Ihor Sevcenko honored at HURI reception (03/16/03)

Ihor Sevcenko honored at HURI reception

by Patton Wright

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - On January 30, Ihor Sevcenko, Dumbarton Oaks Professor Emeritus of Byzantine history and literature, was honored at a HURI reception marking the occasion of the publication of a two-volume festschrift titled "Chrysai Pylai - Zlataja Vrata." Given the enormous contributions that Prof. Sevcenko has made to Byzantine and Ukrainian studies, this publication presents an appropriate allusion to the Golden Gate, a major landmark of the two capital cities of Byzantium and Kyiv.

One of the founders of the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, Prof. Sevcenko stands among an august group of scholars as a leading expert on Byzantine and Slavic history and literature. His lengthy bibliography includes such major works as the "Life of St. Nicholas of Sion" (Brookline, Mass., 1984) and "Byzantium and the Slavs in Letters and Culture" (Cambridge and Naples, 1991).

To honor Prof. Sevcenko on the occasion of his 80th birthday, a festschrift was edited by Peter Schreiner and Olga Strakhov. The two volumes are published as Nos. 1 and 2 of Volume 10 of Paleoslavica: International Journal for the Study of Slavic Medieval Literature, History, Language and Ethnology, a publication of Harvard University's Davis Center for Russian Studies. The festschrift presents essays by over 50 scholars from Ukraine, Italy, France, Germany, Austria, Lithuania, Poland, Greece, Israel, Great Britain, Canada, Bulgaria, Russia and the United States. The essays range across a spectrum of topics from art history and Byzantine verse, to South Slavic philology, hymnography, Slavic prehistory and Ruthenian polemics - all areas that Prof. Sevcenko has investigated and continues to study with a never-flagging enthusiasm.

Many colleagues and friends attended the HURI reception, including Profs. Roman Szporluk, George Grabowicz and Michael Flier, as well as Prof. Richard Thomas, chair of the Classics department, and Don Ostrowski, research coordinator for Harvard's Division of Continuing Education and chair of the Early Slavic Seminar. Among several former students in attendance, Oleksa Bilaniuk, president of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences, spoke of the inspiration he received from Prof. Sevcenko's masterful teaching and erudition.

In his congratulatory letter on this occasion, Bohdan Kudryk, president of the Ukrainian Studies Fund in New York, noted that Prof. Sevcenko had many years ago advised the USF to "be twice as good as the competition." In President Kudryk's view, this was excellent advice, exemplified by Prof. Sevcenko himself throughout his outstanding academic career.

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