June 2023 Newsletter

End of Term Update

________________________

Director’s Message

It has been an exciting time at the Kule Folklore Centre this past term, and a true delight to see so many who support the Centre reunited for in-person events between our walls, and for impromptu reunions on chance encounters in the halls of the beautiful Old Arts Building. The schedule has been chockablock with presentations, conferences, and special visitors. As the new Interim Director, I have been very grateful for the continued enthusiasm and sense of purpose that has carried us along at a fair clip all term, and for the warm welcome I have received here.

We hope you have been keeping up to date through the many announcements on our website, emails, and Facebook posts, supplied by our communications liaison, Stefka Lytwyn. For those who have not been able to make it to the Centre in person, we will continue to post Folklore Lunch talks and lectures to our YouTube site, and newly, to connect you to folklore through the launch of the Kule Folklore Marketplace site.

Dr. Andriy Nahachewsky and Dr. Jelena Pogosjan continue their research on projects that bring them to the Bohdan Medwidsky Ukrainian Archives, and so are still very much part of the life of the Centre, as is former BMUFA Archivist Maryna Chernyavska, as a founding member of the Indigenous Ukrainian Canadian Relationship Building Initiative. The initiative, which receives our continued, staunch support at the Centre as it reaches a widening audience, works to foster a deeper engagement between those who are newly arrived from Ukraine, those of earlier generations, and those whose ancestral connections to this place stretch back to time immemorial.

Within these pages, you will find news of those who stay the course, including our Coordinator, Lynnien Pawluk, our Archivist Assistant and Researcher, Nataliia Yesypenko, and word of the projects and initiatives of our two endowed  chairs, Huculak Chair Dr. Natalia Kahenenko-Friesen and Kule Chair Dr. Larisa Sembaliuk Cheladyn, our four continuing graduate student research assistants, Devon Sereda Goldie, Brittany Dyck, Victoria Kostyniuk, and Dmytro Yesypenko, and two part-time staff, Eric Fincham and Olesya Komarnytska, also, of those who come new to the Peter and Doris Kule Centre for Ukrainian and Canadian Folklore, including two graduate students who commenced studies in January, Anna Olenenko and Anna Morozova.

Where one might begin, as the old proverb reminds us, "Я розуміюся, як вовк на звіздах - I understand this like a wolf understands the stars"

There continue to be many new things to learn.

                  - Andie                              

Andie Palmer, PhD                             
Interim Director                             

KuFC Executive Team

Meet the Kule Folklore Centre’s (KuFC) Executive Management team. 

Dr. Andie Palmer is the Interim Director of the Centre. She is an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at the U of Alberta, Faculty of Arts. Dr. Palmer is a linguistic and legal anthropologist, documenting verbal art, performance, and narratives of place, as well as the negotiation of linguistic and cultural differences in courts, tribunals, and other court-like settings, with a particular focus on the interpretation of treaties and oral history testimony.  Her skillset and knowledge base are a welcome addition to the team.

As well as being the Huculak Chair of Ukrainian Culture and Ethnography, Dr. Natalia Khanenko-Friesen is a professor in the Department of Modern Languages and serves as the Director of the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies in the Faculty of Arts. Dr. Khanenko-Friesen juggles many hats and is very involved in scholarly initiatives focusing on the war in Ukraine, ethnography, anthropology, Ukrainian Canadian studies, Contemporary Ukraine studies, and diaspora studies. 

Dr. Larisa Sembaliuk Cheladyn serves as the Kule Chair of Ukrainian Ethnography at the Kule Folklore Centre. She recently completed her PhD in Media and Cultural Studies at the University of Alberta and is a well-known Ukrainian Canadian artist and illustrator. Larisa's research interests are related to visualizing cultural identity specifically through printmaking, textiles and fashion, family and community photographic documentation, as well as comics and graphic novels. Larisa teaches in the Department of Language and Cultural Studies. Her courses include Folk 204 Forms of Folklore, Folk 205 – History of Folklore Studies, Slav 204 – Slavic Mythology, Slav 320 – Ukrainian Canadian Culture, and Slav 399 – Comics, Memes, and Tattoos. 

