About the Program
News from the Stasiuk Program
In February 2009, Olena Prystayko delivered the seventh annual Stasiuk-Cambridge lecture on 'The Ukraine-EU- Russia Triangle: Is There Room for a Workable Relationship?' at Robinson College, University of Cambridge. The partnership between the two institutions will continue but the current sponsorship by the Stasiuk Program of the lecture series will end, as Cambridge has initiated a Ukrainian Studies program headed by Dr. Rory Finnin.
 The key priority of the Program in the coming 2-3 years is the Famine-Holodomor in Ukraine. Director, Dr. David R. Marples, together with several hired assistants, has begun a systematic study of the Central Archive on the Ukraine Famine, a copy of which is held by the University of Alberta Library. Assistants to date have included Dr. Peter Larson of the Department of Modern Languages and Cultural Studies, and Mariya Melentyeva and Eduard Baidaus, PhD students in the Department of History and Classics. The archives contain more than 6,000 pages of information, hence this is a long-term project geared toward the production of a major manuscript by the 80th anniversary of the tragedy, in 2013.
In addition, the Program will continue to maintain its popular blog page on Current Politics in Ukraine, the contributors to which have included Ihor Khineiko, doctoral candidate in the Department of History and Classics, Kateryna Malyhina, a native of Khmelnytsky, Ukraine, enrolled in the graduate program of the University of Eichstaett-Ingolstaett in Germany, and Kyiv analyst Ivan Lozowy. It also continues to sponsor speakers and in 2008-09, these included Professor Timothy Snyder of Yale University and Olena Nikolayenko, a postdoctoral candidate at Stanford University and a native of Donetsk, Ukraine.
The Stasiuk Program for the Study of Contemporary Ukraine serves as an information centre on events in Ukraine for the scholarly community, government, media and the general public. Our major research commitment has been the study of Ukrainian-Russian relations. We also house an archive on twentieth-century Ukraine, undertake research projects, and sponsor and host scholars and lecturers working on contemporary Ukrainian issues.
The Institute is an ideal place for the creation of such a program, given its academic expertise on contemporary Ukraine. As rapid political changes overtook the Soviet Union, CIUS became a clearing house of information on Ukraine for government agencies, media, academic institutions and business organizations, as well as a focal point for academic and other official visitors from Ukraine to Canada and the USA.
The program, founded in 1990 with support from the Stasiuk Family Endowment Fund, is currently headed by Dr. David Marples, professor of history at the University of Alberta and a former CIUS research associate.
News from the Director
Dr. Marples offered the following talks in the academic year 2008-09 that were related to Ukraine:
“History Memory and World War II in Belarus.” Paper presented at the convention of the Association for the Study of Nationalities, Institute d’Etudes Politiques, Paris, France, 4 July 2008.
“New Information about the Ukrainian Famine of 1932-33.” Lecture presented at the St. John’s Institute, Edmonton, 15 July 2008.
“Current Perceptions of the OUN and UPA in Ukraine: The Dilemmas of History and Memory.” Lecture presented at the 36 th Harvard Ukrainian Summer Institute, Harvard University, 4 August 2008.
“Soviet Partisans and Ukrainian Memory.” Paper presented at the workshop “United Europe-Divided Memory,” Institute fuer die Wissenschaften vom Menschen, Vienna, Austria, 20 September 2008.
“Historical writing and debates on the famine in Ukraine (Holodomor) and the West, 1986-2008.” Paper presented at the workshop “Politics of Food: Past and Present,” University of Denver, Colorado, 11 October 2008.
Talks on the Chernobyl Disaster and the Current Political Situation in Belarus to accompany the showing of films at the Marda Loop Film Festival, Calgary, 15 November 2008.
“Historical Memory, World War II, and the Construction of National Identity in Belarus.” Paper presented at the annual convention of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, Philadelphia Marriott Downtown, Philadelphia, PA, 21 November 2008.
Briefs on current situation in Belarus and Ukraine (all-day workshop) for the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, Government of Canada, Ottawa, 3 February 2009.
“OUN, UPA, and Historical Memory in Ukraine: Rewriting the Soviet Past.” Keynote address, Ukrainian Studies Conference, University of Adelaide, Australia, 21 February 2009.
“ Russia under Putin and Medvedev: Towards a New World Order.” Keynote address at the 20 th Century Dictator Conference, Queen Elizabeth High School, Edmonton, 6 March 2009.
“Historical Memory and the Second World War in Ukraine.” Stanford Lectures on Ukraine, 2008-09, sponsored by the Center for Russian, European, and Eurasian Studies, Stanford University, 2 April 2009.
“Ukraine in 1989,” presentation at the 33 rd annual Stanford-Berkeley Conference in Slavic and East European Studies, University of California at Berkeley, 3 April 2009.
“The Chernobyl Disaster: History, Debates, and Consequences.” Paper presented at the 2009 Annual Stanford Teachers’ Workshop, “Examining Long-Term Radiation Effects: Case Studies of the Atomic Bombings of Japan and the Chernobyl Power Plant Thermal Explosion,” Stanford University, 4 April 2009.
“The Causes of the Famine of 1933 in Ukraine,” Department of Central and East European Studies, University of Glasgow, 3 June 2009.
Selected Media Interviews
CBC Edmonton AM, 11 August 2008
CBC Radio “Radioactive,” regular slot on “ Europe,” 21 August, 25 September 2008; 8 January 2009
City TV, Edmonton, 25 September 2008
Global TV, Edmonton, 26 September 2008
Voice of America, 1 October 2008; 15 January 2009
Maclean’s, 20 October 2008
National Public Radio, Boston, MA, 8 January 2009
Time magazine (for feature article on Belarus), 18 March 2009
Recent Publications on Ukraine
In August 2008, Dr. Marples’ book Heroes and Villains: Creating National History in Contemporary Ukraine, originally published in December 2007, was released in a revised paperback edition by Central European University Press, Budapest and New York.
In May 2009, Dr. Marples published “Ethnic Issues in the Famine of 1932-1933 in Ukraine.” Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 61, No. 3 (May 2009): 505-518.
Awards
In September 2008, Dr. Marples received the University Cup, the highest academic prize offered by the University of Alberta, which is awarded for research, teaching, and public service. He also received the Faculty of Arts Undergraduate Teaching Award and in the spring of 2009, he received the University of Alberta Senate ‘Beyond These Walls Recognition Program’ Award for Individual Faculty.
|
