2017 Spring Seminars

DOMINIQUE AREL is an Associate Professor of Political Science and Chair of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Ottawa, Canada. He received his BA from the University of Montreal, his Master’s degree from McGill University, and his PhD from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Arel’s interests range from nationalism and language politics to politics of identity and the censuses. 

Arel co-edited Rebounding Identities: The Politics of Identity in Russia and Ukraine (John Hopkins University Press, 2006). As the Chair of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Ottawa, he has organized the Annual Danyliw Research Seminar on Contemporary Ukraine since 2005. Professor Arel manages The Ukraine List (UKL), an internet academic/current events newsletter that reaches over 1,500 subscribers in thirty-five countries.

2017 02 03 Dominique Arel: The War in Donbas: Origins, Naming, Implications

The post-Euromaidan search for new commemoration practices and the simultaneous attempt to sweep away symbolic elements of the Soviet past resulted, first, in the massive Leninfall and later in the Supreme Council of Ukraine's acceptance of the controversial decommunization laws. 

At the same time, the annexation of Crimea and subsequent armored conflict in Donbass caused a massive resettlement of the affected population, creating displaced cultural spaces. 

All of these processes launched another powerful wave of discussions about the past and the symbolic meaning of spaces in Ukraine. 

This presentation will focus on mapping the changes in attitudes towards the past and the symbolic reconceptualization of space at both the macro- and micro-level in a comparative cross-regional perspective. 

Viktoriya Sereda is the current HURI MAPA Project Research Fellow, as well as an associate professor of sociology at the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv. Her research focuses on urban sociology, memory studies, nationalism and identity studies. Forthcoming publications include: “Shifts in national, regional and local memories and identities in post-Euromaidan Ukraine,” in Nationalities Papers (coming in 2017); “Ukrainian Past and Present: Legacies, Memory and Attitudes” (co-authored with A.Liebich and O.Myshlovska), in Ulrich Schmid, ed. Unity in Diversity: Region and Nation in Ukraine (Budapest: CEU Press, coming in 2017). 

At HURI, Sereda is conducting research on national identity and historical memory in contemporary Ukraine. Her data is being integrated into HURI's MAPA: Digital Atlas of Ukraine project.

2017 01 03 Victoriya Sereda: Remapping Spaces of Historical Memory in Ukraine after the Euromaidan

This presentation focuses on the role of linguistic and language knowledge in Natural Language Processing, Automated Speech Recognition, and Text-to-Speech product development. As an example, Mykhaylyk demonstrates how Google Translate speaks Ukrainian and explain in the most basic terms how machines “learn” various languages. She reveals some technical tips that could be of interest to and useful for speakers or learners of Ukrainian. 

This presentation encourages everyone to actively use Ukrainian technology products either for everyday life or for improving their Ukrainian. It also indicates some ways through which Slavic linguists can enter the IT job market.

2017 02 23 Roksolana Mykhaylyk: Linguistics and Technology: Teaching Machines to Speak Ukrainian

Today, the very definitions of sovereignty, citizenship, and the role of the state have been torn open by the Russian annexation of Crimea and the on-going military conflict in Eastern Ukraine. As a result, public health institutions are positioned awkwardly at the center of conflicts over the “right to health” and the relationship between citizens and the state. This talk complicates the notion of biological citizenship in Ukraine by pointing to inequalities, which are not driven by social otherness or social exceptionalism alone, and which are not rectifiable, even on a person to person basis, through appeals to entitlements based on one’s illness status, as Petryna describes. Instead, this talk considers how numerous individuals—whether they are HIV patients in Slavyansk, internally displaced persons living in Kharkiv, or LGBTQ activists working in Kyiv, find themselves slotted into social categories that are always already othered, as well as the role that public health institutions often play solidifying new boundaries between those who are “ours” and those who are “outsiders.” 

