Where you currently live: Boston, Massachusetts
Current Position: Director of Print and Digital Publications, Ukrainian Research Institute, Harvard University
Professional Interests: Ukrainian Literature and Culture of the 20th and 21st centuries
Why did you decide to join the Shevchenko Scientific Society?
I joined the Society following the invitation of colleagues who were working on modernizing it and bringing its activities and organization more into the 21st century. It was clear to me that the role of the Society had changed compared to the time when it was first founded. The bulk of scholarly work by the Society’s members is now done within the teaching and research institutions where they are employed. Refocusing the Society’s mission on providing a scholarly community to such members and engaging them in new scholarly projects seemed like a worthy undertaking to dedicate my time and energy to.
What do you value about membership in the Society?
Many of us who work in the field of Ukrainian studies find ourselves in isolation at our home institutions. Those who work in the humanities are usually part of larger departments where Ukrainian studies is represented by them alone. This could be true even for larger institutions that have established programs in Ukrainian studies. And so, for me, the most valuable dimension of membership in the Society is the community of like-minded scholars interested in Ukrainian literature and culture, history and society today. In terms of the most impactful and memorable events, I think the panel “War/Art Balance: Deimperializing the Russian Avant-Garde,” jointly organized by the Society with the Cooper Union in its Great Hall was definitely a highlight in the Society’s programming.
How did your interest in Ukrainian culture and society influence your career path?
My career path in general has been rather nonlinear: I started as a specialist in German studies, then moved on to comparative literature, then to English studies, and only then rediscovered Ukrainian studies for myself. I am grateful that I was able to follow my intellectual interests and eventually found myself working on Ukrainian literature and culture. I think Ukrainian culture remains one of the most understudied and at the same time most promising fields within the humanities. Given Ukraine’s history, its geographic position, and the diversity of people living in Ukraine, the country and its society, politics, and culture hold significant importance for Europe and the world, as can be witnessed by the tragic events of the last ten years. I therefore dedicated my career to finding ways to educate America and the world about Ukraine, no matter what my actual job role is. This focus has led me to reform the publications activities of the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard, resulting in more publications and the launch of a book series of literary translations. I have also worked a lot on connecting international institutions dedicated to Ukrainian studies among themselves and with productive non-governmental and governmental partners in Ukraine. I am proud to have launched such initiatives as Ukrainica, the online database of Ukrainian materials in English translation, and to be co-organizing the Translating Ukraine Summer Institute, among many other things.
What is your current project?
My work as an academic publisher leaves very little time for my own research, unfortunately. The demand for scholarly publications on Ukraine remains substantial; and so my time is usually devoted to scholarly editing, which often presents whole research projects of its own. The situation is similar with publishing literary translations, especially those of Ukrainian modernism, whose editing often results in extensive research. In this sense, my scholarly work is guided by the publication tasks at hand, which, in turn, are dictated by my knowledge of Ukrainian and other literatures and cultures. Any free time that is left is usually devoted to volunteering for various initiatives that I believe to be important, such as the journal Krytyka, for example, or the Shevchenko Scientific Society itself. While much of this work consists of institution building, I do hope to be able to return to my own research and publications in the not-too-distant future.
What career advice would you give to new members of the Shevchenko Scientific Society in the United States?
I could give new members of the Society the same advice that I used to give my students: wherever you are and whatever you do, try to always focus on what is important to you and hone your skills to perfection. Ours is an academic society, and most people will be scholars or intellectually engaged professionals. Given the overall situation in the arts and sciences today, it may be difficult to find teaching and research positions that previous generations of scholars were able to secure. And so, if you find yourself in a non-tenure-track teaching position, or in an administrative position at an institution of learning, it does not mean that you have to give up on your own intellectual interests. I believe that our jobs do not define us. We can define what our jobs are. That is why having different people in the same professional positions often leads to vastly different outcomes. From this perspective, we should try to maximize our impact in the positions that we occupy to advance ideas we believe in. Ideally, those ideas would be about something greater than us, that can benefit whole communities, not just us. I find that following these guiding principles helps lead a happier and more fulfilling life—both professionally and personally.