Slavic Languages and Literatures or Something
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
We're here because your heightened awareness deserves heightened entertainment. The Last Show with David Cooper. Calling all modern David Coopers of the world right now. We are going to discuss the topic on everyone's mind in the media. Slavic languages and literatures. What the heck am I talking about? Well, a few weeks ago, my producer reached out to other prominent David Coopers. We have one here on the show. He is a Slavic languages and literatures professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. And I'm excited to have him here. David, what a joy it is to have you on the show. I'm so happy you invited me. This promises to be fun. Do I need to establish dominance right now, like with you?
Like, do I have to try to come off as smarter than you? Spoiler, I probably won't. No, no. I think, you know, I'm already older than you. And then, you know, you're more famous than me, presumably.
Who is David Cooper and what is his background?
So, you know, I think that balances things nicely. According to the demographic of people named Clara Cooper, my mother, I think you're right. I am more famous than you. Let's talk about being named David Cooper, because I think there's other people out there who have generic names like they Google themselves. Yes. And who knows what they're going to get? Yes. When you Google yourself, what kind of chaos happens for you? Yeah. So it's, you know, recently, like I'd say maybe in the last decade or so, Google has gotten smart and sort of looks at who's searching because you're logged into Google. And so it shows me myself first. But I did go through a sort of crisis of identity, let's say, as as as the Internet grew.
And every time I'd search myself, I went further and further down the results page. Right. And it's one of the reasons that I use my middle initial with professionally, right? Because I realize there's a lot of other academics out there named David Cooper. And so by going by David L. Cooper, I've reduced the field significantly. My major competition now is a rabbi, David L. Cooper, who is a prolific publisher. He's mine too, Rabbi David Cooper. We've tried to have him on the show. He won't respond to our emails. Oh, what's wrong with him? It would be a fun conversation. Yeah. So he's the one that sort of like comes in above me now, right? But back in the mid-90s when I was in graduate school, I was like one of the jobs I gave myself was to create the very first webpages for the departments that I was in.
And, of course, I created a page for myself. And back then, which was before Google search, when you just searched in your Netscape browser or you used Yahoo search, I was top of the results page, right? Because there were very few people that had their own pages at that time. I don't know where you get off saying I'm more famous than you. You are the number one Ask Jeeves in the 90s, David Cooper, that we can find. You know, your field of study, Slavic languages and literature, is at the commercial break you were telling me you do Czech and Russian literature. I got to admit, as you said that, I'm thinking, boring. And then you started getting into one of your research areas, like forged manuscripts in the Czech Republic.
I guess it wasn't called the Czech Republic then. Right. Right. It was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, right? And all I could think of was your research is super cool. Do you want to tell me about this specific thing that you've studied? Yeah. So there was some... This was a point in time when you couldn't study Czech in school. It was Czech's Bohemia. The Bohemian Kingdom was part of Austro-Hungary.
How does having a common name affect identity?
Education was in German. And... Czech language was associated with religious reform and it had sort of been suppressed. And so Czech patriots that were interested in sort of reviving the language and getting people using it more, a couple of them, one of the things they did was to create a series of manuscripts that looked like medieval manuscripts of Czech poetry from a period long before there was other evidence of any use of the Czech language. And the idea was, hey, we have a language and a literary culture that's as old as German language culture, and we can compete with them.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:03–0:56
2
Who is David Cooper and what is his background?
0:56–3:15
3
How does having a common name affect identity?
3:15–9:14
4
What challenges does David face as a Slavic languages professor?
9:14–10:20
5
What is the significance of forged manuscripts in Czech literature?
10:20–10:31
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