March 13, 2021
George Grabowicz, Stanislav Rosovetskyi, Mykhailo Nazarenko, Oleksandr Boron, Oles Fedoruk
George Grabowicz, Stanislav Rosovetskyi, Mykhailo Nazarenko, Oleksandr Boron, Oles Fedoruk
Shevchenko scholarship has traditionally been in the forefront of Ukrainian literary studies and has served as a touchstone in the Ukrainian humanities in the modern period. In 2009 the Shevchenko Scientific Society in the United States initiated an ambitious publication program to mark the 200th Anniversary of the poet’s birth (2014) that drew on the expertise of leading Shevchenko scholars in Ukraine and the West. The project has produced over a dozen books of Shevchenkiana, most notably Taras Shevchenko. The Critical Reception (Kyiv: Krytyka, 2013 and 2016).
Traditionally, the Shevchenko Scientific Society in the US, along with the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences in the US (UVAN) and the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University (HURI), hold an annual conference devoted to the legacy of Shevchenko. The focus of this year’s conference is the broad field of memoir literature relating to Shevchenko, and it reflects the Shevchenko Society’s and HURI’s ongoing publication project that anticipates a six volume edition of all extant memoirs about the Ukrainian national poet, covering his life (1814-1861) and, depending on the authors of these memoirs, appearing well into the late 19th and even the early 20th c.
The first two volumes of this series are scheduled to appear later this year. They build on the fundamental Taras Shevchenko. The Critical Reception, and as in that earlier edition, contain a full scholarly apparatus and comprehensive commentaries.
All of the speakers in this year’s conference are directly involved in the Taras Shevchenko in Memoirs project [Спогади про Тараса Шевченка] and their topics draw specifically on their manifold experiences and the scholarly problems encountered in preparing this publication.
Conference Program (all presentations will be in Ukrainian)
George G. Grabowicz (Moderator and author of the Introduction to volumes 1 and 2 of Taras Shevchenko in Memoirs),“Memory and Genre: Memoirs, Memoirs about Others, and Memoirs about Shevchenko in Particular”
Stanislav Rosovetskyi, “Specific Difficulties in Publishing Memoirs about Shevchenko”
Mykhailo Nazarenko,“Polemical Aspects in the Memoirs about Shevchenko”
Oleksandr Boron,“The Uskov Family Memoirs about Shevchenko: the Limits of Veracity”
Oles Fedoruk,“The year 1847 in Panteleimon Kulish’s Memoirs About Shevchenko”
Albert Kipa, President of UVAN, Concluding remarks