I'm going to apologize in advance for the length of this page - this is the journal I wrote for my "Seminar: Introduction to Humanities Information
Sources" class. I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ukraine when I wrote this, which is why I chose the topic. After a few weeks, I figured out more of what my professor was looking for, and was able to adapt to that. The journal entries become more in-depth after that. These journal entries may seem a little informal, but I know the professor, and knew that he would enjoy the humor.
Journal Number 1 : General Humanities
Database: Academic Search Complete
Search Term: Ukraine
Search Type:
General [Boolean]
Search results
[no limiters] : 60,349, [results from 1918-2016]
[Limit – Full Text] : 33,621, [results from 1927-2015]
[Limit – Full Text] : 33,621, [results from 1927-2015]
There is a lot
of information on Ukraine. When limited to full-text only results, the results
are almost cut in half. There is good variation in what types of full-text
resources are available: academic journals, magazines, newspapers, book
reviews, trade publications, books, and one government document (the 2009 Yalta
Conference).
Of the 33,621
full-text resources, 32,190 are available in English, while only 591 and 219
are available in Russian and Ukrainian (respectively). Russian and Ukrainian
are also the next most common languages, after English. The Russian resources are all academic
journals, and most of the articles are in English. Whether they were written in
English or translated is not given.
Most of the results are about science and advancements therein which were researched in Ukraine. In fact, a Boolean of “Ukraine” when limited to “Ukraine” as a subject yields the frighteningly small number of 434 total full-text results, of which 158 are academic journals. “Ukraine” as a subject also limits the dates to 1989-2015.
Did you know that there is a Journal of Ukrainian Studies? Well, there is, and yes, UNC-G has full-text from 1997-2012. 47 of the 434 total results are found within this journal, while the Journal of Modern History (full-text coverage 1929-2015) has only 3. Cambridge University Press and the American Political Science Association (conference papers) each get only 3. There are 59 reviews, and the same number of books. Of the 434 results, NONE have a subject of “Euromaidan,” while 36 are on deposed President Victor Yanukovych, 34 on the Orange Revolution, and just 17 are on Russian President Vladimir Putin. 15 are on the famine, and 3 are on current President Petro Poroshenko.
However, under [Subject – Thesaurus Terms], 190 resources are about “history,” 94 are “non-fiction,” 59 are “books,” 38 are on the “demostatrations (collective behavior),” 32 are on “Ukraine Conflict, 2014-,” 18 are on Chernobyl, and (finally) 16 are on the “Euromaidan Protests.” 16 total results have a subject of “Euromaidan Protests” and those are under [Thesaurus Terms], not even the regular subject narrowing.
Most of the results are about science and advancements therein which were researched in Ukraine. In fact, a Boolean of “Ukraine” when limited to “Ukraine” as a subject yields the frighteningly small number of 434 total full-text results, of which 158 are academic journals. “Ukraine” as a subject also limits the dates to 1989-2015.
Did you know that there is a Journal of Ukrainian Studies? Well, there is, and yes, UNC-G has full-text from 1997-2012. 47 of the 434 total results are found within this journal, while the Journal of Modern History (full-text coverage 1929-2015) has only 3. Cambridge University Press and the American Political Science Association (conference papers) each get only 3. There are 59 reviews, and the same number of books. Of the 434 results, NONE have a subject of “Euromaidan,” while 36 are on deposed President Victor Yanukovych, 34 on the Orange Revolution, and just 17 are on Russian President Vladimir Putin. 15 are on the famine, and 3 are on current President Petro Poroshenko.
However, under [Subject – Thesaurus Terms], 190 resources are about “history,” 94 are “non-fiction,” 59 are “books,” 38 are on the “demostatrations (collective behavior),” 32 are on “Ukraine Conflict, 2014-,” 18 are on Chernobyl, and (finally) 16 are on the “Euromaidan Protests.” 16 total results have a subject of “Euromaidan Protests” and those are under [Thesaurus Terms], not even the regular subject narrowing.
