Moderated by Serhiy Bilenky, HUSI Program Director at HURI
IN-PERSON and ONLINE via Zoom Webinar (live). Please register to attend in-person using the "REGISTER HERE" button above. To join online via Zoom, please register here.
This event is organized by HURI as part of the Harvard Ukrainian Summer Institute (HUSI) Public Lecture Series.
With their physical prominence, majestic nature, and daunting remoteness, the Carpathians are a landscape unlike much of the rest of Ukraine, famed for its steppe. The mountains lie on or near Ukraine’s western border and comprise a mere 3.6% of present-day Ukraine. Historically they have been inhabited, if lightly, by highland peoples that have been labeled Hutsuls, Boikos, Lemkos, and Rusyns. Both highlands and highlanders have long fascinated lowland Ukrainians, for whom they were relatively exotic. The exotic Carpathians have captivated the imagination of other people as well, Bram Stoker’s Dracula being a case in point.
Most Ukrainians would identify the Carpathians as lying on the periphery of the Ukrainian state. But should one relegate the mountains to the margins? Or—worse—treat them as an afterthought in Ukrainian history? This talk argues that the marginal or peripheral nature of the Ukrainian Carpathians is much less pronounced than one might imagine from their physical location. A sweeping look at the history of the Carpathians, stretching back to prehistoric times and extending to today, will show how the mountains have played an outsized role in Ukrainian history and culture. On occasion, the Carpathians have even figured importantly—centrally—in the history of Europe as a whole.
Dr. Patrice M. Dabrowski completed her PhD in History at Harvard University under the supervision of Roman Szporluk. She has taught and worked at Harvard, Brown, the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and the University of Vienna. She is currently an associate of the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, a member of the Board of Directors of the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America, and editor of H-Poland.
Dabrowski’s work focuses on Polish and Ukrainian history, broadly understood, with a special interest in their places of intersection. Her scholarly studies include works on identity formation, festivals and commemorations, nation-building and nationalism, borderland and regional issues, the history of tourism and environmental history, as well as the intersection of culture and politics in Central and Eastern Europe. She is also an avid mountain climber.
Dabrowski’s books have focused on Polish and Ukrainian history. She is the author of three books: The Carpathians: Discovering the Highlands of Poland and Ukraine (2021), Poland: The First Thousand Years (2014), and Commemorations and the Shaping of Modern Poland (2004). At present she is finishing a longue-durée history of the Carpathian Mountains, which will be part of a series produced by the Ukrainian History Global Initiative. Her book Poland: The First Thousand Years has been translated into Chinese; a Polish edition is forthcoming. The Carpathians: Discovering the Highlands of Poland and Ukraine is currently being translated into Ukrainian.
Dabrowski is the recipient of a number of awards and distinctions. In 2014 she was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland. Dabrowski was the 2021 recipient of the Mary Zirin Prize, awarded annually by the Association for Women in Slavic Studies to an independent scholar. In 2022 her Carpathians book won two awards: honorable mention for Pro Historia Polonorum, an award for the best Polish history book written by a non-Polish historian in the last five years (2017-2021) as well as honorable mention in the category “best foreign publication promoting Poland’s history” sponsored by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland. In 2026 the Kosciuszko Foundation New England Chapter honored her with the distinction of “Distinguished Polish American.”