
A third trend has been interdisciplinary, building on
Nabokov's own claim (based on his work as an entomologist)
to have bridged the gap between the two cultures of
literature and science, on the questions posed by his
extreme antipathy to psychoanalysis, and particularly on the
varied aesthetic, metaphysical, and religious issues raised
by his work. The first two topics were the subject of the
1984 session on "Nabokov and the Passion of Science" and the
1986 panel devoted to "Nabokov on Freud and Freud on
Nabokov," though the debate with psychoanalysis would
surface again in papers drawing on Lacan that were presented
in 1989 and 1992. The interlinked issues of Nabokov's
aesthetics, metaphysics, and religion have been an espe-
cially lively topic, in part because on the surface Nabokov
seems to violate the Russian tradition of using fiction to
address the "big questions," in part because his self-
proclaimed aestheticism is liable to misinterpretation in an
Anglo-American setting, and in part because his wife Vera
insisted on the crucial role in all his work of "potu-
storonnost'" (transcendence, or reaching toward another
world) in her preface to a posthumous collection of
Nabokov's Russian poetry (STIKHI, 1979). Following these
various impulses, the society has organized sessions on "Na-
bokov, Philosophy, and the Arts" in 1987, on "Nabokov and
Religion?" in 1993, and on Nabokov's provocative formula of
"Aesthetic Bliss" in 1994. The issue of interdisciplinarity
was also raised by a paper in the 1989 session on
"Approaches to Teaching Nabokov."
A fourth trend has ostensibly been commemorative, beginning
with the 1986 session on "LOLITA at Thirty," and continuing
in 1987 with "The Posthumous Nabokov," marking the tenth
anniversary of the author's death, and in 1992 with
"Nabokov's Discovery of America." In fact, however, these
panels (like the more recent general sessions) have normally
presented a variety of approaches, including the cultural
and interdisciplinary ones already discussed. But they have
also raised more specific questions of literary
interpretation, which provides another major focus for the
society's programs. Along with LOLITA, PALE FIRE is a
perennial favorite in this regard; but a 1986 panel was
devoted to "Nabokov and the Short Story," and a 1990 session
on "Nabokov as a Stylist" also included papers on his
autobiography SPEAK, MEMORY and on one of his short stories.
Over the years ADA and PNIN have also drawn repeated atten-
tion, but the Russian fiction is almost always underrepre-
sented despite the society's efforts to spread knowledge
about the whole of Nabokov's career. It should be noted,
however, that sessions at both the concurrent AATSEEL
meetings and at the November meetings of AAASS have stressed
the Russian works, with emphasis falling on INVITATION TO A
BEHEADING and THE GIFT. It should also be noted that so
long as the Society welcomes papers both from graduate
students drawn to Nabokov's best-known works and from senior
scholars who treat Nabokov not in himself but in the context
of such broader topics as literature and psychology, Ameri-
can fiction, or postmodernism, we will continue to get a
great number of submissions on LOLITA and PALE FIRE.
Other relevant information would include the fact that the
eleven years since the Society's affiliation with the MLA in
1983 have witnessed a major consolidation in Nabokov's in-
ternational reputation. Especially significant was the mo-
ment of glasnost in the former Soviet Union, when his works
were published for the first time in his native land; pre-
viously they could only be read in smuggled editions which
had to be passed from hand to hand on a day-to-day basis.
The glasnost-inspired rediscovery of Nabokov culminated in
1988, when Gorbachev authorized a five-volume edition of his
works, with a print-run of several hundred thousand copies.
Other less dramatic landmark events also occurred around
this time both in the United States, where Nabokov launched
a new career as an English writer after 1940, and in Germany
and France, where he had lived in the 1920s and 1930s as a
Russian emigre and where he had published some of his early
fiction in translation. Thus major translation projects
involving his works have been undertaken into both French
and German. A Pleiade edition is now in progress under the
supervision of Professor Maurice Couturier of the University
of Nice, and several volumes of a deluxe German editIon
have already been published at Rowohlt under the
direction of Dieter Zimmer, the cultural editor of DIE
ZEIT. Both Professor Couturier and Mr. Zimmer are
members of the Society. In the United States, the
rights to Nabokov's collected works were acquired in the
late 1980s by Knopf, where they now appear in the presti-
gious Vintage International series. Another key event
occurred in 1991 when, in a major acquisition, the Nabokov
archive was purchased by the Berg Collection at the New
York Public Library, thereby supplementing the substan-
tial collection of Nabokov materials already on deposit
at the Library of Congress. Finally, though most gaps
in Nabokov's multilingual career had been filled by the
early 1980s, THE ENCHANTER, a precursor to LOLITA that
was originally written in Russian in 1939, was translated
into English by Dmitri Nabokov in 1986. Nabokov's corre-
spondence with his sister Elena Sikorsky was published
in Russian in 1985, and his SELECTED LETTERS, 1940-1977
followed in 1989. Nabokov also made a television appear-
ance on PBS when Christopher Plummer re-enacted his lec-
ture on Kafka, originally presented to Cornell students
in the 1950s.
