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In the fall of 1941-42, Nabokov was named Resident Lecturer in Comparative Literature
at Wellesley College, and moved to Massachusetts after leaving a post at Stanford University.
Without an official Wellesley position for 1942-43, Nabokov nonetheless taught an unoffical, n
on-credit course in elementary Russian for Wellesley students, who paid $10 apiece, in the spring of 1943;
he repeated the course the following fall. Wellesley College finally decided to offer a course
in elementary Russian for credit, with Nabokov as instructor under one-year contract, for the 1944-45
academic year. In 1945-46, Nabokov was allowed to add an intermediate course to elementary Russian.
A course on Russian poetry in translation was added to the two language courses for fall 1946, and one
on Russian prose in translation for spring 1947. This three-course curriculum was repeated in 1947-48,
the last year Nabokov taught at Wellesley before starting his post at Cornell in the fall of 1948.
(See Brian Boyd, Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years, pp. 34-5, 48, 60, 65, 69, 88, 108, 115, 122, 129.) *
The College replaced Nabokov with another famous émigré;, Waclaw Jedrzejewicz (1893-1993), who took charge of the Russian Department starting in 1948-49. A Ukrainian-born Pole, Jedrzejewicz fought in the Polish underground first against tsarist Russia, then against the Soviets in the Soviet-Polish War of 1919-1920, during which he served under Marshall Jozef Pilsudski. Between the wars, Jedrzejewicz held several high government posts (including Minister of Education) in Poland and eventually emigrated to the U.S. in 1941. After teaching at Wellesley College and Ripon College (Wisconsin), he retired in the early 1960s, though he continued to publish prolifically on Polish issues. He was promoted in 1992 to the rank of Brigadier General by Lech Walesa, and his death in 1993 occasioned a period of national mourning in Poland.
At Wellesley, Jedrzejewicz instituted a weekly Russian Table in the dormitory
dining halls (1948-49); showed Russian films; pioneered the use of Russian music as a language-teaching tool;
introduced Polish, Czech, and Serb literature in the Russian literature survey course (1950-51);
taught a not-for-credit course on Polish literature in Polish; and every year campaigned passionately,
though fruitlessly, for a major in Russian (starting in 1953-54). After the 1957-58 academic year, Jedrzejewicz
left Wellesley. In 1958, he wrote, "My ambition was to organize the Russian Department as a small and modest,
but nevertheless serious apparatus of learning and study, which could take adequate place among other modern
language departments at Wellesley College."
In 1958-59, another Pole-- Xenia Gasiorowska-- replaced Jedrzejewicz as department head. Ukrainian-born Ella Pacaluyko Bones, who had studied Russian literature with Nabokov as a Cornell undergraduate in the 1950s, was hired to teach Russian language and literature in translation. In 1959-60, Dr. Bones became head of the department. After the famous "Kitchen Debate" during Vice President Richard Nixon's 1959 visit to Russia, Wellesley students demanded advanced literature courses and Irina Borisova-Morozova Lynch (currently Professor of Russian Emeritus) was hired to teach literature courses entirely in Russian as well as introductory Russian language. Dr. Pacaluyko Bones and Dr. Lynch, with occasional leave-replacements and visiting lecturers (most notably Dimitri Obolensky), would be the Wellesley College Russian Department for the next thirty years. Waclaw Jedrzejewicz's dream of a Russian major at Wellesley was finally realized in 1969.
To read more about Nabokov at Wellesley, visit Vladimir Nabokov by Amy Gembala.
To read about celebrating Nabokov at Wellesley's 125 anniversary, visit Vladimir Nabokov by Wilma Slaight.
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Russian Department, Founders Hall Wellesley College Wellesley, MA 02481 Phone: 781-283-2418 Fax: 781-283-3671 |
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