Assignments 2200
Week 1: Ukraine as a Vibrant Mosaic – Diversity & Geography
Class 1
Organizational Meeting
Class 2
Focus: Introduce Ukraine’s diversity in geography, culture, and identity.
Pre-class Reading: Political Map of Ukraine
Pre-class Video: Introduction to the People and Culture of Ukraine
Discussion Questions:
What do this map tell us about Ukrainian identity?
- How does geography shape culture?
Language Practice: Greetings in Ukrainian: ‘Добрий день! Вітаю!’ — Good day! Hello!
Week 2: Origins. Where Rivers Meet and Kingdoms Rise
Class 1
Focus: Explore Ukraine’s regions and the idea of a living mosaic.
Pre-class Reading: ‘Regional Identitity in Ukraine’
Pre-class Video: Ukrainian Culture Practices and More
Discussion Questions:
How does regional diversity enrich or complicate national narratives?
What might people not see if they only hear about Ukraine through war coverage?
Can regional differences be a source of unity?
Language Practice: Meeting someone
Class 2
Focus: Introduce students to Ukraine’s pre-Christian worldview, mythological imagination, and symbolic archetypes. Transition into the rise of Kyivan Rus’ through geography, trade, and early political formations.
Pre-class Reading: Russian Primary Chronicle and Ukrainians Celebrate Midsummer Traditions with Songs
Pre-class Video: Queen Olga – The Sainted Shield of Kyiv
Discussion Questions:
What archetypes appear in Slavic mythology?
How does landscape (rivers, forests, sky) shape belief and identity?
Why do trade routes matter in building cultural and political power?
Language Practice: Please and Thank you
Week 3: Kyivan Rus and The Roots of Corruption
Class 1
Focus: Explore the Christianization of Kyivan Rus’ under Volodymyr the Great and its cultural legacy.
Pre-class Reading: Rus and Byzantium – Ukraine: Connected Histories
Pre-class Video: The Kyivan Rus – Medieval Roots of Ukraine and Russia
Discussion Questions:
Why was adopting Christianity a strategic as well as spiritual move?
How did new religious symbols blend or replace older mythologies?
What aspects of this era still influence Ukrainian identity today?
Language Practice: Feelings and Emotions
Class 2
Focus: The formation of law in Kyivan Rus’, from communal justice to Rus’ka Pravda, and how early practices shaped long-term cultural attitudes toward justice, power, and corruption.
Pre-class Reading: Law Codes
Pre-class Video: The Russkaya Pravda
Discussion Questions:
What forms of justice existed in Slavic communities before written law?
How did blood feud and fines shape attitudes toward fairness?
What cultural patterns from early legal traditions might help explain Ukraine’s present-day corruption challenges?
Do you think historical legacies can be broken, or do they continue to shape societies even centuries later?
Language Practice: Days of the Week
Week 4: The Cossack – Warrior &Trickster
Class 1
Focus: Origins and role of the Cossacks in defending and shaping Ukraine.
Pre-class Reading: Who Were the Cossacks?
Pre-class Video: Clip from ‘Taras Bulba’ (1962), A History of The Zaporozhian Cossacks
Discussion Questions:
What values did the Cossacks represent?
- Why were they both warriors and tricksters?
Language Practice: Days of the Week
Class 2
Focus: Daily life and myths of the Cossacks (and about Cossacks.)
Pre-class Reading: Who Were The Ukrainian Cossacks?
Pre-class Video: Cossack’s dance Hopak, The Cossacks Compose a Letter for the Sultan (2009)
Discussion Questions:
How do myths shape national identity?
- Which traits of the Cossacks survive in modern Ukraine?
Language Practice: Reading Cossack’s names
Week 5: Church, Myth, and Education in the Hetmanate
Class 1
Focus: The Hetmanate’s education system and early universities.
Pre-class Reading: Education
Pre-class Video: Ukrainian Church of the Hetmanate
Discussion Questions:
To what extent did Orthodox brotherhood schools adopt Jesuit / Western curricular models, and in what ways did they resist or modify them?
Why was Church Slavonic and Greek emphasized in brotherhood schools rather than putting Latin first (as Jesuits did)? What might have been the cultural / identity implications?
