Greetings from an extended Fulbright grant in Lviv and Mykolaiv
A year ago when I received a 10-month extension on my original Fulbright teaching grant to Ukraine, I was a bit scared. It would be my longest absence from my American home and family since my immigration in the 1970s from then communist Poland. Now close to the conclusion of my year and a half spent in Ukraine, I am very happy I made the decision to take full advantage of this great opportunity. I am now very grateful to the Fulbright Foundation as well as to my friends in Kyiv, Lviv and Mykolaiv for making my stay not only possible but also the most enjoyable and intellectually stimulating experience in my recent career.
On a personal note I am also very happy to have had the opportunity to see the land where my father and grandparents lived and to experience first hand the Ukrainian people's kindness and warmth about which I had heard so much as a child. Besides teaching I also enjoyed meeting Ukrainian artists, librarians, archivists, members of the Orthodox clergy, high school students and teachers, their families, and American Peace Corp volunteers. I attended various excellent folklore shows, theatre productions, and commemorative celebrations of national holidays in both Russian and Ukrainian languages.
Ukraine has always interested me, partially because my father was born in Bila Tserkva south of Kyiv. Since childhood I have had a secret desire to see the steppes he described to me when longing for the landscape and the friends left behind. These were the kresy [frontiers] of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth about which I read in novels and history books. I am also glad that I had the opportunity to experience Ukraine at this historical moment, after Poland's recognition of an independent Ukraine and while Poland is working together with the United States to support Ukrainian aspirations to assume its rightful place within the European community and NATO. My favorite Ukrainian author, Yuriy Andrukhovych correctly noted that the Orange Revolution met the highest "European standards" and I share his disappointment over the slow recognition of this fact by the EU. Presently both Poland and Ukraine are preparing toco-host a major sporting event Euro 2012, to which both nations look forward with excitement and anticipation.
During the fall semester I taught at the Department of Cultural Studies in the Lviv Ivan Franko National University. I had a graduate student seminar about memory of WWII in Western and Eastern Europe and a course on political films. Some of the students have become my friends and we continue to exchange e-mails.
Lviv seems to be a cradle of the Ukrainian national liberation movement. Thanks to my students, I discovered such restaurants in Lviv as the one modeled on the Ukrainian Partisan Army "Kryivka" [hideout]. To gain entrance, one must know its clandestine location and the secret password (“Slava heroiam”-- Glory to the heroes)…
This spring I returned to Mykolaiv and reunited with dear friends and the many faculty members who graciously included me in their intellectual and family lives. Of special note is Olga Grigoreva, professor of English, whom I include among a handful of my closest friends on either sides of the Atlantic Ocean. Halyna Zaporozhets has also provided me with much professional help while dean Oleksandr Pronkevych and I have made plans for close future collaboration, including a conference we hope to have next year about political resistance ala Don Quixote within a comparative European perspective.
During the spring semester I taught “American Civilization" and a course on American film at the Petro Mohyla State University for Humanities. I also advised several master degree theses on American ethnic/racial relations and on the issue of media power in the U.S. in the 1940s. With my now fluent Russian and my new grasp of the Ukrainian language, I was also able to engage in a research project based on discussions and informal interviews as well as newspaper articles, television programming, and scholarly publications. This resulted in a paper on Ukrainian national narrative that I presented at an international conference on nationalism at the University of Warsaw's American Studies Center. It was sponsored partially by the Polish U.S. Fulbright Commission and while there I also chaired a panel on Polish nationalism. I will present a version of the paper on Ukrainian national narrative at the Olbian conference in Yalta in June.
I have also been arranging local screenings of Andrzej Wajda's Katyn, for which President Yushchenko conferred the order of Yaroslav Mudryi on the Polish director during the ceremonial opening of the Polish Film Festival in Kyiv. I was asked to appear on a local television program hosted by Professor Pronkevych. At that time I invited the audience to attend a screening of Katyn at our university on May 29. I also showed the film to the Fulbright graduate students in Mykolaiv who responded with many challenging questions.
Right now Ukraine is a truly exciting place as democracy consolidates and people are not only hopeful but also unafraid to ask questions and pose challenges, especially in the realm of education. For example, I participated in an ethics commission headed by our dean. I am also grateful to Peter Lennie, dean of University of Rochester, for his enthusiastic support of my Fulbright extension and the kind accommodation he made for my leave from Rochester. Now I am sure that I will be in Ukraine soon for more research, conferences and meetings with old friends.
