NEW YORK – The Ukrainian Studies Program at the Harriman Institute will be offering six courses and organizing several events at Columbia University during the fall semester. Dr. Simone Bellezza will be visiting Columbia University in fall 2016, teaching two courses in its History Department. His appointment is generously supported by the Ukrainian Studies Instructional Fund.
Mykola Riabchuk
Dr. Bellezza is research fellow in contemporary history at the University of Trento (Italy). The fil rouge of all his work is the study of national identity and its relationship with other kinds of loyalty (social, political, cultural and religious). In the field of post-Soviet history, his research deals mainly with cultural history and with the public use of history in the political debate. He has studied the perception of national identity in pop-music during the Orange Revolution and the democratization process, including the events of the Euro-Maidan and of the current war in eastern Ukraine.
Lyuba Yakimchuk
The first course Dr. Bellezza will teach at Columbia in the fall is titiled “Introduction to Ukrainian History: Nation and Identity.” To be taught on Mondays and Wednesdays, 1:10-2:25 p.m., this course will go through the main phases of the evolution of Ukrainian history, analyzing different spheres of interaction among the many subjects that contributed to the creation (or dismantling) of the idea of a Ukrainian nation: politics, literary production, foreign influences, historical commemorations, youth cultures and environmental problems will all be discussed with the aim of understanding what a nation is. The secondary task of this course, considering the great sensation caused by the Ukrainian crisis and the fears of a new Cold War, will be to provide students with all the necessary information and conceptual frameworks to understand the present events in Ukraine.
The second course to be taught by Dr. Bellezza, “The Sixties Generation in Ukraine and in Eastern Europe,” examines the role of Ukrainian cultural dissent in the 1960s (the so-called “Shistdesiatnytstvo,” or the ’60s movement) in the national debate during the Soviet period and assesses the influence of this movement and analogous movements outside Ukraine on post-Soviet evolution. It will be taught Thursdays, 2:10-4 p.m.
Ambassador Valeriy Kuchynskyi will be offering his course “Ukrainian Foreign Policy: Russia, Europe and the U.S.” It will be held on Tuesdays, 2:10-4 p.m. and will look at how Ukraine’s foreign policy can ensure international support for its efforts to rebuff the aggression in the east of the country and to fully restore its sovereignty and territorial integrity. The course will examine what has to be done to solve the country’s existing internal problems: rampant corruption, lack of reforms, squabbles in the government and its inefficiency.
Three levels of Ukrainian language instruction will be continue to be taught by Dr. Yuri Shevchuk in the fall: elementary on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, 8:40-9:55 a.m.; intermediate on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, 10:10-11:25 a.m.; and advanced on Mondays and Wednesdays, 1:10-2:25 p.m.
Two events have already been scheduled for the fall semester. On September 20, Mykola Riabchuk, senior research fellow at the Institute of Political and Nationalities Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and a member of the editorial boards of Krytyka, Porownania and the Journal of South Eastern Europe, will deliver a lecture titled “Examined by war. New bonds and old cleavages in the post-Maidan Ukrainian society.” Mr. Riabchuk is currently a visiting Fulbright researcher at the George Washington University. The lecture will take place at noon in the Marshall D. Shulman Seminar Room.
On October 25, the Program will be presenting the 14th installment of its Contemporary Ukrainian Literature Series (co-sponsored with the Kennan Institute, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars) featuring poet, screenwriter and journalist Lyuba Yakimchuk. Born in Pervomaisk, Luhansk Oblast, Ms. Yakimchuk is the author of several full-length poetry collections, including “Like FASHION” and “Apricots of Donbas,” and the film script for “The Building of the Word.” Ms. Yakimchuk’s event, titled “Decomposition” after the name of a cycle of her poems addressing the war in the Donbas region, will take place at 7 p.m. in the Harriman Atrium. Ms. Yakimchuk will present at the Kennan Institute on October 27.
Also this fall, Dr. Shevchuk, director of the Ukrainian Film Club of Columbia University, will continue to screen the newest Ukrainian films, both on and off campus.
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 Professional Studies (http://sps.columbia.edu/auditing) for more details.
Classes began on September 6, and September 16 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.