News from Harvard: fellows, research, seminars, conferences (10/20/02)

News from Harvard: fellows, research, seminars, conferences

by Yuri Shevchuk

The second group of Eugene and Daymel Shklar Fellows in Ukrainian Studies (2002-2003) began its tenure at the institute in June with the arrival of Dr. Henry Abramson, from Florida Atlantic University, who spent two months concluding research on a bibliography of Jews in Ukraine.

Throughout the course of the academic year a total of 10 scholars will be in residence at the Institute conducting research in Ukrainian and related areas of study. They are: Henry Abramson (citizen of Canada), Guido Hausmann and Alexander Kratochvil (Germany),Victoria Khiterer (Israel), Oksana Ostapchuk (Russia), Igor Torbakov and Pavlo Mykhed (Ukraine), Maria Rewakowicz (United States), Andrew Savchenko (Belarus) and Roman Wysocki (Poland).

By their professional profile and areas of interest the group mostly reflects the specializations of HURI's own faculty: history, literature and language. There are five historians, and four philologists, including specialists in both literature and language. There is also an economist-cum-sociologist.

In addition to working on their separate research projects the fellows are expected to participate in HURI's Seminar in Ukrainian Studies and its Ukraine Studies Group which meet weekly at the institute during the academic year, as well as to present papers at and attend the annual conferences of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, the Association for the Study of Nationalities and other professional organizations.

Dr. Abramson is the first to complete his tenure as a 2002-2003 Shklar Fellow. His two and a half months of work at HURI (June-August) resulted in the first-of-its-kind comprehensive online biography "The Jews of Ukraine."

Four of the Fellows will be in residence at HURI during the fall semester of 2002 and five more in the spring of 2003. (Learn more about the professional profile of this year's Shklar fellows at http://www.huri.harvard.edu/shklarfellows_02_03.html)

Dr. Wsevolod Isajiw, professor emeritus of sociology and Robert F. Harney Professor Emeritus of Ethnic, Immigration and Pluralism Studies at the University of Toronto, was named the Distinguished Petro Jacyk Fellow for the year 2002-2003.

In addition to teaching at the University of Toronto since 1970, Prof. Isajiw also taught at the University of Windsor and St. John's University in New York and was a visiting professor at Wayne State University (Detroit), the University of Alberta, University of Manitoba, Macquaire University (Australia), Freie Universität Berlin, Ukrainian Catholic University (Rome), Ukrainian Free University (Munich).

He is a member of many professional and scientific associations. He has authored and edited 10 books and many scholarly articles. One of his recent publications is the book "Understanding Diversity: Ethnicity and Race in the Canadian Context" (1999).

In his recent research Prof. Isajiw has focused on comparative aspects of ethnic relations and on different patterns of adjustment and social incorporation of ethnic groups. At the same time he has been researching theories of pluralistic cultural foundations of civil social order, with special reference to the changes taking place in Ukraine.

As part of his research project at HURI, Prof. Isajiw will work on a systematic sociology of the diaspora, focusing on the Ukrainian community in North America. In particular, he will study the differences between the community structure and the processes of change that affected the four waves of Ukrainian immigration to North America, with a special emphasis on the two most recent waves.

His research will focus on immigrants' assimilation in the broader host society and especially on generational and identity changes, particularly since the time of Ukraine's independence. The end result of his research will be a monograph both in English and Ukrainian.

Prof. Isajiw will be with HURI through March 2003. In his capacity as the Distinguished Petro Jacyk Fellow Prof. Isajiw will organize and lead a symposium on a topic of his choosing which will take place later in the academic year.

The traditional HURI Seminar in Ukrainian Studies resumed with the presentation of a paper on "surzhyk" (a variously proportioned mixture of Ukrainian and Russian, widely spoken in today's Ukraine), titled "The Smoking Tapes: What Melnychenko Recordings Reveal about Nonliterary 'Surzhyk,' which was delivered on September 30 by Michael Flier, Oleksandr Potebnja Professor of Ukrainian Philology, department of Slavic languages and literatures, Harvard University.

The weekly interdisciplinary series of seminars for the fall semester-2002 includes presentations both by scholars who currently work at or are affiliated with HURI and guest-speakers from other universities and other countries (For the HURI Seminar schedule visit http://www.huri.harvard.edu/calendar.html)

The Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute was a major contributor to the fifth congress of the International Association of Ukrainian Studies that took place in Chernivtsi, Ukraine on August 26-29. Two panels were organized and moderated by George G. Grabowicz, the Dmytro Cyzevskyj Professor of Ukrainian Literature at Harvard. The panel "Mystifications and the National Canon" and the roundtable "The Present State of the Humanities in Ukraine" each dealt with major issues of post-Soviet Ukraine which influence its evolution as an independent polity.

The participants of the first panel, among them the literary scholars Taras Koznarsky, the University of Toronto, Tamara Hundorova, the Institue of Literature of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (NASU), Prof. Grabowicz and the historian Oleksii Tolochko, Institute of History, NASU, discussed how the Ukrainian literary canon and various simulacra (forged monuments) both old (like the 18th century "Tale of Ihor's Host," or "Slovo o polku Ihorevim", and new (the Book of Vles or "Vlesova Knyha," which was "discovered," i.e. written, in the 1950s) are created and appropriated by collective opinion.

According to Prof. Grabowicz, "Many people still find it hard to accept that the 'Ihor Tale' is, by all indications, such a mystification written at the end of the eighteenth century, and not coming from the 12th century, as has long been argued by the establishment. These issues cut to the heart of what scholarship is about, i.e., the need to look at things in a new and, if necessary, revisionist way, and not just accept received knowledge."

The roundtable on the present state of the humanities in Ukraine was one of the best attended at the congress, with some 150 people coming to the discussion. Participants in the roundtable were: Marta Bohachevsky-Chomiak, director of the Fulbright Scholar Program in Ukraine; Heorhii Kasianov, Institute of History, NASU; the Rev. Dr. Borys Gudziak, rector of the recently accredited Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv; Natalia Yakovenko and Oleksii Tolochko, both from the Institute of History, NASU; and the moderator, Prof. Grabowicz. The roundtable addressed such highly topical issues as the culture and ethics of scholarship in Ukraine, problems of corruption and plagiarism in the world of academe, funding of education and research, development of new curricula and the need for educational reforms in Ukraine. Both panels provoked much interest among the participants of the congress and were very well received.

Halyna Hryn joined the institute in September as its new research fellow. Ms. Hryn received her M.A. from the University of Toronto. She has taught Ukrainian language, literature and culture at Yale University (1996-2002), Harvard University (1995-1996); Ukrainian Summer Institutes 1992-1996 and 2001), University of Manitoba (1986-1992), and York University (1984-1986) in Canada.

In addition to her teaching experience in Ukrainian studies, Ms. Hryn has served as director of the Harvard Ukrainian Summer Institute (1996 and 2002), and as the executive director of the Yale-Ukraine Initiative (1997-2002).

Ms. Hryn is also a recognized translator of Ukrainian literary works into English, including Volodymyr Dibrova's novels "Peltse" and "Pentameron" (Northwestern University Press, 1996), Oksana Zabuzhko's "Field Work in Ukrainian Sex" (forthcoming; selections published in the literary journal AGNI, 2001), and V. Domontovych's novel "Bez Gruntu" (with George and Moira Luckyj, forthcoming).

Her research interests have concentrated on Ukrainian literature of the 1920s. While at HURI, she will be completing her doctoral dissertation on the Kharkiv journal Literaturnyi Yarmarok, 1928-1929. Ms. Hryn will be at HURI until June 2003.

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