Lynnien Pawluk, Kule Centre Coordinator, is the Centre’s Administrator and currently is the longest serving team member of the KuFC. She has been with the Centre since 2007 and manages the Centre's finances and human resources as well as the general office. Lynnien is particularly active in organizing special events, and in other numerous projects of the KuFC.

Before coming to Canada, Nataliia Yesypenko, Researcher/Archivist Assistant, worked as a museum curator at the Sixtiers Museum in Kyiv for 13 years. Her responsibilities were to acquire, arrange, describe, and provide access to the museum collection for researchers and provide instructions and tasks for new staff and interns. She keeps the Bohdan Medwidsky Ukrainian Folklore Archives running smoothly by arranging and describing archival collections, and providing public access to them.

Stefka Lytwyn is our newest team member. Stefka has over ten years’ experience in marketing, customer service, and corporate relations and is a most welcome addition to the Kule Folklore Centre team. She assists the Centre with all of our social media and marketing needs. Her graphic design skills are evident in our print and social media, and her innovative ideas help to get word of events to our many stakeholders. Stefka also assists the Executive Team in weekly meetings.

Pictured L to R: Larisa Sembaliuk Cheladyn, Lynnien Pawluk, Andie Palmer, Nataliia Yesypenko, & Stefka Lytwyn.

Reports on research activities

Huculak Chair

With the beginning of the new year, Dr. Natalia Khanenko-Friesen reached out to the Ukrainian Canadian Congress—Alberta Provincial Council with the proposal to set up a joint oral history project to document experiences of the Ukrainians fleeing the war and arriving to Canada under the CUAET visa. A community-based project, "Ukrainian Displaced Persons in Alberta: Making Home in Times of War" will gather testimonies from the recent arrivees and will focus on the ways displaced families and individuals seek to reestablish themselves in Alberta. The application for REB is under way as well as training of members of the interviewing team.

On February 9, 2023, Natalia hosted and moderated a session "Rebuilding Ukraine: Truth and Justice" organized by Harvard University and Temerty Contemporary Ukraine Program at HURI as a part of the international symposium "Rebuilding Ukraine, Rebuilding the World" (February 8-10, 2023, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA). "Truth and Justice" panel started by addressing transitional justice and its gradual implementation in Ukraine including the work focusing on extensive gathering of war testimonies.

On February 24, 2023, Dr. Natalia Khanenko-Friesen hosted a workshop "Witnessing the Unfinished War: Current Practices of Self-Reflection and Their Impact on Ukrainian Culture" in the international symposium  "Language, Media, Culture, Literature, and the War: Constructions, Representations, and Responses" in Hannover, Germany. The 3 hour workshop focused on analyzing current practices of reflecting on and responding to war experiences, ranging from trauma and destruction to perseverance and resilience. Dr. Khanenko-Friesen delivered this workshop with Dr. Gelinada Grinchenko, Editor-in-Chief of Ukraina Moderna and Co-chair of the German Ukrainian Historians Commission.

Read more updates from the Huculak Chair here.

Kule Chair

RESEARCH FOCUS

As the Kule Chair in Ukrainian Ethnography, my current research focus is on the visualization of cultural identity in the context of print and digital media expressions. Two ongoing projects include the development of The Maydanyk Digital Archives (a website dedicated to the cartoonist Jacob Maydanyk 1891-1984) and the Ukrainian Voice Legacy Mosaic (a digitally interactive public installation created from the original printing blocks used in the printing of the newspaper Український голос/Ukrainian Voice and other Ukrainian Canadian periodicals between 1910 and 2018). In addition, I will be presenting at the Canadian Association of Slavists Annual Conference in May on the topic of Visualizing Solidarity: Wearing Propaganda -  Tracing the materiality of identity and ideology from the letterpress to silkscreened imagery on t-shirts and festival paraphernalia. This paper will focus on visual aspects of promotion/propaganda using examples from Eastern European and North American print culture that have inspired Ukrainians to mobilize and express solidarity, nationalism, and resistance. 

FOLKLORE STUDIES - WINTER 2023 

The Kule Chair in Ukrainian Ethnography is dedicated to teaching folklore and media courses in the Department of Modern Languages and Cultural Studies.

Courses offered in the  WINTER 2023 term included FOLK 205 - History of Folklore Studies and SLAV 204 - Slavic Mythology and Folklore. There were approximately 50 students enrolled in each course. The focus of FOLK 205 is on the historical evolution of how we study verbal, material, and performative folklore expressions. Examples are drawn from European and North American communities. The course culminates in student presentations based on folk genres of personal interest explored through the lens of one of the theories or research methods covered in class.  SLAV 205 introduces students to Slavic Folklore and Mythology, referencing examples of verbal, material, and performative folk genres of Ukrainian, Polish, Hungarian, Czech, Romanian, Russian, Belarusian, and Slovak origin. Each student is expected to summarize the course content in a multimedia presentation focusing on a topic of personal interest drawn from the course content.

Thank you to the graduate and undergraduate students who assisted as Research and Teaching Assistants during the 2022/23 school year. Dominika Tabor - FOLK204/205; Victoria Kostyniuk - SLAV 399 and Ceramics Research; Wenzhu Li - SLAV 204; Sylvie Ellis (BFA Printmaking practicum & Mosaics assistant) and Eli Young (BFA - Printmaking practicum).

Medwidsky Ukrainian Folklore Archives

2023 has started for The Kule Centre for Ukrainian and Canadian Folklore (KuFC) with big changes. Dr. Andie Palmer led the Centre as a new director, Dr. Larisa Sembaliuk Cheladyn now curates the Bohdan Medwidsky Ukrainian Folklore Archives (BMUFA) and Archivist Assistant Nataliia Yesypenko processes archival collections and provides access for researchers.

After arriving in Edmonton, Nataliia had great luck to start working at the KuFC. Her focus was on the collection of artifacts and textiles in the Special Museum Collection. This textiles was collected over decades by many people. The proper description and preservation procedures took much time and effort from the KuFC staff. The collection includes more than 790 objects and encompasses a variety of textiles starting from hand-embroidered and printed clothing, shirts - sorochky from the 1900s, and modern t-shirts, wedding dresses and dance costumes.

Dr. Larisa Sembaliuk Cheladyn and Ustja Stefanchuk created the metadata and incorporated care handling principles of working with the collection. Nataliia dedicated most of her work with textiles to digitizing the items and cleaning metadata to provide public access to them. Maryna Chernyavska finalized the project and made this collection available online: see it here. Andriy Nahachewsky is the main donor of the artifacts and wrote a detailed description, which can also be found on the Omeka. The textiles collection is an extremely valuable part of BMUFA and the KuFC is proud to promote the results of our teamwork. Please enjoy browsing and admiring these beautiful pieces.

Dr. Larisa Sembaliuk Cheladyn featured the t-shirt collection in her presentation at the CAS (Canadian Association of Slavicists) Conference in Toronto on May 26th-27th 2023; "Visualising Solidarity: Wearing Propaganda."

See the Textiles collection here.

Archivist Assistant's Report

Nataliia Yesypenko is the new Archivist Assistant at the Kule Folklore Centre (KuFC).  since January 2023. In her new position, which she took up in January 2023, Nataliia learns a lot Nataliia learns a lot while working closely with the coordinator of the Centre Lynnien Pawluk, the curator of the BMUFA Larisa Sembaliuk Cheladyn, and the previous Archivist Maryna Chernyavska who volunteers by sharing her expertise and providing consultations. Nataliia is responsible for processing archival collections and providing access to the Centre's archives and library for researchers. She also assists Larisa Sembaliuk Cheladyn in curating the KuFC's graduate student researchers’ contributions to exhibits at the Centre.

In January-February, Nataliia finalized two archival collections. Joan Margel's collection represents respected Alberta’s folklore collector and interviewer. Maryna Hrymych, a visiting Ukrainian scholar in the Centre, contributed to the collection arrangement and wrote Joan’s biography. 

The Heritage Saving and Trust Company's collection is also publicly available on the BMUFA’s database. We thankfully mention the cooperation with the Centre's volunteer Marko Minenko, who possesses a comprehensive knowledge of the Trust's history.

Currently, Nataliia is working on the Dobrolige Digitization project. Wadym Dobrolige is a prominent Ukrainian Canadian artist who immigrated to Canada after WWII and worked as a decorator for the Hudson's Bay Company. Dobrolige painted and decorated many churches in the Prairies. The BMUFA acquired more than 300 pieces of his fine art. Nataliia completed the metadata for the project needs. The plan is to digitize most of Dobrolige's sketches and make them publicly available as high quality images.

Open Hours

BMUFA is now open to the public from 10am to 3pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays, or by appointment. Please contact the Archivist Assistant, Nataliia Yesypenko, in advance to ensure the most efficient visit.

Contact information:
250 Arts & Convocation Hall
University of Alberta
Edmonton, AB
Canada T6G 2E6

Email: ukrfolk@ualberta.ca
Phone: 780-299-6043

Courses

Pictured above: Dr. Larisa Sembaliuk Cheladyn teaching the course SLAV 204, "Slavic Folklore and Mythology" in winter 2023. 

The Kule Folklore Centre supports courses in Folklore and Ukrainian Culture (General, Slavic, and Ukrainian), taught by professors holding the Kule and Huculak Chairs as well as courses taught by faculty affiliated with the Kule Folklore Centre in the  departments of Modern Languages and Cultural Studies and Anthropology. Ukrainian Folklore and Culture related courses are listed in the catalogue with the prefix FOLK, SLAV, or UKR.

Course offerings vary from year to year depending on faculty and enrollment. See this year’s upcoming courses below. Suggested related courses from other departments are also included in our yearly list of recommended courses. For any questions or queries about courses, contact mlcs@ualberta.ca  or the designated instructor. 

See Courses here.

Featured Course: SLAV 320 – Ukrainian Canadian Culture  

TR 9:30-10:50  Instructor: Dr. Larisa Sembaliuk Cheladyn

A survey of the cultural expressions of Ukrainian immigrants in Canada during the late 19th and 20th centuries. The main focus will be on oral, material, and popular culture and folklore on the Canadian Prairies as portrayed in the press. This course has an experiential (printmaking) component.  Taught in English (in person).

For further details/registration log on to Beartracks.

Congratulations to our Graduates

Congratulations to our Graduates, Larisa Sembaliuk Cheladyn (PhD - Media & Cultural Studies), Victoria Kostyniuk (MA - Transnational and Comparative Literatures) and Olesya Komarnytska (MLIS) — Spring Convocation 2023.

Annual Bohdan Medwidsky Memorial Lecture

Kule Folklore Centre in partnership with Alberta Society for the Advancement of Ukrainian Studies hosted the 2023 Annual Bohdan Medwidsky Memorial Lecture on April 14, 2023.  Dr. Andriy Nahachewsky, Huculak Chair Emeritus delivered a presentation titled “Ukrainian Canadian Identity on the Move.” Dr. Nahachewsky spoke about ethnic Identity – often expressed with the metaphor "roots" – as being attractive for many because it conveys an impression of permanence and stability in a too-rapidly changing world. Yet, he finds that changes in content, symbolism, and intensity have been powerful facilitators of the continuing relevance and vitality of the Canadian Ukrainian community.

See the recording here. 
Read about the lecture here.

Andriy Nahachewsky, former director of the Kule Folklore Centre, visited us in advance of his lecture with us on the 14th April.

He met with our grad students and they had a fruitful discussion about current projects and ideas for the future of the KuFC.

The Kule Folklore Centre was also delighted to welcome Switlana and Tamara Medwidsky, the late Dr. Medwisky's sister-in-law and niece, in advance of the 2023 Bohdan Medwidsky Memorial Lecture.

Pictured L to R: Andie Palmer, Larisa Sembaliuk Cheladyn, Tamara Medwidsky, Switlana Medwidsky, Lynnien Pawluk, Nataliia Yesypenko, & Stefka Lytwyn; Close-up of Tamara and Switlana Medwidsky. Photos by Maryna Chernyavska.

Memorial Service for Dr. Bohdan Medwidsky

In honour of Dr. Bohdan Medwidsky's memory. KuFC organized a Memorial Service for him at St. George's Ukrainian Catholic Church Thursday, April 20, 2023 at 7:00 pm.

Recent Events

Anniversary of Escalated Russian Invasion in Ukraine

On February 24, 2023 The Kule Folklore Centre issued the following statement on the continuation of the war against Ukraine: 

The Kule Folklore Centre continues to stand with Ukraine.  On this anniversary, we reaffirm our condemnation of the unjust war and we recommit to our mission of support for Ukrainian researchers, students, and friends old and new.

We stand in support of their scholarship—their freedom to speak out, to freely enquire into the nature of the conflict, to create a record of events, and to safeguard their documentation and findings against suppression and destruction, through the continuation of the Disrupted Ukrainian Scholars and Students (DUSS) initiative, and the free and secure storage of electronic data for scholars, archives and other institutions via the Ukraine-Archives Rescue Team (U-ART).

Read the full statement from Dr. Andie Palmer, Interim Director of the Kule Folklore Centre, here.

Huculak Chair Dr. Natalia Khanenko-Friesen, reflects on the war with Ukraine.

If you need help, please reach out, as support for the community, employees and students, is available here and additional support for students is available here.

Day of Solidarity and Vigil for Ukraine

On Wednesday, March 1, a Day of Solidarity and Vigil for Ukraine was hosted by the Edmonton Eparchy, Kule Folklore Centre, and other organizations at St. Joseph’s College on the U of A campus to commemorate the first anniversary of the escalated invasion of Ukraine.

The day included a morning prayer service for Ukraine peace, lectures, discussions, testimonials, a shared meal and a Panakhyda for Ukraine’s victims of the war. It also included the moving exhibit “Unissued Diplomas,” which honours the memory of Ukrainian students who will never graduate, because their lives were taken by the Russian invasion.  This was organized by the Ukrainian Students' Society - USS .

More information here.
Photos: Edmonton Eparchy

“Writings from the War”: Archiving and Disseminating Testimonials of Ukrainians"

The Kule Folklore Centre was proud to present Alex Averbuch, PhD Izaak Walton Killam Memorial Postdoctoral Fellow, MCLS as one of the lecturers at the Day of Solidarity and Vigil for Ukraine.  

His presentation, “Writings from the War”: Archiving and Disseminating Testimonials of Ukrainians" introduced the project (Writings from the War / Я пишу з війни), which is aimed at collecting, preserving, and disseminating testimonials of Ukrainians about their experience of the Russian-Ukrainian war, so as to provide a documentary source for researchers, academics, students, journalists, artists, and the public in general. The project has been carried out since February 2022 in collaboration with the Kule Folklore Centre, where the testimonials are archived, both in the language of the original and English translation. The presentation engaged with the importance of witnessing, as well as methodological approaches and some considerations as to the analytical potential of available databases of such testimonials. 

Read more here.

Censorship, Surveillance, Resistance: Twentieth-Century Ukraine and Letter Writing

Scholars of epistolary culture from Canada, Ukraine, and the United States examined international letter writing, censorship and surveillance, epistolary conventions and legislation, anxieties and personhood under totalitarianism, and related topics during the international symposium “Censorship, Surveillance, Resistance: Twentieth-Century Ukraine and Letter Writing” on 15-16 May 2023, at the University of Alberta. This event was co-organised between the Kule Folklore Centre, Canadian Institute for Ukrainian and Kule Institute for Advanced Study.

Read more here.

In Memoriam: Peter Arabchuk

On Monday, May 29, 2023, Peter Arabchuk passed away at the age of 82 years. We at the Kule Folklore Centre will fondly miss a great supporter.

Peter Arabchuk’s thoughtfulness and regard for those around him is evident in the aims of the Peter Arabchuk Endowment Fund for the Advancement of Ukrainian Canadian Cultural Heritage Preservation. His generosity through this fund allowed for the creation of the Sustainable Ukrainian Canadian Heritage Network, or SUCH. This multifaceted research and education program of the KuFC aims to assist Ukrainian Canadian communities to preserve and share their cultural heritage, in part through the awarding of Community Archives Grants to community organizations. Thanks to Peter Arabchuk's foresight and generous support, the Kule Folklore Centre and Bohdan Medwidsky Ukrainian Folklore Archives can continue to increase the accessibility of archival resources featuring Ukrainian history and culture. We will also continue to develop the SUCH online platform, which allows Ukrainian community archives to make their holdings available online and easily discoverable.

Through these endeavors, Peter Arabchuk’s legacy will live on.

For those who would wish to leave a message of condolence for Peter Arabchuk’s relatives and friends, please see his obituary here.

Folklore Lunches

Our Folklore Lunches in 2022-2023 were held in person and on Zoom. Some presentations are now available on KuFC’s YouTube channel.