After removing
“Ukraine” as a subject, the number of results on Putin ups to 260 total
results, Yanukovych to 196, and 98 for the Orange Revolution, 31 on Poroshenko,
and 22 on the famine. And still, NONE on Euromaidan. Under [Subject – Thesaurus
Terms], there are 557 on “history,” 491 on “Ukraine Conflict, 2014-,” 458 on
“International Relationships,” and the remaining subjects on science terms
which sound like something out of either Avengers
or Star Trek. Or possibly both Avengers AND Star Trek.
Overall, there
are a lot of results. Most of them seem to be science related, and only a grand
total of 17 are Euromaidan. This shows that, despite everything, Ukraine is
still known as “that funny country with the nuclear disaster tucked up next to
Russia, right?”
Database: Academic Search Complete
Search Term: Ukraine AND Euromaidan
Search Type:
General [Boolean]
[Limit – Full
Text] : 67, [results from 2013-2015]
67 results sound
like a good number of results. However, 39 of them are from magazines, while 20
of them are academic journals. The
Journal of Democracy (4) and Problems
Post-Communism (3) show what people think of Ukraine. Of the 67 results, 64
are in English, while 2 are in Turkish, leaving one which was somehow published
without a language.
Database: JSTOR
Search Term: Ukraine
Search Type:
General [Boolean]
Search results
[no limiters] : 44,526 (of which 3 are NOT academic journals)
Unlike Academic Search Complete, JSTOR makes it almost impossible to modify which results show from a search, without starting over again. By which, I mean that one can not add a term without “modifying search” and using Boolean phrasing. One is unable to adjust one’s search by dates, languages, or subject. This makes narrowing anything down difficult, unless one likes browsing JSTOR.
Overall, not recommended for any sort of general searches. Stick to searching JSTOR via full-text journals, not just general search terms. There is also no obvious way to insure that one is searching JSTOR’s full-text holdings, and not just citations.
Unlike Academic Search Complete, JSTOR makes it almost impossible to modify which results show from a search, without starting over again. By which, I mean that one can not add a term without “modifying search” and using Boolean phrasing. One is unable to adjust one’s search by dates, languages, or subject. This makes narrowing anything down difficult, unless one likes browsing JSTOR.
Overall, not recommended for any sort of general searches. Stick to searching JSTOR via full-text journals, not just general search terms. There is also no obvious way to insure that one is searching JSTOR’s full-text holdings, and not just citations.
Database: LexusNexus Academic
Search Term: Ukraine
Search Type:
General [Boolean]
Search results
[no limiters] : 997
There is no
clear way to limit to full-text results. Of the 997 results, 595 are from
newspapers and 297 are from news transcripts. Not a database recommended for
the Humanities. Unless one is looking for newspapers or news transcripts.
Database: ProQuest Central
Search Term: Ukraine
Search Type:
General [Boolean]
Search results
[no limiters] : 1,674,906,
[Limit – Full Text] : 1,549,719
[Limit – Full Text] : 1,549,719
There are
significantly more types of results, which include Wire Feeds, Newspapers,
Trade Journals, and Blogs. It is very easy to limit to both full-text and
peer-reviewed, which lead to the much more reasonable number of 28,041 results.
It is difficult to limit by subject, once one limits down to both full-text and
peer-reviewed, as the subjects included are “studies,” “humans,” “nonfiction,”
“politics,” “female,” “male,” and “animals.” Many more subjects along those
lines are possible limiters. I’ll take “International Relations of Male Animals
in Politics, for $2000, Alex.” (yes, you can select more than one subject).
The search for Ukraine AND Euromaidan had 0 results
for full-text and peer-reviewed, and a total of 20 full-text results, 12 of
which are newspapers.
Database: JSTOR
Journal: The Journal of Modern History
Search Term: Ukraine
Search Type:
General [Boolean]
Search results
[no limiters] : 582
As usual,
JSTOR’s search features leave a lot to be desired, in terms of being able to
limit to subject, date range, or even full text. JSTOR does automatically limit
to “content I can access,” which is a big step in the right direction.
Database: ProQuest
Journal: The Journal of Ukrainian Studies
Search Term: Ukraine
Search Type:
General [Boolean]
Search results
[no limiters] : 421 (all full-text; all scholarly journals)
While there are
the usual ProQuest oddball search terms, there are the more specific and more
helpful “European History,” “Slavic Studies,” “cultural identity,” “Slavic
Languages,” and “Slavic Literature.” There are 7 results about “revolutions”
(which?), 5 on “famine,” and 3 on “English language” (no, I’m not making that
one up…).
