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Ukrainian Language Courses

UKRN S-Aab Beginning Ukrainian (30227)
(8 units: UN, GR, NC) M-F 9 am-12 noon
Alla Parkhomenko, Ph.D., Kyiv State University

An intensive course for students with little or no knowledge of Ukrainian. Basic grammatical structures are introduced and reinforced through an active oral approach. By the end of the course students are expected to develop the ability to conduct short conversations in a range of familiar situations related to daily activities, understand simple factual texts, and write routine messages. They will be able to create with language, and initiate, maintain and bring to a close simple exchanges by asking and responding to simple questions. A variety of genuine sources will be used to establish an authentic environment.

UKRN S-B Intermediate Ukrainian (31593)
(8 units: UN, GR, NC) M-F 9 am-12 noon
Yuri I. Shevchuk, Ph.D., Kyiv State University

Development of students' conversational skills in a variety of real life communicative settings gets a priority treatment in the course. This is accompanied by a review of basic structures and further expansion of grammar fundamentals. Major emphasis is placed on further vocabulary acquisition through readings and viewings of videotaped programs focusing on contemporary cultural and political issues. By the end of the course students will be able to narrate and describe in major time frames, deal effectively with unanticipated complications in most informal, and some formal settings on topics of personal and some general interest.

UKRN S-C Advanced Ukrainian (30230)
(8 units: UN, GR, NC) M-F 9 am-12 noon

This is an intensive course for students who wish to develop their mastery of the language. Reading selections include annotated articles on contemporary issues in business, economics, politics, and culture. Short written reports and oral presentations will be part of the course. By the end of the course the students will be able to discuss extensively a wide range of general interest topics and some special fields of interest, hypothesize, support opinions and deal with linguistically unfamiliar situations. Classes will be conducted largely in Ukrainian.

History, Politics, and Literature Courses

HIST S-1512 Modern Ukraine, 1790-2003 (31590)
George Liber, Professor of History, University of Alabama at Birmingham

This history course provides a narrative overview and analysis of the evolution of Ukrainian national identity from the early nineteenth century to the present. It investigates the incorporation of Ukrainian territories into the Austrian and Russian Empires; socio-economic and political developments in these empires; the emergence of the Ukrainian national movement in the nineteenth century; the revolution of the 1917-1921 period; the formation of the USSR and the Ukrainian SSR; Ukrainianization; Ukrainian national communism; collectivization, the famine of 1932-33, and the purges; Ukraine's socio-economic transformation; the Second World War; the post-Stalinist period; Gorbachev's reforms; the collapse of the USSR; the emergence of an independent Ukraine; and post-communist and post-colonial problems.
By placing the development of the modern Ukrainian national identity within its socio-economic, political, and intellectual context, this course probes this identity's evolution and its variance from region to region over the past two centuries.

GOVT S-1248 Theorizing Ukraine: Politics, Theory, and Political Theory (31654)
(4 units: UN, GR, NC)

Alexander J. Motyl, Professor of Political Science, Rutgers University, Newark

A historically and comparatively informed examination of social science approaches to conceptualizing and theorizing politics and political developments in Ukraine. The course investigates concepts and theories of the state, revolution, nation, nationalism, empire, elite, socialism, totalitarianism, transition, civil society, modernization, political culture, and democracy. Both concepts and theories will be discussed in relation to one another, in light of modern Ukrainian history, and with reference to other countries.

UKRN S-102 Symbolic Identity: Discourse of Gender in Ukrainian Literature
(4 units: UN, GR)

Tamara Hundorova, Corresponding Member of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (NASU), Head of the Literary Theory Department, Institute of Literature, NAS (Kyiv, Ukraine)

This course provides an interdisciplinary analysis of Ukrainian literature from the point of view of gender studies. It explores how different types of discourse construct gender identity and how gender issues influence literary imagination. The course also looks at the symbolic role of gender in national identity, and studies gender as a factor in construing modern and postmodern consciousness. Students will examine different gender strategies employed by Ukrainian writers from Ivan Kotliarevs'ky and Marko Vovchok to Yuri Andrukhovych, and Oksana Zabuzhko.

Prerequisites: reading knowledge of Ukrainian or permission of the instructor.

Calendar of Special Events in PDF