The Return of Ihor Ševčenko: Interviews with a Cofounder of Ukrainian Studies at Harvard

A lecture by Frank Sysyn, Director of the Peter Jacyk Centre for Ukrainian Historical Research at the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies and Professor in the Department of History and Classics at the University of Alberta, and Lidia Stefanowska, Professor of Slavic Literatures at the University of Warsaw.

Moderated by Serhii Plokhii, Mykhailo S. Hrushevs'kyi Professor of Ukrainian History and Director of the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University.

IN-PERSON and ONLINE via Zoom Webinar (live). Registration is required to attend online. 

About the Lecture

“And you, like a dry tumbleweed, you don’t know where the wind will take you,” Ihor Ševčenko in conversation with Lidia Stefanowska

At the end of his life, Ihor Ševčenko (1922-2009), the prominent Byzantinist and co-founder of HURI, spoke with Lidia Stefanowska about his life and career. Born in Radość, Poland, as the son of emigres from the Ukrainian People’s (National) Republic, Ševčenko grew up in the circles of the Ukrainian emigration in Warsaw while at the same time attending institutions of the Polish elite. During World War II, he studied at the German University of Prague, before joining the exodus of Ukrainian refugees to Western Europe and North America. In his interviews he discusses his career in Byzantine studies as well as his contacts with George Orwell and his translation of Animal Farm, J. Robert Oppenheimer and his residence at the Institute of Advanced Studies where he was the youngest fellow, and interaction with the leading global specialists in the humanities, intellectually stimulating and personally adventurous to say the least. Lidia Stefanowska, professor of Slavic Literatures at the University of Warsaw, will recount her experiences in engaging with the eminent scholar to reveal his visions and insights from his times and career. Frank Sysyn, professor of the University of Alberta and formerly associate professor of history at Harvard, who wrote the preface for the volume, will recount his contacts with both the interviewee and the text. The volume is being printed as the twelfth volume in the series of Memoirs, Diaries, and Interviews of the Peter Jacyk Program for the Study of Modern Ukrainian History in Lviv.

About the Speakers

Frank Sysyn is director of the Peter Jacyk Centre for Ukrainian Historical Research at the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies and professor in the Department of History and Classics at the University of Alberta. He serves as editor in chief of the Hrushevsky Translation Project. A specialist in Ukrainian and Polish history, Sysyn is the author of Between Poland and the Ukraine: The Dilemma of Adam Kysil, 1600–1653 (1985), Mykhailo Hrushevsky: Historian and National Awakener (2001), and many studies on the Khmelnytsky Uprising, Ukrainian historiography, and early modern Ukrainian political culture. [Source]

Lidia Stefanowska is a professor of Slavic literatures at the University of Warsaw in Poland. In the 1990s, Stefanowska studied at Slavic Department, Harvard University (Ph.D received in 1999), where she had a chance to meet Prof. Sevcenko. She is the author of Antonych, Antynomii [Antonych, Antinomies], a deep analysis of work of Ukrainian poet Bohdan Ihor Antonych. Stefanowska is also the author of monographs on Ukrainian literary life in DP camps: Mission Impossible: MUR i odrodzenie ukraińskiego życia literackiego w obozach dla uchodźców na terytorium Niemiec 1945-1948 (two volumes: 2013 and 2014) and Wołodymyr Derżawyn. Materiały źródłowe do biografii naukowej (2021). She also wrote many articles devoted to literature in independent Ukraine. 

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This event is organized by Harvard's Ukrainian Research Institute (HURI) as part of the Seminar in Ukrainian Studies event series.

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