The Slavic Linguistics Society Comes of Age

Abstract

The Slavic Linguistics Society recently met for the tenth time. The most recent annual meeting was held in the ancient university city of Heidelberg during the gloriously warm and sunny early September of 2015. There in the beautiful Alte Aula of the oldest university in Germany, I had the opportunity to reflect on the history of the field in general and on the growth of our organization in particular. This column recapitulates my comments at that presentation and elaborates on some of the points made. As such, it serves as a taking stock, after ten years of efforts to create an organization that comprehends the diverse needs, interests, and expectations of those students and scholars for whom Slavic languages hold endless fascination. It also looks back to the last Reflections piece I wrote, almost twenty years ago (“Building Bridges,” JSL 4(1): 1–7).