The period since 1983 has also been a time of harvest for
Nabokov scholarship, to which Society members have made
important contributions. Meaningful commentary on Nabokov
takes many forms, of course, not all of them connected with
our society. For example, the philosopher Richard Rorty's
CONTINGENCY, IRONY, AND SOLIDARITY (1989) includes a major
essay on Nabokov, and the physicist and human rights
activist Andrei Sakharov refers to Nabokov at a crucial
point in his MEMOIRS (1990). One whole section of John Up-
dike's ODD JOBS (1991) consists of essays on Nabokov, while
distinguished scholarly books like Paul John Eakin's
FICTIONS IN AUTOBIOGRAPHY (1985) or Matei Calinescu's
REREADING (1993) draw on Nabokov for crucial theoretical
insights.
Nonetheless, this period has witnessed a variety of notewor-
thy publications by members of the Nabokov Society. In 1984
Phyllis Roth brought out the first anthology of major
critical essays on Nabokov; Michael Juliar's new
bibliography of his much-scattered writings, involving major
breakthroughs in both accuracy and scope, appeared in 1986;
Brian Boyd's impressively documented two-volume biography
and critical study was published by Princeton in 1990 and
1991; and A SMALL ALPINE FORM (1993), edited by Charles
Nicol and Gene Barabtarlo, was the first attempt to assess
Nabokov as a writer of short fiction. D. Barton Johnson
studied the complex reflexivity of Nabokov's fiction in
WORLDS IN REGRESSION (1985) and also edited a special issue
of CANADIAN-AMERICAN SLAVIC STUDIES devoted to European
scholarship on Nabokov. Aspects of Nabokov's relations with
his contemporaries are discussed in Geoffrey Green's FREUD
AND NABOKOV (1988), in a forum edited by Dale Peterson in
the SLAVIC AND EAST EUROPEAN JOURNAL (1989), and in John
Foster's NABOKOV'S ART OF MEORY AND EUROPEAN MODERNISM
(1993), while the role of his metaphysical interests is
explored in NABOKOV'S OTHERWORLD (1991) by Vladimir Alex-
androv, who also edited the GARLAND COMPANION TO NABOKOV
(1994), with 75 article-length entries (over 40 of them by
society members) which present the current state-of-the-art
in Nabokov studies and thus provide a basis for future
research. Other notable scholarship by society members in-
cludes two general overviews of Nabokov's career (David
Rampton's VLADIMIR NABOKOV in 1984, and Stephen Jan Parker's
UNDERSTANDING NABOKOV, 1987), two detailed studies of
particular novels (Priscilla Meyer's FIND WHAT THE SAILOR
HAD HIDDEN on PALE FIRE, 1988, and Gene Barabtarlo's PHANTOM
OF FACT on PNIN, 1989), and three thematically oriented
critical studies (Leona Toker's NABOKOV: THE MYSTERY OF
LITERARY STRUCTURE, 1989, Julian Connolly's NABOKOV'S EARLY
FICTION, 1992, and Gene Barabtarlo's AERIAL VIEW, on
Nabokov's art and philosophy, 1993). Further testimony to
the society's vitality as a scholarly organization would be
the even greater number of articles and reviews published by
its members, but they are too numerous to mention here.
* * * * *
2. Evidence of ongoing activity, for example,
publications and official communications to members.
THE NABOKOVIAN (known until Fall 1984 as the VLADIMIR
NABOKOV RESEARCH NEWSLETTER) has been the official organ of
the society since it was founded in 1978. It circulates
semi-annually under the editorship of Professor Stephen Jan
Parker, a professor of Russian at The University of Kansas
and the secretary-treasurer of the organization. This
journal is indexed in the MLA INTERNATIONAL BIBLIOGRAPHY and
its thirty-fourth issue, dated Spring 1995, will be
appearing shortly. Four sample issues from the period under
review have been enclosed for Program Committee's inspection
(see Packet I).