Consider the statutes of brotherhood schools: what were the expectations for teachers and students (personal virtues, moral behavior, qualifications)? What does that tell us about the values of the period?
Language Practice: Months of the Year
Class 2
Focus: The role of religion and myth in education.
Pre-class Reading: History of the University – Ivan Franko National University of Lviv
Pre-class Video: Ukrainian Church of Hetmanate
Discussion Questions:
- In what ways did the figure of the Cossack—defender of Orthodoxy and symbol of freedom—become part of the educational and cultural imagination of Ukrainians?
How did Jesuit schools use education as a missionary tool, and how did Orthodox brotherhoods respond to protect cultural and spiritual autonomy?
- Do myths (such as the heroic image of the Cossack) have more power in shaping identity than historical facts? Why might education rely on myths as much as on history?
Language Practice: Months of the Year
Week 6: Hetmans and the First Constitution
Class 1
Focus: Bohdan Khmelnytskyi — Hero or Massacre?
Pre-class Reading: Khmelnytsky Bohdan
Pre-class Video: The Khmelnytskyi Rebellion (Jewish History Lab)
Discussion Questions:
Was Bohdan Khmelnytskyi primarily a freedom fighter, a state-builder, or a warlord?
How do modern Ukrainians remember Khmelnytskyi — as a national hero, a tragic figure, or something in between?
From the Jewish perspective: how do we reconcile the image of Khmelnytskyi as a defender of Orthodoxy with the massacres committed under his uprising?
What does the Pereiaslav Treaty (1654) reveal about the dilemmas of small states caught between larger empires?
How does looking at the same event from different cultural memories (Ukrainian, Polish, Jewish) shape our understanding of history?
Language Practice: Numbers 1 through 10
Class 2
Focus: Pylyp Orlyk and Ivan Mazepa as symbols of Cossack political thought and resistance.
Pre-class Reading: The Constitution of Pylyp Orlyk
Pre-class Video: How Russia Ended Ukrainian Independence
Discussion Questions:
Why did Mazepa ally with Charles XII of Sweden against Russia in 1708? Was this a betrayal or an act of patriotism?
What makes Orlyk’s Constitution unique in European history? How does it compare with other early constitutions (e.g., English Bill of Rights 1689, US Constitution 1787)?
Did these later Hetmans see themselves as heirs of Khmelnytsky’s liberation struggle or as pragmatic survivors between empires?
Why is Mazepa vilified in Russian history as a traitor but celebrated in Ukrainian tradition as a state-builder?
Language Practice: Numbers 11 through 20
Week 7: Ukraine and the Ottoman World
Class 1
Focus: Encounters with the Ottoman Empire and the “Sultanate of Women.”
Pre-class Reading: From Slave to Queen
Pre-class Video: Sultanate of Women
Discussion Questions:
What does Hürrem Sultan’s biography reveal about Ukraine’s position between East and West?
Why might her story still matter for Ukrainian cultural memory?
Why was Süleyman’s reign called the Sultanate of the Women? Do we see parallels in other cultures where women exert power indirectly?
How does myth (Roxolana as a “witch,” manipulator, or benefactor) shape history differently than documents?
Language Practice: Numbers 10 through 100
Class 2
Focus: Ukraine under Russian and Austrian Rule
Pre-class Reading: Hryhorii Skovoroda
Pre-class Video: How Russia, Prussia and Austria Partitioned Poland
Discussion Questions:
How did being split between two empires shape Ukrainian identity differently?
How did Orthodoxy under Russian rule differ from Greek Catholicism under Austrian rule? What were the advantages and disadvantages for Ukrainian culture?
Which empire allowed more space for a Ukrainian national revival? Could Skovoroda’s philosophy have flourished equally in both contexts?
Why did Hryhorii Skovoroda reject official positions and live as a wandering teacher? Was this simply personal spirituality, or also a subtle critique of empire?
Language Practice: Colors
Week 8: Urban Growth & Modernism
Class 1
Fall Break
Class 2
Focus: The growth of cities like Lviv and Odesa under Austrian and Russian empires, and their roles as cultural crossroads.
