Understanding Ukraine Through Literature 3700-AL-UUTL-qDP
As recently Ukraine, the largest country within the European continent, situated at a geopolitical crossroads, has found itself in the spotlight of the world’s attention, there is an increasing need for expertise on Ukrainian culture, politics, and society. At the same time, there is lack of understanding of what Ukraine really is today and what Ukrainians are like. Where is this country on the line between East and West? How to interpret the changes that took place since its independence and what Ukrainian culture looks like today? When and how was it shaped and influenced?
The course is designed to find answers to these questions by discovering Ukrainian literature and history behind it. During the course we will read Ukrainian texts in the English translation, so no prior knowledge of Ukrainian language is required.
Type of course
Prerequisites (description)
Course coordinators
Learning outcomes
- is familiar with a broad overview of the rich literary scene of contemporary Ukraine including Ukrainian war literature, as well as discuss the Romantics and the avant-garde, the modernists and the dissidents, the post-modernists and the feminists
- is familiar with the key texts of Ukrainian literature
- is familiar with Ukrainian basic cultural values, history and literature
- participates in discussions
- is able to analyze texts using specific research methods
- is able to recognize and interpret basic problems and phenomena of Ukrainian literature
Assessment criteria
Final grade depends on:
- Presence in the classroom
- Activity during the seminars
- Participation in discussions
- Reading the obligatory texts
- Writing an essay
(2 unjustified unattendances is accepted.)
Bibliography
Ivan Kotliarevs’kyi, ‘Eneïda’
Taras Shevchenko, ‘My Friendly Epistle’ from The Poetical Works of Taras Shevchenko’
Sholem Aleichem, ‘Chava’ and ‘Get thee gone’
Ivan Franko, ‘Pure Race’
Lesia Ukrainka, ‘Forest Song’
Olha Kobylianska, ‘On Sunday Morning She Gathered Herbs’
Mykola Kulish, ‘The People’s Malakhi’ and 'Sonata Pathétique’
Selection of poems by Vasyl Stus
Olena Stiazhkina, ‘In God’s Language’
Serhiy Zhadan, ‘Voroshilovgrad’
Lyuba Yakimchuk, ‘Apricots of Donbas’
Andrey Kurkov, ‘Ukraine Diaries’
Anastasia Afanasieva, Aleksandr Kabanov, Liudmila Khersonskaya, Boris Khersonsky, selections in the anthology ‘Words for War: New Poems from Ukraine’
Additional information
Additional information (registration calendar, class conductors, localization and schedules of classes), might be available in the USOSweb system: