Shevchenko Scientific Society

Evening of Ukrainian Piano Trios
2025-12-13 17:00 - 19:00 (America/New_York)
Program:
Mykhailo Verbytsky / Martin Kennedy – Ukrainian National Anthem, arranged for Piano Trio
Iryna Alexiychuk – Signs on the Water for Piano Trio
Borys Liatoshynsky – Piano Trio no. 1, op. 7

Lara St. John, violin
After performing for decades around the globe as a “high-powered soloist” (The New York Times), Canadian-born violinist Lara St. John has chosen to dispense with a conventional biography, preferring instead to offer the following personal statement: “I began playing the violin when I was two years old and have continued to do so ever since. But even though my career has had many high points and offered real artistic satisfaction, I cannot honestly say I would do it all over again. It has required horrific sacrifices – including my experiences with child sexual abuse and being treated as little more than a commodity by a long list of presenters, administrators and so-called educators. “Rampant misogyny continues to be depressingly commonplace in the world of classical music, incredibly, even as we fumble our way toward the middle of the 21st century. This has drained away a lot of the sheer joy of making music for me. “At the same time, I have made some wonderful friends in this business. I will always have faith in them and in the profound power of music to inspire and to heal. I will never stop being amazed by the possibility within a simple instrument like the violin. But my desire to use it as a tool for making a living has fallen off to almost nothing.” Lara now only performs for causes she cares about, like elevating Ukrainian music. Lara has performed as a soloist with most of the world’s major orchestras. She owns her own recording label, Ancalagon, which she founded in 1999. In 2022, she released she/her/hers, her label’s 16th album, featuring solo violin works by women. After going public with her own experience of being raped by her professor at the Curtis Institute of Music when she was 14 years old, Lara heard from many other survivors of abuse at the hands of music teachers, conductors and colleagues, with the complicity of their respective institutions. She has now finished Dear Lara, a documentary film on this subject, premiering early 2026. In 2021 Lara was invested with the Order of Canada, her country’s highest honor. She is a knight of Burgundy and a reptile enthusiast. She owns and performs on a 1779 Guadagnini, a 2011 David Wiebe and a 2024 Isabelle Wilbaux.
Valeriya Sholokhova, cello
Ukrainian-American cellist Valeriya Sholokhova is a versatile soloist and chamber musician based in New York City. She has performed on renowned stages such as Carnegie Hall, Wigmore Hall, The Kennedy Center, and Saturday Night Live, and has toured extensively through Europe and the United States. Valeriya is a co-founder of Trio Fadolin, which has received Chamber Music America’s Ensemble Forward Grant and recorded an album of commissioned works. As a soloist, Valeriya performed the U.S. premiere of Peteris Vasks’ Cello Concerto No. 2 in Boston as well as Camille Pepin’s double concerto, “The Sound of Trees” at the Kennedy Center. A founder of the Ukrainian Music Initiative, Valeriya actively champions the works of Ukrainian composers through recitals, fundraisers, and her ongoing involvement with the Ukrainian Contemporary Music Festival. A laureate of international competitions, Valeriya holds principal positions with The New Orchestra of Washington, The Refugee Orchestra Project, and The Washington Heights Chamber Orchestra. A full-scholarship graduate of the Juilliard School and the Manhattan School of Music, she is also dedicated to community outreach through Sing for Hope.
Pavlo Gintov, piano
Pianist Pavlo Gintov has been described as “a poet of the keyboard” by Marty Lash of the Illinois Entertainer, a “musical storyteller” by the Japanese publication Shikoku News, and “a fantastic pianist and extraordinary artist” by Jerry Dubins of the Fanfare Magazine. Following his debut at the Kyiv Philharmonic Hall at the age of 12, when he performed Mozart Concerto in D minor K 466 with Kyiv Chamber Orchestra under the baton of Roman Kofman, Pavlo has been touring throughout Europe, Asia, Africa, South America and the United States, appearing at such stages as Carnegie Hall in New York, Berlin Philharmonic Hall, Teatro Verdi Nationale in Milan, the Great Hall of Moscow Conservatory and Kioi Hall in Tokyo. He has been a soloist with Tokyo Royal Chamber Orchestra, the National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine, Shizuoka Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra Ensemble Kanazawa, the National Symphony Orchestra of the Dominican Republic, and Manhattan Chamber Orchestra under such conductors as Michiyoshi Inoue, Victor Yampolsky, Thomas Sanderling, Volodymyr Sirenko, and Tomomi Nishimoto. A passionate advocate for Ukrainian music, Pavlo is a founding member of the Ukrainian Music Initiative and a co-founder of the Ukrainian Music Competition that takes place annually in New York City. He holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the Manhattan School of Music, where he studied with Nina Svetlanova.
Registration is required. Suggested donation is $20

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Webinar. (Un)solved Problems of Modern Mathematics
2025-12-09 12:00 - 13:30
Olena Karlova holds a Doctor of Sciences degree in Geometry and Topology (Lviv National University, 2017). She is a Professor at the Department of Mathematical Analysis of Yuriy Fedkovych Chernivtsi National University (Chernivtsi, Ukraine) and a Professor at the Department of Mathematics of Jan Kochanowski University (Kielce, Poland). She is the author of more than 80 scientific papers published in international mathematical journals. She has been an invited speaker at international conferences and symposia in the Czech Republic, France, Italy, and Poland, and has received several distinctions, including the Best Young Mathematician of Ukraine Award (2016) from the Shevchenko Scientific Society and the Ukraine–USA Foundation, the Andrew Bruckner Award (2023) for contributions to Real Analysis, and the Talents for Ukraine Grant (2023) from the Kyiv School of Economics Foundation. As the founder of the Mathematical Workshop community in Chernivtsi and the MiniMudryk mathematics club for gifted pupils, she is deeply engaged in fostering young mathematical talent, cultivating a research culture among youth, and strengthening ties between academic institutions. Since 2022, she has served as the President of the Chernivtsi Mathematical Society.
Moderator: Prof. Rostyslav Grigorchuk (Texas A&M University)

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The Taste of a Nation: The Battle over Ukrainian Cuisine in the Twentieth Century
2025-12-06 17:00 - 19:00
СМАК НАЦІЇ: БОРОТЬБА ЗА КУЛЬТУРУ УКРАЇНСЬКОЇ КУХНІ У ХХ СТОЛІТТІ
У 2022 році Україна отримала значний розголос коли культуру приготування борщу внесли до списку нематеріальної спадщини ЮНЕСКО. Ейфорія що виникла, породила чимало шкідливих історичних міфів та призвела до значної політизації питання. Сьогодні, це створює ризики у популяризації знань про цю важливу частину національної ідентичності. Об’єктивні, науково перевірені знання про роль та місце української кухні в частині ідеологічного, політичного та національного опору нації у ХХ столітті допоможуть уникнути пастки відомої під терміном “gastronativism”. Доповідь доктора історичних наук Ігоря Лиля про зв’язок між смаком, ідентичністю та баченням майбутнього.
Доктор Ігор Лильо – історик і антрополог зі Львова, спеціаліст з європейської історії та культурі. Він отримав ступінь доктора філософії в Львівському національному університеті імені Івана Франка і викладав у кількох європейських університетах. Зараз він є запрошеним професором на факультетах слов’янських, німецьких та євразійських студій та історії в Університеті Канзасу. Навесні 2024 року викладав для студентів бакалаврату курси Understanding Russia and Eastern Europe та історії України. Автор і співавтор кількох популярних книг з історії української кухні. Як співавтор книги «Україна: їжа та історія» (Київ, 2021), отримав престижну премію Gourmand World Cookbook Award в Іспанії.

THE TASTE OF A NATION: THE BATTLE OVER UKRAINIAN CUISINE IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
In 2022, Ukraine drew worldwide attention when the cultural tradition of preparing borscht was added to UNESCO’s list of Intangible Cultural Heritage. Yet, alongside the celebration came new historical myths and a wave of politicization that now risk distorting our understanding of this critical part of national identity. How can food reflect not only culture but also history, politics, and even national resistance? And how can we avoid falling into the trap of what some call “gastronativism”?
In this talk, historian Dr. Ihor Lylo will explore the fascinating connections between taste, identity, and visions of the future, showing how Ukrainian cuisine has become more than nourishment, emerging instead as a powerful language of survival and self-expression..

Dr. Ihor Lylo is a historian and anthropologist from Lviv, specializing in European history and culture. He earned a Ph.D. from Ivan Franko National University in Lviv and has taught at several European universities. He is currently a visiting professor in the Departments of Slavic, German, and Eurasian Studies and History at the University of Kansas. In Spring 2024, he taught undergraduate courses on Understanding Russia and Eastern Europe and the history of Ukraine. He is also the author and co-author of several widely read books on the history of Ukrainian cuisine. As co-author of Ukraine: Food and History (Kyiv, 2021), he received the prestigious Gourmand World Cookbook Award in Spain.

The lecture will be delivered in Ukrainian.
Discussion will take place in Ukrainian and English.

Admission to this event is free.
Registration is required. Suggested donation is $20

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Online webinar: New Perspectives on the Holodomor
2025-11-15 17:00 - 18:30
Iryna Skubii, ‘Our Village Was Also Helped by Nature’: Remembering Survival in the Holodomor
Iryna Skubii is the inaugural Mykola Zerov Fellow in Ukrainian Studies at the University of Melbourne. She holds a PhD from Queen’s University, Kingston (Canada) and a Candidate of Science Degree from V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University (Ukraine). Dr. Skubii is the author of Trade in Kharkiv in the Years of NEP: Economy and Everyday Life (1921–1929) (2017). Her article on food waste and survival practices during the Soviet famines in Ukraine received the Best Article Prize from the American Association for Ukrainian Studies. Her current research explores the global history of sunflowers in Ukraine, and she is preparing book manuscripts on survival, environment, and material culture during the Soviet famines, as well as on the history of consumption in early Soviet Ukraine.
John Vsetecka, “The Holodomor as Current History: Russian Disinformation about the Holodomor as part of its Historical War against Ukraine”
John Vsetecka is Assistant Professor of History at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, FL. He is a scholar of East European and Soviet history, with a specific interest in the history of Ukraine. His research and writing focus on the history of famine, mass violence, and transitional justice. Dr. Vsetecka is finishing his first book, entitled, In the Wake of Hunger: Confronting the Legacies of the 1932-1933 Famine (Holodomor) in Soviet Ukraine during the 1930s. He is also a co-editor (with Daria Mattingly) of The Holodomor in Global Perspective: How the Famine in Ukraine Shaped the World (ibidem-Verlag/Columbia University Press), which will be published in late October 2025. He is also the founder of H-Ukraine (part of the larger H-Net platform), which shares and promotes academic and scholarly content related to the study of Ukraine.
Daria Mattingly, “Stalin’s Activists: Rank-and-File Perpetrators of the Holodomor”
Daria Mattingly is a historian of the Soviet Union and modern Ukraine and a Lecturer at the University of Chichester. Her research focuses on the Holodomor, collectivization, and the social history of violence, with particular attention to rank-and-file perpetrators and memory. She is completing a monograph, Stalin’s Activists: The Rank-and-File Perpetrators of the Holodomor and together with John Vsetecka co-edited the volume The Holodomor in Global Perspective. Dr. Mattingly’s work has appeared in leading journals and edited volumes, and she frequently contributes public-facing scholarship on Ukrainian history and its contemporary resonances.

