Kevin Hannan

death_place = Sanok, Poland
other_names =
known_for =
occupation = ethnolinguist and slavicist
nationality = American
spouse = Hanna

Kevin J. Hannan (January 22, 1954 in La Marque, Texas, United States - January 5, 2008 in Sanok, Poland) was American ethnolinguist and slavicist.

Personal life

He was born in the family of Silesian-Irish background. Kevin Hannan married Hanna, a Polish American and had two daughters with her, Marianne and Celeste.

Education and Academic Career

Hannan graduated with a BA degree from Stephen F. Austin State University, Nacogdoches, Texas and a Master of Arts degree from the University of Texas at Austin. He was the first student to receive a doctorate in Slavonic Philology from the latter university.

After establishing his family, he earned a living by working for Mills Electrical Contractors in Austin, Texas. In 2002, in a dramatic move, he left the United States, and resumed his research and academic career at the University of Łódź, Łódź in Poland.

Research

Hannan stemmed from the milieu of pre-television-era small Texan localities, where the descendants of the original Central European settlers, until recently, preserved their local dialects/languages, commonly referred to as Bohemian (Czech), Moravian, and Silesian. This early experience of multiethnicity and multilingualism, along with family links to Czech Silesia, inspired him to embark on the doctoral research to comprehend the shaping and maintenance of ethnolinguistic and religious difference in the borderland region (that borders on Poland and Slovakia) in the broader context of Central Europe. His wide-ranging findings, he presented in "Borders of Language and Identity in Teschen Silesia" (1996), which is the most insightful monograph on the ethnolinguistic present of the Cieszyn Silesia.

After resuming his research at the threshold of the 21st century, Hannan widely travelled in Ukraine, Poland, Russia, and the Balkans. He came to the conclusion that civic cosmopolitanism, divorced from localized ethnic values as embodied in long-lasting ethnic groups (often imagined as nations), failed people, leaving them to the anonymous and dehumanizing economic forces of supply and demand. An epitome of such a situation he saw in his native United States, which, according to him, explained a constant increase in genealogical research in the country, observed since the 1970s. In this line of thinking, a person can find one’s identity only in one’s ethnolinguistic ancestry, not in the technical rationalism of law and economy. Hence, the United States or any other settler state could never become a ‘real ethnic country’. Hannan propounded this thesis with force in "Why I Left America: Reflections on History, Culture and Religion / Dlaczego wyjechałem z Ameryki", which he published under a pseudonym in 2003, fearful of possible backlash that would bar him permanently from obtaining a position at a Western university.

As a positive alternative to the de-ethnicized United States he posed the ethnic values of Poland in his "My Poland: Essays on Polish Identity / Moja Polska. Eseje o polskości" from 2005. Obviously, this choice did not make him blind to the failings of Polish nationalism and national statehood such as the long-lasting preservation of serfdom and the never-ending quest for ethnolinguistic purity, which led to vast ethnic cleansing in the communist period (1944-1989). He was especially critical of the relentless Polonization of Belarusians, Rusyns (Lemkos), and Ukrainians, who, in his eyes, preserved ‘real Slavic spirituality,’ as encapsulated in Greek Catholicism, Orthodox Christianity, and the liturgical language of Church Slavonic. [see: "Experiencing the Divine Conversation: Liturgical Languages of Eastern Christians in Contemporary Poland", 2005]

Hannan chose Poland as his adopted homeland in preference to the Czech Republic, which he perceived as an example of an overexclusive ethnic nationalism, which led to the 1993 breakup of Czechoslovakia, producing this nation-state and another, Slovakia. However, he always qualified his love of all things Polish by saying that ‘his Poland’ was the southern half of the country skirted by the multilingual, multiethnic, and multiconfessional Carpathians. He wrote lyrically about this area in his collection of poems, "Bounties of Collective Memory / Dary zbiorowej pamięci" from 2006.

