Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute to welcome 12 post-doctoral scholars (10/15/06)

Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute to welcome 12 post-doctoral scholars

by Peter T. Woloschuk

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - The Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute's (HURI's) director, Oleksandr Potebnja Professor of Ukrainian Philology Michael S. Flier has announced that 12 international post-doctoral scholars will be doing research at HURI during this academic year.

Eleven of the research fellows have received Eugene and Daymel Shklar Research Fellowships and one has been awarded a Fulbright Fellowship. The 12 come from the United States, Ukraine, Finland, Germany, Great Britain and Russia.

In making the announcement Prof. Flier said, "When I joined the institute in 1991, I became engaged in a long-standing dialogue with my colleagues about the desirability of establishing a fellowship program that would permit us to bring promising younger scholars in Ukrainian studies to Harvard to use our libraries, consult with our scholars, and exchange ideas on their work and the work of others with colleagues, students and the larger Ukrainian community. Ten years later, Eugene and Daymel Shklar made that dream possible by underwriting the Shklar Fellowship Program. The results of their generosity have been nothing short of spectacular."

"The fellows come from a wide variety of countries in Eastern and Western Europe, Asia, and North America," Prof. Flier pointed out. "The presence each semester of some five to seven young post-doctoral fellows from a variety of disciplines, including history, political science, literature, linguistics and art, has energized the institute, creating an atmosphere of excitement and discovery that has had a positive impact on the work of the fellows themselves and all those scholars at HURI who have come into contact with them. They have benefited considerably from exposure to different ways of analyzing the same phenomena. Armed with new knowledge of fact and approach, these scholars have returned to their home bases and in turn have invigorated scholarly interchange there."

"We at HURI are delighted with the success of the Shklar Fellows Program and look forward to working with another group of dynamic young scholars in Ukrainian studies again this year," Prof. Flier concluded.

The twelve post-doctoral fellows are:

Konstantin Akinsha, a correspondent for ARTnews magazine in Budapest, Hungary. Mr. Akinsha earned his candidate of sciences degree in 1990 in art history. He will spend four months at Harvard (February-May 2007) working on the topic "The Bohdan and Varvara Khanenko Museum: The Fate of the Dispersed Collection." He will study the history of one of the most significant private collections of West European art ever assembled in Ukraine and will trace the dispersal and destruction of that collection from the Bolshevik Revolution through the end of World War II.
Jessica Allina-Pisano, assistant professor in the department of political science at Colgate University, who earned her Ph.D. in political science in 2003 from Yale University. During her four months at Harvard (September-December 2006), Dr. Allina-Pisano will research the topic "The Last Barbed Wire Fence in Europe: State Power and Economy in a Divided Village of Zakarpattia, 1945-2005." She will study how "policies intended primarily to secure state sovereignty reached beyond political life to drive or limit economic opportunities" by looking at the effects of state control on the access of rural peoples to the means of capital reproduction in two villages, Kisszelmenc and Nagyszelmenc, located next to each other but separated by the Ukraine-European Union border.
Tarik C. Amar, who received his Ph.D. in history from Princeton University in 2006. Dr. Amar will spend four months at Harvard (February-May 2007) working on the topic "The Making of Soviet Lviv, 1939 to 1963." His study will address the question of the making of a distinct Soviet western Ukrainian identity by looking at how a Soviet Ukrainian Lviv was fashioned out of the prewar Polish-dominated and multi-ethnic city.
Mark Andryczyk, an instructor in contemporary Ukrainian literature at Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv, who holds a Ph.D. (2005) in Ukrainian literature from the University of Toronto. Dr. Andryczyk will spend four months at Harvard (September-December) conducting research on "A Community of Others: The Identity of the Ukrainian Intellectual in Post-Soviet Ukrainian Prose." Dr. Andryczyk will study the depiction of the Ukrainian intellectual throughout the history of modern Ukrainian literature. As part of his work, he will look at the re-engagement of the Ukrainian intellectual in society during the Orange Revolution, the emergence of a new generation of writers and the recent new scholarship that has been published.
Elvis Beytullayev, a junior research fellow at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, who earned a Ph.D. in international studies at the University of Cambridge in 2006. Dr. Beytullayev will spend four months at Harvard (September-December) working on the topic "The Crimean Political Scene in the Post-Soviet Era and Its Implications for Ukraine's Relations with Turkey and Russia." Dr. Beytullayev will examine how domestic Crimean politics have affected relations between Ukraine and Russia since Ukraine's independence from the Soviet Union.
Jerzy Macków, a professor of comparative government at the University of Regensburg. Dr. Macków earned his doctorate in 1992 at the University of Hamburg, followed by his Habilitation in 1998 at the Armed Forces University in Hamburg. He will spend four months (September-December) at Harvard researching the topic "Has the Orange Revolution Changed the Ukrainian Political System? The Democratization of Post-Communist Authoritarianism." His work will investigate whether the Orange Revolution brought about significant democratization to the authoritarianism that has been characteristic of Ukraine's government since independence. In doing so, he will focus on two questions: 1) whether in the wake of the Orange Revolution new aspects of national identity emerged that have facilitated the implementation of a democratic reform agenda in Ukraine; and 2) whether the political elite has altered its attitude to law and politics regarding the opposition in order to create a functioning constitutional state.
Vladimir Melamed, who completed his graduate studies in modern East-Central European history at the Ukrainian Studies Institute, National Academy of Ukraine, Lviv, in 1995. Currently he is an independent scholar based in California and is a consultant for the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust. He will spend four months at Harvard (September-December) studying "Ukrainian-Jewish Relations in Interwar Eastern Galicia, 1918-1939: Ukrainian Perspective, Jewish Perspective." Mr. Melamed plans to investigate a number of aspects of Ukrainian-Jewish relations within the context of the interwar Polish state. The topics include the Lviv pogrom of November 1918; the Jewish-Polish compromise of 1925; anti-Semitism in Polish institutions of higher learning and similar topics, and the reaction to these events within Ukrainian and Jewish societies in accordance with their perceptions, stereotypes and past experience.
Tatiana Oparina, associate professor in history at Novosibirsk Pedagogical University, where she has been on the faculty for the last 15 years. Ms. Oparina will spend four months at Harvard (February-June 2007) working on "Russian-Ukrainian Ecclesiastical Contacts and the Problem of the 'True Faith' from the End of the Time of Troubles (1613) to the Treaty of Pereiaslav (1654)." The project will investigate the views of the Moscow Patriarchate on Kyiv-style piety, Kyivan theology, the problem of "heresy" in Ukrainian texts, and divergences in canon law practices in a period when Muscovy was becoming more closely familiar with Ukrainian religious practices and falling under their influence.
Johannes Remy, lecturer in Russian and East European Studies at the Renvall Institute for Area and Cultural Studies at the University of Helsinki, who received his Ph.D. in history in 2000 from the same institution. Dr. Remy will come to Harvard for four months (February-May 2007) to work on the topic "Ukrainian Nationalism and Russia from the 1840s to the 1870s" which will comprise two major parts: first, the formation of Ukrainian national mythology; second, the political programs of Ukrainian activists, their positions on the Polish insurrection (1863-1864) and the government's policies in relation to the Ukrainian movement.
Olena Rusina, a senior research associate at the Medieval History Department of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine in Kyiv, who received her candidate of sciences degree from the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv in 1991. The recipient of a fellowship funded by Dr. Jaroslav and Nadia Mihaychuk in 2003, Ms. Rusina is currently at HURI as a Fulbright Scholar. She will spend her time researching "Trends and Contexts in Pre-Modern Pseudo-History in Post-Soviet Ukraine." Ms. Rusina hopes to fill a gap in Ukrainian scholarship by writing a book under the working title "Atlantis in the Heart of Europe: New Visions of Ukrainian Past."
Steven Seegel, who earned his Ph.D. in history in 2005 at Brown University and for the past year has held the position of lecturer at the University of Tennessee. Dr. Seegel will come to Harvard for four months (February-May 2007) to research the topic "Cartography and the Representation of Modern Ukraine." His work looks at the strategic use of the discourse of historical/geographic science and racial/ethnolinguistic categorization to represent a modern Ukraine between the Russian and Habsburg empires, as well as the lands of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
Ihor Zhuk, the director of the Leopolis Project and the curator of the Collection of Visual Materials at Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv. He received his candidate of sciences degree in art history in 1989 from the Moscow School of Industrial and Applied Art. A longtime colleague of HURI, Mr. Zhuk will return to the institute for four months (February-May 2007) to conduct further work on the Leopolis Project. During his stay at Harvard, he will draw on material housed at Harvard to assemble blocks of textual and visual data, and compile new e-documents for this complex hypertext and visual resource of valuable art objects and historically significant architecture found in Ukraine and dating from the Neolithic period to the present. Mr. Zhuk's work at Harvard will result in a thoroughly elaborated art history database of over 2,500 objects to be used as a teaching and research tool by mid-2007.