February 17, 2023. “Rooster: A Symbol of Resilience in Ukraine.” Victoria Kostyniuk, KuFC graduate researcher, set the stage for her talk thus: “In April 2022 when Borodyanka, Ukraine was liberated, the world was taken aback by photos of a ceramic rooster, peacefully sitting on a shelf in an apartment which had been destroyed by bombs. This rooster has since become a symbol of the resilience shown by the people of Ukraine.”

Read more here.
See the full presentation here.

March 10, 2023. Curator’s Talk: “Dumy moї - My Thoughts: Taras Shevchenko's Story of Empathy and Resistance Amid the Ongoing War in Ukraine.” Dmytro Yesypenko, PhD Student, MLCS, supplied context and insights for our appreciation of the Dumy moï - My thoughts multimedia exhibition he co-curated with Kule Chair Dr. Larisa Sembaliuk Cheladyn. 

Read more here.
See the full presentation here.  

March 31, 2023: “The Spirits Never Die: Ukrainian Native Faith as Spatial, Historical and Political Construct,” Adrien Nonjon, PhD Candidate, INALCO, Paris. As Nonjon explained, though long confined to the margins of anti-Soviet dissidence in the 1960s and 1980s, neo-paganism is now a tangible reality in Ukraine, thanks in particular to movements such as RUNvira (Ridna Ukrayins’ka Natsional’naVira) and ORU (Ob’iednannia Ridnoviriv Ukraïny).

Read more here.
See the full presentation here.  

April 19, 2023: “Coloniality of the Indecent: Ukrainian Bawdy Folklore in the Modern Design of Sexuality.” Dr. Maria Mayerchyk, Senior Research Associate at the Social Anthropology Department, Ethnology Institute of the National Academy of Sciences (Ukraine) and Philipp Schwartz Fellow at the University of Greifswald, Germany, considered why there may have been increased censorship of published folk texts in the early 19th century, even though Church influence was then in decline.

Read more here. 

Other Events

Carol of the Bells / ЩЕДРИК Film Screening

On February 5, 2023, the Ukrainian National Federation of Canada, Edmonton branch, with support from KuFC, hosted a screening of newly-released Ukrainian film, Carol of the Bells (2022, Original title: Shchedryk) at the Ukrainian National Federation Hall in Edmonton. Released during Russia’s war in Ukraine, this film, set in WWII, is a reflection on the resilience of the human spirit and took on a new meaning with the current situation in Ukraine. This presentation was well attended and widely received.

Introduction to Slavic Mythology

On January 23, 2023 the Kule Folklore Centre invited stakeholders to join staff and students for a presentation zoomed in from the Center for European Studies at the University of Florida.

Presenter Michal Luczynski - philologist, linguist and teacher – provided an overview of Slavic mythology and the gods, their origins and their relationships with pagan Slavs.

Roundtable - “Storying Indigenous-Ukrainian Relationships”

A roundtable discussion, “Storying Indigenous-Ukrainian Relationships,” co-organized by the initiative and Punctuate! Theatre, was held on May 7, 2023, after the theatrical Citadel Theatre performance of “First Métis Man of Odesa.” The roundtable participants included Myrna Kostash, Naomi McIlwraith, Mathew McKenzie, and Mariya Khomutova; discussion was facilitated by Lianna Makuch.

World Book Day - Market Place Launch

In celebration of World Book Day 2023, the KuFC has created an online showcase space for books that have been published or otherwise supported by the Kule Folklore Centre, the Huculak Chair of Ukrainian Culture and Ethnography, and the Kule Chair of Ukrainian Ethnography, as well as publications by our faculty and graduate students. Our new, online Marketplace has also been launched, making our publications through the Centre readily accessible for purchase online, and providing an opportunity to browse and consider. We invite you to visit: Click here. 

50th Anniversary Faculty Club Malanka Celebration

Save the date for the U of A Faculty Malanka, 13th January, 2024, for a 50th Anniversary Celebration at the Faculty Club.

Stay posted for ticket information and availability.

Я розуміюся, як вовк на звіздах
I understand like a wolf understands the stars

-In memory of Dr. Bohdan Medwidsky

We hope you will enjoy today’s proverb, and the inimitable Dr. Andriy Nahachewsky’s perspective on it.