Harvard Ukrainian Summer Institute

HUSI 2018 pizza night

The only program of its kind in North America, the Harvard Ukrainian Summer Institute (HUSI) offers seven weeks of intensive accredited university instruction in Ukrainian studies. The program includes four academic courses offered through the Harvard Summer School and a weekly event series hosted by Harvard's Ukrainian Research Institute (HURI). Every summer since 1971, HUSI has brought together exceptional undergraduates, graduate students, and working professionals from around the world. The Harvard Ukrainian Summer Institute provides students with the opportunity for academic advancement, career development, and membership in a diverse and interdisciplinary community of scholars that spans five decades of HUSI cohorts.

Harvard Ukrainian Summer Institute 
HUSI 2024 | June 24 – August 9

The format of HUSI 2024 will be primarily on-campus / in-person. However, we are offering a new course this year, Intensive Elementary Ukrainian, which will be offered only online.

Please see the Enrollment >> page to enroll in HUSI and the Scholarships >> page to apply for funding. Harvard's Ukrainian Research Institute (HURI) awards numerous scholarships to HUSI students each year. The application deadline for a HUSI Scholarship is March 14, 2024.

Prospective students should review Harvard Summer School deadlines, registration instructions, and costs. HUSI students may enroll in 4-8 credits of coursework and are encouraged to take full advantage of Harvard’s scholarly resources, including the collections of our libraries and museums. Our public lecture series will take place weekly on Wednesdays at 5 PM (EDT/Boston time), in-person and online. 

UKRN S-AAB Intensive Elementary Ukrainian (8 credits)

Dr. Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed, Preceptor, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Harvard University

This intensive course provides a comprehensive introduction to modern Ukrainian language and culture for those who would like to speak Ukrainian or use the language for reading and research. Designed for students without any previous knowledge of Ukrainian, the course stresses all four major communicative skills (speaking, listening and viewing comprehension, reading, and writing). Students are introduced to Ukrainian culture through readings, screenings, and class discussions. This course prepares students to continue in Ukrainian at the intermediate level or for future study or travel abroad.

Meeting Time: 8:30am - 11:30am (ET/Boston time) five days per week, Monday through Friday.
Participation: Online Synchronous (live)

*This is a FLAS-eligible course, with a total of 140 contact hours of instruction. Students who require financial support must apply for a Summer FLAS Fellowship from the Davis Center, if eligible. FLAS applications are due in early February each year.

 

UKRN S-G Ukrainian for Reading Knowledge (8 credits)

Dr. Volodymyr Dibrova, writer, translator, literary critic, and research reporter at the Ukrainian Research Institute, Harvard University

This course is designed primarily for graduate students of humanities who wish to acquire a reading knowledge of Ukrainian for research purposes. A variety of texts from different fields are used to allow students to learn about Ukrainian culture and history and explore the social, cultural, and historical context of the Ukrainian language.

PREREQUISITES: Some previous background in Ukrainian, Russian, or other Slavic languages with permission of the instructor.

Meeting Time: 10:00am to 1:00pm five days per week, Monday through Friday.
Participation: On Campus (in-person)

*This is a FLAS-eligible course, with a total of 120 contact hours of instruction. Students who require financial support must apply for a Summer FLAS Fellowship from the Davis Center, if eligible. FLAS applications are due in early February each year.

 

UKRN S-128 Ukraine in the World: Exploring Contemporary Ukraine (4 credits)

Dr. Emily Channell-Justice, Director of the Temerty Contemporary Ukraine Program, Ukrainian Research Institute, Harvard University

This course provides students with a framework for understanding Russia's war in Ukraine, which began on February 24, 2022. Starting from the fall of the Soviet Union, the course delves into the relationship between Ukraine, Russia, and the west in order to understand the geopolitical situation that preceded war. It explores Soviet legacies in Ukraine on language, cultural practice, and ethnic and national identifications and considers the importance of mass protest and civic organizing in Ukraine's political culture. The course further considers the role of information in the current war and provides students with tools for seeking out and verifying information in the fast-moving context of war.

Meeting Time: 12:00 to 3:00pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays
Participation: On Campus (in-person)

 

UKRN S-132 Tradition and Modernity: Ukraine in the 19th and 20th Centuries (4 credits)

Dr. Serhiy Bilenky, Research Associate, Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta

The main focus of this course is on the cities and complex relations between tradition and modernity in Ukraine in a wider imperial and transnational context. The course introduces students to the most important social, political, and cultural issues facing modern Ukraine, from the imperial to Soviet and post-Soviet times, primarily in urban settings. We consider major cities such as Kyiv, Odessa, Lviv, Kharkiv, and Dnipro, as well as Jewish shtetls and monuments of Soviet industrial sublime, such as the Dnipro Hydroelectric Station. We explore such topics as the reactionary responses to modernity ranging from anti-semitism to religious conservatism; the central role of the city and urbanization; making and unmaking of nationalities; public hygiene and the limits of control; revolutionary culture and artistic avant-garde; the long-lasting effects of wars and extreme violence on society; the curse of resources; and the rise of mass culture and sport, among others. Students learn why studying Ukraine is essential for our understanding of the modern world.