Pre-class Reading: Lviv
Pre-class Video: Odesa Ukraine: Travel Documentary
Discussion Questions:
- How did imperial policies (Habsburg vs. Russian) shape the growth of Lviv and Odesa differently?
- In what ways did cities encourage Ukrainian national identity, and in what ways did they suppress it?
- How does architecture (churches, boulevards, universities) reflect imperial power and local adaptation?
- Were Lviv and Odesa more cosmopolitan “world cities” or imperial peripheries?
- What role did trade, migration, and printing play in making cities engines of cultural change?
Language Practice: Family members
Week 9: Masters of the Language – Taras Shevchenko and Mykola Hohol. Ukraine in the 18th-19th centuries
Class 1
Focus: The gradual emergence of Ukrainian self-awareness within the Russian Empire: how loss of statehood, shifting loyalties, and cultural survival created the foundation for a literary awakening.
Pre-class Video: Destruction of Zaporizhian Sich
Discussion Questions:
- How did the destruction of the Hetmanate and the abolition of the Zaporizhian Sich affect Ukrainian collective memory?
- What did “Little Russia” mean politically — and how did it influence how Ukrainians began to see (or lose sight of) themselves?
- In what ways did the Orthodox Church and imperial institutions contribute to cultural assimilation?
- How can literature and language become tools of resistance when a nation loses political independence?
Language Practice: Family Relations
Class 2
Focus: How Taras Shevchenko (as Kobzar/national voice) and Nikolai Gogol (Mykola Hohol) transform imperial-era tensions into literature—memory, language, irony, and moral vision.
Pre-class Reading: Russia and Ukraine Renew Rivalry
Pre-class Video: The legend of Taras Shevchenko
Discussion Questions:
How does Shevchenko transform personal loss and exile into a collective national voice?
Why did writing in Ukrainian become an act of resistance for Shevchenko?
In Kateryna, how does the female experience mirror the fate of the nation?
How does Gogol’s “double identity” — Ukrainian by origin, Russian by language — shape his vision of belonging?
In what ways does Gogol’s humor or absurdity expose deeper moral and political tensions of the empire?
- How do both writers use memory and language to preserve cultural identity under imperial rule?
Language Practice: Meals
Week 10: Jewish Ukraine: Memory, Faith, and Cultural Continuity
Class 1
Focus: The cultural vibrancy and tragedy of Jewish life in Ukraine. Explore how Jewish identity shaped and was shaped by the Ukrainian cultural landscape.
Pre-class reading: In Uman, Annual Rosh Hashanah
Pre-class video: Jewish History in Ukrainian Maps
Discussion Questions:
- After watching Jewish History in Ukrainian Maps, how does geography help us understand the movement and transformation of Jewish communities across Ukraine? What patterns of coexistence, migration, or trauma become visible through maps?
- The Uman Rosh Hashanah article shows Hasidic pilgrims returning to a war-torn Ukraine. What does this reveal about the power of faith and collective ritual during times of national crisis?
- How have Jewish and Ukrainian identities historically intersected, overlapped, or conflicted within the same cultural and geographic space? What legacies of cooperation or tension remain visible today?
- What does the persistence of pilgrimage to Uman suggest about the resilience of cultural memory and spiritual belonging? How do these practices re-inscribe Jewish presence in contemporary Ukrainian identity?
- In what ways can we see the current return of pilgrims and the visual mapping of Jewish life as a “translation” of the past into the present? How does remembering shape both national and personal identity?
Language Practice: Places in Town
Class 2
Focus: Global Jewish-Ukrainian intersections through the life of Muhammad Asad and the after-effects of genocide in Ukrainian Jewish communities. Explore how one man’s journey from Lviv to Pakistan reflects the multicultural legacies of Jewish Ukraine, and how the history of the violence (in Anatomy of a Genocide, pp. 32-44) remains a living memory.
Pre-class Reading: Anatomy of a Genocide pp.32-44
Pre-class Video: Muhammad Asad
Discussion Questions:
Muhammad Asad started in Lviv (then Lemberg) and journeyed through multiple identities and geographies. What does his story tell us about Jewish Ukraine’s global reach and the translation of identity across borders?
How do the reading and the video together challenge or deepen your understanding of “Jewish Ukraine” as a place both historical and transnational?
