A diversity of courses at Harvard: from images of Ukraine to linguistic issues (05/05/02)

A Ukrainian Summer: where to go, what to do...

A diversity of courses at Harvard: from images of Ukraine to linguistic issues

Following are descriptions, in the words of instructors, of couses offered during the summer of 2002 at the Harvard Ukrainian Summer Institute.

"IMAGES OF UKRAINE IN WESTERN CULTURE" - Dr. Lubomyr Hajda, and Dr. Ksenya Kiebuzinski, Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, Harvard University:

The course will look at representations of Ukraine in Western culture, analyzing texts created in Europe, the Americas and even South Africa. These texts will include works of literature, the visual arts, music, and theater. The period of the creation of these works dates from the 17th through the mid-20th centuries. This is the first time that much of the material will be studied.

Rather than looking at the texts chronologically in terms of date of publication, the course will study them through the chronological framework of Ukrainian history in terms of events and figures portrayed.

The course will begin with the period of Antiquity, the period that saw the establishment of Greek settlements on the northern Black Sea coast. For example, we will look at the Greek myth of Iphigenia in Tauris, which is set in Khersones in Crimea, and which became the source of a great many plays and at least 20 operas.

Similarly, we will look at themes related to the Scythians and the Sarmatians, who inhabited territories now in Ukraine. Then we will proceed to Kyivan Rus', which is represented, for example, by an opera titled "Volodimiro" by the eminent composer Dominico Cimarosa, a contemporary of Mozart. The Kozak period is a particularly rich source of representation in Western culture: the Zaporozhians, the Gogolian hero Taras Bulba, and the Hetmans Bohdan Khmelnytskyi and Ivan Mazepa. An interesting instance was the 1877 production of the play "L'Hetman" by Paul Déroulède at the Odéon theater in Paris. In it, Déroulède uses a hetman clearly based on Khmelnytskyi and Ukraine's war of liberation from Poland as an allegory of the relations between France and Germany in the 1870s. The premiere was attended by the French cultural, political and military elite. "L'Hetman" had a successful run of three months, elicited an enthusiastic reception by the audience, and was favorably and widely reviewed in France and abroad.

In the realm of music, the story of Taras Bulba has proven to be particularly inspiring. For example, in 1895 an opera on this theme was staged in Buenos Aires - becoming the first national Argentinean opera. Two years later, the first Norwegian national grand opera was presented in Oslo, titled "Kosakken" (The Kozaks), it also was based on the story of Taras Bulba. Thus, within only two years the Ukrainian story by Gogol was used for two operas of two arising nations. Despite the celebrity of some of these works in their particular historical moment, many of their creators today are obscure figures. Some of them, however, deserve serious reconsideration.

But there are also a number of renowned cultural figures who drew their inspiration from Ukrainian themes, such as Lord Byron and Victor Hugo, Guillaume Apollinaire, Rainer Maria Rilke, Franz Liszt and Joseph Haydn. Besides works of "high" culture, the course will tangentially look at more modern media, such as film, television, fashion design and popular music. It is hoped that students will make their own discoveries and add to a growing register of cultural productions inspired by Ukraine.

"UKRAINE AS LINGUISTIC BATTLEGROUND" - Michael S. Flier, Oleksandr Potebnja Professor of Ukrainian Philology, Harvard University:

The course is about Ukraine as a territory on which a number of languages have converged and vied for dominance throughout recorded history. In order to appreciate the status of the Ukrainian language today, it is important to see it in historical context.

The course is divided into an introduction and four major segments. In the introduction, the class will be presented with the basic linguistic concepts necessary to analyze the "language situation" in Ukraine, past and present.

In Part 1, we examine the history of East Slavic, noting important distinctions as compared with West Slavic (primarily Polish), and South Slavic (primarily Old Church Slavonic). We conclude with a close comparison of the linguistic structures of Ukrainian and Russian. In Part 2, we turn to the history of Ukrainian in its interaction with Church Slavonic, Polish and Latin, Belarusian and Russian. In Part 3, the class considers questions of language and dialect, and reviews three case studies (Ukrainian, Rusyn and Lemko) before turning to general problems of linguistic norm, code switching, and code mixing (surzhyk). In Part 4, we take advantage of the knowledge about Ukrainian gained from a strictly linguistic approach to review other perspectives, sociolinguistic, anthropological and political.

"20th CENTURY UKRAINE" - Serguei Ekeltchik, assistant professor of history and Slavonic studies, University of Victoria:

The course "20th Century Ukraine" focuses on political, economic, social and cultural transformations that shaped the history of Ukraine in the last century. Traditional scholarship has sought a single narrative line carrying on through the decades. But channeling the past into a story of socialism's collapse or a nation's trials and triumphs leaves out important social and cultural motives, that have determined people's choices.

Besides being the century of socialism and nationalism, the 20th century in Ukraine has also been the age of mass mobilization, mass murder and mass culture. The course will examine such often overlooked aspects as manifestations of everyday life in Ukraine, gender relations and popular entertainment.

Alongside classical works by Ivan L. Rudnytsky, Roman Szporluk and Bohdan Krawchenko, the students will read excerpts from recent books by Terry Martin, Hiroaki Kuromiya and Amir Weiner that demonstrate the prominent place of Ukrainian topics in modern American scholarship. New archival revelations on the Famine, the Stalinist terror, and the parallels between Soviet and Nazi ethnic cleansings will also be discussed.

My aim is to encourage students' presentations and essays that would approach their subjects innovatively, by applying methods of modern historiographies of other European nations. For instance, by looking at the scholarship on the French Revolution, one can see fresh ways of interpreting the events of 1917-1920 in Ukraine. The psychology of fear and the strategies of survival under Stalin are topics that could greatly benefit from a look at the work of German historians. Studies of American consumerism and mass culture can reveal much about the mechanisms of Soviet decay and post-Soviet cultural struggles.

In a more general sense, the course will equip students with the information and analytical skills essential for understanding major events of the past century, and the present-day situation in Eastern Europe.

* * *

Following established tradition, HUSI is also offering three proficiency-oriented intensive Ukrainian language courses. Beginning Ukrainian, taught by Dr. Maria Rewakowicz, instructor, Rutgers University, is designed for students with little or no knowledge of the language. Elementary grammatical structures will be presented through an active oral approach. Reading and discussion of simple texts along with written exercises complement the acquisition of oral and aural skills.

Intermediate Ukrainian, taught by Dr. Yuri I. Shevchuk, independent scholar, Toronto, is an intensive review of basic structures, followed by expansion of grammar fundamentals. Major emphasis is placed on oral communication using basic conversational patterns, and on the vocabulary acquisition, with readings and videotaped programs focusing on contemporary cultural and political issues.

Advanced Ukrainian, taught by Dr. Volodymyr Dibrova, instructor, department of Slavic languages and literatures, Harvard University, is designed for students who wish further to develop their command of the language. Reading selections include annotated articles on contemporary issues in business, economics, politics and culture. Short written reports and oral presentations will be part of the course. Classes are conducted largely in Ukrainian.

HUSI is the only program in North America that tests the oral proficiency of all Ukrainian language students according to the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages guidelines, both at the beginning and the end of the studies.

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