Read a Q&A with Carroll: http://huri.harvard.edu/news/news-from-huri/293-public-health-in-ukraine-in-wartime-q-a-with-jennifer-carroll.html

2017 02 27 Jennifer Carroll: Beyond Biological Citizenship: Public Health in Ukraine in Wartime

The book Jewish City or Inferno of Russian Israel? A History of the Jews in Kiev before February 1917 (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2016) is the first comprehensive history of Jews in Kyiv from the tenth century to the February 1917 Revolution. 

At the turn of the twentieth century, the Kyiv Jewish community was one of the largest and wealthiest in the Russian Empire. The book illuminates the major processes and events in Kyivan Jewish history: the creation of the Jewish community and the expulsions of Jews from the city, government persecution and Jewish pogroms, the Beilis Affair; as well as the participation of Jews in the political, economic and cultural life of Kyiv and their contribution to the development of the city. 

The book also discusses the complicated interethnic relations in Kyiv and how they were affected by the policies of the Imperial Russian authorities toward national minorities. 

Victoria Khiterer is Associate Professor of History at Millersville University. 

Watch a video of the talk here: https://www.facebook.com/hurifb/videos/1298300046884247/

2017 03 06 Victoria Khiterer: Jewish City or Inferno of Russian Israel? History of the Jews in Kiev

This symposium is partially in English, partially in Ukrainian.

George G. Grabowicz (Dmytro Čyževs’kyj Professor of Ukrainian Literature, Harvard University) 
“Forming Shevchenko’s Reception: The Year 1861” 
IN ENGLISH

Olexandr Boron (Institute of Literature, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine) 
“Shevchenko’s Pseudo-fiance, Anna Sharikova: Inventions and Facts”
IN UKRAINIAN

Tamara Hundorova (Institute of Literature, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine)
“Gypsies as 'the Other’ in Ukrainian Literature: Shevchenko and Kobylianska”. 
IN UKRAINIAN

2017 03 08 Shevchenko Symposium with George G Grabowicz, Tamara Hundorova, and Oleksandr Boron

The presentation will focus on corruption among the highest officials in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Ukraine (MZS) in the 1970s and their involvement and active participation in counterpropaganda and ideological subversion operations designed to conceal the prosecution of intellectuals and the Russification in Ukraine. Special attention will be paid to the relations between the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine and the MZS leadership, and the behavior of diplomats and their close relatives during their business trips abroad. Their ideology and patterns of their political and personal behavior will be explored through the lens of Moscow’s cadre policies and traditions of nepotism, and in light of a new campaign of repressions against the Ukrainian intelligentsia launched in the early 1970s. 

More specifically, the presentation will examine the complexities of ideological affinities and loyalties of the Ukrainian political elite during the pre-perestroika period – the era of Heorhii Shevel who headed the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs from August 1970 to November 1980, and will offer an overview of the “extracurricular” activities of Ukrainian diplomats that went beyond their mission to represent Ukraine abroad and to deal with foreign relations. Ideological ambivalence and corruption among Ukrainian diplomats were interdependent phenomena that reinforced one another, forming a new cohort of Ukrainian diplomats who were both a product of the Soviet system and a new Ukrainian professional elite contributing greatly to the construction of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in independent Ukraine. The presentation is based on Ukrainian archival documents. 

Olga Bertelsen received her Ph.D. at the University of Nottingham (U.K.) and is currently a Ukrainian Studies Fund Research Fellow at the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute. She is also a recipient of postdoctoral fellowships at the Harriman Institute, Columbia University (2013-2014; 2015) 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, national security, Soviet secret police, political activism in Ukraine, and memory politics. Among her forthcoming publications are the monograph on the theatre director Les Kurbas and Ukrainian theatre (the publishing house “Smoloskyp”), and the edited volume of essays on the Euromaidan (Indiana University Press). Her current book projects are dedicated to the formation of imperial consciousness among Russian writers, including Joseph Brodsky, and the least investigated topic of cannibalism, a phenomenon observed in the Soviet Union during the famine of 1932-1933.

2017 03 20 Olga Bertelsen: Corruption Among Soviet Ukrainian Elite in the 1970s

Want to learn more about Ukraine? Interested in using geographic information systems (GIS) in your research? 