Books

*
* [O'Donnell, Stojgniev, pseudonym] "Why I Left America: Reflections on History, Culture and Religion / Dlaczego wyjechałem z Ameryki. Refleksje nad historią, kulturą i religią" (translated into Polish by Anna and Jarosław Fejdych). 2003. Marklowice: The Celto-Slavic Fellowship of Apiarists and Bielsko-Biała: Prasa Beskidzka. ISBN 83-87237-25-6.
* "My Poland: Essays on Polish Identity / Moja Polska. Eseje o polskości" (translated by Jacek Serwański et al.). 2005. Poznań: Wydawnictwo Poznańskie. ISBN 83-7177-204-1.
* "Bounties of Collective Memory / Dary zbiorowej pamięci" (Series: Rzecz Poetycka). 2006. Łódź: biblioteka. ISBN 978-83-88529-18-4 [collection of poems] .

Articles and Book Chapters

* Analogical Change in West Slavic Be (pp 306-324). 1993. "Journal of Slavic Linguistics." No 2, Summer-Fall.
* The Language Question in Nineteenth Century Moravia (pp 116-125). 1993. "Czechoslovak and Central European Journal" (formerly "Kosmas"). No 2, Winter.
* Some Unpublished Poems of Óndra Łysohorsky (pp 98-123). 1995. "Oxford Slavonic Papers." Vol XXVIII (New Series).
* Identity and Assimilation among the Poles of Zaolzie. 1996. "The Sarmatian Review." No 1, Jan. http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~sarmatia/196/Hannan.html
* Ethnic Identity Among the Czechs and Moravians of Texas (pp 3-31). 1996. "Journal of American Ethnic History." No 4, Summer.
*
* K lingvistickému přehodnocení Łysohorského literární laštiny (pp 39-47). In: K Jánasová, ed. 1996. Óndra Łysohorský, 1905-1989. Kolokvium uskutečněné ve dnech 8.-10. červena 1995 u příležitosti nedožitých 90. narozenin básníka. Frýdek-Místek: Muzeum Beskyd. ISBN 90-901843-6-7.
*
* Ethnic Identities in Austrian and Czech Silesia before the Second World War (pp 225-243). In: Kai Struve and Philipp Ther, eds. 2002. "Die Grenzen der Nationen. Identitätenwandel in Oberschlesien in der Neuzeit" (Series: Tagungen zur Ostmitteleuropa-Forschung, vol 15). Marburg: Herder-Institut. ISBN 3-87969-298-X.
* Reflections on Assimilation and Language Death in Czech-Moravian Texas (pp 110-132). 2003. "Kosmas: Czechoslovak and Central European Journal". No 2, Spring.
* O urokach i stereotypach polskości (pp 135-148). 2003. "Sprawy Narodowościowe". No 22.
* Polish Catholicism: A Historical Outline (pp 1008-1015). 2004. "The Sarmatian Review". No 1, Jan.
* Lech kocha Głupią Ludmiłę. Polacy i stereotypy słowiańskości a "Malowany ptak" Jerzego Kosińskiego (pp 67-84). 2005. "Er(r)go". No 2.
* Experiencing the Divine Conversation: Liturgical Languages of Eastern Christians in Contemporary Poland (pp 263-294). 2005. "The Polish Review". No 3.
* Polishness in the Borderlands (pp 205-226). In: Wojciech J. Burszta, Tomasz Kamusella and Sebastian Wojciechowski, eds. 2005. "Nationalisms Across the Globe" (Vol I: Europe). Poznań: School of Humanities and Journalism. ISBN 83-87653-51-9.
* The Historical and Linguistic Background of Lachian Regionalism and "Separatism" (pp 471-496). In: Wojciech J. Burszta, Tomasz Kamusella and Sebastian Wojciechowski, eds. 2005. "Nationalisms Across the Globe" (Vol I: Europe). Poznań: School of Humanities and Journalism. ISBN 83-87653-51-9.

Notes

References

* [http://www.taylordailypress.net/articles/2008/01/17/obituaries/news04.txt Obituary] from "Taylor Daily Press"