Moderator Dr. Catherine Wanner (Pennsylvania State University/Shevchenko Scientific Society)
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Rostyslav Konta: Online Webinar. How Ethnology Saved a Nation: The History of the Shevchenko Scientific Society Between Science and Politics
2025-11-04 12:00 - 13:30
Доповідь присвячено аналізу ролі Наукового Товариства імені Шевченка в розвитку етнологічної науки в Україні та її значенню для збереження національної ідентичності в умовах складних політичних обставин.
Ростислав Конта народився 1977 р. на Чернігівщині. 1999 р. закінчив історичний факультет
Київського національного університету імені Тараса Шевченка. В 2004 р. захистив кандидатську дисертацію на тему: «Ідея державотворення в суспільно-політичному житті України в першій половині ХІХ століття: історіографія проблеми» та закінчив аспірантуру вказаного навчального закладу. В 2003-2004 рр. працював асистентом кафедри філософських та соціальних наук Київського національного торговельно-економічного університету. 2006-2008 рр. – доцент кафедри філософії та гуманітарних дисциплін Українського державного університету економіки та фінансів. З 2007 р. асистент, 2008 р. доцент, а з 2018 р. професор кафедри етнології та краєзнавства Київського національного університету імені Тараса Шевченка. Автор близько 140 праць. Наукові інтереси: історіографія національної ідеї в Україні в ХІХ столітті; дослідження науково-організаційної етнологічної діяльності в Науковому Товаристві імені Шевченка у Львові (1892-1940 рр.).
Модератор: Віталій Чернецький, Президент НТШ-А

Реєстрація

The lecture will analyze the role of the Shevchenko Scientific Society in the development of ethnological scholarship in Ukraine and its importance for preserving national identity amid complex political circumstances.
Rostyslav Konta was born in 1977 in the Chernihiv region. He graduated in 1999 from the Faculty of History at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv. In 2004, he defended his Ph.D. dissertation, “The Idea of State-Building in the Socio-Political Life of Ukraine in the First Half of the 19th Century: Historiography of the Problem,” and completed his postgraduate studies at the same institution. From 2003 to 2004, Konta worked as an assistant at the Department of Philosophy and Social Sciences at Kyiv National University of Trade and Economics. From 2006 to 2008, he served as an associate professor in the Department of Philosophy and Humanities at the Ukrainian State University of Economics and Finance. Since 2007, he has been affiliated with the Department of Ethnology and Local History at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv – first as an assistant (2007), then as an associate professor (2008), and since 2018 as a full professor. Konta is the author of about 140 publications. His research interests include the historiography of the national idea in 19th-century Ukraine and the organization of the ethnological scholarly activities of the Shevchenko Scientific Society in Lviv (1892–1940).

Moderator: Vitaly Chernetsky, President of the Shevchenko Scientific Society in the US (NTSh-A)

Our Life Behind Barbed Wire: Photography, Poetry, and Song from Ukraine’s Shadows
2025-11-01 18:00 - 20:30
In partnership with

The Shevchenko Scientific Society gallery will host an evening of scholarship and performance centered on the experiences of Ukrainian forced laborers (Ostarbeiters) in Nazi Germany.

Schedule
6:00 pm Lecture by Alex Averbuch and opening of the Ostarbeiter photography exhibit «Our Life Behind Barbed Wire”
7:00 pm Musico-poetic performance with poet Alex Averbuch, translators Oksana Maksymchuk & Max Rosochinsky, and composer-vocalist Olga Zaitseva-Herz (part of the Ukrainian Cultural Festival by Razom for Ukraine)
The public lecture by Alex Averbuch will open an exhibition dedicated to the photography and correspondence of Ukrainian Ostarbeiters who were displaced to Nazi Germany during World War II. The show brings together rare images and personal letters that record daily life, coercion, and resilience. The materials trace intimate struggles, including young women’s pregnancies in captivity, secret marriages, and clandestine efforts to send forbidden news home, as well as acts of resistance and survival under totalitarian rule.
The exhibition will remain on view through January 1, 2026.
Following the talk at 7:00 pm, guests are invited to view the exhibition and attend an immersive musico-poetic program by Averbuch and Zaitseva-Herz. Blending poetry, voice, and sound, it brings forward often-silenced histories, from deported Ostarbeiters and victims of the Holocaust to those suffering under Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine. Staged within the exhibit space itself, the performance resonates with Ukraine’s historical “shadows,” enveloping the audience in poetry, song, and storytelling that bridge past traumas with the present struggle for survival and dignity.

Alex Averbuch, a native of Novoaidar, Luhansk region, Ukraine, is a poet, translator, and scholar. He is the author of several books of poetry and an array of over seventy selections of literary translations between Hebrew, Ukrainian, Russian, and English. His poems have appeared in English translation in Beloit, Manhattan Review, Copper Nickel, Birmingham Poetry Review, Plume, Words Without Borders, Sugar House Review, Constellations, and Common Knowledge, as well as in anthologies in English, Italian, French, Romanian, Hebrew, Finnish, Estonian, and Polish translation. His works have been twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Averbuch’s latest poetry book was a finalist for the Shevchenko National Prize, Ukraine’s highest award for culture and literature, and is forthcoming in English translation by Oksana Maksymchuk and Max Rosochinsky under the title Furious Harvests from HURI/Harvard UP. Standalone collections of his poetry have been or will soon be published in Polish, Italian, and German. He is currently an assistant professor of Ukrainian literature and culture in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Michigan.
Olga Zaitseva-Herz is an ethnomusicologist and postdoctoral fellow at the Kule Folklore Centre, University of Alberta. Originally from Dnipro, she completed her PhD in 2024 with a dissertation on Ukrainian songs in Canada, exploring their interconnectedness and the transculturality of singing styles. Her current research interest is in the strategic role of popular music in Russia’s war on Ukraine, with particular attention to cultural resilience in digital spaces and AI-mediated communication. Alongside her academic work, she is an active performer and composer with extensive international concert experience. In 2011, she founded the band Zaitsa in Germany, reimagining traditional Ukrainian songs through jazz, pop, and klezmer elements. With this ensemble, she has performed hundreds of concerts across Europe, including a premiere at the Mela Festival in England, associated with the opening of the London Olympic Games in 2012. She has also performed as a solo singer with different orchestras and also played in orchestras on international tours with Andrea Bocelli and David Garrett. An installment of her contemporary opera Bakhmut Rhapsody, based on frontline soundscapes and ethnographic fieldwork combined with poetry by T. Shevchenko and L. Ukrainka, premiered at the Ukrainian Contemporary Music Festival in New York City in 2024. Her current artistic research project focuses on the sonification of Ukrainian embroidery, where traditional patterns are transcribed into musical compositions. In this innovative work, embroidered stitches become notes, and colors shape pitch and timbre, creating polyphonic soundscapes that translate the intangible cultural heritage of Ukrainian embroidery into sonic form.
Oksana Maksymchuk is a bilingual Ukrainian-American poet, scholar, and literary translator. Her debut English-language poetry collection Still City: Diary of an Invasion (University of Pittsburgh Press (US)/Carcanet (UK)) was long-listed for the 2025 Griffin Poetry Prize and Pen/Voelcker Award for Poetry. She co-edited an anthology Words for War: New Poems from Ukraine (Academic Studies Press, 2017) and co-translated several poetry collections, most recently, Alex Averbuch’s Furious Harvests (Harvard University Press, 2025). Oksana holds a PhD in philosophy from Northwestern University.
Max Rosochinsky is a scholar, translator and poet from Simferopol/Crimea. His translations have featured in publications including Modern Poetry in Translation, Words Without Borders, Poetry International and the Best European Fiction series from Dalkey Archive Press, while his translation of Lyuba Yakimchuk’s Prayer was performed by the author at the 2022 Grammy Awards Ceremony. A co-winner of first place in the Joseph Brodsky-Stephen Spender Prize translation competition, he co-edited Words for War: New Poems from Ukraine, an anthology of contemporary Ukrainian poetry with Oksana Maksymchuk, and co-translated Apricots of Donbas, a collection of selected poems by Lyuba Yakimchuk, and The Voices of Babyn Yar, a book of poetry by Marianna Kiyanovska.
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Shevchenko Workshop in Ukrainian Studies
2025-10-31 18:00 - 2025-11-01 17:30
The Shevchenko Scientific Society in the United States, in partnership with the American Association for Ukrainian Studies and Razom for Ukraine, will host a workshop in Ukrainian Studies this fall. Early-career scholars, including PhD candidates and post-doctoral fellows based in the United States, will present their research and engage in a multidisciplinary dialogue with experts in the field. The in-person workshop will be held in New York City on October 31 – November 1, 2025, which will provide participants with an opportunity to attend some events at the Ukrainian Cultural Festival.
Workshop Program
October 31/Friday
6:00 pm – 6:15 pm Opening Remarks
Vitaly Chernetsky, University of Kansas

6:15 pm – 7:30 pm Keynote Address: Reflections on Ukrainian Studies During Wartime
Paul D’Anieri, University of California, Riverside

7:30 pm – 9:00 pm Reception

November 1/Saturday
9:00 am – 9:30 am Coffee/Registration

9:30 am – 11:15 am Panel 1. Literature and Culture during the 1920s Cultural Revival
Chair: Olena Nikolayenko, Fordham University
The Unresolved Revolution: Yuri Smolych and the Ukrainian War of Independence
William Ronald Debnam, Columbia University
No Laughing Matter: Ostap Vyshnia’s Hunting Smiles
Nicole Gonik, University of California, Berkeley
The Poet and His Masks: Poetic Ventriloquism in Pavlo Tychyna’s Later Poetry as a Modernist Device
Olha Khometa, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
It is… how to put it gently… entre chien et loup: Space and Illness in Mykola Khvylovy’s Povist’ pro Sanatorijnu Zonu
Paul Morrison, Harvard University
Discussants: Vitaly Chernetsky, University of Kansas; Halyna Hryn, Harvard University

11:30 am – 1:15 pm Panel 2. Contesting Gender Norms
Chair: Vitaly Chernetsky, University of Kansas
The War Bodies, the Geobodies, and the Gender Neutrality of War. The Analysis of Art Practices of Contemporary Ukrainian Artists
Ewa Sułek, Harvard University
Women, War, and Ethics of Care in Andrey Kurkov’s Grey Bees
Oksana Vykhopen, University of Kansas
Performing Gender and Redefining Identity in Wartime Ukraine
Oksana Moroz, Messiah University
Instrumentalizing Queerness: Ukrainian Literature as Cultural Resistance
Ali Karakaya, Stanford University
Discussants: Catherine Wanner, Pennsylvania State University; Yuliya Ladygina, Pennsylvania State University

1:15 pm – 2:15 pm Lunch

2:15 pm – 4:00 pm Panel 3. Social Identities and Resistance
Chair: Paul D’Anieri, University of California, Riverside
Folklore and the Crimean Tatar Tragedy: Perso-Turkic Tales, Greco-Byzantine Legends, and an Untold Genocide in Soviet Crimea
Diego Benning Wang, Harvard University
“‘As strong as a diamond’: The Soviet people and Ukrainian identity in Komunist Ukraïny (1968-69).”
Daniel Berardino, University of California, Berkeley
Choosing Religious Nationalism: Local Religious Behavior during the Russian War on Ukraine
Marika Olijar, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Populism, Political Communication, and Perceptions of the Russia–Ukraine War in the Global South: Evidence from India
Adam Lenton, Wake Forest University
Discussants: Olena Nikolayenko, Fordham University; Sophia Wilson, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville

4:15 pm – 5:30 pm Roundtable “Cultural Diplomacy and Ukrainian Studies”
Chair: Oleksa Alex Martiniouk, Razom for Ukraine
Panelists: Kateryna Smagliy, Embassy of Ukraine in the USA
Sophia Wilson, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville
Olga Zaitseva-Herz, University of Alberta
Nataliia Shuliakova, Yale University

6:00 pm – 8:30 pm Our Life Behind Barbed Wire: Photography, Poetry, and Song from Ukraine’s Shadows
Exhibit Opening Reception & Musical-Poetic Performance
Introductory remarks by Alex Averbuch, University of Michigan
Musical-poetic performance by poet Alex Averbuch, translators Oksana Maksymchuk and Max Rosochinsky, and composer-vocalist Olga Zaitseva-Herz
A powerful exhibit and musico-poetic performance by Alex Averbuch and Olga Zaitseva-Herz, staged within the exhibit space itself. Surrounded by rare photographs of Ukrainian Ostarbeiters, audiences experience poetry, song, and storytelling that connect forced labor, the Holocaust, and today’s war in Ukraine.
This event is part of the Ukrainian Cultural Festival
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Mykola Riabchuk: Mapping a "Nation from Nowhere": The Toxic Influence of "Imperial Knowledge" and the Challenges of Decolonization
2025-10-25 17:00 - 19:00
Professor Riabchuk argues that the long-standing “invisibility” of Ukraine on the mental maps of the world—as well as the persistent factual misunderstandings—stems from the global community’s uncritical acceptance of the Russian perspective, both on Russia itself and on the peoples it has colonized. This perspective is articulated through a system of narratives developed by the empire to undermine the agency of subordinated nations, rendering them nearly invisible and voiceless to the outside world, and insignificant or inferior in their own eyes. Following Edward Said, Riabchuk identifies this discursive system as “imperial knowledge” and demonstrates how, over the past two centuries, the empire has successfully institutionalized and disseminated it globally as supposedly “scientific knowledge”—and therefore unquestionable, normalized, and elevated to the status of “common truths.” The deconstruction of this “knowledge” within the broader context of ongoing global decolonization processes must become a priority for both Ukrainian and international intellectuals.
Mykola Riabchuk is a leading research fellow at the Institute of Political and Ethno-National Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and a visiting professor at both the University of Warsaw and the Ukrainian Catholic University. He is the author of around twenty books, several of which have been translated into Polish, Serbian, Hungarian, German, and French. In recent years, driven by the need to communicate the truth about Ukraine to international audiences, he has written primarily in English. He is the author of three books in English, including Eastern Europe since 1989: Between the Loosened Authoritarianism and Unconsolidated Democracy (Warsaw, 2020), and At the Fence of Metternich’s Garden: Essays on Europe, Ukraine, and Europeanization (Stuttgart, 2021). Riabchuk is also a recipient of the Taras Shevchenko National Prize of Ukraine for his 2022 collection of essays Leksykon natsionalista.
The lecture will be delivered In Ukrainian.
Discussion in Ukrainian and English.
Admission to this event is free. Registration is required.
Suggested donation is $20

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Book Launch: Still City (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2024) by Oksana Maksymchuk
2025-10-11 17:00 - 19:00
The poems in Oksana Maksymchuk’s debut English-language collection meditate on the changing sense of reality, temporality, mortality, and intimacy in the face of a catastrophic event. While some of the poems were composed in the months preceding the full-scale invasion of the poet’s homeland, others emerged in its wake. Navigating between a chronicle, a chorus, and a collage, Still City reflects the lived experiences of liminality, offering different perspectives on the war and its aftermath. The collection engages a wide range of sources, including social media posts, news reports, witness accounts, recorded oral histories, photographs, drone video footage, intercepted communication, and official documents, making sense of the transformations that war affects in individuals, families, and communities. Now ecstatic, now cathartic, these poems shine a light on survival, mourning, and hope through moments of terror and awe.
Oksana Maksymchuk is a bilingual Ukrainian-American poet, scholar, and literary translator. Her debut English-language poetry collection “Still City” was published by University of Pittsburgh Press (US) and Carcanet Press (UK) and was long-listed for the 2025 Griffin Poetry Prize and the 2025 Pen/Voelcker Award for Poetry. Her poems appeared in The Guardian, The Paris Review, The Poetry Review and many other journals. She co-edited an anthology, “Words for War: New Poems from Ukraine,” and co-translated several poetry collections. She is a recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellowship, the Scaglione Prize for Literary Translation from the Modern Language Association, the American Association for Ukrainian Studies Translation Prize, and other honors. Oksana holds a PhD in philosophy from Northwestern University.
Moderator: Dr. Vitaly Chernetsky (U of Kansas/Shevchenko Scientific Society)
Admission to this event is free. Registration is required.
Suggested donation is $20
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Yurko Gutsulyak’s Exhibition. Faultlines of Belonging
2025-09-27 17:00 - 18:00
Faultlines of Belonging brings together poster works created during the ongoing full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine. Addressed primarily to audiences outside Ukraine, these works confront the viewer with urgent visual messages intended to inform, challenge, and compel action. They trace the geopolitical, cultural, and personal fractures that define the country’s present moment. The artist assumes the role of communicator across borders, translating the lived experience of war into a language accessible to those far from its frontlines.
From stark black-and-white typographic compositions to blue-and-yellow affirmations and experimental explorations of national identity, the works navigate themes of belonging, displacement, and resilience. They question Ukraine’s future between East and West, humanize statistics, and counter the relentless machinery of Russian misinformation. They expose destruction as both a physical and metaphorical act, while asserting the cultural strength that endures despite it.
Some pieces respond directly to events as they unfold, capturing the raw pulse of a nation under attack. Others take a more reflective stance, distilling symbols and messages into meditations on heritage, historical truth, and collective memory. Together, they occupy the unstable ground of global interconnection, asserting that there is no safe distance from violence, responsibility, or the shared task of defending truth.
As part of the exhibition, The Blue-Yellow Series delves into Ukrainian identity through an abstract yet profoundly personal reinterpretation of the national flag. Since the beginning of the war, Ukrainians worldwide have developed a heightened awareness of blue and yellow in their surroundings—colors that have come to embody resilience, solidarity, and hope. The project expands on this phenomenon by exploring how these colors exist beyond their visual form. One of its key messages, “When no colors are left, the Ukrainian flag is still waving,” reflects the endurance of national identity even in the face of destruction.
Yurko Gutsulyak (b. 1979, Ukraine) is an artist and visionary who explores symbolism, materiality, and conceptual storytelling. With a branding and graphic design background, he merges design methodologies with artistic inquiry, using printed editions and interactive objects to challenge conventional interpretations of sign metaphors and visual codes.
Before shifting his focus to contemporary art, Yurko Gutsulyak built a distinguished career in visual communication. In 2005, he founded Gutsulyak.Studio, an award-winning practice specializing in identity and packaging. His projects have received over 150 international accolades, including Red Dot, European Design Awards, Epica Awards, Pentawards, Dieline Awards, Communication Arts, Graphis, and have been exhibited in Canada, Switzerland, France, Germany, China, Poland, Mexico, the United States, and Ukraine.
He has lectured worldwide and served as a jury member for creative competitions across North America, Europe, and Asia. His insights have been featured in leading design publications, including Novum (Germany), idPure (Switzerland), +design (Greece), idN (Hong Kong), telegraf (Ukraine), Font (Czech Republic), and Brand (China). Since relocating to Toronto in 2017, he has continued developing his artistic practice while maintaining his studio.
Exhibition opens September 13, 2025
Artist talk will take place on September 27, 2025.
Admission to this event is free. Registration is required. Suggested donation is $20
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Alexander Shcheglovitov: Studying Autism-Associated Disorders Using Human Brain Organoids Generated from Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells
2025-09-20 17:00 - 19:00
Approximately 1 in 31 children in the United States are diagnosed with autism-associated disorders. The underlying causes remain poorly understood, and there are currently no effective treatments for affected individuals. Brain organoids provide a novel powerful model for studying human brain development and disease. In my lab, we generate brain organoids from patients with specific autism-associated genetic mutations to investigate the disrupted cellular and molecular mechanisms. In this presentation, I will share our approach to using brain organoids to study human brain development and autism-associated brain disorders.
Dr. Alexander Shcheglovitov is an Associate Professor of Neurobiology at the University of Utah and a Faculty Director for the Utah Cellular Translational Research Core at Utah CTSI. He earned a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in applied physics from the National Technical University of Ukraine, followed by a PhD in biophysics from the Bogomoletz Institute of Physiology, Kyiv, Ukraine. He completed Postdoctoral training at the University of Virginia with Dr. Ed Perez-Reyes and Stanford University with Dr. Ricardo Dolmetsch. His lab studies human brain development and autism-associated neurodevelopmental disorders using brain organoids. Dr. Shcheglovitov is a recipient of several prestigious awards, including the Innovation Research Award from the International Society for Autism Research, NARSAD Young Investigator Award, and Alex’s Lemonade Stand Innovation Award.
Moderator: Dr. Roman Shirokov (Rutgers U)
Admission to this event is free. Registration is required.
Suggested donation is $20
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Book Launch: Ecocide in Ukraine: The Environmental Cost of Russia's War by Darya Tsymbalyuk
2025-09-13 17:00 - 19:00
Russia’s war on Ukraine has not only destroyed millions of human lives, it has also been catastrophic for the environment. Forests and fields have been burned to the ground, animal and plant species pushed to the brink of extinction, soil and water contaminated with oil products, debris, and mines. On a single day in June 2023, the breached Kakhovka Dam flooded thousands of kilometers of protected natural habitat, as well as villages, towns, and agricultural land. The devastation of biodiversity and ecosystems across Ukraine has been immeasurable, long-lasting and its consequences stretch beyond national borders. In this poignant book, Ukrainian researcher Darya Tsymbalyuk offers an intimate portrait of her beloved homeland against the backdrop of Russia’s war and ecocide. In elegant and moving prose, she describes the damage to the country’s rivers, the grasslands of the steppes, animals, insects, and colonies of birds, as a result of Russia’s ground and air operations. Alongside the everyday experiences of people in Ukraine living with the environmental consequences of the war, we share Tsymbalyuk’s own reckoning with the changing nature of cherished places and the loss of familiar worlds caused by the ongoing Russian invasion.
Darya Tsymbalyuk is an interdisciplinary researcher, and her practice includes writing and image-making. She serves as an Assistant Professor at the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures and the Committee on Environment, Geography, and Urbanization (CEGU), University of Chicago. Darya is the author of Ecocide in Ukraine: the Environmental Cost of Russia’s War (Polity 2025). Among her many shorter scholarly publications is a double special issue on the environmental humanities of Ukraine co-edited with Tanya Richardson and forthcoming with East/West: Journal of Ukrainian Studies. The issue includes an article “Constellations of Ukrainian Thought and the Environmental Humanities”, in which Tsymbalyuk and Richardson attempt to trace the development of environmental thought in Ukraine from the 20th century until today. Her other scholarly texts have been published by Nature Human Behaviour, Journal of International Relations and Development, Narrative Culture, REGION: Regional Studies of Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia, to name a few. Her public-facing writing appeared in BBC Future Planet, openDemocracy, The Funambulist, KAJET, NiCHE: Network in Canadian History & Environment, Klassiki and many other platforms.
Moderator: Dr. Olena Nikolayenko (Fordham U)

