Scholars gather in Winnipeg for conferences (07/18/04)

Scholars gather in Winnipeg for conferences

WINNIPEG - The University of Manitoba hosted the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences on May 29-June 6, bringing more than 70 academic organizations, 6,000 professors and scores of visitors from the general public to the campus.

On Saturday, May 29, the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences in Canada (UVAN), with the assistance of the Center for Ukrainian Canadian Studies, held its one-day conference at St. Andrew's College. The conference met with unprecedented success as there were a total of some 80 participants.

It featured a varied program which included the presentation of academic papers by specialists from the universities of Manitoba, Alberta and Toronto on topics ranging from Ukrainian Canadiana, Ukrainian culture and contemporary Ukraine, to a showing of a rare archival film "The Barbarian and the Lady" (also known as "Taras Bulba") and a roundtable discussion pertaining to Ukrainian Canadian archives and museums (Andriy Makuch, Jars Balan and Dr. Shelley Sweeney). Among the presenters were Dr. Alexandra Pawlowsky, Dr. Denis Hlynka, Dr. Robert Klymasz, Geraldine Russin, Mykola Soroka, Dr. Valerii Polkovsky, Dr. George Chuchman and Pablo Markin.

The interest generated by this conference was evident as Dr. Pawlowsky's paper was highlighted in a Winnipeg Free Press article on the day preceding the conference as a presentation of particular interest and by the fact that Dr. Pawlowsky's and Dr. Hlynka's papers were earmarked by the media for possible Canada-wide coverage.

Dr. Pawlowsky's paper, "Baba's language: The language of Ukrainian Canadiana," dealt with the Ukrainian Canadian variant of the Ukrainian spoken language that developed among the Ukrainian Canadians over their 100 plus years of domicile in Canada.

Dr. Hlynka's paper, "The Mazepa legend in America," traced the evolution of the legend in North American popular culture. This paper was of particular interest because it presented heretofore little known information about the legend and how pervasive it was in North America, particularly the American West of the 19th and 20th centuries, and noted that it laid the foundation for the development of the American burlesque theatre.

The conference took a year of planning and was coordinated by Drs. Pawlowsky and Hlynka and Dr. Roman Yereniuk, all members of UVAN, but also part of the academic personnel of the Center for Ukrainian Canadian Studies.

All sessions took place at St. Andrew's College, which houses the Center for Ukrainian Canadian Studies.

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