Meeting Time: 12:00 to 3:00pm on Mondays and Wednesdays
Participation: On Campus (in-person)

 

Dr. Serhiy Bilenky >>

Serhiy Bilenky is a Research Associate at the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta and, since 2023, Editor-In-Chief of East/West: Journal of Ukrainian Studies. He also has been Program Director of the Harvard Ukrainian Summer Institute (HUSI) since 2015. Born in Kyiv, Ukraine, Bilenky graduated from Kyiv National Shevchenko University, from which he also received his Candidate of Sciences degree in 1997. In 2007, he received his PhD in History from the University of Toronto. Bilenky has taught courses on Russian, Ukrainian, and east European history at the University of Toronto, Columbia University, and Harvard University. His monographs included Romantic Nationalism in Eastern Europe: Russian, Polish, and Ukrainian Political Imaginations (Stanford University Press, 2012) and Imperial Urbanism in the Borderlands: Kyiv, 1800-1905 (University of Toronto Press, 2018). He is also the editor of the selected writings of the leading 19th-century Ukrainian intellectuals: Fashioning Modern Ukraine: Selected Writings of Mykola Kostomarov, Volodymyr Antonovych, and Mykhailo Drahomanov (Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, 2014). Bilenky's most recent book is Laboratory of Modernity: Ukraine between Empire and Nation, 1772–1914 (McGill-Queen's University Press and CIUS, 2023) – a multidisciplinary history of Ukraine during the “long” 19th century.

 

Dr. Emily Channell-Justice >>

Emily Channell-Justice is the Director of the Temerty Contemporary Ukraine Program at the Ukrainian Research Institute, Harvard University. She is a sociocultural anthropologist who has been doing research in Ukraine since 2012. She has pursued research on political activism and social movements among students and feminists during the 2013-2014 Euromaidan mobilizations. Her ethnography Without the State: Self-Organization and Political Activism in Ukraine was published in 2022, and her edited volume, Decolonizing Queer Experience: LGBT+ Narratives from Eastern Europe and Eurasia (Lexington Books) was published in 2020. She has published academic articles in several journals, including History and AnthropologyRevolutionary Russia, and Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society. She received her PhD from The Graduate Center, City University of New York, in September 2016, and she was a Havighurst Fellow and Visiting Assistant Professor of International Studies at Miami University, Ohio from 2016-2019.

 

Dr. Volodymyr Dibrova >>

Volodymyr Dibrova is a writer, translator, and literary critic. His publications include – a collection of short stories Tealuxe Sketchbook (Kyiv, Pulsary, 2012) and a collection of stories and essays Old Stories Retold (Kyiv, Komora, 2013). He has been recognized with the 1991 Mykola Lukash Prize for translating Samuel Beckett’s novel Watt into Ukrainian, the 1996 Sherban-Lapika Prize for the play, The Short Course, and the 2007 BBC Ukrainian Service Book of the Year Prize for Andrew’s Way. Dr. Dibrova has taught at the Kyiv Linguistic University (Ukraine), Kyiv-Mohyla Academy (Ukraine), Indiana University, Penn State University (Fulbright scholarship) and Harvard University. In addition to teaching the Ukrainian for Reading Knowledge course at the Harvard Ukrainian Summer Institute, he is the Media Content Specialist and Research Reporter at the Ukrainian Research Institute, Harvard University. He has a PhD (Candidate of Sciences) degree from the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences and MA from the Kyiv Linguistic University.

 

Dr. Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed >>

Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed teaches Ukrainian at Harvard University and runs the Ukrainian language program in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures there. She has previously taught language courses at Bohdan Khmelnytsky National University, University of Maine, Indiana University, and Colgate University. She holds a PhD in Slavic studies from Indiana University (2022) and a PhD in American Literature from the Taras Shevchenko Institute of Literature, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (2007). Dr. Shpylova-Saeed is interested in memory studies, particularly in contested memory with a focus on Ukraine and Russia.

 

Testimonials

Read about HUSI in the words of our former students. See more.

 

HUSI 2023 Schedule (for reference)

2023 Jun 28

Causes of War and Obstacles to Peace in Ukraine

5:00pm to 6:30pm

Location: 

CGIS-North/Knafel Building, 3rd Floor, Room K-354, 1737 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, MA 02138

Speaker: Paul D'Anieri, Professor of Political Science and Public Policy, University of California, Riverside
... Read more about Causes of War and Obstacles to Peace in Ukraine

2023 Jul 05

Russian Aggression and Ukrainian Jews: The War and the Community

5:00pm to 6:30pm

Location: 

Room K-354, CGIS-Knafel (North Building), 1737 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, MA 02138

Speaker: Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern, Crown Family Professor of Jewish Studies and Professor of History, Northwestern University
... Read more about Russian Aggression and Ukrainian Jews: The War and the Community

2023 Jul 12

Taras Shevchenko: What We Know, What We Don’t Know and What We’re Doing About It

5:00pm to 6:30pm

Location: 

CGIS-Knafel/North Building, 3rd Floor, Room K-354, 1737 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, MA 02138

Speaker: George G. Grabowicz, Dmytro Čyževs’kyi Research Professor of Ukrainian Literature, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Harvard University... Read more about Taras Shevchenko: What We Know, What We Don’t Know and What We’re Doing About It

2023 Jul 19

Education and Displacement: Ukrainian Families in Germany

5:00pm to 6:30pm

Location: 

CGIS-Knafel/North Building, 3rd Floor, Room K-354, 1737 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, MA 02138

Speaker: Félix Krawatzek, Senior Researcher, Centre for East European and International Studies (ZOiS), Berlin; Associate Member of Nuffield College, University of Oxford, UK
... Read more about Education and Displacement: Ukrainian Families in Germany

2023 Jul 26

Maidan: Ukraine's Democratic Revolution

5:00pm to 6:30pm

Location: 

CGIS-Knafel/North Building, 3rd Floor, Room K-354, 1737 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, MA 02138

Speaker: Sophia Wilson, Associate Professor of Political Science, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville; President of the American Association for Ukrainian Studies (AAUS)
... Read more about Maidan: Ukraine's Democratic Revolution

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