'Voices of Ukraine' Offered This Semester

Ilya Repin

"Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks," 1891.

This spring, students interested in learning about Ukraine's history through fiction and non-fiction have an opportunity to attend a seminar, RUSS 4113/RUSS 5113, which is titled "Voices of Ukraine." The course will explore the multilingual, multidenominational and multinational aspects of Ukrainian literature during the last 200 years. The seminar encompasses the works of writers who were born in Ukraine, lived there and wrote in the Ukrainian, Russian, Yiddish and Hebrew languages.

The seminar's goal will be to show how linguistically diverse Ukraine's literary tradition is and how the topics of war, violence, memory and displacement have prevailed from the 19th century to the present. The seminar examines themes of ethnic violence, blood libel accusations, pogroms, revolution, Civil War, WWI, the Holodomor, WWII, the Chernobyl nuclear disaster and the current war. The readings include known works by Nikolai Gogol, Taras Shevchenko, Lesia Ukrainka, Ivan Franko and Isaac Babel, as well as lesser known works such as Der Nister's Regrowth: Seven Tales of Jewish Life Before, During, and After Nazi Occupation (Vidervuks), excerpts from Svetlana Alexievich's documentary work Voices from Chernobyl and Serhiy Zhadan's novel on the current war, called Orphanage.  

This seminar counts towards the Russian studies minor and Jewish studies.

The seminar meets Tuesdays and Thursdays from 2-3:15 p.m. in Champions Hall 411. 

Learn about the Russian studies minor. Learn more about the Jewish studies minor.

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