Regular departments in the journal include a series of news
items about Nabokov and the Nabokov Society by Professor
Parker, an Annotation and Queries section, an Annual
Bibliography (in the Fall issue), and selected abstracts of
papers read at meetings sponsored by the Society. The
journal often includes special features as well, and the
four enclosed issues have been chosen to reflect some of the
possibilities. Thus Number 23 (Fall 1989) publishes a
series of items connected with the unbanning of Nabokov's
works in the former Soviet Union along with a valuable
preliminary list of publications (compiled by Russia-based
scholars) that mentioned Nabokov's name or works in the
Soviet Union in the period from 1922 to 1970. Number 27
(Fall 1991) discusses the acquisition of the Nabokov Archive
by the Berg Collection of the New York Public Library, along
with an article by Brian Boyd (Nabokov's recent biographer)
who before these papers passed to the Berg had had sole
access to the archive. Number 28 (Spring 1992) features a
translation of the short story "Wingstroke," originally
written in Russian by Nabokov in 1923 and here rendered into
English for the first time by Nabokov's son; "Wingstroke"
was published simultaneously by the YALE REVIEW. Number 31
(Fall 1993) is notable both for its index to the first
thirty issues, which provide a convenient overview of the
journal's entire activity until last year, and for the on-
going project of annotating ADA, which Brian Boyd is sharing
with the Nabokov Society both for the members' edification
and for helpful input as he prepares the Pleiade edition of
that novel in France.
In addition to THE NABOKOVIAN, the society has recently un-
dertaken two new projects intended to enhance scholarly
communication about Nabokov. One is the annual journal
NABOKOV STUDIES whose first volume appeared this fall after
an unfortunate delay caused by the Los Angeles earthquake
(the journal is published at the University of Southern
California); the other is the list-server NABOKV-L, which
is based at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
NABOKOV STUDIES offers a forum for longer, more specialized
articles on Nabokov that might not find a venue in other
scholarly publications; it also plans to inform its readers
about Nabokov criticism outside the Anglo-American realm of
literary discourse that dominates perceptions of his work in
the United States. This journal thus complements THE
NABOKOVIAN, with its focus on bibliographical listings,
annotations of difficult passages, and information about
conferences and other developments throughout the world.
NABOKV-L, which was established in February 1993, brings e-
mail technology to bear on the problem of encouraging more
frequent scholarly exchange throughout the year. It is
owned and edited by D. Barton Johnson, the current Vice
President of the Society, and editor of NABOKOV STUDIES. At
present there are about 130 "subscribers," including many,
if not the majority, of the most prominent people in the
field. Nearly twenty have published books on Nabokov, and
many of the remainder have written articles and/or
dissertations about him. There are also a number of under-
graduates and a surprising number of non-academic
subscribers. Eight different countries are represented.
NABOKV-L is a refereed listserver, in the sense that all
contributions must first be approved by Professor Johnson.
Originally intended as an adjunct to NABOKOV STUDIES whereby
readers and contributors could discuss articles, NABOKV-L
quickly expanded to fill a much wider range of functions.
Some representative activities have been:
1. Perhaps most important is the creation of an
electronic network of specialists in constant interaction,
sharing their information with other interested parties.
This process is more informal, "interactive," and infinitely
faster than book and journal publication. Typical topics
have ranged from requests for highly specific facts to
discussions of literary (and other) allusions in the oeuvre,
and to a wide-ranging discussion of LOLITA and European
romanticism. Aside from its "public" function, NABOKV-L
also provides a framework for person-to-person professional
contacts. The E-mail addresses of all subscribers are
available and many students and younger scholars are able to
direct their queries to senior specialists, thus
facilitating mentoring relationships within the
organization. Questions range from "what should I read
next?" to possible dissertation topics.
2. NABOKV-L provides bibliographical information on
current and older Nabokov criticism along with description
of their contents in some cases. Some book reviews are
presented. Information on conferences and work-in-progress
is also available.
3. One of NABOKV-L's monthly features is the
substantial "VN Collation" prepared by Suellen Stringer-Hye
(Texas A&M) which gathers Nabokoviana culled from the world
press.