Admission to this event is free. Registration is required.
Suggested donation is $20
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Village to Modern Daylong Symposium
2025-05-17 09:30 - 17:00
The Ukrainian Museum and the Shevchenko Scientific Society in the US are partnering to host a seminal event celebrating the Museum’s new exhibition Village to Modern.
The influence of Ukrainian folk art on the Ukrainian avant-garde in the early 20th century was transformative. With its vibrant colors, geometric patterns, and unique symbols, Ukrainian folk art played a significant role in shaping the development of new artistic movements and pushing the boundaries of artistic expression for innovative and groundbreaking works. Pioneering avant-garde artists such as Kazimir Malevich and Alexandra Exter were inspired by the authenticity of Ukrainian folk art, which had its creative roots in small villages across the country.
Join us for a daylong symposium with visual presentations by distinguished art historians, an exhibition walkthrough with the Museum’s director, and a roundtable discussion culminating with an audience Q&A. Our distinguished group of guest speakers include Dr. Myroslava Mudrak, Oksana Semenik, and Dr. Alisa Lozhkina. The program will be held throughout the day in both locations, the Shevchenko Scientific Society in the US and The Ukrainian Museum, with a light lunch at mid-day. The full schedule is provided below. This event will be held both in person and online (live stream), and tickets for both options are available on Eventbrite. For online ticket purchases, the exhibition walkthrough at the Museum is not included. The live stream link to the event will be sent via email from the Shevchenko Scientific Society in the US the day before the event.

Symposium Program
Location: Shevchenko Scientific Society in the US
63 4th Avenue
9:30 am – Coffee Reception
10:05 am – 10:15 am – Welcome by Dr. Vitaly Chernetsky, President of Shevchenko Scientific Society in the US
10:15 am -12:30 pm – Visual Presentations by Guest Speakers (there will be breaks between presentations)

Location: The Ukrainian Museum
222 East 6th Street
1 – 2 pm – Light Lunch Reception
2 – 3 pm – Walkthrough of the Village to Modern Exhibition with Museum Director Peter Doroshenko

Location: Shevchenko Scientific Society in the US
63 4th Avenue
3:30 – 5 pm – Roundtable and Q&A

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Book Launch: Decolonizing Ukraine: The Indigenous People of Crimea and Pathways to Freedom by Greta Uehling
2025-05-10 17:00 - 18:30
In this ground-breaking book, distinguished anthropologist Greta Uehling illuminates the untold stories of Russia’s occupation of Crimea from 2014 to the present, revealing the traumas of colonization, foreign occupation, and population displacement. Drawing upon extensive fieldwork in Ukraine, including over 90 personal interviews, Uehling brings her readers into the lives of people who opposed Russia’s Crimean operation, many of whom fled for government-controlled Ukraine. Via the narratives of people who traversed perilous geographies and world-altering events, Uehling traces the development of a new sense of social cohesion that encompasses diverse ethnic and religious groups. The result is a compelling story—one of resilience, transformation, and ultimately, the unwavering pursuit of freedom and autonomy for Ukraine, regardless of ethnicity or race. Decolonizing Ukraine: The Indigenous People of Crimea and Pathways to Freedom demonstrates how understanding Crimea is essential to understanding Ukraine – and the war with Russia – today.
Greta Uehling is a cultural anthropologist who specializes in the study of war, conflict, and population displacement. A Professor at the University of Michigan, she teaches seminars on human rights and humanitarianism for the Program in International and Comparative Studies. She is the author of Beyond Memory: The Deportation and Repatriation of the Crimean Tatars (2004) and Everyday War: The Conflict over Donbas, Ukraine (2023).
Moderator: Dr. Maria Sonevytsky, Bard College
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Serhii Tereshchenko: Theory of Cultural Change in Yevhen Malaniuk's Poetry and Scholarship
2025-05-09 18:00 - 19:00
After the Ukrainian National Republic was taken over in 1919, the army officer Yevhen Malaniuk, then 22 years old, moved to Poland. He lived there for twenty years until another world war forced him to move to Czechoslovakia, then Germany, and finally to New York, where he found a job in engineering. Malaniuk, with his ties to academia and many publications, is a little-known public thinker who has already discussed important issues that Ukrainians face today: how to showcase the Ukrainian nation to the world and how cultural politics affects people’s well-being. He presented his ideas about culture in poetry in the books The Stiletto and the Stylus (1925) and The Power (1951). He also developed a cultural theory on how a nation under occupation can move towards a democratic open society in his quasi-anthropological studies, including Essays in the History of Our Culture (1954), On the Problem of Bolshevism (1956), and A Book of Observations (1962).
Serhii Tereshchenko is a visiting assistant professor at the University at Albany, State University of New York (SUNY). He teaches literature and film from Ukraine, Central Europe, and Central Asia. Serhii defended his dissertation at Columbia University, where he studied how science fiction promoted plurality and inclusivity in the Soviet Union and Socialist Bloc to dismantle the one-party centralized power through mass media. He presented his research at the Center for Science Fiction Studies at the University of Kansas and the Science Fiction Consortium at the University of South Africa. Dr. Serhii Tereshchenko is now developing the book “Lyrical Games: Gender and Nation in Polish Hip-Hop” (Palgrave McMillan, the US) and translating from Ukrainian an edition of text titled “Cultural Paratroopers: Ukrainian Literary Organizations in the 1840s-1990” (Glagoslav, the Netherlands).
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Leonid Hrabovsky: A 90th Anniversary Celebration A Concert Featuring the Music of the Composer
2025-05-03 17:00 - 19:00
Program:
Keepsake for Elissa (1988)
Forrest Eimold, piano

Trio for violin, double bass and piano (1964)
Andrii Didorenko, violin
Marguerite Cox, bass
Pavlo Gintov, piano

Hlas 1 (1990)
Clara Cho, cello

EQVIN (2019)
Alexander Yakub, violin
Forrest Eimold, piano

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Leonid Hrabovsky (b. 1935) is a Ukrainian composer, laureate of the Boris Lyatoshynsky Prize (1993), and Honorary Professor of the Mykola Lysenko Lviv National Music Academy (2010). He is the author of Four Ukrainian Songs, four Homeomorphies, the melodrama La Mer for narrator, mixed choir, and large symphony orchestra on texts by the French poet Saint-John Perse, the symphony-legend Evening on Ivan Kupalo, the symphonic poem Vorzel in memory of B. Lyatoshynsky, and many other compositions. Using a wide range of modern compositional techniques developed in the 20th century, he created his own system and method of algorithmic composition. After many years of work, he completed the computerization of this method and returned to active composing. Since 2016, he has written 12 Two-Voice Inventions for harpsichord, Tetragon, ARRY, EQVIN, and STR-O(r)GAN for organ. While living and working in the U.S. since 1990, Hrabovsky has maintained a close relationship with the musical life of independent Ukraine, arranging lectures, talks, and creative meetings. His works have been performed at numerous events in Ukraine, the U.S., Europe, and both North and South America. This year, a festival celebrating the 90th anniversaries of three composers—Arvo Pärt, Giya Kancheli, and Leonid Hrabovsky—is planned in the city of Bonn.