In what ways does Asad’s life reflect cultural continuity, transformation, or rupture—especially in the context of displacement, migration, and faith?
Considering the legacy of genocide and the lives of Jewish-Ukrainians as seen in both the reading and video: how might memory serve as both a burden and an inheritance? How can literature, identity, and faith become tools of cultural survival?
Language Practice: Shopping
Week 11: Independence Attempts & Soviet Ukraine: Peoples Republic, Anarchism, Ukrainization
Class 1
Focus: The struggle for Ukrainian independence amid the collapse of empires — from the emergence of the Ukrainian People’s Republic to the insurgent anarchism of Nestor Makhno. Examine how competing ideologies, shifting loyalties, and the loss of statehood shaped the Ukrainian experience during and after World War I, and how culture became a means of resilience and reinvention.
Pre-class Reading: Ukraine
Pre-class Video: Nestor Makhno
Discussion Questions:
- What political and cultural goals did the Ukrainian People’s Republic pursue during and after World War I?
- How did the Makhnovist movement challenge both Ukrainian nationalism and Soviet Bolshevism?
- In what ways did language and culture become battlegrounds in Ukraine’s attempts at self-definition and independence?
- How can we understand the significance of “state-loss” for a nation’s identity and its strategies of cultural survival?
Language Practice: Asking for Directions
Class 2
Focus: Explore how Ukrainian identity persisted and transformed after the collapse of empires and the failure of early independence movements.Through the story of Vasyl Vyshyvanyi (Archduke Wilhelm of Austria) — a Habsburg prince who chose to identify as Ukrainian — we examine questions of cultural allegiance, elite identity, and the project of Ukrainization in the 1920s.
Pre-class Reading: Vasyl Vyshyvany
Pre-class Video: How Ukraine Became Part of the USSR
Discussion Questions:
How does Vasyl Vyshyvanyi’s choice to embrace Ukrainian identity challenge our understanding of nationality and belonging?
In what ways did the policy of Ukrainization serve as a form of cultural survival after political defeat?
How did Soviet power reinterpret or manipulate the idea of Ukrainization for its own purposes?
What does Vyshyvanyi’s transformation from Habsburg archduke to Ukrainian officer reveal about the role of individual agency in nation-building?
How does the memory of Vasyl Vyshyvanyi help us reflect on the persistence of Ukrainian identity between empire and repression?
Language Practice: The Menu
Week 12: Holodomor and Art. Maria Prymachenko and Kazimir Malevich.
Class 1
Focus: This class examines how Stalin’s policies of collectivization and nationalization destroyed the Ukrainian countryside and targeted national consciousness. At the same time, artistic and intellectual life fell under strict ideological control. Through the lens of Kazimir Malevich’s abstract art, we explore how silence, form, and abstraction can express both trauma and endurance.
Pre-class Reading: “Murder by Starvation”: The Holodomor
Pre-class Video: The Revolution of the Black Square
Discussion Questions:
How does the Holodomor illustrate the intersection of economic policy and national repression?
In what sense can Malevich’s abstraction be seen as a response to enforced silence?
How do state violence and artistic minimalism both strip away context — and what remains afterward?
What parallels exist between the erasure of life in famine and the erasure of individuality in Soviet art?
Can art built on emptiness communicate moral protest? How?
What does the Black Square reveal about survival through negation or absence?
Language Practice: Dietary Restrictions
Class 2
Focus: This class connects the linguistic repressions of the 20th century with Maria Prymachenko’s art — an explosion of color, folklore, and hope that kept the Ukrainian imagination alive when words were censored. We explore how art and language serve as parallel languages of survival: one spoken through speech, the other through symbol.
Pre-class Reading: Language, Status and State Loyalty in Ukraine
Pre-class Video 1: How to Destroy a Language Properly | Language Repressions in Ukraine in the XX Century
Pre-class Video 2: Ukraine and Art as a Factor in War
Discussion Questions:
- How do you understand the word “linguocide”, and what are the main historical stages of Ukrainian language suppression?
- In what ways does Prymachenko’s folk imagery preserve the emotional and symbolic vocabulary of Ukraine?
- How do her mythic animals and flowers “speak” when human language is silenced?
