Ohio State is expanding its course offerings related to Ukraine and bringing Ukrainian scholars and guests to campus this coming academic year. Monitor this page for additional events as the year unfolds.
Academic Year 2024-25 Ukrainian Courses
First-year Ukrainian Language
PhD student Mykyta Tyshchenko will be offering first-year Ukrainian this year Tuesdays through Fridays from 4:10-5:05 PM. Students, employees, and Program 60 are all welcome! Tyshchenko hails from Ukraine himself and is currently writing his dissertation about Ukrainian film. Undergraduates and graduates can sign up for this four-credit course using the class number 34828. In spring the course meets in the Journalism Building 387. Ласкаво просимо!
Introduction to Ukrainian Culture
In spring semester, Dr. Alisa Lin will teach Slavic 2345.20, Introduction to Ukrainian Culture on Wednesdays and Fridays, 11:10am–12:30 PM. Dr. Lin has written about Ukrainian Cossacks on the OSU Origins site: listen or read here. This will be Dr. Lin’s second time offering the course which fulfills the requirements for a Foundation course in Literary, Visual & Performing Arts in the New GE and is a Literature/Diversity Global Studies course in the Legacy GE. Stay tuned for registration details!
Collaborations with Ukrainian Scholars
CSEEES is participating in several exchange programs for Ukrainian scholars. During the autumn semester, we hosted Dr. Maksym Kolesnikov in September to spend time with colleagues and students on the Columbus and Wooster campuses through a BridgeUSA program. During his month-long visit, Dr. Kolesnikov, an agronomist from Dnipro, Ukraine, gave two Cultural Connections talks.
This spring CSEEES will continue to support Ukrainian academics and educate our community about Ukraine through joining the Big Ten Academic Alliance (BTAA) Nonresidential Scholars Program for Ukraine and hosting two scholars. This program is intended to support academics in and from Ukraine to continue to advance their research, writing and teaching activities. These scholars will participate in twice-monthly research seminars, attend virtual professionalization workshops on topics such as academic publishing, interdisciplinary research and current theoretical trends in Ukrainian studies, and interact with their Ohio State sponsors, CSEEES affiliate faculty Prof. Ashley Bigham (Knowlton) and Prof. Alisa Lin (SEELC).
Upcoming Events About Ukraine
More events will be announced as they are scheduled!
Nonresidential Scholars Program for Ukraine January Research Presentations with Dr. Yevhen Zakharchenko (Karazin Kharkiv National U.)
Tuesday, January 21, 10:00-12:00 PM EST, Zoom
The Nonresidential Scholars Program for Ukraine, led by Indiana U. and supported by the BTAA and partner universities, is pleased to announce the first research workshops for the 2025 program, featuring the scholarship of the new cohort of fellows. During this session CSEEES' BTAA scholar Dr. Yevhen Zakharchenko (Karazin Kharkiv National U.) will be discussing his project entitled "'Kharkiv is the first capital' vs. 'Kharkiv is reinforced concrete': Memory and identities in Kharkiv before and after the Russian invasion.”
Film Screening: Flowers of Ukraine (dir. Adelina Borets, 2024)
Friday, January 31, 4:00-6:00 PM, 250 Knowlton Hall
Join CSEEES, the Department of Theatre, Film and Media Arts and the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures for a special film screening of Flowers of Ukraine.
Natalia, a strong, independent anarchist with a sharp sense of humor, is determined to defend her beloved land against all odds. What begins as a battle against developers soon takes on a deeper meaning when Russia invades Ukraine, intensifying her fight for survival. Flowers of Ukraine paints a compelling portrait of a woman who refuses to back down, offering viewers a powerful message of resilience and hope.
A reception with Adelina Borets (director) and Glib Lukianets (producer) will follow the screening.
Previous Events
Mershon Monday with Ashley Bigham (Ohio State U.)
Monday, September 9, Derby Hall, Room 1039
Join the Mershon Center for their Mershon Monday lecture series. This week's talk will feature Ashley Bigham, Associate Professor at the Knowlton School of Architecture, who will discuss Ukrainian architectural responses to wartime needs. Lunch will be served at 12:15 PM and the discussion will take place from 12:30 to 1:30 PM.
Kalbouss Lecture "De-occupying the Archive: Art as Liberatory Practice" with Dr. Victoria Donovan (U. of St. Andrews)
Monday, September 9, 3:00-5:00 PM, Thompson Library Room 165
Check back soon for more details.
Abstract: If as Achille Mbembe reminds us archives are infrastructures of colonial epistemic violence, Soviet industrial archives in Ukraine deal in specialist kinds of epistemic imperialism. Industrial archives, and the celebratory words and images of extractivist practice they contain, manifest as the institutionalised and thus ‘authoritative’ meaning of these places. This epistemic reduction can be understood as what Asiya Bazdyrieva calls the ‘resourcification’ of Ukraine, its reduction in the economic and cultural imaginaries to a set of resources to be plundered and exchanged for profit. The looting and destruction of archives, libraries, and museums is part of Russia’s continuing campaign to control Ukraine’s epistemic infrastructures, asserting hegemony over the meaning of its cultural space.
This paper looks at the ways in which artists from Ukraine have resisted (re-)colonial epistemic violence, through engaging industrial archives, confronting and dismantling their infrastructures of epistemic occupation. Analysing specific artistic practices and products, I ask how archives of the occupied and destroyed territories, including heavily industrialised spaces such as Mariupol, Sieverodonetsk, and Soledar, can be reconstituted through community-led practice.
Workshop: "Engaged Scholarship, Decolonial Futures?" with Dr. Victoria Donovan (U. of St. Andrews)
Tuesday, September 10, 12:00-1:30 PM, Research Commons (18th Ave Library)
During this workshop with Dr. Victoria Donovan we will discuss her research with communities in Ukraine’s Donbas region and specific questions about scholarly accountability, activism, and challenging imperial knowledge production. Materials will be pre-circulated to those who register for this catered lunch-time event. Regional expertise not required.
Have questions? Please email Dr. Jennifer Suchland at suchland.15@osu.edu.
Reading and Discussion with Novelist and Poet Dr. Oksana Lutsyshyna (U. of Texas, Austin)
Sunday, September 29, 3:00 PM at Two Dollar Radio in German Village
Please join the Center for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies (CSEEES) at Two Dollar Radio Headquarters in German Village for a special reading with Oksana Lutsyshyna as we celebrate her latest book, Ivan and Phoebe.
Ivan and Phoebe spotlights the uproarious generation that led the Ukrainian independence movement of 1990; from subjugation to revolution to post-Soviet rule, it investigates the difficulties and absurdities of societal change and the families that change with it. She will discuss the Revolution on the Granite (1990) in Ukraine, and life in Ukraine on the border of the two epochs - the Soviet era and the era of Independence.
Oksana Lutsyshyna is a Ukrainian writer, translator, and poet. For her latest novel, Ivan and Phoebe, she was awarded Lviv City of Literature UNESCO Prize (2020) and the Taras Shevchenko National Award in fiction (2021). She teaches the Ukrainian language and Eastern European literatures at the University of Texas at Austin.