Forest Eimold, piano
New York-based composer-keyboardist Forrest Eimold (b. 1999) has been hailed as “incredible” and “fearless” by The Boston Musical Intelligencer, “extremely impressive” by Harmonie, and as having “ably responded to the many virtuosic demands” of today’s compositional vanguard by The Washington Post. Forrest’s compositional honors include the Louis Sudler Prize in the Arts from Columbia University, a Density Labs Fellowship from the Juilliard School, a Blueprint Fellowship from National Sawdust, and multiple awards from the National YoungArts Foundation. A publication of Forrest’s organ transcription of Gerald Barry’s Chevaux-de-frise is forthcoming from Schott Music. Having graduated in 2022 from the dual program between the Juilliard School and Columbia University, Forrest currently studies composition at the Yale School of Music. Having served as Music and Organ Scholar at Trinity Church Wall Street (2018–22), he now works as Staff Pianist at the Juilliard School (2021–present).
Clara Cho, cello
Clara Cho is a Korean cellist based in New York City. She collaborates closely with living composers including Reiko Füting, Ashkan Behzadi, and Samuel Torres to contribute to the development of emerging repertoire. As she seeks to integrate diverse forms of art with her performance beyond the boundaries of classical and contemporary music, Clara has also collaborated with rising jazz musicians, choreographers, visual artists, and fashion designers including Miro Magloire (New Chamber Ballet, Columbia Ballet Collaborative), Christian McGhee, Emmanuel Michael, Nicola Caminiti, Jahari Stampley, Jingu Jun (“The Last Garment”, fashion brand), Youngsu Jo on various projects. Recently, she was featured on Reiko Füting’s latest album “distant: violin. sound”, as a part of the ensemble, Noise Catalogue. Clara holds BM, MM, and PS degrees from the Manhattan School of Music, where she studied under Julia Lichten and Philippe Muller. Her upcoming performances include a Contemporary Chamber Music Concert on May 19th at St. John’s in the Village, and a Noise Catalogue concert featuring George Crumb’s Black Angels on May 31st at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church.
Andrii Didorenko, violin
A New York-based violinist and composer Andrii Didorenko was born in Dnipro, Ukraine, to a family of professional violinists. He took his first violin lessons with his parents and made his debut with an orchestra at the age of 10. He earned his graduate and postgraduate degrees from Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory and appeared as a soloist with Moscow Symphony Orchestra and Moscow Camerata Chamber Orchestra. From 1999 to 2004, Andrii lived in Taiwan where he taught, performed, and debuted as a composer. Since moving to New York in 2006, he has performed regularly as a soloist and chamber. Andrii is also a leader of a contemporary rock fusion ensemble, Lost World Band, which has released several critically acclaimed albums. Since the start of the war, he has written several pieces inspired by Ukrainian folk music and participated in many fundraising events to aid Ukraine.
Marguerite Cox, bass
Marguerite Cox is a double bassist from Northeast Ohio, currently a fellow in Carnegie Hall’s renowned Ensemble Connect program. She is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music—where she was the first person to earn a master’s degree in double bass performance—and Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music, where she also earned a minor in Poverty, Justice, and Human Capabilities.A versatile musician, Marguerite’s work spans classical, experimental, folk, and improvised traditions. She performs regularly with ensembles such as A Far Cry, Palaver Strings, New Canaan Chamber Music, and Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players. Recent highlights include appearances with the Baltimore and Charleston Symphonies, and solo recitals presented by Illuminate Women’s Music, Summer Strings Academy for Girls, and the Cincinnati Bass Club’s 2025 tribute to François Rabbath.Marguerite is a dedicated advocate for new and experimental music. She has premiered works by Nick Dunston, Matt Aucoin, and Ted Babcock; performed at the ensemble mise-en festival and the Museum of Modern Art; and held creative residencies at Avaloch Farm and Brown University. In 2023, she was a member of the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra.She is also a core member of Big Bend, an improvising folk band that has toured nationally with performances at Le Poisson Rouge (NYC), Constellation (Chicago), The 5 Spot (Nashville), and studio collaborations with Grammy-winning producer Shahzad Ismaily. Her improvisation duo, Goal Weight, with violinist Jennifer Gersten, has performed at P.I.T., Cutelab, and Freddy’s Bar.Marguerite has held fellowships at the Tanglewood Music Center, Aspen Music Festival, Spoleto Festival USA, and the Music Academy of the West, and studied with mentors including Edgar Meyer, Paul Ellison, Tim Pitts, Leigh Mesh, and Tracy Rowell.
Pavlo Gintov, piano
Pavlo Gintov has been described as “a poet of the keyboard” by Marty Lash of the Illinois Entertainer, a “musical storyteller” by the Japanese publication Shikoku News, and “a fantastic pianist and extraordinary artist” by Jerry Dubins of the Fanfare Magazine. Following his debut at the Kyiv Philharmonic Hall at the age of 12, Pavlo has been touring throughout Europe, Asia, Africa, South America and the United States, appearing at such stages as Carnegie Hall in New York, Berlin Philharmonic Hall, Teatro Verdi Nationale in Milan and Kioi Hall in Tokyo. He has been a soloist with Tokyo Royal Chamber Orchestra, the National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine, Orchestra Ensemble Kanazawa, the National Symphony Orchestra of the Dominican Republic and Manhattan Chamber Orchestra under such conductors as Michiyoshi Inoue, Victor Yampolsky, Thomas Sanderling, Volodymyr Sirenko and Tomomi Nishimoto.
Alexander Yakub, violin
Alexander “Sasha” Yakub received a graduate diploma in violin performance in 2024 as the first student of Leila Josefowicz at the Mannes School of Music on a full scholarship, where he also completed his masters as a President’s Scholar under Miranda Cuckson in 2022. Sasha holds a bachelors in music from Harvard, where he received the 2020 Robert Levin Prize in Musical Performance and was a 2019 Harvard Office for the Arts Development Fellow. Sasha was also a 2022-2024 Akademist at the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra, 2021 Bang On a Can Summer Festival Fellow, 2020 Yamaha Young Artists Competition honorable mention winner, and a 2017-18 Tanglewood Music Center Violin Fellow, during the second year of which he served as concertmaster for the 2018 Myrios recording of “In Seven Days” by Thomas Adès (Kirill Gerstein, soloist). The eponymous album—containing it—was the 2021 winner of the contemporary category in the International Classical Music Awards. In 2024, he won runner-up at the Mannes School of Music Concerto Competition for his performance of Adès’ Concentric Paths violin concerto. Some of Sasha’s notable public performances include the world premiere of Paul Mortilla’s violin concerto “Animal Brain: ad infinitum perplexus confixium” with New Music New Haven at the Yale School of Music and the performance of “Synchronisms No. 9” at the Harvard Music Department’s memorial concert for Prof. Emeritus Mario Davidovsky. Sasha lives in New York, where he has contracted with Lincoln Center Stage and the American Composers Alliance and serves as concertmaster of the BeComEnsemble.
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Chornobyl and Its Legacies Today: Ecocide, Cultural Responses, and Critical Geopolitics. Webinar
2025-04-26 11:00 - 12:30
Join us for a timely discussion on the anniversary of the Chornobyl disaster, exploring its enduring impact through the lenses of environmental violence, cultural memory, and geopolitical critique. Featuring presentations by Stanislav Menzelevskyi (Indiana University), Nathaniel Pickett (National Institute for Children’s Health Quality), and Darya Tsymbalyuk (University of Chicago), along with a screening of Chornobyl 22, a short film by Oleksiy Radynski.
Moderated by Vitaly Chernetsky, President of the Shevchenko Scientific Society.
Stanislav Menzelevskyi is a film scholar, archivist, and co-founder of the Medusa publishing project in Ukraine. Stanislav headed the Research and Programming Department of the Oleksandr Dovzhenko National Center for over a decade. He is the co-author of the compilation films Atomopolis. Assembling Utopia (2016) and Lviv-Intervision (2018). Currently, he is pursuing a Ph.D. at the Media School at Indiana University, Bloomington, after spending time as a Fulbright Fellow at UC Berkeley (2018) and a Carnegie Fellow at Columbia University’s Harriman Institute (2013).
Nathaniel Ray Pickett received his doctorate from the Department of Geography and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Kansas in 2022. Over the course of his academic career, he has published work on a variety of topics at the intersection of power, knowledge, and space, including articles on territorial cleansing; incorporating Science, Technology, and Society methodologies in geographic research; and the long-term effects of the Chornobyl disaster on Ukrainian society, politics, and culture. In 2015-16, Dr. Pickett was a Fulbright Research Fellow in Ukraine where he conducted archival research and interviews for his dissertation work. Most recently, he published “Chornobyl Body Politics: Making Environmental Violence Visible” with Dr. Shannon O’Lear in Exploring Environmental Violence (2024). He currently works at the National Institute for Children’s Health Quality.
Darya Tsymbalyuk is an interdisciplinary researcher, and her practice includes writing and image-making. Most of Darya’s work lies at the intersection of environmental humanities and artistic research. Darya is the author of Ecocide in Ukraine: The Environmental Cost of Russia’s War (Polity Press 2025). Among her many shorter publications is a double special issue on the environmental humanities of Ukraine co-edited with Tanya Richardson and forthcoming with East/West: Journal of Ukrainian Studies. In addition to writing, Darya also works with images through drawing, painting, collage, and film essays. Darya serves as an Assistant Professor at the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures and the Committee on Environment, Geography, and Urbanization (CEGU), University of Chicago.

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Book Launch: Selected Works in Two Volumes by Vasyl Makhno
2025-04-12 17:00 - 19:00
Vasyl Makhno is regarded as one of the contemporary Ukrainian poetic voices on the global stage, with his works translated into more than twenty languages. Skhyma is the most comprehensive collection of his poetry, featuring works written between 1993 and 2023. In addition to his poetry, Makhno’s essays offer a unique insight into his artistic and personal world. The book Chickens Don’t Fly gathers essays written from 2002 to 2023. These essays intertwine memories, autobiographical stories, and reflections on others, with some resembling short stories that form a cohesive tapestry, while others take readers on a journey through various spaces — and ultimately, through life.
Vasyl Makhno is a Ukrainian poet, prose writer, essayist, and translator. He is the author of fourteen collections of poetry: Skhyma (1993), Caesar’s Solitude (1994), The Book of Hills and Hours (1996), The Flipper of the Fish (2002), 38 Poems about New York and Some Other Things (2004), Cornelia Street Café: New and Selected Poems (2007), Winter Letters (2011), I Want to be Jazz and Rock’n’Roll (2013), Bike (2015), Jerusalem Poems (2016), Paper Bridge (2017), A Poet, the Ocean and Fish (2019), and most recently One Sail House (2021). He has also published a book of short stories, The House in Baiting Hollow (2015), a novel, The Eternal Calendar (2019), and five books of essays, The Gertrude Stein Memorial Cultural and Recreation Park (2006), Horn of Plenty (2011), Suburbs and Borderland (2019), Biking along the Ocean (2020), and From Consonants to Vowels: an Encyclopedia of Names, Places, Birds, Plants and Other Things (2023). Makhno’s works have been widely translated into many languages; his books have been published in Germany, Israel, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Serbia and the US.
He translated Zbigniew Herbert’s, Janusz Szuber’s, Bohdan Zadura’s and Anna Frajlich’s poetry from Polish into Ukrainian, and edited an anthology of young Ukrainian poets from the 1990’s. He is the recipient of Kovaliv Fund Prize (2008), Serbia’s International Povele Morave Prize in Poetry (2013), the BBC Book of the Year Award (2015), and International Ukrainian-Jewish Literary Prize “Encounter” (2020).
Featuring: pianist Pavlo Gintov and singer Alla Rodina (soprano).
Moderator: Tamara Hundorova (Princeton University)
The presentation will be delivered in Ukrainian.
Admission to this event is free. Registration is required. Suggested donation is $20
Реєстрація

Lesia Ukrainka. The Drama of Awareness of the Shadow by Yevheniia Kononenko
2025-04-05 17:00 - 19:00
Ukrainian researchers have offered a wide variety of interpretations of Lesia Ukrainka’s works, especially her dramaturgy. Writer Yevheniia Kononenko offers an interpretation of Lesia Ukrainka’s dramaturgy using the analytical psychology apparatus of Carl Gustav Jung, one of the most prominent thinkers of the 20th century. The author analyzes not only the ideas of Lesia Ukrainka’s dramas but also the personalities of the characters in these dramas, who are carriers of various ideas. The main marker of the study is the concept of consciousness. How aware are Lesya’s characters? And how aware was the poetess herself, giving them life?
Yevheniia Kononenko was born in Kyiv in 1959. In 1981, she graduated from the Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics of the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, then worked for several years as a programmer in various institutions in Kyiv. She made her debut in Ukrainian literature as a translator from French, and in 1993, she received the Mykola Zerov Prize for translating French poetry. Kononenko is the author of collections of short stories, novels, books for children, and collections of essays. She is a laureate of national awards and a participant in international programs. In 2003, she participated in the International Writing Program at Iowa State University.
She is currently working on a historical novel as a Fulbright scholar.
The presentation will be delivered in Ukrainian.
Admission to this event is free. Registration is required. Suggested donation is $20

Реєстрація

Book Launch: Art in Ukraine Between Identity Construction and Anti-Colonial Resistance. Edited by Svitlana Biedarieva
2025-03-29 17:00 - 19:00
This edited volume traces the development of art practices in Ukraine from the 2004 Orange Revolution, through the 2013–2014 Revolution of Dignity, to the ongoing Russian war of aggression.
Contributors explore how transformations of identity, the emergence of participatory democracy, relevant changes to cultural institutions, and the realization of the necessity of decolonial release have influenced the focus and themes of contemporary art practices in Ukraine. The chapters analyze such important topics as the postcolonial retrieval of the past, the deconstruction of post-Soviet visualities, representations of violence and atrocities in the ongoing Russian war against Ukraine, and the notion of art as a mechanism of civic resistance and identity-building.
The book will be of interest to scholars of art history, Eastern European studies, cultural studies, decolonial studies, and postcolonial studies.

