Harvard Ukrainian Summer Institute marks 36th anniversary (08/27/06)

Harvard Ukrainian Summer Institute marks 36th anniversary

by Peter Woloschuk

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - "There's nothing like this in Ukraine," said Olena Lesyk speaking of her eight weeks at Harvard Ukrainian Summer Institute (HUSI), "and I wish there were."

Ms. Lesyk, a Lviv native who recently received her doctorate in business economics and management from the University of Helsinki, Finland, came to the Summer Institute to take classes in Ukrainian and the politics of independent Ukraine, and to further her research in the business economics of a number of east European countries including Ukraine.

"I will be lecturing in international business strategies this fall in Helsinki," Ms. Lesyk continued, "and much of what I learned went directly into my syllabi and lectures."

Ms. Lesyk was one of 36 students who attended the 2006 Harvard Ukrainian Summer Institute. This session marked the 36th anniversary of the annual summer program offered by the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute (HURI) as part of the Harvard Summer School and drew 27 graduate or post-doctoral scholars and nine undergraduates from nine countries, including 18 from the United States, 10 from Ukraine, two from Russia, and one each from Canada, Poland, Switzerland, Finland, Israel and Turkey. The group comprised 23 females and 13 males. Several of the students were older professionals who were taking courses either for personal interest and enjoyment or to hone skills.

Twenty of the students received either partial or full scholarships from special HUSI scholarship funds endowed by gifts and donations over the years, including the Ukrainian Summer Institute Fund organized by the Ukrainian Research Institute; the George A. Prokopyshyn and Irene E. Prokopyshyn Fund at the Ukrainian Institute; The gift of the Ukrainian National Home Corp. of Blackstone, Mass., on behalf of Mr. and Mrs. Peter Furman; the Waldimir Semenyna Ukrainian Fund to support qualified graduate students or senior undergraduates who are enrolled in the Ukrainian Summer Institute and who seek exposure to Ukrainian studies within the context of their own studies; and the Ostap and Marie Shenkiryk Fund to provide scholarship funding for qualified graduates of the St. Volodymyr Gymnasium in Rohatyn, as well as smaller donations from the Ukrainian community. Two students had been awarded Foreign Language Area Studies Fellowships for Summer Language Studies by the U.S. Department of State. All of the stipended students were required to take at least eight credits and were free to take any of the other courses offered in the curriculum.

Tuition at HUSI, as a matter of policy, has been kept low in order to accommodate as many students as possible and to afford them the opportunity of participating in the program. At only 57 percent of the full Harvard University Summer School tuition, HUSI allows its students to use all of the facilities of the University and to receive Harvard University credits for the courses that they take.

This summer HUSI offered six courses, including three eight-credit Ukrainian language courses which were taught by HUSI's language-instruction veterans Alla Parkhomenko (beginning Ukrainian), Yuri Shevchuk (intermediate), and Volodymyr Dibrova (advanced). The three four-credit Ukrainian studies courses were new and were taught by Taras Koznarsky (University of Toronto) who lectured on "The Myth of Kyiv: A City through Centuries and Cultures," which examined the forces that shaped Kyiv's symbolic topography over the last two centuries; Volodymyr Kravchenko (Kharkiv National University) who taught "Modern Ukraine: Late 18th Through the 20th Century" and looked at Ukrainian history from the point of view of regional differences in its modernization and identity development; and Andrew Wilson (School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London) who taught "Independent Ukraine: Politics, National Identity and Democratization," and explored the challenges Ukraine has faced since 1991 and the prospects for its post-Orange Revolution future.

Ms. Parkhomenko (Beginning Ukrainian) is the examinations manager at the British Council Ukraine. She received her (kandydat nauk) candidate of sciences degree in English Stylistics from the Shevchenko National University of Kyiv in 1982. She taught English and stylistics there from 1981 until 1998. She also taught at the National University of Kyiv Mohyla Academy (1992-1994). Ms. Parkhomenko has written a number of articles on English stylistics, literature and linguistics. She won a British Council Fellowship in 1990 and a Fulbright in 1996 to conduct research in the United Kingdom and the United States.

Mr. Shevchuk, head of language instruction, is a lecturer of Ukrainian language and culture at the department of Slavic languages at Columbia University in New York. He is also the founder and director of the Ukrainian Film Club at Columbia. He earned his candidate of sciences degree in Germanic Philology from Kyiv State University (1987), and his MA in political science from the New School for Social Research, New York, (1996). He has taught English at the department of foreign languages of the Ukrainian Institute of Water Management, Rivne, Ukraine (1987-1992), and intermediate Ukrainian at the Harvard Ukrainian Summer Institute since 1990. He published a number of articles on English vocabulary studies, theory of translation, language and identity formation in Ukraine, and dual citizenship. He is also a journalist and translator. His published translations include George Orwell's "Animal Farm" (Vsesvit, No 1, Kyiv, 1991) and Orest Subtelny's "Ukraine: a History" (Kyiv, 1992).