Database: Google Books
Search Term: Ukraine
Search Type:
General [Boolean]
Search results
[no limiters] : 49,300 [19th-21st Century]
[Limit – AND Euromaidan] : 691
The very thing
that makes Google great makes Google Books bad. No easy way to limit by
anything, and the necessary assumption that anything important is one page one,
and maybe, just maybe, page two. Seriously not recommended, unless frustration or
hilarity the wanted results.
Database: Google News
Search Term: Ukraine
Search Type:
General [Boolean]
Search results
[no limiters] : 28,800,000
[Limit – AND Euromaidan] : 35,200
I’ll let those
results speak for themselves… There are a lot of interesting stories, as every
single news result for Ukraine pops up. One very important feature is that one
can limit the news results to recent and breaking (recent, last hour, last 24
hours, etc).
Database: Google Scholar
Search Term: Ukraine
Search Type:
General [Boolean]
Search results
[no limiters] : 1,370,000
[Limit NO
patents, NO citations] : 1,290,000
[Limit – AND Euromaidan] : 1180
Again, what
makes Google great, makes Google Scholar not a great source.
All in all, Academic Search Complete is the most recommended database, due to the ease of use.
Journal Number 2 : Philosophy
Database: Philosopher’s Index
Search Term: Ukraine
Search Type:
General [Boolean]
Search results
[no limiters] : 24 [1977-2014]
[Limit – Full Text] : 9 [1996-2014]
[Limit – Full Text] : 9 [1996-2014]
[Limit – Subject
– Ukrainian] : 11
There are some
fascinating topics in Philosopher’s
Index about Ukraine. The 11 results are about biomedical ethics, business
ethics in post-Soviet Ukraine, government/political ethics, social philosophy
(specifically about the Chernobyl disaster), political philosophy focusing on
Marxism, contemporary sex and gender philosophy (in Russian), presidential
debates, prisons, business standards, and an article on the history of L’viv
([Lvov; L’vov; Lviv]; a city in far western Ukraine). Other articles are about the
ethics of cheating, an article on the ethics of nationalism (in German), an
article on the philosophic differences between the Soviet-era official academic
structures and the current informal communities of practice (in Russian),
pedagogy, feminism, gender theory, and prayer and metaphysics.
As mentioned,
there are a lot of philosophical differences between Ukraine and the US. This
can be noted in how Ukrainians view things such as cheating. Peace Corps
Volunteers in the TEFL-sector (Teaching English as a Foreign Language; English
teachers) are warned that Ukrainian children cheat. Constantly. They copy off
each other’s papers. They use Google Translate and claim it as their own work.
They tell each other the answers to questions. And they cry when you call them
on it. True story – I made a 12 year old girl cry once when I enforced my “no
cheating during the game” rule and told her that she had to sit out the rest of
the game because she was telling everyone the answers. Teachers also often
change grades. It is very hard to give a student a “fair” grade in Ukraine, as
there may be pressure to give them good or bad grades. I have been flat out
told that I couldn’t give a student a high/low grade, because the rest of their
grades were low/high. Teachers play favorites, and it shows in what the students
think of classes and how they do their work.
I found several
very interesting journals: the journal "In Itinere European Cities and the Birth of Modern Scientific
Philosophy," the journal "Topos:
Journal for Philosophical and Cultural Studies," the "Journal of Academic Ethics,” the journal
"Studies in East European Thought,"
as well as many others. Some of them would be very interesting to look at
closely for more subject-area searching.
Database: Academic Search Complete
Search Term: Ukraine AND Philosophy
Search Type:
General [Boolean]
Search results
[no limiters] : 537
[Limit – Full
Text] : 452
When looking at
the linked subjects, the most popular subject is the Orange Revolution, with
exactly 3 linked articles. The most popular thesaurus keyword is Physics, with
364 results. The next is “particles (nuclear physics)” with 47 results. Of the
452 full-text results, 436 are academic journals. The most popular publication
is “Low Temperature Physics” with a
whopping 66 articles. One starts wondering where the Philosophy topics are, as
the top 22 academic journals are hard sciences. Journal 23 is “Religion in Eastern Europe” (4),
followed by “Russian Politics and Law”
(4), “Society: Philosophy, History,
Culture” (4), followed by 16 more science journals before “European Societies (2).