The MAPA: Digital Atlas of Ukraine project makes use of the latest innovations in information technology to advance research on Ukraine. 

At this panel presentation, Serhii Plokhii (HURI Director/ MAPA Faculty Director) and Viktoriya Sereda (HURI MAPA Research Fellow) will present recent research on historical memory in Ukraine while showcasing the capabilities of HURI's MAPA tools. The MAPA project director, HURI's IT Specialist Kostyantyn Bondarenko, will also be present to answer any technical or design questions.

Check out the MAPA website here: http://gis.huri.harvard.edu/ 
Read more about Sereda's research here: http://www.huri.harvard.edu/news/news-from-huri/288-re-mapping-spaces-of-historical-memory-in-ukraine-re-mapping-spaces-of-historical-memory-in-ukraine.html

2017 03 22 MAPA Launch - Goodbye, Lenin: Mapping Memory in Revolutionary Ukraine

Interwar Poland has a less than stellar reputation for its treatment of minority ethnic groups, which was cause for concern, considering that nearly one-third of Poland’s population comprised minorities—particularly Ukrainians, Belarusians, Jews, and Germans. While most historical literature focuses on group-level policies pursued by Warsaw to create an ethnically homogenous Poland, in this seminar I will disaggregate the level of analysis to focus on the dynamics between the Polish government and political organizations that claim to represent minority ethnic groups. 

Using the case of the Ukrainian minority, I explore how the Polish government pursued a divide and rule strategy to manage Ukrainian opposition. This was done through the promotion and exploitation of inter- and intra-organizational conflicts, the creation of loyalist Ukrainian organizations, the activation of sub-ethnic group cleavages, and the banning of organizations that could credibly unite the Ukrainian opposition. I reconstruct the intentions of policy makers using process-tracing analysis and extensive archival research of the main organ responsible for formulating minority policies, the Ministry of Interior (Ministerstwo Spraw Wewnętrznych). 

Daniel Fedorowycz
Eugene and Daymel Shklar Research Fellow, HURI

Read a Q&A with Daniel here: http://huri.harvard.edu/news/news-from-huri/298-daniel-fedorowycz.html

Daniel Fedorowycz completed his doctorate in Politics at the University of Oxford. His dissertation examines ethnic politics in multinational states and focuses on the variation in state response to minority group organizations in interwar Poland. More broadly, Daniel researches questions relating to the causes of ethnic conflict through examining local-level dynamics in the Polish-Ukrainian borderlands during the interwar and World War II era. In 2014-15, Daniel was a pre-doctoral fellow at Yale University’s Program on Order, Conflict, and Violence. He holds a MA in European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies and BA(Hons) from the University of Toronto. Currently, Daniel is a Shklar Fellow at the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute.

2017 03 27 Daniel Fedorowycz: Divide and Rule: Managing the Ukrainian Minority in Interwar Poland

How Similar, How Different? What Surveys Reveal about Believers from the Three Largest Churches in Ukraine 

Olena Bogdan, Visiting Carnegie Fellow at Duke University, Sociology Department; Associate Professor of Sociology at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy

We will look into representative survey data on the three largest churches in Ukraine: the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Kyiv Patriarchate, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Moscow Patriarchate and the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church. How similar and different are their believers in their social background, language preferences, political and religious perspectives? 

More information: https://www.facebook.com/events/192700177899429/

2017 04 17 Olena Bogdan: Believers from Ukraine's Three Largest Churches

CRIMEAN KHAN MEHMED GIRAY IV’S INVOLVEMENT IN THE POLISH-MUSCOVITE STRUGGLE OVER UKRAINE (1654-1666)

This presentation aims to analyze the course of the involvement of the Crimean Khanate in Polish-Muscovite struggle over during the second reign of Mehmed Giray IV.

Sait Ocakli is a Eugene and Daymel Shklar Research Fellow at HURI.

