Hello Queen's History students and welcome back to another professor interview! This week's prof is Dr. Vassili Schedrin. Hope you enjoy, and a big thank you to Dr. Schedrin for the answers.
Q: What is your favourite part about being a professor?
I have been teaching for the past 10 years, and my favourite part has been different, its evolved. When I started learning the craft of teaching, my favourite part of teaching was learning about new things.
At a certain point, I started to see that whatever I said in class, and when students responded at me, I learn from them. Not directly, but most of the time because of this conversation in class, I see what I do in a larger context and understand my pretty narrow field of topics way better. It’s in colour as opposed to being in black and white.
This live conversation is the best part of my job. Scholarship in general is a conversation by those of the same generation, those in different places and cultures, and between subsequent generations. Scholarship is not progressing per say, but it’s also not cyclical. It’s like in the Talmud, we are talking and talking and we generate this ‘knowledge,’ this better understanding.
Q: If you could give your students one piece of advice, what would it be?
Ask questions. Ask questions in general but also in class, as you can learn in class. Like in a scientific lab, when you are safe and have a supervisor and have a training task, learn to ask questions. In real life it will pay you back, this ability to ask questions. How can I do it better? Why am I sitting here? if you don’t ask questions you are just static.
Q: Who is a person in history that you would most like to meet, and why?
It’s Solomon Mikhoels. Why? I want to ask him one question, and for context here’s the introduction as to why I chose him. When I was an undergrad in my third year, I went to the archives and found one of his plays considered lost. I didn’t look for it, I was not searching for it, but it’s like It was given to me.
If you know the film Everything is Illuminated, one of the last scenes asks why did he leave this ring? And the answer was that the ring is here not because of you, but you are here because of the ring. So that play is for me as that ring was, someone left it for me. I picked it up, and since then I have tried to make sense of this find. Yes, I have some sort of understanding of Mikhoel’s logic, in the much larger picture of me finding that play, and I think that many events that happened after just pushed me in a certain direction.
I never thought of writing his biography. He doesn’t have a lot of biographies, but he has a few as he’s a symbolic figure of the Soviet Jews, and many of them explain their identity through Mikhoels. There’s other stuff too, for example, I was thinking about writing his biography, and thought about his daughters who were alive and thought that at a certain point I should meet them, but was reluctant to meet them. I didn’t think I needed intermediaries between me and Mikhoels, sort of arrogant maybe, but nevertheless, all of the sudden they died, in one week of each other at the end of 2016, and for me it was a sort of sign to move on.
Another example, and these are just isolated examples, there are many more, I was thinking about the title of this biography a couple years ago. Not in identifying myself with Mikhoels, in just trying to establish a conversation with him, so far I have a link with him which works mainly one way, him to me, and it’s very hard for me to get to him, so this is the task I am trying to solve when writing his biography. I conceived this biography as I imagine how he would write an autobiography. My title was “The Unwritten Autobiography,” which made sense in describing what I am going to do, and it sounded sort of odd, but it was my working title. At a certain point in Jerusalem, I worked with his archive brought by his daughters, deposited at the theatrical museum, which was off-limits to the public but I was let into the archives and was able to work with it. There I found, by chance like the play, his poem. It was clearly his, there was no signature but I know what he was thinking , and there were references to his other writings like familiar plays. The poem had a title, and the title was “The Unwritten Poem.”
So, if I were to meet him I wouldn’t ask him about any details of his life, I just want to ask if it’s true, about what’s going on between me and him, if he really wanted me to do this. I didn’t pick him as a subject, but I feel a force that pushes me. It may sound odd, but if you become a historian you might feel this way some day.
Q: What is your favourite or least favourite historical fiction movie/tv show?
I consider Schindler’s List an exemplary historical movie. Absolutely exemplary, not in terms of its true to the facts but as a historical movie. But I have two other movies, in which what is common for all three is the archival component. In Schindler’s List, it’s the list. If you’re in this list you’re alive, if you’re in another you’re dead. All the turning points of the movie involve lists, starts with making lists and so on and so forth.
There are two other movies have an archival component to them. One of them is made by Roman Polanski, and it’s title is The Ninth Gate starring Johnny Depp. It’s the story of a book dealer who was hired by a rich collectioner to check the authenticity of certain books. The collectionary’s collection is devoted to the devil, and the book is a sort of link to the devil to be used in a ritual. It’s kind of Indiana Jones, but it’s very archival because the central concept of it is that the book is illustrated and there are nine illustrations. Some of them are signed by the publisher, some are signed by Lucifer, and if there is the correct balance between them then the book would work in the proper way to be used in magical ritual. The purpose of his mission is to find the very last illustration which was missing, and in the finale it’s clear that one of the signatures is a forgery from a later time replacement, not authentic at all, and that’s why it doesn’t work. Then in a most dramatic moment, in a printing shop he finds the last one in a matter of luck. The idea is that without this single page the entire book wouldn’t work. In the real book business this is a big deal. No collectioner would ever have a replacing part within a book, he would pay the cost of a library for the cost of this one page. Overall it’s a very dynamic movie, really fun to watch.
The third one is The Name of the Rose, the novel itself is excellent and the movie is very good. It’s starring Sean Connery, and it’s very very good without spoiling anything. This was the first, most historical movie I had ever watched. It’s about Medieval Times and it’s absolutely Medieval times. It’s also archival as it’s about a lost manuscript.
I would watch them in this order, when they came out: The Name of the Rose in 1990, Schindler’s List in 1993, and then The Ninth Gate in 1999.
Q: Astrology was a big part of history. So, what’s you star sign?
Scorpio.