The Eugene and Daymel Shklar Research Fellowships in Ukrainian Studies bring distinguished scholars from around the world to the Ukrainian Research Institute for research on important projects concerning Ukrainian history, politics, literature, linguistics and culture.

Established in 2001, the Shklar Fellowships have created exciting scholarship and unprecedented research opportunities in Ukrainian studies in the United States. Since their inception, two IBEX Fellowships, three Fulbright Fellowships, eight HURI Fellowships and 46 Shklar Fellowships have been awarded. In addition to conducting research, each fellow is required to present a lecture as part of HURI's weekly "Seminars in Ukrainian Studies."

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Founded in June 1973, the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute serves as a focal point for graduate and undergraduate students, fellows and associates pursuing research in Ukrainian language, literature and history, as well as in anthropology, archaeology, art history, economics, political science, sociology, theology and other disciplines. It also organizes symposia and conferences on a variety of related topics.

Together with the Harvard University Library, its library has one of the largest collections of Ukrainian materials in the West. The institute's library contains books, maps, reference materials, periodicals, and other basic resources available for use at the Institute.

The institute's publication office publishes the Harvard Ukrainian Studies journal (founded in 1977) as well as a series of book publications, including the Harvard Series in Ukrainian Studies, the Harvard Library of Early Ukrainian Literature and Harvard Papers in Ukrainian Studies. A bulletin, Perspectives on Contemporary Ukraine, is also available.

HURI forms a vital component of Harvard University's vibrant international studies community and is an integral part of Harvard's National Resource Center for Russian, East European and Central Asian Studies. It also works closely with the Center for European Studies, the Davis Center for Russian Studies the Harvard Institute for International Development, the Center for Jewish Studies and a wide range of other institutes, centers, departments, schools, and faculties with international programs.

The institute's mission includes the advancement of knowledge about Ukraine in the United States through research and teaching of the highest quality. This mission was shaped by HURI's founder, Omeljan Pritsak, the first Mykhailo S. Hrushevskyi Professor of Ukrainian History and a scholar of broad scope and erudition, who served as the institute's first director until his retirement in 1989, and by another Harvard scholar of international distinction, Ihor Sevcenko, Dumbarton Oaks Professor of Byzantine Literature and History.

With Ukraine's independence, the institute's mission has broadened to include contemporary political, social and economic issues. HURI also seeks to foster the study of the diverse religious and ethnic groups that make their home in Ukraine, to act as a bridge between Ukrainian studies and the study of Russia, Poland, Turkey, Belarus and Moldova, and to develop close and supportive relations with Ukraine's emerging cultural and academic institutions.

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