Folklore researcher from Lviv journeys to University of Alberta

EDMONTON - Oksana Lutsko, a graduate student at the Ivan Franko University of Lviv, visited Edmonton this April to expand her knowledge of Canadian Ukrainian folklore and the Ukrainian community in Edmonton. Sponsored as a visiting researcher by the Huculak Chair of Ukrainian Culture and Ethnography, she collected information in the Bohdan Medwidsky Ukrainian Folklore Archives at the University of Alberta, presented a seminar for graduate students, and visited many community institutions and events.

One of the highlights of her journey was an interview with sisters Anna Zwozdesky and Lena Gulutsan, who know many songs from their parents' Bukovynian villages a century ago, as well as many Ukrainian songs popular in more recent times.

Ms. Lutsko also enjoyed her visit to a lively class of Ukrainian bilingual students at Austin O'Brien High School. She showed a DVD about her native Lviv, spoke of Ukrainian Easter customs, danced "Podolianochka" with the class, and asked about the traditions they know from their homes.

Ms. Lutsko is one of the first young Ukrainian folklorists in Ukraine researching Ukrainian folklore in Canada. Folkloric traditions in the diaspora were not researched in Soviet Ukraine. However, such study can reveal a great deal about the Ukrainian spirit worldwide in the past and in the present.

"I am very grateful to the faculty and staff of the Ukrainian Folklore Center for giving me this opportunity," she stated. The Huculak Chair of Ukrainian Culture and Ethnography, the Kuryliw Family Scholarship Fund and the Kule Chair in Ukrainian Ethnography, all operating within the Ukrainian Folklore Center, have long cooperated with scholars in Ukraine and have plans to expand such international activities.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, June 4, 2006, No. 23, Vol. LXXIV

| Home Page |