NEW YORK – The Ukrainian Studies Program at the Harriman Institute will offer six courses and a series of events at Columbia University during the fall semester.
Dr. Olga Bertelsen will be a post-doctoral research scholar at Columbia University in the fall – a position made possible by the generous support of the Petro Jacyk Fund. Dr. Bertelsen received her Ph.D. at the University of Nottingham (U.K.), and is a recipient of post-doctoral fellowships at the Harriman Institute, Columbia University (2013-2014) and at the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto (2014-2015). Her research interests include Ukrainian and Russian histories and cultures, the intelligentsia and state violence, famines, the Soviet secret police, national minorities in the Soviet Union, and human behavior under authoritarian rule.
Among her recent publications are the monograph “The House of Writers in Ukraine, the 1930s: Conceived, Lived, Perceived,” published in “The Carl Beck Papers,” and a collection of new archival documents about the persecution of Jews in the Soviet Union in two parts, published in
“On the Jewish Street.” Her most recent book titled “Arkhiv Rozstrilianoho Vidrodzhennia: Les’ Kurbas i Teatr ‘Berezil.’ Arkhivni dokumenty (1927-1988)” has been accepted for publication by the Smoloskyp publishing house (Kyiv).
At Columbia, Dr. Bertelsen will teach a course titled “Ukraine’s Revolution of Dignity: A Russian-Ukrainian Political and Cultural Encounter” (Wednesdays, 2:10-4 p.m.). This course is dedicated to Ukraine’s Revolution of Dignity, or Euro-Maidan – the attempt to develop independent governance with civic values. It traces the historical and cultural foundations of the Maidan, examines its tradition from multiple and competing perspectives, and considers the impact of Russian imperial and neo-imperial practices in Ukraine and beyond.
Another course to be offered in the fall is Ambassador Valeriy Kuchynskyi’s “Ukrainian Foreign Policy: Russia, Europe and the U.S.” Ambassador Kuchynskyi is the former permanent representative of Ukraine to the United Nations, a career diplomat who has been actively involved in the implementation of Ukraine’s foreign policy for many years. His course (Tuesdays, 2:10-4 p.m.) examines the political crisis in Ukraine and looks at how Moscow has challenged the basic principles of international law and numerous bilateral agreements, and how it threatens global peace and security.
The course considers whether there is anything the world community can do to stop the aggressor and whether diplomacy can still play a role. These and other issues are dealt with in a newly revised course, delivered by a career diplomat. The instructor will share his own diplomatic experience, trace the trajectory of Ukraine’s foreign policy and analyze the current international crisis.
Dr. Yuri Shevchuk of the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures will teach the course “Soviet, Post-Soviet, Colonial and Post-Colonial Cinema,” (Tuesdays, 6:10-10:00 p.m.). The course will discuss how filmmaking has been used as an instrument of power and imperial domination in the Soviet Union, as well as in the post-Soviet space since 1991. A body of select films by Soviet and post-Soviet directors which exemplify the function of filmmaking as a tool of appropriation of the colonized, and their cultural and political subordination by the Soviet center will be examined in terms of post-colonial theories.
The course will focus both on Russian cinema and on often overlooked work of Ukrainian, Georgian, Belarusian, Armenian and other national film schools and will examine how they participated in the Communist project of fostering a “new historic community of the Soviet people” as well as resisted it by generating, in hidden and, since 1991, overt and increasingly assertive ways their own counter-narratives. Close attention will be paid to the new Russian film as it reinvents itself within the post-Soviet imperial momentum projected on the former Soviet colonies.
Three levels of Ukrainian language instruction will be taught this fall by Dr. Shevchuk: elementary on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 8:40-9:55 a.m.; intermediate on Mondays and Wednesdays at 10:10-11:25 a.m.; and advanced on Mondays and Wednesdays at 2:40-3:55 p.m.
For the eighth year now in a row, the best in contemporary Ukrainian literature will be presented to audiences in North America. The 13th installment in the Contemporary Ukrainian Literature Series, co-sponsored by the Ukrainian Studies Program at the Harriman Institute and the Kennan Institute in Washington, will feature writer Sofia Andrukhovych. One of the leading writers representing the newest generation of Ukrainian authors, Ms. Andrukhovych is the author of five volumes of prose. Her novel “Felix Avstriia” was awarded the prestigious BBC Book of the Year prize for 2015. Ms. Andrukhovych’s events will take place at the Kennan Institute on December 1 and at the Harriman Institute on December 3.
Several events are already scheduled for the fall semester. On September 24, Dr. Volodymyr Kulyk (Institute of Political and Ethnic Studies, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine) will deliver a talk titled “Ukrainian Identity Under the Impact of Euromaidan and the War.” Dr. Iryna Vushko (Hunter College) will present her monograph “The Politics of Cultural Retreat: Imperial Bureaucracy in Austria Galicia 1772-1867” (Yale University Press, 2015) on October 6. Both events are free and open to the public and will be held at noon in the Marshall D. Shulman Room (1219 International Affairs Building).
Dr. Shevchuk, who is also director of the Ukrainian Film Club of Columbia University, will continue to provide fans of film with consistent programming featuring Ukrainian cinema both on and off campus this fall.
Courses at Columbia are open to students from other universities in the New York metropolitan area seeking credit. Students are advised to contact the university at which you enrolled to determine whether it participates in this manner with Columbia University. Some courses are also open to outside individuals interested in non-credit continuing studies.
Additionally, through the Lifelong Learners program, individuals over age 65 who are interested in auditing courses may enroll at a discount rate. Readers may visit the Columbia University School of Continuing Education (http://www.ce.columbia.edu/auditing/?PID=28) for more details.
September 8 is the first day of classes and September 18 is the final day to register for a class. For more information about courses or the Ukrainian Studies Program at Columbia University, readers may contact Dr. Mark Andryczyk at [email protected] or (212) 854-4697.