- What parallels exist between Prymachenko’s bright colors and the re-emergence of Ukrainian as a spoken language?
- How does the act of painting become a form of national speech?
- Why do language and art often survive when political systems collapse?
- How do we continue this legacy of expression today — through words, through art, or through both?
Language Practice: How Is the Food?
Week 13: Ukraine in World War II: Occupation, Collaboration and Memory
Class 1
Focus: We will try to understand Ukraine’s experience during WWII — the Soviet-German conflict, mass occupation, forced labour, and the battle for survival on Ukrainian soil. We will explore how occupation, collaboration and resistance affected Ukrainian society, and how these events laid the groundwork for post-war memory and identity formation.
Pre-class Reading: Without Ukraine There Would Have Been No Victory
Pre-class Video 1: Ukraine During World War II
Pre-class Video 2: Lyudmila Pavlichenko – The Extraordinary Snyper
Discussion Questions:
What were the major challenges Ukraine faced as a battleground between the USSR and Nazi Germany?
How did occupation affect everyday life for Ukrainian citizens in rural and urban settings?
In what ways did Soviet and Nazi policies differ in their approach to Ukrainian identity and culture?
What roles did collaboration and resistance play in shaping the post-war memory of Ukraine?
Language Practice: Time Vocabulary
Class 2
Focus: In this session we will learn how the memory of WWII continues to shape Ukrainian identity and geopolitics. This class explores the figure of Stepan Bandera (1909–1959) — one of the most controversial and influential figures in 20th-century Ukrainian history. We will examine how Bandera’s image was constructed, demonized, and revived — and what his story tells us about the politics of memory in modern Ukraine.
Pre-class Reading: The Living Ghosts of the Second World War and the Russian Invasion of Ukraine.
Pre-class Video: Assassination of Stepan Bandera
Discussion Questions:
How did Stepan Bandera’s political activity during WWII reflect the broader struggle for Ukrainian independence between Nazi and Soviet powers?
Why did the Soviet regime view Bandera and the OUN as such a threat, even after the war ended?
What does Petrone mean by “living ghosts,” and how might Bandera be considered one of them in Ukrainian historical consciousness?
What does the controversy around Bandera tell us about the difficulties of reconciling wartime history, nationalism, and moral responsibility?
Can national heroes also be divisive figures? How does historical distance influence our judgment of such people?
Language Practice: Time and Date
Week 14: Thriving Moments and Missed Chances: Ukraine from the 1950s to Independence
Class 1
Focus: In this class, we explore two defining spaces of late-Soviet Ukraine — Crimea and Chernobyl — as symbols of both beauty and vulnerability. Crimea, long romanticized in imperial imagination, reveals the complexities of identity, migration, and belonging in a multiethnic region reshaped by Stalin’s deportations and Soviet tourism culture. Chernobyl, by contrast, exposes the dark side of industrial modernity and state secrecy. Together, they illuminate Ukraine’s position between empire and environment, ideology and awakening — setting the stage for independence in 1991.
Pre-class Reading: Chernobyl 25 Years Later
Pre-class Video: Who Does Crimea Belong To?
Discussion Questions:
How did Crimea’s diverse population and strategic location shape its role within the Soviet Union?
What happened to the Crimean Tatars during and after World War II, and how did their story resurface in late-Soviet and post-Soviet Ukraine?
How does the cultural image of Crimea — the “southern paradise” — contrast with the reality of displacement and repression?
In what ways did Chernobyl transform not only environmental policy but also political consciousness in Ukraine?
How do both Crimea and Chernobyl represent the fragility of Soviet modernity — one through myth, the other through disaster?
How did these two places, each in its own way, prepare the moral and emotional ground for Ukraine’s independence in 1991?
Language Practice: Useful Words
Class 2
Thanksgiving Break
Week 15: Independence, Maidan and Invasion.
Class 1
Focus: This class examines Ukraine’s post-independence journey — the struggle to build democratic institutions while remaining in Russia’s geopolitical shadow. We explore how economic hardship, political corruption, uneven reforms, and competing historical narratives shaped public expectations of independence, which became not a single event, but an ongoing civic project. The 2013–2014 Euromaidan Revolution becomes the moment when Ukrainians reclaimed agency, choosing dignity, accountability, and a European future over authoritarian influence.
