EDMONTON, Alberta – Approximately 40 people attended the University of Alberta symposium on “Crisis and Identity: Cultural and Linguistic Perspectives on Ukraine and its Diaspora” held on March 21. Organized by Alla Nedashkivska, lead researcher of the Nationalities, Culture and Language Policies Cluster of the Research Initiative on Democratic Reforms in Ukraine (RIDRU), the day offered three sessions with two speakers and one discussant.
In the first session, Marianna Novosolova of Dresden Technical University offered a detailed analysis of several war poems providing evidence of the distancing of Ukrainian and Russian identities as a result of the war. The audience welcomed future research about the Russian perspective and a comparison between it and that of Ukrainians.
Irene Sywenky of the University of Alberta noted that, despite the Chornobyl disaster and its political significance (e.g., resulting in the Green Party), there is little in contemporary Ukrainian literature about the environment, particularly in contrast to the Romantic poets.
Discussant Natalia Pylypiuk, of the University of Alberta, reminded the audience that certain other ecological disasters have not been written about in Ukrainian literature, such as the Soviet destruction of the Dnipro dam during World War II as a result of which 100,000 Soviet citizens and Nazis were killed.
The second session focussed on Ukrainian Canadian folklore. Maryna Chernyavska (University of Alberta) defined and explained many functions of archives as “memory institutions” (concerned with preservation and public access), described source books that exist and pointed out new developments in digital archives. Such archives have the advantage of giving access while simultaneously endangering churches because they can then easily be vandalized. She announced the upcoming conference on Ukrainian Canadian archives in the spring of 2018.
Natalie Kononenko (University of Alberta) discussed the religious practices of Ukrainian Canadian women, noting that churches in rural Prairie Canada are being cared for disproportionately by women through activities such as cooking for church “praznyky” (celebrations), quilting to raise funds and looking after graves. She also described new modifications to cultural practices. She noted that she and her team have added 24 new subject headings to describe Ukrainian folklore and will soon propose them as additions to the Ethnographic Thesaurus of the Library of Congress.
Discussant Jelena Pogosjan, director of the Kule Folklore Center at the University of Alberta, noted that although the content of folklore is constantly shifting, the purpose of exploring and uncovering the meaning of these ritual shifts remains. Thus, since it is impossible to collect everything, there is a need for an operational model to help researchers collect what is needed to achieve their objectives, as for example determining the role of women.
Grant Wang
Participants of the symposium held at the University of Alberta.
The final session focussed on questions of language with distinguished scholar Holger Kusse (Dresden Technical University) suggesting linguistic “nation-building.” He drew upon evidence from a range of sources from contemporary Ukrainian to reveal the use of positive language imaging analogous to that used in the 19th century during the period of nation-building.
Alla Nedashkivska (University of Alberta) reviewed multiple Internet sources that demonstrate the principle that people themselves are the innovators and language planners in Ukraine. Online sites encourage a variety of language uses, including language switching, remembering old terms, reading for pleasure, adding prestige to Ukrainian, using empowering slogans, replacing foreign words, and using self humor. These data suggest that volunteerism and creativity are key to popularizing the Ukrainian language.
Discussant and post-doctoral fellow Ivan Kozachenko (University of Alberta) raised a series of questions for the speakers: Is praise more significant when it comes from people outside the nation? Was language used to manufacture a regional identity in Zakarpattia (e.g., for tourism) or in the Donbas (for political reasons)? What is the difference in impact between modern social media and the use of radio in the past? Is there a difference between “language as identity” and “language as part of an existential choice”? Should analysis of language promotion be situated in its context, that is, in opposition to, rather than part of, the status quo?
Audience discussion was rich for each session, but the liveliest was in relation to why Ukrainian television is so unengaging. Symposium presentations were videotaped and will be available on RIDRU’s website.
Olenka Bilash acknowledged the funders and supporters of the event – the Kule Institute for Advanced Study, RIDRU, Department of Modern Languages and Cultural Studies, Kule Folklore Center, Ukrainian Language Education Center and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and the Graduate Academy of Technical University of Dresden – and closed the day with an announcement about RIDRU’s fall online conference: “Finding a Way Forward in Ukraine: Reform vs Inertia in Democratizing Government and Society.”