Associate liberal arts dean met with other past Naylor Lecturers
JANUARY 27, 2017 BY
Donald L. Dyer
Donald L. Dyer, associate dean of faculty and academic affairs for the College of Liberal Arts, professor of Russian and linguistics, and co-director of the University of Mississippi Chinese Language Flagship Program, recently attended a special event featuring past Naylor Lecturers at Ohio State University.
Dyer’s was among 16 papers delivered by former Naylor lecturers, all of whom had returned to OSU for a three-day gathering on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the founding of the Kenneth Naylor Lecture Series in South Slavic Linguistics. The theme of the three-day symposium was “The Current State of Balkan Linguistics—Where Do We Stand?”
Dyer presented “Indeterminedly Definite after All These Years: A Tribute to Naylor 1983.” His paper traced an idea originally presented by Naylor in an article he published in 1983 and which Dyer expounded upon in a 1988 publication of his own.
After the two wrote about this in the 1980s, other scholars picked up on the idea and referred to it as an important finding over the next 20 years.
Former Naylor lecturers present at Ohio State University. Donald Dyer, fourth from right in the back row. Photo by Brian Joseph
“The symposium was a gathering of the preeminent Balkan Slavists in the world, bringing together the most productive 21st-century scholars in this field,” said Dyer, who delivered the 17th Naylor Lecture in 2014. “It was quite a treat to be to be brought back for an encore presentation and honored in this way, but to also have the opportunity in one place and at one time to associate with such a group of scholars, to hear each others’ papers and to support each other in our work.”
In 1997, Brian Joseph became the first appointed Kenneth E. Naylor Professor. He established an annual lecture on South Slavic linguistics in Naylor’s memory that brings leading scholars in the field to OSU each spring for a public lecture. They also speak in Joseph’s South Slavic and Balkan classes. Each lecture is subsequently published as a monograph article in the Naylor Lecture Series.
For more information on the lecture and lecturers, visit https://slavic.osu.edu/kenneth-e.-naylor-memorial-lecture.