Svitlana Biedarieva is an art historian, artist, and curator. She is the author of the book Ambicoloniality and War: The Ukrainian-Russian Case (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025), the editor of Art in Ukraine Between Identity Construction and Anti-Colonial Resistance (Routledge, 2024) and Contemporary Ukrainian and Baltic Art: Political and Social Perspectives, 1991-2021 (ibidem Press, 2021), and the co-editor of At the Front Line. Ukrainian Art, 2013-2019 (Editorial 17, 2020). She has published texts in leading academic journals and media outlets, such as October, Daedalus: Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Financial Times, and The Art Newspaper. She holds a PhD in History of Art from the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London.
Moderator: Dr. Vitaly Chernetsky,
President of the Shevchenko Scientific Society

Displacing a Person: Memoirs, Diary Entries, and Photographs by Juchym Charczenko, the Engineer
2025-03-22 17:00 - 19:00
Переміщення особи: Спогади, щоденникові записи і фотодокументи інженера Юхима Харченка. Нью-Йорк: Наукове Товариство ім. Шевченка в Америці, 2024. 272 с.
У рамках проєкту публікування архівних матеріалів НТШ-А вийшла книга споминів та щоденникових записів інженера Юхима Харченка (1912–2004). Пропоноване видання складається з двох частин: перша – це авторові спомини від часу та місця народження, родинного кола аж до потрапляння у концентраційний табір Бухенвальд, а друга – щоденникові записи про українське життя в переселенчому таборі Корнберґ. Видання ілюстровано світлинами з повоєнного періоду.
Під час презентації демонструватиметься виставка фоторобіт Стефанії Харченко “Хроніка Нью-Йорка: солідарність з Україною”.
За участі: Андріана Каратницького, Стефанії Харченко та Василя Махна.
Презентація відбудеться українською мовою.
Вхід – вільний. Реєстрація обов’язкова.
Рекомендована пожертва – 20 дол.

Реєстрація

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As part of the project to publish archival materials, the Shevchenko Scientific Society in the USpresents a book of memoirs and diary entries by engineer Juchym Charczenko (1912–2004). The publication consists of two parts: the first includes the authors recollections from his birth and family circle to his time in the Buchenwald concentration camp, and the second contains diaryentries about Ukrainian life in the Cornberg displaced persons camp. The publication isillustrated with photographs from the post-war period.
During the presentation, we will show an exhibition of photographs by Stefania Charczenko titled Chronicle of New York: Solidarity with Ukraine.
With the participation of Adrian Karatnycky, Stefania Charczenko, and Vasyl Makhno.
The presentation will be delivered in Ukrainian.
Admission to this event is free.
Registration is required. Suggested donation is $20

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Modern Shevchenko Studies: Multidisciplinary Discourses
2025-03-11 08:00 - 17:00
11 березня 2025 році в Навчально-науковому інституті філології відбудеться Міжнародна науково–практична конференція «Сучасне шевченкознавство: мультидисциплінарні дискурси», присвячена 211-ій річниці від дня народження Тараса Шевченка
Організатори:
Міністерство освіти і науки України Київський національний університет імені Тараса Шевченка
Навчально-науковий інститут філології КНУ імені Тараса Шевченка
Кафедра історії української літератури, теорії літератури і літтворчості
Всеукраїнський навчально-науковий центр шевченкознавства University of Alberta,
Віденський університет, Інститут славістики,
Варшавський університет, Інститут україністики,
Познанський університет імені Адама Міцкевича, Кафедра україністики,
Інститут літератури ім.Т.Г.Шевченка НАН України, Відділ шевченкознавства,
Наукове товариство ім. Шевченка в США,
Осередок НТШ на Західну Канаду (Едмонтон)
Тематика і напрями:
Феномен Тараса Шевченка в контексті війни України з Росією.
Тарас Шевченко та світова культура.
Наукова і критична рецепція творчості Тараса Шевченка.
Тарас Шевченко в сучасних історико-літературних дослідженнях.
Творчість Тараса Шевченка в сучасних перекладах мовами світу.
Лінгвістичні прочитання творчості Тараса Шевченка.
Фольклористичні та інтермедіальні студії.
https://www.facebook.com/philology.knu.ua

XLIV Наукова Шевченківська Конференція
2025-03-08 16:00 - 18:00
Програма:
Cпадок романтизму та народництва від ХІХ ст. до сьогодення
Сергій Біленький
УНІГУ/Колумбійський університет
Читачі Шевченка: автокоментар і сучасна вау-рецепція
Тамара Гундорова
Принстонський університет/Інститут літератури НАНУ ім. Т. Г. Шевченка
“Щоденник” Шевченка
Григорій Грабович
НТШ-А/Гарвардський університет
Модератор:
Віталій Чернецький, Президент Наукового Товариства ім. Шевченка.
Доповіді виголошуватимуться українською мовою.
Дискусія – українською й англійською.
Вхід – вільний. Реєстрація обов’язкова. Рекомендована пожертва – 20 дол.

РЕЄСТРАЦІЯ
ДИВИТИСЯ ПОДІЮ В ОНЛАЙНІ

Сергій Біленький – професор-гість Колумбійського університету та головний редактор Схід/Захід: журнал українознавства (з 2023). Програмний директор Гарвардської літньої школи українознавтсва з 2015 року. Закінчив Київський університетет ім. Т. Г. Шевченка, в якому здобув ступінь кандидата наук (1997). Отримав ступінь доктора філософії з історії в Торонтонському університеті (2007). Викладав курси російської, української та східноєвропейської історії в Торонтонському, Колумбійському університетах та Гарвардській літній школі українознавтства. Серед його публікацій: Romantic Nationalism in Eastern Europe: Russian, Polish, and Ukrainian Political Imaginations (Stanford University Press, 2012) та Imperial Urbanism in the Borderlands: Kyiv, 1800-1905 (University of Toronto Press, 2018).). Він також є редактором вибраних творів провідних українських інтелектуалів ХІХ ст., Fashioning Modern Ukraine: Selected Writings of Mykola Kostomarov, Volodymyr Antonovych, and Mykhailo Drahomanov (Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, 2014). Найновіша розвідка – мультидисциплінарна історія України протягом «довгого» 19 століття – Laboratory of Modernity: Ukraine between Empire and Nation, 1772–1914 (McGill-Queen’s University Press and CIUS Press, 2023).

Тамара Гундорова – професор-гість та наукова співробітниця Прінстонського університету, провідна наукова співробітниця Інституту літератури НАН України, асоційована наукова співробітниця Гарвардського українського наукового інституту та декан Українського вільного університету. Віцепрезидентка Українського ПЕН. Авторка багатьох книжок, зокрема про Лесю Українку «Книги Сивілли» (2023), «Постчорнобильська бібліотека. Український постмодернізм 1990-х» (2019), «Транзитна культура. Симптоми постколоніальної травми» (2013; 2024), «Кітч і література. Травестії» (2008), «Франко і/не Каменяр» (2006); «Femina melancholica.. Стать і культура в гендерних утопіях Ольги Кобилянської» (2002), а також багатьох статей та розвідок про модернізм, постмодернізм, фемінізм, постколоніальні дослідження та історію української літератури. Була стипендіаткою програми Фулбрайта, університету Монаша, фонду імені Петра Яцика, університету Хоккайдо та Ініціативи Філіпа Шварца Фонду Олександра фон Гумбольдта тощо

Григорій Грабович – професор-дослідник катедри української літератури ім. Дмитра Чижевського в Гарвардському університеті. Професор Грабович був директором Українського наукового інститут у Гарварді (1989–1996) і одним із засновників і президентом (1991–1993) Міжнародної асоціації україністів. З 2012 по 2018 був президентом Наукового Товариства ім. Шевченка в США; нині є членом Управи. У 1997 році заснував український щомісячник «Критика», який став провідним інтелектуальним часописом в Україні. Перша книга Грабовича про Шевченка («Поет як міфотворець» (The Poet as Mythmaker), 1982; українські видання: 1991, 1997) була відзначена найбільш впливовою академічною книгою в Україні пострадянського періоду. 2013 року опублікував працю «Шевченкові ‘Гайдамаки’. Поема і критика». Грабович також був головним редактором видання «Тарас Шевченко в критиці» (т.1, 2013; т.2, 2016). Автор каталогу-монографії «Тарас Шевченко. Поет, художник, ікона (1814–1861)» (2014 р.). Редактор міжнародного проєкту «Історія української літератури», головний офіс якого знаходиться в Університеті Санкт-Ґаллена, Швейцарія. Лауреат Національної премії ім. Т. Г. Шевченка.

Віталій Чернецький – Президент Наукового Товариства ім. Шевченка в Америці (з грудня 2024), літературознавець, кінознавець, перекладач. Професор славістики Канзаського університету, у 2009-2018 роках був президентом Американської асоціації україністів. Здобув ступінь Ph.D. у порівняльному літературознавстві та теорії літератури в Університеті Пенсильванії. Автор монографії Картографуючи посткомуністичні культури: Росія та Україна в контексті глобалізації (вид. ун-тів МакҐил та Квінс, 2007; україномовна версія, вид. «Критика», 2013) та статей про модерні та сучасні слов’янські та східноєвропейські літератури і культури, де він наголошує на міжреґіональних та міждисциплінарних контекстах. Нова книга українською, Перетини і прориви: Українська література і кіно поміж глобальним та локальним, готується до друку у видавництві «Критика». Співредактор двомовної антології сучасної української поезії Листи з України (2016) та анотованого українського перекладу Культури й імперіялізму Едварда Саїда (2007), запрошений редактор спеціального числа електронного часопису КіноКультура, присвяченого Україні (2009). Серед його перекладів англійською романи Юрія Андруховича Московіада (2008) та Дванадцять обручів (2015), а також збірка його вибраних поезій, Пісні для мертвого півня (2018, спільно з Остапом Конем), а також збірка поезій Остапа Сливинського Зимовий король (2023, спільно з Іриною Шуваловою). Переклад роману Софії Андрухович Фелікс Австрія готується до друку. Протягом 2024 року проф. Чернецький був президентом Асоціації слов’янських, східноєвропейських та євразійських досліджень (ASEEES).

Program:
The Legacy of Romanticism and Narodnytsvo from the 19th Century to the Present
Serhiy Bilenky, HURI/Columbia University
Shevchenko’s Readers: Auto-commentary and Modern Wow-Reception
Tamara Hundorova, Princeton University/Institute of Literature of the National Academy of Sciences
Shevchenko’s “Diary”
George Grabowicz, Shevchenko Scientific Society/ Harvard University
Moderator:
Vitaly Chernetsky, President of the Shevchenko Scientific Society

Serhiy Bilenky is a visiting assistant professor at Columbia University and Editor-In-Chief of East/West: Journal of Ukrainian Studies (since 2023). He also has been Programs Director of Harvard Ukrainian Summer Institute since 2015. Born in Kyiv, Ukraine, he graduated from Kyiv National Shevchenko University, from which he also received his Candidate of Sciences degree (1997). He received his PhD in History from the University of Toronto (2007). Bilenky taught courses on Russian, Ukrainian, and east European histories at the University of Toronto, Columbia University, and Harvard Ukrainian Summer Institute. Among his publications is Romantic Nationalism in Eastern Europe: Russian, Polish, and Ukrainian Political Imaginations (Stanford University Press, 2012) and Imperial Urbanism in the Borderlands: Kyiv, 1800-1905 (University of Toronto Press, 2018). He’s also the editor of the selected writings of the leading 19th-century Ukrainian intellectuals Fashioning Modern Ukraine: Selected Writings of Mykola Kostomarov, Volodymyr Antonovych, and Mykhailo Drahomanov (Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, 2014). His most recent book is Laboratory of Modernity: Ukraine between Empire and Nation, 1772–1914 (McGill-Queen’s University Press and CIUS Press, 2023) – a multidisciplinary history of Ukraine during the “long” 19th century.

