Gazing across the Steppe: Urum Folklore of North Azovian Greeks in Ukraine
14 October 2026
About the lecture:
This lecture will examine the rich linguistic and cultural heritage of Urum — an endangered Turkic language historically spoken by some North Azovian Greek communities in Ukraine’s Join Dr. Anna Antonova to explore the heritage of Urum — an endangered Turkic language historically spoken by North Azovian Greek communities in Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast. The presentation will highlight the oral traditions of this bilingual ethnic group, which traces its origins to Christian Orthodox populations in medieval Crimea, offering vital insight into the multi-ethnic tapestry of Ukraine. Drawing on the history of North Azovian Greeks (Urums and Roumeans), a bilingual ethnic group tracing its origins to Christian Orthodox populations in medieval Crimea, Dr. Antonova will explore the Urum oral traditions — proverbs, riddles, and folk songs — on the basis of her work translating the unique folkloric materials collected and published by the North Azovian Greeks: Urums and Roumeans NGO in 2025 under the title Çöle S'evnıp. Оhuyuh urumcas (Gazing across the Steppe: A Reader in Urum). The presentation will highlight how these oral traditions offer vital insight into the multi-ethnic tapestry of Ukraine, while reflecting on the role of literary translation in safeguarding displaced cultural memory amid the realities of ongoing war.
About the lecturer:
Anna Antonova is a literary scholar and translator, currently a research coordinator at the University of Alberta’s College of Social Sciences and Humanities. With a master’s in translation studies from Donetsk National University, she completed her PhD in Transnational and Comparative Literatures in the Department of Modern Languages and Cultural Studies at the University of Alberta in 2022. She has coordinated the annual Translating Ukraine Summer Institute in Wroclaw (Poland) since 2024, co-founded by the U of A’s Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies and the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute. Anna’s current research interests focus on literary representation of the Russo-Ukrainian war and translation of Ukrainian war-themed literary fiction. Her latest translation project centres on a collection of folklore materials and poetry originally written in Urum, a language of the North Azovian Greek community from the Donbas region of Ukraine.