2017 04 10 Sait Ocakli: Crimean Khanate and Polish-Muscovite Struggle

How Strong Is the Ukrainian State? Institutions and Society; External and Internal Threats

In his talk, Adrian Karatnycky, Senior Fellow and co-director of the Atlantic Council’s Ukraine in Europe Program, will examine the record of the Poroshenko Presidency, assessing its accomplishments and failings. He will discuss the steep decline in popularity and the traditionally low levels of support for all Ukraine’s presidents as well as the factors that contribute toward them. He will also offer an assessment of the prospects for Poroshenko’s reelection in 2019 and attempt to answer the question of whether Ukraine can successfully face the challenge of Russian aggression in the absence of a strong and popular President.  

More information: https://www.facebook.com/events/630789423778566/

2017 04 12 Adrian Karatnycky: How Strong Is the Ukrainian State?

The Petryshyn Memorial Lecture in Ukrainian Studies

"Mobilizing the Peasantry: The Quandaries of Modernity in the Galician Carpathians, 1880-1914"

Frank Sysyn 
Director, Peter Jacyk Centre for Ukrainian Historical Research, Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies;
Professor, History and Classics, University of Alberta 

Among the Austrian Galician counties, Turka and the highland areas of Staryi Sambir stood out for the high percentage of Ukrainian speakers and Greek Catholics. They also had high rates of illiteracy, few towns, and a high percentage of land in forests. Villagers were divided into various social groups, including former serfs and petty nobles alongside a substantial Jewish rural population. Trade in livestock was an important part of the local economy and especially important for Jewish market towns. Political and economic reforms in the 1860s and 1870s unleashed a series of changes in this isolated region. The granting of Galician autonomy created a new political situation and competition between Poles and Ruthenians. New legislation granted economic emancipation to the peasants and the Jews. Construction of a railway system on the outskirts of the region enabled new movement of people and goods. 

More information: https://www.facebook.com/events/1304652979581867/

2017 04 03 Frank Sysyn: The Quandaries of Modernity in the Galician Carpathians

In his talk at HURI, Volodymyr Kulyk will present preliminary findings of his most recent project which he implements in collaboration with Professor Henry Hale of George Washington University. It is based on a representative survey of the Ukrainian population that was conducted in February 2017 by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology. The project examines public support for radical reforms in post-Euromaidan Ukraine. It analyzes what parts of Ukrainian society support radical changes in various domains, to what extent the groups supporting such changes in different domains overlap, and how support for reform is related to the preference for national identity over its sub and supranational competitors. 

Watch a video here: https://www.facebook.com/events/275324829591965/permalink/281494632308318/

2017 05 01 Volodymyr Kulyk - Nat'l Identity and Public Support for Reforms

Prior to the diplomatic appointment, Mr. Shevchenko had accomplished an outstanding career in politics and media. He is also well known in Ukraine as a civil activist and a human rights defender.

After that Mr. Shevchenko started a successful political career. He won seats in the Ukrainian Parliament 3 times (in 2006, 2007, 2012). In 2006-12 he served as the Chairman of the Free Speech Committee. In 2012-14 he served as the 1st Deputy Chairman of the Human Rights Committee.

Mr. Shevchenko is a sponsor of 60 legislative acts, adopted by the Ukrainian Parliament. That includes the Law on Access to Information – a corner stone of the Ukrainian anti-corruption legislature.

In 2013-14 Mr. Shevchenko was an active participant of the EuroMaidan protests. He was deeply involved in organizing peaceful demonstrations and protection of the protesters from the brutal violence by the police and legal repressions by the authorities.

He graduated from Kyiv Shevchenko University (1999). He was a Yale World Fellow (2008), a Draper Hills Fellow at Stanford (2009), and a John Smith Fellow in the UK (2013).

Watch the video here: https://www.facebook.com/events/431659743844098/permalink/439612686382137/

2017 04 27 Andriy Shevchenko: Ukraine: Workshop in Nation Building

Founded in June 1973, the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute (HURI) serves as a focal point for graduate and undergraduate students, fellows, and associates pursuing research in Ukrainian language, literature, and history as well as in anthropology, archaeology, art history, economics, political science, sociology, theology, and other disciplines. 