No. 7 : Ukrainian Humanities Studies in the 21st Century
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Item A Word of Welcome From the Editor-in-Chief(2020) Morenets, VolodymyrIntroductory article of Kyiv-Mohyla Humanities Journal (2020) No. 7 by the editor in chief.Item War and Autocephaly in Ukraine(2020) Hovorun, CyrilA series of conflicts that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union culminated in the war in Ukraine waged by Russia in 2014. The international community was taken by surprise, and its reactions to the Russian aggression were often confused and inadequate. Even more confused and inadequate were the responses from global Christianity. Russian propaganda often renders the aggression against Ukraine as a quasi-religious conflict: a "holy war" against the "godless" or "heterodox" West. It would be natural, therefore, for the Christian churches worldwide to loudly condemn both propaganda and aggression. However, in most cases, their response was silence. Such reactions came from most local Orthodox churches, the Roman Catholic church, and international ecumenical organizations such as the World Council of Churches. An exception was the reaction from the Ecumenical Patriarchate, which decided to grant autocephaly to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine. The article argues that the Tomos for autocephaly was, among other reasons, a reaction to the war in Ukraine. The responses of other local Orthodox churches to the Tomos also indicate their attitude to the war in Ukraine. These reactions have demonstrated a profound crisis in inter-Orthodox solidarity and social ethics.Item Interconfessional Polemics in a Model of Ukrainian Literary History(2020) Isichenko, IhorPolemic texts on issues of Orthodox-Catholic relations occupy, for various reasons, a prominent place among publications in Ukrainian literature of the late 16th — early 17th centuries. Because of this, researchers of the history of Ukrainian literature continue to be interested in them. The history of the study of interconfessional polem ics depends to a large extent on political contexts, primarily on the national and religious policies of states. Objective interpretation of polem ical prose of the late 16th to the early 18th centuries, however, warrants exem ption from the influence of this state of affairs and the transfer of the focus of attention to the plane of literary communication. In such a context polemical texts can be seen as a manifestation of societal dialogue, reflecting the search of Ukrainian Baroque writers for their identity in the context of a civilizational dialogue between East and West and in geopolitical changes of the Reformation era.Item Transformation of the Collective Identity of Ukrainian Citizens After the Revolution of Dignity (2014–2019)(2020) Averianova, Nina; Voropaieva, TetianaIn the modern world, there is a growing interest in the problem of forming a person’s identity. The category of "identity," despite the diversity of theoretical and empirical research, remains complex. The article is devoted to the study of transformations of the collective identity of Ukrainian citizens after the Revolution of Dignity, in the context of the Russian-Ukrainian war in Eastern Ukraine. In the period from 2013 to 2019, there have been radical changes in many spheres of public life in Ukraine. The Revolution of Dignity, the annexation of the Crimea, and the war in the Donbas all led to significant political, legal, and socio-economic and socio-cultural changes that contributed to the processes of the transformation of the collective identity of Ukrainian citizens. The aim of this article is to study the dynamics of the changes in the collective identity of Ukrainian citizens after the Revolution of Dignity through the prism of the integrative approach.Item Post-Communist Institution-Building and Media Control(2020) Ryabinska, NatalyaThis study uses an interdisciplinary perspective to shed light on Ukraine’s continuous problems with media independence, which to date have not allowed Ukraine to become a country with a truly free media: since Ukraine’s independence in 1991 its media have consistently remained only “partly free.”1 The approach proposed in the paper combines theoretical tools of post-communist media studies with advancements in political science research in regime change and state-building to explore the continuities and changes in the institutional environment for the media in post-communist new democracies. The approach is applied to analyze two cases of post-communist media change, both problematic to explain within the framework of media studies alone: the case of incomplete media transformation in a hybrid regime (Ukraine) and the incident of backsliding in independent media in an advanced new democracy (Hungary). The paper is structured as follows: I first present the shortcomings in the way institutions, or more specifically the institutional environment for media freedom, were previously approached in post-communist media studies. I then propose a more advanced approach based on theories and concepts originating from comparativepolitics studies of regime change and state and institution-building. I apply this approach to analyze the institutional environment for the media in Ukraine. Next, I explore the case of