Mr. Dibrova is a preceptor at Harvard University's Slavic department and an editor and writer-in-residence at Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute. He received his candidate of sciences degree in Irish literature at Shevchenko Institute of Literature of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine in 1988. Mr. Dibrova has served as head of the English department at Kyiv Mohyla Academy (1992-1993), taught English and world literature at Kyiv Linguistic University (1977-1989), been an associate at the Shevchenko Institute of Literature (1989-1992), acted as head of the Narodna Hazeta's Washington bureau (1990-1991) and worked as a translator (1973-1977). He is a literary critic who writes on Ukrainian, French and American literatures, and who has translated works by Henry David Thoreau and Eugene Ionesco. His translation of Samuel Beckett's novel "Watt" won the Mykola Lukash Award for translation. Most importantly, he is also a writer of short stories, novels and plays whose works have been translated into English, Polish, Hungarian, German and Belarusian. His most recent books are "Vybhane" (Kyiv. Krytyka, 2002) and "Project Dibrova" (Chetver No 14, Lviv, 2002).

Dr. Koznarsky is assistant professor of Ukrainian at the Department of Slavic languages and literatures, at the University of Toronto, and is well known in the field of Ukrainian literature and cultural studies. He earned his Ph.D. from Harvard in 2001, with a thesis on Ukrainian and Russian literary relations in the 19th century. He is the author of several scholarly articles, including "Izmail Sreznevsky's Zaporozhskaia Starina as a Memory Project" (Eighteenth-Century Studies, Fall 2001), and reviews in Krytyka and Suchasnist.

Mr. Kravchenko is a professor of history at Karazin National University of Kharkiv and the head of both its department of Ukrainian studies and the Eastern Institute of Ukrainian Studies. He is a specialist on the history of Kharkiv and Slobidska Ukraina, and has authored or edited over a hundred works on Ukrainian history and historiography, including several works on the historian Dmytro Bahalii and a major monograph on the Ukrainian historiography (Kharkiv: Osnova, 1996). He is the founder and editor-in-chief of the journal Skhid/Zakhid.

Mr. Wilson is senior lecturer at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, at University College London, and is a leading authority on Ukrainian politics. In addition to many scholarly articles, he is the author of three important monographs on Ukrainian politics, most recently "Ukraine's Orange Revolution" (Yale University Press, 2005).

HUSI students in 2006 were a diverse group.

Michael Leavey an insurance executive with post-graduate degrees from Yale University and the University of Massachusetts in Russian, Polish and Czech who is married and has two grown daughters, took his first academic course in more than 25 years to deepen his knowledge of Ukrainian.

Tetyana Pechonchyk, a graduate student in linguistics at the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, said of the classes she attended, "They were very vivid and the discussions that accompanied each class helped me to clarify many issues."

Huseyin Oylupinar, a lecturer and Ph.D. candidate in international relations at the Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey, came to HUSI to supplement his study of international relations between Turkey, Ukraine and Europe. He plans ultimately to promote the level of Ukrainian and Slavic studies in his home country. Attending HUSI was for him "a great opportunity to be part of Ukrainian studies on a global scale." He added that "the Ukrainian studies community in the U.S.A. has been very warm to someone of non-Ukrainian origins. I felt at home."

HUSI 2006 gathered both established academics and young scholars to participate in the summer's guest-lecture series.

On July 10, Timothy Snyder (Yale University) spoke on "The Polish-Soviet Secret War for Ukraine, 1926-1939," in which he captivatingly described a Polish-sponsored underground attempt to Ukrainianize western Ukraine in the interwar period.

On July 24, Paul D'Anieri (University of Kansas) presented "Ukraine's Foreign Policy: An Agenda for Research," in which he described the lacunae in the study of Ukrainian foreign policy and suggested paths for future study.

On July 25, Gene Fishel, special advisor to the U.S. vice-president on national security affairs, led an animated roundtable discussion with HUSI students and faculty on "Developments in Ukraine: A View from Washington."

On July 31, Myron Stachiw, the director of the Fulbright Program in Ukraine and a specialist in anthropology, social history and historic preservation, shared his observations on "Cultural Rescue in the Chornobyl Zone: Preserving the Traditional Culture of Polisia in the Aftermath of Ecological and Societal Disaster." Students and faculty were enthralled by the photographs and short films that accompanied his talk.

On August 7, Dominique Arel (University of Ottawa) spoke on "The Issue That Keeps Coming Back: Language Politics in Post-Soviet Ukraine."

