UKRAINIAN STUDIES REVIEWED AT CIUS’S MILESTONE FORTIETH ANNIVERSARY CONFERENCE
“A jewel in the Faculty of Arts”—this is how Lesley Cormack, Dean of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Alberta, described the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (CIUS) on the opening morning of the conference “Ukrainian Studies in Canada: Texts and Contexts,” held in Edmonton on 14–15 October 2016.
Over the course of two days, thirty scholars and community figures from across Canada and abroad reviewed the history of the institute and the development of Ukrainian studies as an interdisciplinary field. In five round-table sessions, they discussed the challenges and opportunities confronted by scholars in Ukrainian studies due to the changing intellectual landscape of the humanities, the corporatization of universities, and fiscal constraints. The conference at the U of A’s Lister Centre was attended on average by 125 people each day. About six hundred others viewed the presentations live online from Canada and other countries (USA, Poland, Ukraine, Germany, and others).
Susan Hamilton, Associate Vice-President (Research) of the University of Alberta, pointed out in her greetings at the start of the conference that the institute, founded in 1976, has been in existence for about a third of the U of A’s history. Conference attendees also heard opening remarks by CIUS Director Volodymyr Kravchenko and greetings from Andriy Shevchenko, Ambassador of Ukraine to Canada, and Linda Duncan, Member of Parliament for Edmonton Strathcona.
The keynote address was delivered by the Most Reverend Borys Gudziak, Bishop of the Eparchy of Saint-Volodymyr-Le-Grand de Paris and President of the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv.
Bishop Borys began his address by saluting Peter Savaryn, a key civic figure in the founding of CIUS, and acknowledging the presence of three of the institute’s directors (founding director Manoly Lupul, Zenon Kohut, and Volodymyr Kravchenko). He placed the forty years of CIUS in a larger historical context, stretching back to the nineteenth century. That was a period in which serfdom existed, he said, when most people could not read or write. It was a time when the Ukrainian language was being persecuted, and, he continued, this was a reason why the poet Taras Shevchenko became so important to Ukrainians. Bishop Borys pointed out that during the first years of the existence of the University of Alberta (founded in 1908), Ukrainians in their homeland were striving to establish a Ukrainian-language university. With so many obstacles placed on the path to normal development of the Ukrainian culture, he observed, academic institutions such as the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute (HURI) and CIUS were created as part of a longstanding desire to conduct, free from inhibition, the study of Ukraine. High standards were set by the visionary promoters of Ukrainian studies in the West—who knew numerous languages and were familiar with a range of viewpoints, the Harvard graduate noted. Bishop Borys’s presentation also included a description of the impact of CIUS in Canada and abroad, especially Ukraine.
The conference’s first round table centred on the topic “Foundations.” Moderated by Serhii Plokhy (HURI), the participants included former CIUS directors Manoly Lupul (1976–86) and Zenon Kohut (1994–2012), Paul Robert Magocsi (University of Toronto), and Frank Sysyn (CIUS), with Taras Kuzio (CIUS) as the discussant. The audience listened attentively to the panelists’ review of the conditions that led to the foundation of CIUS—Manoly Lupul referred to the “educational ladder” vision for the institute and its operation under a then-hoped-for “enlightened multiculturalism”—as well as to proposals for better representation of or building the field around certain disciplines and themes.
Lunch breaks at the conference provided an opportunity for all present to view the work of an upcoming generation of scholars. CIUS had made available awards to bring six graduate students to Edmonton from other parts of Canada, and gave them a forum to describe their research interests through a poster display in the main auditorium.
Conference-goers were also invited to visit another CIUS display on the U of A campus. In the atrium of the Rutherford North Library, publications of the CIUS Press were showcased, along with a multimedia project summary and a 125th anniversary immigration commemorative exhibit sponsored by the Kule Folklore Centre.
Following the break, a second round table focused on “New Challenges for Ukrainian Studies.” Moderated by Yaroslav Hrytsak (Ukrainian Catholic University, Lviv), panelists included Marta Bohachevsky-Chomiak (former director, Fulbright Exchange Program in Ukraine), Rory Finnin (Cambridge University), Andrii Portnov (Berlin-Brandenburg Ukraine Initiative), Mark von Hagen (Arizona State University), and Serhy Yekelchyk (University of Victoria), with David Marples (University of Alberta) as the discussant. The questions raised addressed the level of cooperation among scholars in the field, the use of social media, and the role of academics in society.
Day two of the conference began with a round table devoted to Ukrainian-Canadian studies. Moderated by Jars Balan (CIUS), the presenters comprised Natalia Khanenko-Friesen (University of Saskatchewan), Lubomyr Luciuk (Royal Military College of Canada), Andrij Makuch (CIUS), and Roman Yereniuk (University of Manitoba), with Natalie Kononenko (University of Alberta) as the discussant. A commenter from the audience suggested that this field is underdeveloped, and called for this issue to be raised at future gatherings of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress.
