Kyivan scholars speak at Shevchenko Society in New York (06/25/06)

Kyivan scholars speak at Shevchenko Society in New York

NEW YORK - The Shevchenko Scientific Society (NTSh) hosted a program composed of lectures by three Kyivan scholars who had just participated as speakers at the annual world convention of the Association for the Study of Nationalities (ASN), which was held at the Harriman Institute of Columbia University.

The lecturers were Myroslava Antonovych, associate professor of jurisprudence at the National University of Kyiv Mohyla Academy; Lesia Stavytska, doctor of philology and chair of the department of sociolinguistics at the Institute of the Ukrainian Language of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (NANU); and Orysia Demska-Kulchytska, candidate of philological sciences and associate director of the Institute of the Ukrainian Language of NANU.

The program, which took place on March 26, was introduced by NTSh president Dr. Larissa Onyshkevych and chaired by Prof. Vasyl Makhno.

The first guest speaker was Prof. Antonovych, author of the monograph "International Public Law" (Kyiv, 2003). She began by thanking the American government for financial assistance in the form of Fulbright and IREX grants in the past, and NTSh for sponsoring her present trip to the U.S.

In the opinion of Prof. Antonovych, the Orange Revolution in November-December 2004, whose peaceful and bloodless nature knows no precedent in the history of revolution, represented the creation of a Ukrainian political nation.

The struggle for human rights, freedom and national independence, all of which the Orange Revolution embodied, can be viewed as an outgrowth of the Ukrainian legal tradition, dating back to the remarkably progressive constitutions of Pylyp Orlyk (1709) and the Ukrainian National Republic (1918), as well as the struggles for human and national rights waged by the Ukrainian Helsinki Group of the 1970s and 1980s, said the lecturer.

The Ukrainian political nation of today can be thought of as a single medal with two different faces - civic and ethnic - concluded Prof. Antonovych.

Next to speak was Ms. Demska-Kulchytska, author of the monograph "Foundations of the National Corpus of the Ukrainian Language" (Kyiv, 2005). She, too, thanked the American NTSh for sponsoring her trip to the ASN Convention in New York. She also singled out the NTSh in Ukraine as one of the main bulwarks of Ukrainian identity.

Ms. Demska-Kulchytska discussed her research into the old and new meanings of a number of social-political terms, such as "democracy," "nationalism" and "globalization," among others.

The last speaker was Dr. Stavytska, author of the "Short Dictionary of Jargon in the Ukrainian Language" (Kyiv, 2003), who is currently a Shklar Fellow at the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute. Because jargon and slang were excluded from Soviet dictionaries, explained the lecturer, she found the field wide open since 1992 for research and publication of dictionaries in the area of the vocabulary of various microsocial groups in Ukraine, such as sportsmen, musicians, computer specialists and just plain ordinary users of obscene language.

Dr. Stavytska presented to the Shevchenko Society copies of her monographs: "Ukrainian Jargon: A Dictionary" and "Argot, Jargon, Slang" - both published by Krytyka (Kyiv, 2005).

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