In Canada, a discussion of vanishing Jewish heritage in Ukraine ...

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THE UKRAINIAN WEEKLY SUNDAY, MAY 2, 2010
No. 18
A Ukrainian Summer: where to go, what to do...
Harvard Ukrainian Summer Institute
is now accepting student applications
by Peter T. Woloschuk
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – The Harvard
Ukrainian Summer Institute (HUSI) is currently
accepting applications for its 2010
program. This will be the 40th summer
session organized by the Harvard
Ukrainian Research Institute.
Over the years, over 1,000 students
have completed and benefited from the
program. One such person is University of
Massachusetts-Amherst history professor
and author Dr. Patrice M. Dabrowski, who
attended HUSI in 2002 while a graduate
student studying Central and Eastern
European history and culture. This summer,
she will act as HUSI’s director.
Dr. Dabrowski received her bachelor’s
degree in Slavic languages and literatures
from Harvard in 1984 and holds a master’s
in law and diplomacy from the Fletcher
School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts
University, as well as a doctorate in history
from Harvard. She held a Eugene and
Daymel Shklar Research Fellowship in
Ukrainian Studies at HURI in the fall of
2008 and has been a Fulbright and IREX
Scholar and a postdoctoral fellow at
Brown University. She is currently conducting
major research on the Hutsuls of
the Carpathian region of southwestern
Ukraine between the two world wars.
In reflecting on her time as a student at
HUSI, Dr. Dabrowski said, “I have always
found it fascinating to see how people with
various backgrounds end up coming to
Harvard University for the HUSI program
and how often their later career paths intersect.
While attending the program, I made
a number of connections that have served
me well in my academic career.”
“When I began graduate school, I
never expected I would end up studying
Ukrainian. I had already studied Russian
and Polish as an undergraduate and was
on my way to becoming a historian specializing
in Central and Eastern Europe,
with a particular focus on Poland,” Dr.
Dabrowski explained. “But I became
intrigued by Ukrainian history, with all its
complexities. More historians of Central
and Eastern Europe (certainly every historian
of Poland) should study that history.
And ultimately I decided to do something
about it.”
“But I needed to study Ukrainian first,”
she said, explaining that she decided to
enroll in the advanced language course
offered at HUSI.
HUSI was launched in 1970 by Prof.
Omeljan Pritsak, the Harvard Ukrainian
Research Institute’s co-founder, to maintain
and strengthen a solid foundation of
Ukrainian studies in the West and to open
the course offerings of the institute to college
students who were not enrolled at
Harvard University. For the first 20 years
HUSI students were primarily a mix of
”heritage students” – children and grandchildren
of the Ukrainian diaspora – and
students who were studying Ukrainian language,
culture or history as part of their
own purely academic pursuits. Since the
dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1990
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