NOTES ON PEOPLE: Sisters at Columbia earn grad degrees (06/26/05)

NOTES ON PEOPLE

Sisters at Columbia earn grad degrees

NEW YORK - Adriana and Zenia Helbig have received Ph.D. and M.A. degrees respectively, from Columbia University. Both graduates of St. John's Ukrainian Catholic School in Newark, N.J., Mount St. Mary Academy in Watchung, N.J., and Drew University in Madison, N.J., the sisters stood side by side at Columbia University's 251st graduation ceremonies last month.

Adriana Helbig earned a Ph.D. in ethnomusicology, having received an M.A. and an M.Phil. in this subject in 1999 and 2001. As a graduate student at Columbia University, Adriana was a faculty fellow and taught as a music humanities instructor within Columbia University's undergraduate Core Curriculum.

Adriana's doctoral research is based on anthropological fieldwork conducted among Roma (Gypsy) communities in Ukraine between 1999 and 2004. Her dissertation, titled " 'Play for me, Old Gypsy': Music as Political Resource in the Roma Rights Movement in Ukraine," analyzes the influences of Western development aid on Roma cultural production in Ukraine.

Her dissertation is the first anthropological study on Roma in Ukraine conducted by a scholar from the United States and was researched with the aid of grants from Columbia University and the Fulbright Program (2001-2002).

Before she begins to teach music history at Fordham University in the fall, Dr. Helbig will be "komendantka" of the older girls' Plast camp in East Chatham, N.Y. this summer.

Zenia Helbig received an M.A. from Columbia University's department of Middle Eastern and Asian languages and cultures. Building on her undergraduate interest in comparative religions, Zenia's master's thesis analyzes the relationship between science and religion in the medieval Islamic world. Last spring Zenia presented a paper titled "Islamic Fundamentalism: A Fight for Mythos" at the Hikmat Motahari Conference in Tehran, Iran sponsored by the Islamic Republic of Iran, Broadcasting.

For the upcoming fall semester, Zenia has been awarded a faculty fellowship to continue her doctoral studies in comparative scripture, interpretation and practice in the department of religious studies at the University of Virginia. In addition, Zenia has also been awarded the United States government-funded Foreign Language Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowship through the University of Virginia's South Asian Studies Department.

Prior to beginning her doctoral studies, Zenia will spend the summer at the Henry Martyn Institute in Hyderabad, India, studying advanced Persian on a Summer FLAS Fellowship.

A former teacher in the Religion Department at Mount St. Mary Academy, Zenia was the recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Fellowship for the study of Arabic literature at the University of Pennsylvania in 2001 and the Harriet Gilbert Davis Scholarship awarded by Drew University to an outstanding religion major in 1997-1998.

Adriana and Zenia are the daughters of Marijka and the late Omelan Helbig. Active in New Jersey's Ukrainian community, they are graduates of the Ukrainian Music Institute in Newark, N.J., class of Taissa Bohdanska. Zenia performs with the Syzokryli Ukrainian Dance Company, while Adriana works as a Plast counselor in Whippany, N.J.

Active participants in Ukraine's recent Orange Revolution, the sisters served as UCCA election observers in Uzhhorod, Zakarpattia, during the October 31, 2004, and November 21, 2004, rounds of voting and took part in the protests on Kyiv's Independence Square (maidan) that led to the repeat vote in Ukraine's 2004 presidential election.

Adriana and Zenia are members of Branch 25 of the Ukrainian National Association.

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