Ukrainian for Reading Knowledge

Volodymyr Dibrova, Preceptor, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Harvard University

This 8-credit language course is designed primarily for graduate students of the humanities and social sciences who wish to acquire a reading knowledge of Ukrainian for research purposes. Texts from a variety of fields are used. Reading selections include annotated articles on contemporary issues in business, economics, politics, science, technology, environment, and culture.

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

This course meets 9:00 am to 1:00 pm, four hours daily, Monday through Friday, for seven weeks, a total of 140 contact hours of instruction. This is a FLAS eligible course. (8 credits; UKRN S-G)

Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century Ukrainian Literature: Rethinking the Canon

George Grabowicz, Dmytro Cyzevs'kyj Professor of Ukrainian Literature, Harvard University

This course is a survey of the major writers and works of Ukrainian literature from the 1920s to the present, with a special focus on how their reception and evaluation has been reconfigured by Ukraine's independence. The course examines topics including modernism and postmodernism, the "executed renaissance," socialist realism, the literature of dissent and emigration, and underground and post-Soviet literature, as well as addressing problems and misperceptions of Ukrainian writers and works. (4 credits; UKRN S-101)

PREREQUISITES: Reading knowledge of Ukrainian, or permission of the instructor.

Tradition and Modernity in Ukraine, 19th and 20th Centuries

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. (4 credits; UKRN S-132)

Volodymyr Dibrova

Media Content Specialist - Research Reporter, HURI; Preceptor in Slavic Languages and Literatures, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Harvard University. BA, Kyiv Shevchenko University, Ukraine; MA, Kyiv Linguistic University; PhD (Candidate of Sciences), Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. Literary critic, translator (1991 M.Lukash Prize for translating S.Beckett’s novel Watt into Ukrainian), playwright (1996 Sherban-Lapika Prize for The Short Course), writer (2007 BBC Ukrainian Service Book of the Year Prize for Andrew’s Way). Most recent publications – a collection of short stories Tealuxe Sketchbook, Kyiv, Pulsary, 2012; a collection of stories and essays Old Stories Retold, Kyiv, Komora, 2013.

George Grabowicz

Dmytro Čyževs’kyi Professor of Ukrainian Literature, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Harvard University. He received his PhD in Comparative Literature from Harvard. He has published extensively on general historical and theoretical problems in Ukrainian literature, the poetry (and art) of Taras Shevchenko, and Ukraine in Polish and Russian literatures of the Romantic period. His book of essays, Teksty i masky, appeared in 2005. Grabowicz is co-editor with Oleksandr Fedoruk of the facsimile first edition of Haidamaky (Krytyka, 2013). He is founder and Editor-in-Chief of the Kyiv-based journal and publishing house Krytyka.

Serhiy Bilenky

Research Fellow at the Chair of Ukrainian Studies, University of Toronto. Candidate of Sciences, Kyiv Shevchenko National University; PhD (in History), University of Toronto. Taught courses on Russian, Ukrainian, and east European histories at the University of Toronto (2009-2010; 2013-2016) and Columbia University (2009-2012). The author of three monographs: Mykhailo Maksymovych ta osvitni praktyky na Pravoberezhnii Ukraїni u pershii polovyni XIX stolittia (Kyiv, 1999); 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, 2017). The editor of the selected writings of the 19th century Ukrainian intellectuals Fashioning Modern Ukraine: Selected Writings of Mykola Kostomarov, Volodymyr Antonovych, and Mykhailo Drahomanov (Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, 2014).