a radical reconstruction of media-related institutions in Hungary after Viktor Orban’s Fidesz party came to power in 2010.Item Ukrainian Investigative Journalists After the Euromaidan: Their Role Conceptions and Worldviews(2020) Yaroshchuk, OleksandrIn recentyears, an increased interest in journalistic roles has inspired multiple empirical studies aimed at establishing the journalistic role conception and performance of journalists worldwide. Ukraine is not an exception. Studies published in recentyears show that the professional culture of journalists in Ukraine is changing, resulting in the "blurring of boundaries" between journalism and activism. Moreover, Ukrainian journalists also show a high degree of political engagement. However, these studies have not measured the specific professional settings of investigative journalists, who form a unique community in the Ukrainian media system. Therefore, this study is devoted to uncovering the role conceptions of Ukrainian investigative journalists, their professional identities, and culture. The results show that many journalists express multiple roles: a "populist mobilizer" combined with "watchdog" role, or "watchdog" combined with "critical change agent" role. This confirms the hypothesis that a multiplicity of roles and blurring of boundaries are also present among investigative journalists.Item Unravelling the Ukrainian Revolution: "Dignity," "Fairness," "Heterarchy," and the Challenge to Modernity(2020) Wynnyckyj, MychailoUkraine’s "Revolution of Dignity," spanning both the 2013-2014 protests in Kyiv’s city center and the mass mobilization of grass-roots resistance against Russian aggression in 2014-2015 and thereafter, manifest new interpretations of ideas and philosophical concepts. In the first part of the article we unravel the meaning of the Ukrainian word hidnist (roughly translated as "dignity") — a moniker of the revolution whose significance remains underestimated. In the second part we situate Ukraine’s revolution within a broader context of "modernity" and suggest its individualist foundation may be replaced by a form of "personalism"— an ethic that echoes that of Ukraine’s revolutionaries. In the third part of the article, we delve into the substance of the revolution’s agenda: its protagonists’ promise to build a non-hierarchical community of "fairness" (spravedlyvist). In the fourth and final section, the main argument of the article is summarized, namely: that the shift from individualism to personalism in social interaction and the transition from hierarchy to heterarchy in power relations, particularly with respect to institutionalizing "fairness," embodied in the various structures and organizations formed during Ukraine’s Revolution of Dignity, may have been reflective of more comprehensive trends in ideational change affecting European (Western) civilization.Item Higher Education in Ukraine in the Time of Independence: Between Brownian Motion and Revolutionary Reform(2020) Kvit, SerhiiThe article explores major milestones in reforming higher education in Ukraine, applying the methodology of case studies. It analyzes political and social conditions that influenced the process of reform. The author pays particular attention to the concept of university autonomy, its development and implementation in Ukraine, considering legal and institutional efforts. The impact and experience of some leading institutions like Kyiv Mohyla Academy is discussed. The author concludes that the task of ensuring comprehensive university autonomy is of a political nature. This is the only reliable instrument for raising of quality of Ukrainian higher education.Item The 160th Anniversary of the Academic Trudy Kyivskoi dukhovnoi akademii (1860–2020) : History and the Present Collection(2020) Klos, VitaliiThe article is dedicated to the 160th anniversary of the first publication of the Trudy Kyivskoi dukhovnoi akademii (1860-2020) scholarly collection in i860. Information on the history of the formation and functioning of the Kyiv Theological Academy (KTA) academic collection is provided. Attention is centered on the latest research of Kyiv Orthodox Theological Academy academic staff, published in the latest issue of Trudy Kyivskoi dukhovnoi akademii (No. 19,2019).Item Is a Ukrainian Standard of the Russian Language on the Agenda?(2020) Moser, MichaelThis article discusses the pros and cons of the creation of a separate Ukrainian standard of the Russian language. Owing to the centralist and elitist history of the Russian standard language, the high variant of Russian that is used in Ukraine does not significantly differ from that of Russia, if at all. Low varieties, by contrast, are quite heterogeneous. The standardization of "Ukrainian Russian" would thus be very problematic at all stages: the selection of norms and their codification, the implementation and elaboration of the new norms. All these steps would not only require considerable funding; in the long run, it would also undermine the status of Ukrainian as Ukraine’s sole state language.Item The 1917 Break and Its Aftermath: Ukrainian Academia’s Perception and Representation of the Revolutionary Events (2007–2017)(2020) Shlikhta, NataliaThe author of this review is not a student of the Ukrainian Revolution of 1917-1921 herself. My interest in Soviet history