NEW YORK – The Ukrainian Studies Program at the Harriman Institute will offer five courses and a series of events focusing on today’s Ukraine at Columbia University during the fall semester. Additionally, two visiting scholars and a young writer will be visiting the program this fall.
Dr. Tamara Martsenyuk, assistant professor at the National University of Kyiv Mohyla Academy, will be a visiting Fulbright scholar at the Harriman Institute during the 2017-2018 academic year. The topic of her research project will be “Women’s Activism in Ukraine: from Euro-Maidan to War in Donbas.”
Markian Dobczansky is a historian of the Soviet Union who will be a postdoctoral fellow in Ukrainian studies at the Harriman Institute of Columbia University for two years, beginning in the fall. His appointment is generously supported by the Petro Jacyk Fund.
Dr. Dobczansky’s specializations include Russian-Ukrainian relations, nationalism, the politics of culture and urban history. He is currently working on a book about the intersection of Soviet, Ukrainian and local factors in the construction of local identity in Kharkiv during the 20th century.
Dr. Dobczansky received a Ph.D. from Stanford University, where he studied Soviet, Russian and East European history. He was the recipient of a Mellon Pre-Doctoral Fellowship in Contemporary History at The George Washington University and was most recently the Petro Jacyk postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto. He received a B.A. in European history and German studies from the University of Pennsylvania.
Ambassador Valeriy Kuchynskyi will teach a course titled “Ukrainian Foreign Policy: Russia, Europe and the U.S.”, which will be held on Tuesdays at 2:10-4 p.m. The course 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 also 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, will trace the trajectory of Ukraine’s foreign policy and analyze the current international crisis.
Dr. Yuri Shevchuk (Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures) will teach the course “Soviet, Post-Soviet, Colonial and Postcolonial Cinema.” 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, etc. 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 re-invents itself within the post-Soviet imperial momentum projected on the former Soviet colonies. This course will take place Tuesdays at 6:10-10 p.m.
Three levels of Ukrainian language instruction will be taught by Dr. Shevchuk: elementary on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 11:40-12:55 a.m.; intermediate on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 10:10-11:25 a.m.; and advanced on Mondays and Wednesdays at 1:10-2:25 p.m.
This year, the Contemporary Ukrainian Literature Series, co-sponsored by the Ukrainian Studies Program at the Harriman Institute and the Kennan Institute in Washington, celebrates its 10th year of bringing many of Ukraine’s leading writers to the U.S. Lately, the series has focused on the youngest generation of Ukrainian wordsmiths making their mark on the country’s culture scene. That trend continues as the series hosts Uzhhorod-based writer Andriy Lyubka in October. Mr. Lyubka’s events, titled “Smuggling Ukraine Westward,” will take place at the Harriman Institute on October 9 and at the Kennan Institute on October 12.
Several other events have already been scheduled for the fall semester. On September 26, Dr. Mariana Budjeryn will deliver a talk titled “Inheriting the Bomb: Soviet Collapse and Denuclearization of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine, 1990-1994” and on October 5 Mykola Riabchuk will give the lecture “Hybrid Censorship During the Hybrid War: Freedom of Speech and Expression in the Post-Euro-Maidan Ukraine.” On October 24, Anne Applebaum will present her latest book, “Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine” (Penguin Random House, 2017). All three of these events will take place 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. Please 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 as Lifelong Learners. Visit the Columbia University School of Continuing Education (http://www.ce.columbia.edu/auditing/?PID= 28) for more details.
September 5 is the first day of classes, and September 15 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.