4. One of NABOKV-L's more venturesome features is a
weekly excerpt from Roy Johnson's book manuscript on
Nabokov's short stories (Johnson is on the faculty at the
University of Manchester in the United Kingdom). Presented
chronologically, one story is analyzed each week. The
intent of the series is to encourage discussion of the
stories (which are relatively neglected) by Nabokov readers.
5. NABOKV-L also presents occasional short essays. A
representative sample would include the following items:
"Nabokov in Germany," by Dieter Zimmer (a well-known
editor with DIE ZEIT, the German newsweekly), who is in
charge of the Rowohlt VLADIMIR NABOKOV. GESAMMELTE WERKE and
Nabokov's first bibliographer. This article surveys
Nabokov's publication and reception in Germany from 1921 to
the present.
"Meeting Nabokov," by David R. Slavitt, a novelist and
former book and film editor at NEWSWEEK, describes his 1958
interview with Nabokov and, some years later, his cover
story on the author.
"`Guilty of Killing Quilty': the Central Dilemma of Na-
bokov's Lolita," by Barbara Wyllie, a graduate student at
the London School of Slavonic Studies, explores the
hypothesis that murdering Quilty is mad Humbert's
hallucination.
"VN and `Tokalosh,'" by D. Barton Johnson--an
examination of the evidence for and against VN's authorship
of a Russian short story of the early twenties.
A copy of NABOKOV STUDIES has been enclosed in Packet I for
the Program Committee's inspection. Also enclosed in Packet
II is the subscription list for NABOKV-L, and an example of
a communication over the listserver -- the article by Dieter
Zimmer.
* * * * *
3. Evidence that the organization has involved a diverse
portion of its membership in its activities, including
convention programs.
The organization has always tried to encourage the broadest
possible involvement, both from its own members and from the
MLA as a whole. Topics for sessions are chosen at the MLA
convention itself, with the participation of the audience.
They are then announced in the February issue of the MLA
NEWSLETTER, on the NABOKV-L listserver, and in THE
NABOKOVIAN.
Perhaps the best evidence of broad involvement by the mem-
bership appears in the index to the first fifteen years of
THE NABOKOVIAN, which was published in the Fall 1993 issue
of the journal (included in Packet I). Since only members
can publish in this forum, the 134 author names that appear
in the index suggest that a high proportion of the
membership has in fact taken part in the society's activi-
ties. Similarly, in the 16 MLA sessions sponsored by the
society since 1987 (see the list provided in Packet II), 49
different people (22 women and 27 men) have occupied the 75
slots that are available if we include the session
organizers along with the paper presenters. Moreover, since
sessions are normally organized either by officers of the
society, or by paper presenters from the previous year,
there is some unavoidable repetition caused by the need to
ensure organizational continuity from year to year. Thus if
papers alone are counted, 47 different people occupied the
59 available slots.
These participants have ranged in rank from senior pro-
fessors like Thomas Woodson or Ralph Ciancio, through junior
faculty like James English and Susan Sweeney, to graduate
students like Brenda Marshall or Jeanne Ewert.
Institutional affiliation ranges from public research
universities like Virginia or California to private research
universities like Rice or Brandeis, from liberal arts
colleges like Davidson or Williams to regional universities
like Grand Valley State or Youngstown State, and from
schools with religious affiliations like California Baptist
or Santa Clara to an engineering school like Worcester Poly-
technic. Several panelists have been foreign nationals
(Leona Toker from Israel and Antje Thole from Finland),
while U. S. participants have come from almost every re-
gion -- from the South, the Mid-Atlantic, the North East,
the Middle West, the South West, and the Pacific West
(including Alaska). The only major geographical gap that I
have found is the Rocky Mountain West.
* * * * *
4. A statement of the organization's purpose, and the
date the organization was founded.
The following statement of purpose appears in the original
bylaws: "The Vladimir Nabokov Society is dedicated to the
appreciation of the writings of Vladimir Nabokov, to the
exchange of views and information concerning these writings,
and to the fellowship of their readers." A further
statement appears in every issue of the organization's
journal: "THE NABOKOVIAN serves to report and stimulate
Nabokov scholarship and to create a link between Nabokov
scholars both in the USA and abroad."
Under its original name of the Vladimir Nabokov Society, the
International Nabokov Society was founded on December 29,
1978, about a year and a half after the author's death.