and Western historiography undoubtedly influenced my approach and the interpretation advanced in this article. This is an outsider’s review, the author of which has not aspired nor pretended to provide exhaustive coverage of the publications from the period. I certainly make no authoritative estimations, nor do I draw authoritative conclusions. Rather, I see my part just as Geoff Eley saw his when he participated in the discussion between Sovietologists of different generations on the pages of the Russian Review in 1986-1987. Having focused his own studies on Nazi history, he was able— as an outsider— to see the methodological limitations of the approaches applied by those who studied Soviet history as well as to provide broader perspectives on the challenges they faced and the research problems they raised.2 Therefore, when examining scholarly and public history publications from the decade between the two jubilee anniversaries of the 1917 revolutionary events, I will focus primarily on methodological and conceptual issues, which allows me to frame academic views on these events within a broader context of the study of the (Ukrainian) 20th century.Item Fear and Technology in the Theatre: Staging McLuhan(2020) Veretelnyk, RomanAlthough Marshall McLuhan had comparatively little to say about the theatre as a medium in his books, Robin C. Whittaker’s observation that "performance was integral to the delivery of McLuhan’s messages" serves as a reminder to address the question considering an added dimension. For example, at the "Theatre and the Visual Arts" panel at the Fourth Annual Seminar in Irish Studies held in 1971 at the University of Toronto, McLuhan was very much the performer in expressing various thoughts about the "electric theatre," to the delight of both his co-panelists and audience present. Conversing with W. H. Auden and renowned Beckett actor Jack MacGowran, McLuhan asks "what the Greeks might have done with PA systems if they’d had them... would they have shunned the gramophone and radio?" Auden and MacGowran are categorical in their responses, MacGowran’s retort that "they (the Greeks) would have been deadly against" being blunt and to the point. McLuhan answers by musing “whether this (incursion of electronic media) will change acting and the problems of the visual organization of theatre is another question.”Item Baroque Opera on the Contemporary Ukrainian Theatre Stage : Ideas and Solutions(2020) Shumilina, Olha; Varakuta, MarynaThe Baroque epoch left a rich and voluminous opera heritage. Opera as a music genre emerged at the turn of the 16th-17th centuries in the Italian city of Florence and in the 17th century developed and spread throughout Italy, ft later appeared in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. The trend towards Italian opera and the colossal popularity of this art form required the development of infrastructures to support performances. The capitals of princedoms and large cities were marked by the construction of opera theatres and the invitation of Italian composers, soloists, instrumentalists, choirs, and ballet performers to these cities. Also, the implementation of special machinery, décor, stage costumes, and make up contributed to opera’s popularity. Opera performance was a spectacular event, preparation for which required significant funding by royalty and aristocrats, and performances demanded a high level of preparation.Item Insha optyka: Genderni vyklyky suchasnosti(2020) Peleshenko, OlenaReview on Vira Ageyeva, Tamara Martsenyuk, eds. Insha optyka: Genderni vyklyky suchasnosti [Other Optics: Gender Challenges of Today]. Kyiv: Smoloskyp, 2019. 256 pp. In Ukrainian.Item Identities In-Between in East-Central Europe, eds. Jan Fellerer, Robert Pyrah, and Marius Turda(2020) Yesypenko, DmytroReview on Jan Fellerer, Robert Pyrah, and Marius Turda, eds. Identities In-Between in East-Central Europe New York; Abingdon: Routledge, 2020. 306 pp.Item Literaturnyi landshaft Ukrainy. XX stolittia(2020) Sauliak, OleksandraReviews on Volodymyr Panchenko. Literaturnyi landshaft Ukrainy. XX stolittia [The Literary Landscape of Ukraine. The 20th Century]. Kyiv: Yaroslaviv val, 2019. 528 pp. In Ukrainian.Item Cossacks in Jamaica, Ukraine at the Antipodes: Essays in Honor of Marko Pavlyshyn, eds. Alessandro Achilli, Serhy Yekelchyk, and Dmytro Yesypenko(2020) Kin, OstapReviews on Alessandro Achilli, Serhy Yekelchyk, and Dmytro Yesypenko, eds. Cossacks in Jamaica, Ukraine at the Antipodes: Essays in Honor of Marko Pavlyshyn Boston, MA: Academic Studies Press, 2020. 812 pp.Item Avant-Garde Art in Ukraine, 1910–1930: Contested Memory by Myroslav Shkandrij(2020) Martynyuk, OlenaReview on Myroslav Shkandrij Avant-Garde Art in Ukraine, 1910–1930: Contested Memory Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2019. 202 pp.Item Revolutionary Ukraine, 1917–2017: History’s Flashpoints and Today’s Memory Wars by Myroslav Shkandrij(2020) Kravchenko, MariiaReview on Myroslav Shkandrij. Revolutionary Ukraine, 1917– 2017: History’s Flashpoints and Today’s Memory Wars. New York; Abingdon: Routledge, 2020. 216 pp.Item Wild Music Sound and Sovereignty in Ukraine by Maria Sonevytsky(2020) Zaitseva-Herz, OlgaReview on Maria Sonevytsky. Wild Music Sound and Sovereignty in Ukraine. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2019.