A fourth round table, titled “Teaching Ukrainian Studies,” included Myroslav Shkandrij (moderator; University of Manitoba), Dominique Arel (University of Ottawa), Bohdan Kordan (University of Saskatchewan), Taras Koznarsky (University of Toronto), Alla Nedashkivska (University of Alberta), and Heather Coleman (discussant; University of Alberta). Among the many themes that emerged from this session was the observation that a good number of students in the field are not of Ukrainian origin. Concern was also expressed over the closure of courses, especially language courses. Some of the speakers emphasized new courses and ways of teaching as means of attracting students.
The fifth round table, on “Community Outreach,” included Roman Yereniuk (moderator; University of Manitoba), Andrew Hladyshevsky (Ukrainian Canadian Foundation of Taras Shevchenko), Nadia Jacyk (Petro Jacyk Education Foundation), Olga Kuplowska (Canadian Foundation for Ukrainian Studies), Roman Petryshyn (University of Alberta), and Paul Grod (discussant; Ukrainian Canadian Congress). Among the questions that emerged from this session was the issue of endowments earmarked for Ukrainian studies during a trend toward the disappearance of majors in this field and decreasing funding from universities.
In his closing remarks, CIUS director Volodymyr Kravchenko declared the conference a success. In spite of many challenges, the field of Ukrainian studies is very much alive all over the world, he said (shche ne vmerly ukraїns’ki studiї), and the University of Alberta continues to be a leader in the field. Kravchenko confirmed CIUS’s commitments to both Ukrainian and Ukrainian-Canadian studies. He emphasized that new challenges compel CIUS to rethink its professional and cultural profile, and to develop new strategies for the future. The institute thus intends to focus more on studying modern and contemporary Ukraine. The foundations for this approach, he said, have already been laid in the institute’s successful existing programs in Edmonton (Contemporary Ukraine Studies Program), Toronto (Holodomor Research and Education Consortium), Lviv (Petro Jacyk Program for the Study of Modern Ukrainian History and Society, along with the Ukraïna moderna scholarly journal), and Kharkiv (Kowalsky Program for the Study of Eastern Ukraine).
Kravchenko also pointed out that CIUS has established new post-doctoral fellowships to support contemporary Ukraine and Ukrainian-Canadian studies. New initiatives like the Annual Award in Ukrainian Studies as well as the online East/West: Journal of Ukrainian Studies, he added, also reflected the institute’s changing priorities. The CIUS director went on to observe that while the institute was an integral part of the University of Alberta, he considered it important to maintain close relations with the Ukrainian community in Canada. He stressed that no single endowment, no money invested in the institute, no matter how small or big the amount, has been used for purposes other than Ukrainian and Ukrainian-Canadian studies. Kravchenko reiterated that CIUS’s fundamental mandate was research and publishing. Yet now the time was ripe, he asserted, for the institute to start thinking about teaching Ukrainian courses at the university level.
The conference program upheld the supporting role of the community in CIUS operations, with gratitude expressed to the listed conference sponsors, which included—in addition to the university’s Faculty of Arts and the Kule Institute for Advanced Study—local organizations and many individuals. Among the attendees at the conference was Dr. Jeanette Bayduza, whose recent generous gift to CIUS made possible one of the fellowships to which Kravchenko referred (the inaugural Bayduza Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship for the Study of Modern and Contemporary Ukraine).
Ambassador Shevchenko was the featured speaker at the banquet that followed the conference. He emphasized the importance of the work that institutions such as CIUS have done for the development of Ukrainian identity. He also echoed a sentiment expressed during the conference that the study of Ukrainian problems helped in the understanding of larger global issues. Dean Lesley Cormack complemented that view by noting that social scientists were better equipped to resolve the problems of the world than others. Greetings were also brought by representatives of the federal and provincial governments—Member of Parliament Randy Boissonnault and Alberta Minister of Economic Development and Trade Deron Bilous, respectively. The 40th anniversary of CIUS happens to fall on a year of other major anniversaries: 125 years of Ukrainians in Canada, 25 years of Ukraine’s independence, and 150 years since the birth of historian and civic leader Mykhailo Hrushevsky. In conjunction with the latter, Frank Sysyn presented a recently published volume of Hrushevsky’s History of Ukraine-Rus' to Nadia Jacyk, whose father inaugurated the multi-volume translation project.
In honour of the occasion, and replacing its regular annual Newsletter publication for this year, CIUS published the full-colour commemorative overview CIUS: Forty Years of Excellence. This beautifully designed 56-page “ruby jubilee” publication is available in hard copy as well as online. A video of the CIUS 40th Anniversary Conference proceedings will also be posted online, with texts and transcriptions to be added at a later date. Please visit us at www.cius.ca.