Tamara Hundorova is currently a Visiting Professor and Scholar at Princeton University. She is also a Principal Scholar at the Institute of Literature, NAS of Ukraine, an Associate Fellow at Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, and a Dean at Ukrainian Free University. Vice President of PEN Ukraine. Tamara Hundorova authored multiple books, including Lesia Ukrainka. Knyhy Syvilly (2023), The Post- Chornobyl Library. The Ukrainian Postmodernism of the 1990s (2019), Tranzytna kul’tura. Symptomy postkolonial’noi travmy (2013; 2024), Kitsch i Literatura. Travestii (2008), Franko i/ne Kameniar (2006); Femina melancholica. Stat’ i kul’tura v gendernij utopii Ol’hy Kobylians’koi (2002) and many articles and chapters on modernism, postmodernism, feminism, postcolonial studies, and the history of Ukrainian literature. She is a former Fulbright Scholar, Visiting Scholar of Monash University, recipient of Yacyk Distinguished Fellowship, Foreign Visitors Fellowship (Hokkaido University), and Fellowship of Philipp Schwartz-Initiative of Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung, among others.

George G. Grabowicz is the Dmytro Čyževs’kyj Research Professor of Ukrainian Literature in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Harvard University. He received his B.A. from Yale University in 1965 and his PhD in comparative literature from Harvard in 1975. Professor Grabowicz has been Chairman of the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Harvard (1983-1988) and Director of Harvard’s Ukrainian Research Institute (1989-1996). From 2012 to 2018 he was President of the Shevchenko Scientific Society in the US and is currently a Vice-President there. In 1997 he founded and since then has been editor-in-chief of the Ukrainian monthly Krytyka, a leading intellectual journal in Ukraine. He has written on Ukrainian, Polish and Russian literature and on literary theory. His first book on Shevchenko (The Poet as Mythmaker, 1982; Ukrainian editions: 1991 and 1997) has been voted the most influential academic book of the post-Soviet period in Ukraine. He currently heads an international team of scholars working on a history of Ukrainian literature that is due to appear shortly. In March, 2022 he was awarded the Shevchenko Prize, Ukraine’s highest award in the humanities and arts, for his series of articles on modernism and the poet Pavlo Tychyna. His most recent publication is an Introduction to vols 1 and 2 of Taras Shevchenko in Memoirs: A Critical Edition, Kyiv, 2023.

Vitaly Chernetsky is Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Kansas. A native of Ukraine, he began his university education at Moscow State University, and continued it at Duke University, arriving in the US as an exchange student in the fall of 1989. He received his MA (1993) and PhD (1996) in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory from the University of Pennsylvania. Prior to coming to KU in 2013, he taught at Columbia, Northeastern, and Miami University (Ohio), and has held research fellowships at Cornell and Harvard. At KU, he also served as CREES Director from 2015 to 2020, and is currently on the executive committee of the Jewish Studies Program and the Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction. Chernetsky is an ASEEES/AAASS member since 1993 and an active member of Q*ASEEES. He is a past president of the American Association for Ukrainian Studies (AAUS) and the current President of the Shevchenko Scientific Society in the U.S., the autonomous U.S. branch of the oldest Ukrainian learned society, founded in 1873. He is the author of Mapping Postcommunist Cultures: Russia and Ukraine in the Context of Globalization (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2007; Ukrainian-language edition 2013; co-winner, AAUS book prize; winner, best Ukrainian book in the humanities, Ukraine’s Book of the Year awards) and of numerous articles on modern and contemporary Russian and Ukrainian culture where he seeks to highlight cross-regional and cross-disciplinary contexts.

The conference will be delivered in Ukrainian.
Admission to this event is free. Registration is required. Suggested donation is $20

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Why Did Russia Invade? [Portland, OR & virtual]
2025-02-27 20:00 - 21:30 | Vollum College Center, 3203 SE Woodstock Blvd, Portland, OR, 97202, United States
The History, Social Sciences, and Law Section of the Shevchenko Scientific Society invites you to a timely talk by political scientists Maria Popova (McGill University) and Oxana Shevel (Tufts University).
In their recent book, Russia and Ukraine: Entangled Histories, Diverging States, Popova and Shevel challenge the narrative that NATO expansion provoked the invasion. Instead, they argue that Russia’s slide into authoritarianism led its government to view Ukraine’s democratic, pro-European trajectory as a direct threat. Their talk will explore Russia’s refusal to accept Ukrainian sovereignty and how it has relied on geopolitical tensions with the West to justify aggression. Their analysis provides crucial insights into the real causes of the war.
This event will take place in-person at Reed College and virtually online.
Join via Zoom
Event page at Reed College
5:00 pm Pacific Time
8:00 pm Eastern Time

Analysis and Reflections on How War has Changed Ukraine's Religious Communities. Day 1096, The Third Anniversary of Russia's Full-Scale Invasion
2025-02-24 13:00 - 14:15
Join us for an informative discussion where each speaker will share their insights on the main changes they’ve observed in their research on religion since the full-scale invasion. They will highlight important developments and topics they intend to focus on in the future. Each speaker will do a presentation followed by a general Q&A session.
Join via Zoom link at 1:00 PM ET on Monday February 24th, 2025.

Andriy Fert holds a PhD in History and is currently a lecturer in the Public History and Memory Studies Program at the Kyiv School of Economics. He serves as the Ukrainian PI for the international research project “Memories of Soviet Repressions in Post-Soviet Spaces.” Since 2017, he has been working for the Institute for International Cooperation of the Deutscher Volkshochschul-Verband e.V. (DVV), coordinating projects related to history education in secondary schools in Ukraine. His studies focus on religion in the Soviet period and religion’s role in memory processes.
Pavlo Smytsnyuk is a Petrach Fellow at the Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies at George Washington University in D.C., where he is working on a project on religious peacebuilding. He specializes in political theology, modern Greek and Slavic Orthodoxy, and religious nationalism. From 2019-2022, Dr. Smytsnyuk was the Director of the Institute of Ecumenical Studies and a Senior Lecturer at the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv. Pavlo studied philosophy and theology in Rome, Athens, and St. Petersburg, and holds a Doctorate from the University of Oxford. Before coming to Washington, he was a postdoctoral researcher at Princeton University.
Dmytro Vovk is a visiting associate professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law where he teaches international human rights, law and religion, and the rule of law. He is also an affiliated researcher of the Cardozo Institute of Holocaust and Human Rights and the Centre for Public, International and Comparative Law at University of Queensland. Vovk has been a rule of law, constitutional law, and religious freedom expert for several international institutions. He also testified before the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom and briefed the U.S. State Department. He has published extensively on religious freedom and church-state relations in post-Soviet countries and beyond. Vovk is a co-editor of the BYU Law International Center for Law and Religion Studies blog “Talk About: Law and Religion blog.”

The War in Europe
2025-02-19 19:00 - 20:30 | Goethe-Institut Boston 170 Beacon Street Boston MA 02116 USA, 170 Beacon Street, Boston, MA, 02116
How we got here, Where we stand now, and What might be required in the aftermath͏‌
Arrowsmith Press, in collaboration with AGNI, Irish Pages, Brookline Booksmith, The Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University, The Shevchenko Scientific Society & Boston University’s Center for the Study of Europe, presents
WAR IN EUROPE
a conversation
On the eve of the third anniversary of the bloodiest war in Europe in eighty years, we’ll reflect on how we got here, where we stand now, and what might be required in the aftermath–for the United States, Europe, and of course, Ukraine. Three of the world’s leading authorities on Ukraine will assist us in exploring these matters. Serhii Plokhii, Director of the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, will offer an update on the current situation in Ukraine, along with relevant background on the war; Professor of Modern European Intellectual History at Yale University Marci Shore will examine the intellectual framework that enabled the war, together with its impact and implications for Ukrainian, and European, culture. Economist Liudmyla Kurnosikova, currently a McCloy Fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School, will speak about plans for the post-war reconstruction of Ukraine. The panel will be moderated by writer and editor (and founder of AGNI!) Askold Melnyczuk, University of Massachusetts Boston.

This panel discussion marks the publication of a special issue of Ireland’s leading literary journal, Irish Pages, guest-edited by Askold Melnyczuk, on the topic of The War in Europe.
Copies of Irish Pages will be available for sale.
RSVP to Attend in Person
Register Here for the Webinar

Serhii Plokhii interests include the intellectual, cultural, and international history of Eastern Europe, with an emphasis on Ukraine. He is the author of, among others, The Russo-Ukrainian War: The Return of History (W.W. Norton, 2023); Atoms and Ashes: A Global History of Nuclear Disasters (W.W. Norton, 2022); The Frontline: Essays on Ukraine’s Past and Present (HURI, 2021); Nuclear Folly: A History of the Cuban Missile Crisis (W. W. Norton, 2021); Forgotten Bastards of the Eastern Front: American Airmen behind the Soviet Lines and the Collapse of the Grand Alliance (Oxford University Press, 2019); Chernobyl: The History of a Nuclear Catastrophe (Basic Books, 2018); and The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine (Basic Books, 2015). His books have won numerous awards, including the Ballie Gifford Prize and the Shevchenko National Prize (2018).

Marci Shore is professor of history at Yale University and a regular visiting fellow at the Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen in Vienna. She is on leave in 2024-2025 at the Munk School for Global Affairs at University of Toronto. Her research focuses on the intellectual history of twentieth and twenty-first century Central and Eastern Europe. She is the translator of Michał Głowiński’s The Black Seasons and the author of Caviar and Ashes: A Warsaw Generation’s Life and Death in Marxism, 1918-1968, The Taste of Ashes: The Afterlife of Totalitarianism in Eastern Europe. A new edition of her third book, The Ukrainian Night: An Intimate History of Revolution, was published in March 2024. Her articles and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, Foreign Policy, Eurozine, The Atlantic, The Yale Review, The New York Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal. In 2018 she received a Guggenheim Fellowship for the book project about phenomenology in East-Central Europe tentatively titled In Pursuit of Certainty Lost: Central European Encounters on the Way to Truth.

Liudmyla Kurnosikova is currently pursuing a Master in Public Administration as a McCloy Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School. Her academic focus centers on the post-war reconstruction of Ukraine, with a particular emphasis on fostering investment. Before joining HKS, she worked as a senior manager in management consulting, operating across Europe and Central Asia, with her primary base in Germany. Liudmyla holds an M.Sc. in International Economics and Economic Policy from Goethe University Frankfurt, along with two separate bachelor’s degrees in Economics from the University of Goettingen and Philology from the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy.

Askold Melnyczuk has published four novels and a book of stories. What Is Told (Faber, 1994) was the first commercially published novel in English to highlight the Ukrainian refugee experience and was named a New York Times Notable. Others have been cited as an LA Times Best Books of the Year and an Editor’s Choice by the American Library Association’s Booklist. His selected poems, The Venus of Odesa, will appear in 2025. A book of essays and selected non-fiction, With Madonna in Kyiv: Why Literature Matters More than Ever will appear from the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute in 2026. A co-edited anthology of contemporary Crimean Tatar literature is forthcoming in 2025. He has also edited a book of essays on the St. Lucian Nobel-prize winning poet Derek Walcott and is co-editor of From Three Worlds, an anthology of Ukrainian writers from the 1980s generation. Founding editor of AGNI Magazine and Arrowsmith Press, he has taught at Boston University and Harvard and currently teaches at the University of Massachusetts Boston. In 2024 he edited a special issue of Irish Pages, Ireland’s leading literary journal, on The War in Europe.

