Exploring and Questioning Russophonia: An interview with Naomi Caffee

The authors discuss a new academic discipline of Russophone studies and seek to promote the discussion of Russophonia in all academic fields, thus providing combined international and interdisciplinary contributions to a global scholarly debate. The proposal stems from a fundamental assumption: the understanding that globally distributed national studies (e.g., American and British Russian studies, Italian Russistica, and German Russistik, among others) have their own distinct traditions and that they are not identical in terms of objectives and epistemological as well as theoretical approaches; they are predominantly defined in spatial terms with the common reference point being Russia (in all its different historical forms).