CIUS-Alberta U. appointment fills position in Ukrainian-Canadian field (01/24/93)

CIUS-Alberta U. appointment fills position in Ukrainian-Canadian field

EDMONTON - To mark the centennial of Ukrainian settlement in Canada, the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (CIUS) has created a permanent position in the Ukrainian-Canadian field, to be filled by a joint appointment with the department of history at the University of Alberta.

Prof. Frances Swyripa, a descendant of the first pioneer immigration, assumed her duties on September 1, 1992. In the department of history she will teach courses in the history of Ukrainians in Canada, ethnic settlement, women in Canadian society and the Canadian West.

At the CIUS she undertakes responsibility for the Ukrainian Canadian program, where priority is to be placed on developing a series of research projects and encouraging a new generation of scholars in Ukrainian Canadian studies.

A research associate with the CIUS from 1977 to 1983, Prof. Swyripa resigned to resume her studies after receiving a prestigious Izaak Walton Killam Memorial Scholarship. She completed her doctorate at the University of Alberta in 1988 and was awarded the Neporany Postdoctoral Fellowship by the Canadian Foundation for Ukrainian Studies that same year.

Since 1989, she has been a Canada Research Fellow in the department of history at the University of Alberta, preparing a manuscript on the writing of ethnic history in Canada. The study is particularly concerned with myth-making and the processes of legitimization by which ethnic groups seek to justify their particularist identities while simultaneously integrating with Canadian nation-building.

Prof. Swyripa's research interests have long focused on immigrant and ethnic history, where she has published extensively in the field of Ukrainian Canadian studies. Her most recent book, "Wedded to the Cause: Ukrainian Canadian Women and Ethnic Identity, 1891-1991," is soon to be released by the University of Toronto Press. It explores the often complex relationship among class, gender and ethnicity, specifically when statelessness and national oppression in the homeland combine with a negative group stereotype and minority status in emigration to influence women's roles and options.

One of Prof. Swyripa's first concerns at the CIUS will be the identification of research needs in the interwar experience of Ukrainians in Canada, with the long-term goal of a companion volume to Orest Martynowich's monograph, "Ukrainians in Canada: The Formative Years, 1891-1924," published by the CIUS in 1991 in conjunction with the Ukrainian Canadian Centennial. As the interwar period has been largely neglected by scholars, much groundwork remains to be done before a synthetic work can be contemplated.

In 1993, Prof. Swyripa is slated to spend eight months in Ukraine participating in the University of Alberta-Lviv University Academic Exchange Program. She plans to cull local archives for materials pertinent to the history of Ukrainians in Canada, establish contacts with interested scholars and promising students, and explore the possibility of establishing Canadian studies courses at selected universities.

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