Transit Culture and Postcolonial Trauma
2025-02-15 17:00 - 19:00
Презентація книжки Тамари Гундорової «Транзитна культура і постколоніальна травма» (Віхола: Київ, 2024)
Тамара Гундорова розглядає пострадянський транзит і говорить про покоління, тіло і пам’ять в українській культурі між двома Майданами (2004-2014). В її фокусі – реконструкція національної історії з фрагментів та слідів стертого і втраченого минулого, візія «моєї Європи» і тема «останнього радянського покоління», а також феномен «лузера» 2000-х як емблеми посттоталітарної травми. В центрі уваги – романи «Музей покинутих секретів» (2009) О. Забужко, «Ворошиловград» (2010) С. Жадана, «Записки українського самашедшего» (2010) Л. Костенко.
Модератор: Сергій Біленький
Презентація відбудеться українською мовою.
Дискусія українською та англійською.
Тамара Гундорова – професор-гість та наукова співробітниця Прінстонського університету, провідна наукова співробітниця Інституту літератури НАН України, асоційована наукова співробітниця Гарвардського українського наукового інституту та декан Українського вільного університету. Членкиня Українського ПЕН.
Авторка багатьох книжок, зокрема про Лесю Українку «Книги Сивілли» (2023), «Постчорнобильська бібліотека. Український постмодернізм 1990-х» (2019), «Транзитна культура. Симптоми постколоніальної травми» (2013; 2024), «Кітч і література. Травестії» (2008), «Франко і/не Каменяр» (2006); «Femina melancholica.. Стать і культура в гендерних утопіях Ольги Кобилянської» (2002), а також багатьох статей та розвідок про модернізм, постмодернізм, фемінізм, постколоніальні дослідження та історію української літератури.
Була стипендіаткою програми Фулбрайта, університету Монаша, фонду імені Петра Яцика, університету Хоккайдо та Ініціативи Філіпа Шварца Фонду Олександра фон Гумбольдта тощо
Вхід – вільний. Реєстрація обов’язкова. Рекомендована пожертва – $20.
РЕЄСТРАЦІЯ
Transit Culture and Postcolonial Trauma by Tamara Hundorova (Vihola, Kyiv, 2024)
Tamara Hundorova explores the post-Soviet transition and examines themes of the body, generations, and memory in Ukrainian culture between the two Maidans (2004–2014). She focuses on the reconstruction of national history from the fragments and traces of an erased and lost past, the vision of ‘my Europe,’ the concept of the ‘last Soviet generation,’ and the phenomenon of the ‘loser’ of the 2000s, which has become emblematic of post-totalitarian trauma. Central to her analysis are the novels The Museum of Abandoned Secrets (2009) by Oksana Zabuzhko, Voroshilovgrad (2010) by Serhiy Zhadan, and Notes of a Ukrainian Madman (2010) by Lina Kostenko.
Moderator: Dr. Serhiy Bilenkyi (Columbia University)
The book launch will be presented in Ukrainian.
Discussion in Ukrainian and English.

Prof. Tamara Hundorova is currently a Visiting Professor and Scholar at Princeton University. She is also a Principal Scholar at the Institute of Literature, NAS of Ukraine, an Associate Fellow at Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, and a Dean at Ukrainian Free University. She is a member of PEN Ukraine.
Tamara Hundorova authored multiple books, including Lesia Ukrainka. Knyhy Syvilly (2023), The Post- Chornobyl Library. The Ukrainian Postmodernism of the 1990s (2019), Tranzytna kul’tura. Symptomy postkolonial’noi travmy (2013; 2024), Kitsch i Literatura. Travestii (2008), Franko i/ne Kameniar (2006); Femina melancholica. Stat’ i kul’tura v gendernij utopii Ol’hy Kobylians’koi (2002) and many articles and chapters on modernism, postmodernism, feminism, postcolonial studies, and the history of Ukrainian literature.
She is a former Fulbright Scholar, Visiting Scholar of Monash University, recipient of Yacyk Distinguished Fellowship, Foreign Visitors Fellowship (Hokkaido University), and Fellowship of Philipp Schwartz-Initiative of Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung, among others.
Admission to this event is free. Registration is required. Suggested donation is $20
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Ukrainian Music Initiative Introductions: Ukrainian Classical Music
2025-02-04 19:30 - 21:30
About the Ukrainian Music Initiative
Ukrainian resistance to Russia’s genocidal invasion has inspired the world. Ukrainian culture, including art, literature, design and music, which for centuries has been suppressed and threatened with elimination, is a key element of the fight.
UMI, a new world-class effort, was created to elevate Ukrainian classical music to its rightful place in the Western canon and to fill a significant gap in the US’ cultural landscape. This is being accomplished by having skilled and knowledgeable musicians of Ukrainian heritage perform Ukrainian music in accessible venues on a regular basis.
A collaboration of four independent artists, UMI consists of contralto Vira Slywotzky, cellist Valeriya Sholokhova, and pianists Margarita Rovenskaya and Pavlo Gintov. All of whom have a longstanding history of commitment to Ukrainian music and are sought after performers in New York City and beyond. Joining them in their mission are musicologist Leah Batstone and business entrepreneur Alex Gamota.
UMI is presented by Vira & Friends, a non-profit corporation under the auspices of the Ukrainian American Educational Center of Boston, a 501(c)(3).

Українське суспільство через три роки після початку повномасштабної війни
2025-01-25 17:00 - 18:30
Через три роки після початку повномасштабної війни українське суспільство втратило частину феноменальної єдності й опірності, яку демонструвало в перші місяці після 24 лютого 2022 року, але все ще має достатній запас міцності, щоби витримати воєнні злигодні й не вимагати від влади поступок аґресорові. Спираючись на двох соціологічних опитуваннях, проведених на різних етапах великої війни, Володимир Кулик аналізуватиме тяглість і зміни в поглядах різних категорій українського населення. Особливу увагу буде надано змінам в ідентифікаціях і мовних практиках, які демонструють незворотність руху України в напрямку геть від Москви.

Володимир Кулик є професором Київської школи економіки. Протягом багатьох років він працював в Інституті політичних і етнонаціональних досліджень Національної академії наук України. Він також викладав у Колумбійському, Стенфордському та Єйльському університетах, а також проводив дослідження в Гарварді, Стенфорді, Університеті Джорджа Вашинґтона, Центрі імені Вудро Вілсона та інших наукових осередках США й інших країн. Він є фахівцем із політики мови, памʼяті й ідентичності в Україні та мовної політики багатомовних країн світу, автором чотирьох книжок і понад сімдесяти наукових статей українською, англійською та іншими мовами.
Доповідь відбудеться українською мовою.Дискусія українською та англійською.
Вхід – вільний. Реєстрація обов’язкова.Рекомендована пожертва – 20 дол.
РЕЄСТРАЦІЯ
UKRAINIAN SOCIETY THREE YEARS INTO THE FULL-SCALE WAR
Three years into the full-scale war, Ukrainian society has lost some of its phenomenal unity and resilience, which it demonstrated in the first months after February 24, 2022, but it still has enough strength to continue withstanding wartime hardships without demanding that the authorities make concessions to the aggressor. Based on two nationwide surveys conducted at different stages of the full-scale war, Volodymyr Kulyk will analyze continuity and change in the views of different categories of the Ukrainian population. Of particular importance will be the changes in identifications and language practices, which demonstrate the irrevocability of Ukraine’s movement away from Moscow.
Volodymyr Kulyk is a professor at Kyiv School of Economics. For many years, he worked at the Institute of Political and Ethnic Studies, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. He has also taught at Columbia, Stanford and Yale Universities as well as conducting research at Harvard, Stanford, George Washington University, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and other scholarly institutions in various Western countries. He is an expert on the politics of language, memory and identity in Ukraine and language policies of multilingual countries across the world. Kulyk is the author of four books and more than 70 scholarly articles in Ukrainian, English and other languages.
The lecture will be delivered in Ukrainian.Discussion in Ukrainian and English.
Admission to this event is free.Registration is required. Suggested donation is $20
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Pianist Roksolana Kit performs works by Ukrainian composers
2025-01-11 17:00 - 18:30
Program:
Kateryna Palachova – “Prayer”
Serhiy Bortkiewicz – Sonata no.2, op. 60 (1 and 2 movements)
Theodore Akimenko – “Urania. Heaven’s Muse”
Borys Lyatoshynsky – Prelude op.44, no.4
Vitaly Vyshynsky – “Kitch music”
Antin Rudnytsky – Sonata op.10
Mykola Leontovych – “Shchedryk” (arrang. Sergiy Yushkevych)

Moderator: Pavlo Gintov

Roksolana Kit is a Ukrainian pianist, event organizer, and founder of various music initiatives. In 2023, she performed in Arkan alongside Roman Himey and Yarema Malanchuk at the Kyiv Biennial, and in 2024, she joined the IRON Collective at the Warsaw Autumn Festival. As the Grand Prize winner of the Ukrainian Music Competition, Roksolana is set to perform Antin Rudnytsky’s Piano Sonata at Carnegie Hall. Earlier this year, she has performed this Sonata at the Klavier Festival in Bayreuth, Germany.
Roksolana studied at the “Workshop of Cultural Practitioners” at the Ukrainian Catholic University in 2021 and further honed her craft at the XV International Piano Forum Bieszczady bez granic in Syanok, Poland (2020), as well as in early music masterclasses at the Mid Europe Early Music Festival in Kielce, Poland (2022). She also won the special project award for the 20th anniversary of the Hnatyshyn Foundation, Ukraine – Heritage, Spirit, and Future, in Canada (2022).
In 2023, she co-founded Etc.duo with flutist Natalia Kozhushko-Maksimiv, a duo focused on performing works by Ukrainian composers of the 20th and 21st centuries. She is also the co-founder of the Ukrainian podcast Without Experts and a regular contributor to the classical music publication The Claquers.
Roksolana holds a bachelor’s degree from the Mykola Lysenko National Academy of Music and a master’s degree from the H. and K. Bacewicz Music Academy in Łódź, Poland.

Pianist Pavlo Gintov has been described as “a poet of the keyboard” by Marty Lash of the Illinois Entertainer, a “musical storyteller” by the Japanese publication Shikoku News, and “a fantastic pianist and extraordinary artist” by Jerry Dubins of the Fanfare Magazine. Following his debut at the Kyiv Philharmonic Hall at the age of 12, Mr. Gintov has been touring throughout Europe, Asia, Africa, South America and the United States, appearing at such stages as Carnegie Hall in New York, Berlin Philharmonic Hall, Teatro Verdi Nationale in Milan and Kioi Hall in Tokyo. He has been a soloist with Tokyo Royal Chamber Orchestra, the National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine, Orchestra Ensemble Kanazawa, the National Symphony Orchestra of the Dominican Republic and Manhattan Chamber Orchestra under such conductors as Michiyoshi Inoue, Victor Yampolsky, Thomas Sanderling, Volodymyr Sirenko and Tomomi Nishimoto.
Admission to this event is free, registration is required. Suggested donation is $20. Building capacity is limited, please register below to secure your spot.
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