Harvard Ukrainian Summer Institute features courses in four fields (05/07/06)

A Ukrainian Summer: where to go, what to do...

Harvard Ukrainian Summer Institute features courses in four fields

by Patricia Coatsworth

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - To be held from June 26 to August 18, the 36th session of the Harvard Ukrainian Summer Institute will feature six courses in history, literature, political science and language. Courses will be taught by noted scholars and educators from the United States, Canada, England and Ukraine.

The history course, "Modern Ukraine," offers students an opportunity to look at the formation of Ukraine's modern national identity as it developed from the end of the eighteenth to the 21st century. Topics to be covered include the evolution of interpretations of Ukraine's past in parallel with the evolution of national identity; the emergence of the Ukrainian national idea and national movement in the 19th century; the Ukrainian national movement from 1917 through the 1930s; the second world war; and Soviet identity versus national identity in the USSR.

The course will be taught by Volodymyr Kravchenko, professor of history and head of the Department of Ukrainian Studies, Karazin National University of Kharkiv, Ukraine, and a specialist in Ukrainian historiography of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. Prof. Kravchenko, a former Shklar Fellow at the Institute, is the author of three books and is the editor-in-chief of the historical and cultural journal Skhid - Zakhid.

"Independent Ukraine: Politics, National Identity and Democratization" will be taught by Andrew Wilson, senior lecturer in Ukrainian studies at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies of University College, London. Dr. Wilson will examine Ukraine since independence in 1991, with emphasis on the effect of the post-Soviet political system on modern national identity and the creation of a functioning democracy based on European values. The course will investigate Ukraine's initial progress as a new state under President Leonid Kravchuk, its reputation for political drift and corruption under President Leonid Kuchma, and the causes and course of the Orange Revolution in 2004.

Dr. Wilson is the author of "Ukraine's Orange Revolution" (Yale University Press, 2005) and is currently writing a new study on Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian national ideas and how they relate to the many different versions of the rival "all-Russian" concept.

"The Myth of Kyiv: A City through Centuries and Cultures" will examine how literary works and cultural processes from the early 19th century to the present (with a few detours into the medieval period) shaped the symbolic topography, geography and myth of Ukraine's capital, a place where Ukrainians, Russians, Poles and Jews constructed their own versions of the city, its origins and its various roles.

The instructor for this course will be Taras Koznarsky, assistant professor of Ukrainian at the University of Toronto. As a graduate student at Harvard, Dr. Koznarsky was a teaching fellow in the department of Slavic languages and literatures and taught Ukrainian at the Summer Institute in 1994-1996. His research interests include Ukrainian literary institutions in the first half of the 19th century and the shaping of Ukrainian cultural identity; Ukrainian modernism and avant-garde; and Kyiv and its legacies in cultural and ideological schemes, specifically the constructions of Kyiv in the Ukrainian, Russian, Jewish and Polish literatures of the19th and 20th centuries. He is currently writing a book on the shaping of Ukrainian literary discourse and cultural identity from 1800 through the 1830s.

Veteran HUSI language instructors Alla Parkhomenko (Beginning Ukrainian), Yuri Shevchuk (Intermediate Ukrainian) and Volodymyr Dibrova (Advanced Ukrainian) will be returning to teach this summer.

Dr. Dibrova, preceptor in Slavic languages and literatures at Harvard, and Dr. Shevchuk, lecturer of Ukrainian language and culture at Columbia University, both teach Ukrainian during the academic year at their respective institutions.

Dr. Parkhomenko, who develops modern approaches to assessment and communicative teaching techniques for the British Council in Ukraine, will be returning for her fourth summer teaching Beginning Ukrainian.

The HUSI language program strives to create an immersion environment that encourages participants to use as much Ukrainian as possible. Weekly language tables engage all three constituencies that traditionally attend the summer school: North American students specializing in Ukrainian studies, students of Ukrainian heritage aiming to augment their knowledge and native speakers from Ukraine. Each group makes its own special contribution to the program, informing and learning from the others.

Each year, HUSI's course offerings are supplemented by a program of guest lectures by prominent faculty; roundtable discussions by visiting scholars on current events in Ukraine; and cultural presentations such as screenings of contemporary Ukrainian films and literary evenings with Ukrainian authors.

The application deadline for students with no visa requirements is Friday, May 26. For application materials contact: Patricia Coatsworth, Administrator, Harvard Ukrainian Summer Institute, 1583 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02138; telephone, 617-495-7833, fax, 617-495-8097, e-mail, [email protected].

The Summer School Program is made possible in part by financial support from the Social Science Research Council and endowed funds established by benefactors from the Ukrainian community of North America. For more details about the program, including course descriptions and syllabi, faculty profiles, downloadable application materials, past programs, alumni comments and much more, visit the HUSI website at http://www.huri.harvard.edu/husi.htm.

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