The collective monograph presents the results of the study of the professorship of Russia as a creative community that created original traditions, representations, languages ​ ​ of self-description, interaction practices, methods of historicization and classification of their own activities. The international team of authors worked with university archives, the archive of the Ministry of Education, memoirs and interviews of professors, scientific periodicals, anniversary stories and publications of solemn speeches. These texts were analyzed as a single story of professors "about themselves," which has an idea, means of implementation, work with a potential reader. This approach allows you to free yourself from the social magic of the university, depressurize knowledge about it and see in it a man-made historical phenomenon that is not equal to yourself in time and space.