Establishment of the society and election of its officers
took place at its first business meeting, following a
special Nabokov session sponsored by the MLA. But the
decision to found the society had been taken the previous
year, after another MLA special session on December 27,
1977; and Stephen Parker had already published the first
issue of THE VLADIMIR NABOKOV NEWSLETTER in the Fall of
1978, using a mailing list gathered from participants at the
1977 special session and at a similar special session in
1976.
* * * * *
5. A copy of the organization's constitution or bylaws
showing the date of adoption.
A copy of the bylaws, taken from the Spring 1991 issue of
THE NABOKOVIAN (Number 26), has been enclosed. As noted in
the preface to the bylaws, they were originally adopted in
December 1979. Since Spring 1991 there have two significant
amendments of the bylaws which should be mentioned. At the
December 1991 meeting of the society it was decided to
eliminate the position of Program Director and to give the
Vice President (who previously had little to do) some of
these responsibilities. The Vice President is now charged
with organizing an open session on Vladimir Nabokov at every
MLA Convention; these sessions, which were chaired by John
Burt Foster, Jr. in 1992 and 1993 and by D. Barton Johnson
in 1994, have proved to be very successful, both for
initiating the Vice President into the scholarly business of
the organization (the Vice President normally becomes the
next President) and for offering a forum for the widest
possible variety of ongoing Nabokov scholarship within the
society and within the Modern Language Association.
The second amendment, adopted at the December 1992 meeting
of the society, involved a name change, from the Vladimir
Nabokov Society to the International Nabokov Society. The
society has always had international members; but with the
breakup of the Soviet Union and the easing of the
prohibition on Nabokov's writings, it has now become
possible to have a significant Russian membership. Members
also come from Canada, France, the United Kingdom, Germany,
the Netherlands, Switzerland, Spain, Croatia, Slovenia, the
Czech Republic, Poland, Sweden, Finland, Israel, New
Zealand, Japan, and India. In recent years members of the
society have participated in Nabokov conferences in St. Pe-
tersburg, Russia and Nice, France, and they will also take
part in a Nabokov session at the World Conference of
Slavists in Warsaw later this year.
Though it is not expressly stated in the by-laws, it should
be added that due to the multilingual nature of Nabokov's
career, the organization rotates the leadership positions
among its members in English and in Slavic departments. As
a result, the Presidency and Vice-Presidency alternate so
that one position is always held by an English-language
scholar and the other by a person based in Russian.
The current officers of the organization are as follows:
President: John Burt Foster, Jr.
Professor of English and
Cultural Studies
George Mason University.
Vice-President: D. Barton Johnson
Professor of Russian, Emeritus
University of California, Santa
Barbara.
Secretary-
Treasurer: Steven Jan Parker
Professor of Russian
The University of Kansas.
Directors: Gennadi Alexis Barabtarlo
Professor of Russian
University of Missouri,
Columbia
Susan Elizabeth Sweeney
Associate Professor of English
College of the Holy Cross
Julian Connolly
Professor of Russian
University of Virginia
Phyllis Roth
Professor of English
Skidmore College
Samuel Schuman
Professor of Language and
Literature
University of North Carolina,
Asheville
* * * * *
6. Current membership numbers and a sample membership
application.
Individual Members, in the USA - 128
Individual Members, abroad - 66
Institutional Members, in the USA - 69
Institutional Members, abroad - 23
TOTAL MEMBERSHIP - 286
The figures are valid as of January 6, 1995.
Members join the Society by subscribing to THE NABOKOVIAN,
so that there is no membership application as such.
* * * * *
7. A description of the dues structure.
The dues are synonymous with a subscription to THE
NABOKOVIAN, which currently costs $11 per year for
individuals and $14 per year for institutions. Higher rates
apply to international members.
Respectfully submitted,
John Burt Foster, Jr.
President, International
Nabokov Society.
Enclosures:
Packet I
Nabokov Studies 1 (1994)
The Nabokovian 31 (Fall 1993)
The Nabokovian 28 (Spring 1992)
The Nabokovian 27 (Fall 1991)
The Nabokovian 23 (Fall 1989)
Packet II
Nabokov Society Programs at the MLA, 1987-94
Nabokov Society Bylaws
NABOKV-L Listserver, Description and Subscribers
"Rowohlt's Nabokov Edition," by Dieter Zimmer
John Foster
English / George Mason University
Email Address: "jfoster@gmu.edu"
(Please note address change)