Pre-class Reading: Ukraine’s Struggle for Independence in Russia’s Shadow
Pre-class Video: History of the Ukrainian Euromaidan Revolution
Discussion Questions:
What challenges and hopes shaped Ukraine’s independence after 1991?
Why did Russia continue to influence Ukrainian politics, culture, and economics throughout the post-Soviet period?
Based on the video, what sparked the Euromaidan Revolution, and why did peaceful protests transform into a national uprising?
How did civil society — students, volunteers, journalists, artists — shape the direction and meaning of Maidan?
What does the Revolution of Dignity reveal about how Ukrainians define freedom, identity, and belonging?
How did Maidan alter Ukraine’s relationship with Russia, Europe, and its own past?
Language Practice: Professions
Class 2
Focus: This class examines Russia’s full-scale invasion. We discuss the political motivations behind the invasion, including Russia’s fear of an independent, democratic, culturally confident Ukraine. At the same time, we explore how Ukrainians — museum curators, librarians, volunteers, artists, civilians — preserve art, archives, language, monuments, and intangible heritage during war. Cultural protection becomes an act of resistance, proving that Ukraine’s identity is not inherited from empire but actively created, defended, and shared with the world.
Pre-class Video: How Ukrainians Are Saving Art During the War
Pre-class Reading: Why did Putin’s Russia Invaded Ukraine?
Discussion Questions:
According to the reading, what political and historical narratives shaped Russia’s decision to invade Ukraine?
Why does Putin’s government insist that Ukraine has “no separate culture or history,” and how does this belief justify aggression?
What does the video reveal about the everyday labor of protecting art, archives, and heritage in wartime?
How does cultural preservation become a form of national defense — equal to military and diplomatic efforts?
What examples from the video show that Ukrainian identity is active, diverse, and future-oriented, not nostalgic or imposed?
Why might museums, libraries, language, and monuments be considered strategic targets during invasion?
How has the war accelerated cultural revival, solidarity, and international recognition of Ukraine?
What does the effort to save art tell us about what Ukrainians believe is worth fighting — and living — for?
Week 16: Project Ukraine. Final Presentations – Vision, Identity, and Renewal
Overview:
The final assignment invites you to synthesize what you’ve learned about Ukrainian history, language, and culture by creating a forward-looking vision for Ukraine. Ground your ideas in course content—historical events, cultural patterns, archetypes, language use, and identity—and explore how Ukraine might thrive in the future.
You may approach this project through analytical writing or through a more creative, applied proposal format.
Written Paper:
Length: 4–5 pages (1,000–1,200 words)
Format: Times New Roman, 12-pt font, double-spaced, 1-inch margins
Citation Style: MLA for in-text citations
Submission: Due on the date listed in the course calendar (approximately two weeks after the final class session)
Your paper should offer a clear, well-supported argument or vision. It should demonstrate your ability to connect cultural, historical, and symbolic frameworks in a meaningful and forward-thinking way.
Possible Topics Include:
How cultural archetypes (e.g., warrior, guardian, seeker, Berehynia) shape Ukraine’s self-image today
Ukraine’s revolutionary tradition as a force for democratic identity
The long arc of resilience: historical trauma and healing
Cultural diplomacy through literature, music, or the arts
Peace-building and postwar reconstruction: a national proposal
The Ukrainian language as a symbol of dignity and inclusion
Project Ukraine: A multidimensional strategy for future development
You are encouraged—but not required—to integrate symbolic or archetypal frameworks discussed during the course.
Oral Presentation (5–7 minutes):
Schedule: Presentations will take place during the final class sessions (Week 15 or 16, depending on section schedule).
Duration: 5–7 minutes
Visuals: A PowerPoint or visual aid is welcome but not required.
Your presentation should include:
A clear introduction to your topic
A summary of your main insights or proposals
Visual aids (optional but recommended)—e.g., slides, images, charts, or maps
A brief integration of Ukrainian language learned in class
Sample language to include:
Вітаю! (Hello!)
Мене звати… (My name is…)
Тема мого дослідження… (The topic of my research is…)
Дякую за увагу! (Thank you for your attention!)