This summer's cultural events included two film screenings presented by Dr. Shevchuk. On July 6, he presented "Ukrainian Animation Today," a collection of recent works by award-winning Ukrainian animators, including Stepan Koval, Yevhen Syvokin and Oleksandr Shmyhun. On August 3, he presented "Ukrainian Documentary Films," a program that included Serhii Masloboishchikov's "People from Maidan: Nevseremos'!" (2005), Viktoriia Melnykova's "With Best Wishes, Enver" (2006), and Oles Sanin's "Seventh Day" (2005). These films were co-presented by the Ukrainian Film Club and the Ukrainian Studies Program of Columbia University.

On July 13, the Ukrainian-American playwright Irena Kowal presented a live performance of selected scenes from her works, including "Pagan Saints" (in Ukrainian, "Lev i Levytsia") and "The Marinated Aristocrat." The bilingual performance was aptly titled "Drama on Two Fronts," and the actors were HUSI students and faculty.

On July 21, Alexander Motyl (Rutgers University) read excerpts from his recent novel "Whiskey Priest" (2005), which examines the perceived historical realities among native-born Ukrainians and diaspora Ukrainians, but is set in the form of a thriller.

On August 4, HUSI welcomed the acclaimed bandurist Julian Kytasty, who performed traditional and composed bandura music.

Finally, on August 11, HUSI continued a longstanding tradition by ending the 2006 Summer Institute with an evening of delightful and irreverent student presentations and skits.

The courses concluded on Friday, August 18, with a formal ceremony and presentation of certificates upon successful completion of the summer program. Sophia Grachova of Kyiv, Mariya Horiacha of Lviv, Oksana Myshlovska of Chene Borgeries, Switzerland, and Jan Surer of Waltham, Mass., were presented with the Theodosius and Irene Senkowsky Prize with an accompanying purse to acknowledge their achievements in Ukrainian studies. The prize was endowed in honor of Dr. and Mrs. Senkowsky of Philadelphia who valued the advancement of Ukrainian studies and encouraged young scholars and wanted to see them continue their work in the field.

HUSI was launched in 1970 by Prof. Omeljan Pritsak, the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute's co-founder, to maintain and strengthen a solid foundation of Ukrainian studies in the West and to open the course offerings of the institute to college students who were not enrolled at Harvard University. For the first 20 years HUSI students were primarily a mix of "heritage students" - children and grandchildren of the Ukrainian diaspora - and students who were studying the Ukrainian language, culture or history as part of their own academic pursuits.

Since the declaration of Ukrainian independence and the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, students from Ukraine itself have been able to attend, adding two additional components to the "mix." The program has benefited immensely from their presence. Most of the Ukrainian students who come are outstanding young and future academics and professionals of Ukraine. These students meet and network with scholars and the other students who attend. There have also been numbers of non-traditional students, including businessmen, government officials, journalists and others who have attended.

So HUSI's mission now has expanded and, while still supporting Ukrainian studies in the West, it is also breaking down the barriers isolating Ukrainian studies in Ukraine from the rest of the world. And this has been to the benefit of the advancement of true scholarship on both sides.

The fruits of HUSI's efforts to foster a development of the trans-Atlantic world of Ukrainian studies are already visible. Many American and Ukrainian HUSI students have become friends, correspondents and academic collaborators. Ukrainian HUSI alumni often go on to greater academic achievement or reform in Ukraine. For example, the director of Lviv National University's Center for Master's Program Development in Sociology and Cultural Studies, Iryna Starovoyt, is a HUSI alumna, and many of the center's faculty are also HUSI alumni. This center supports some of the most sophisticated and up-to-date graduate education and research in Ukraine, and is instituting a reformed doctoral curriculum that will serve as a model for other academic departments and institutions in Ukraine.

In its 36-year history HUSI has welcomed more than 2,000 students to its summer courses. Some of its outstanding alumni include Kateryna Yushchenko, today the first lady of Ukraine; the Rev. Borys Gudziak, rector of the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv; Timothy Snyder, professor of history at Yale University; Frederigo Argentieri, professor of history at John Cabot University in Rome, who was instrumental in getting Robert Conquest's "Harvest of Sorrow" published in Italian; and Kazuo Nakai, a prominent specialist in Ukrainian studies at the University of Tokyo, Japan.

For the past two years HUSI has been directed by Alex Dillon, who earned his Ph.D. in Ukrainian history at Harvard University in 2003. His dissertation, advised by Prof. Roman Szporluk, was on "The Rural Cooperative Movement and Problems of Modernization in Tsarist and Post-Tsarist Southern Ukraine (New Russia), 1871-1920." He has taught European, Eastern European, Russian and Ukrainian history at College of the Holy Cross (Worcester, Mass.) and at the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv, where he served as an international visiting fellow under the auspices of the Open Society Institute.

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