These results show, however, just how entwined the sciences and philosophy are. If philosophy is “thinking about knowledge” or “a love of knowledge,” there is going to be a lot of non-philosophical results. So far, Philosopher’s Index is a better database, despite Academic Search Complete having more overall results, as the small results are all on Philosophic topics.
Database: JSTOR
Search Term: Ukraine
Search Type:
General [Boolean]
[Limit –
Discipline – Philosophy]
: 528 search results.
[Limit –
Discipline – Philosophy
AND Limit – Type – Article] : 295.
Now, on my last
journal entry, I indicated that JSTOR
has some issues. I stand by that assessment. As usual, there is no easy way to
limit by subject, nor see what subjects are available. I know that there are 295
journal articles available, with a subject of Ukraine and a discipline of Philosophy. What I do not
know is what those almost 300 articles are about. Ethics? Logic? Aesthetics?
Pedagogy? Business? In order to use these results, I would have to click
through all 295 of them, and hope I was able to find the one(s) I was looking
for. JSTOR, despite being awesome,
could use some features found on Ebsco-owned databases.
Database: ProQuest Research Library
Search Term: Ukraine AND Philosophy
Search Type:
General [Boolean]
[Limit – Full Text] : 3687 results
[Limit – Full Text] : 3687 results
[Limit – Full
Text AND Limit – peer-reviewed] : 1920 results
As usual, Proquest has unusual subject keywords
available to narrow down searches. The first two subjects, tied at 129 results
each, are “Eastern Europe” and “Experimental/Theoretical.”
“Experimental/Theoretical” what? Philosophy? Isn’t philosophy mostly
theoretical to begin with? That being said, there are some very good subjects:
“Politics and Political Behavior,” “Social Trends and Culture,” “Law,” and
“Social Responsibility.” On the plus side, there are a lot of publication
titles to choose from, including: “The
Journal of Ecclesiastical History,” “Central
European History,” “Demokratizatsiya,”
“Canadian Slavonic Papers,” and the “Harvard Ukrainian Studies.”
Overall, not the
best resource, but better than JSTOR.
Database: Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Search Term: Ukraine
Search Type:
General [Boolean]
Search results
[no limiters] : 0
Um… Not
recommended.
Book results:
Given my location in Ukraine, I am unable to go to Jackson Library/Z. Smith Reynolds Library and look in the various encyclopedias and dictionaries for what they have. Some, such as the Dictionary of World Philosophy look very interesting, and would probably have something interesting on Philosophy from/about Ukraine.
It would be
interesting to do a search of philosophical topics and see if any of them
relate to Ukraine. A search of the philosophy behind nuclear power may yield
interesting results. I think this because the electronic resources are
dependent on people. If someone forgets to tag Ukraine, then a search of
Ukraine will not yield that result. The same goes for the number of tags.
Often, only the first [x-number] of tags can be searched. If Ukraine was not in
the top [number], then it will not show in the results. It would be interesting
to look through journals on Eastern Europe or Post-Soviet-Bloc countries and
see if any more results show up. Maybe they weren’t tagged right to show up in
a Boolean search.
If someone were
looking at a specific topic, they could search for that topic, and then see if
any of the results could be about Ukraine. While “business ethics in post
Soviet-bloc countries” will have something about Ukraine, “Selkies” won’t.[1]
A generic search almost tells me what isn’t available, rather than what is. I
didn’t see a single article on Taras Shevchenko. Or Sergey Kirov. I wonder if
articles about Ukraine might be mislabeled. Since Ukraine has only just celebrated her 24th
year as an independent country, maybe articles written about her under Soviet
rule aren’t tagged as Ukraine and therefore they don’t return in a search for
Ukraine.
Journal Number 3 : Religion
Database: ProQuest Religion
Search Term: Ukraine
Search Type:
General [Boolean]
Search results
[no limiters] : 2,860
[Limit – Full Text] : 2,703
[Limit – Full Text] : 2,703
[Limit – Full
text AND Peer Reviewed] : 803
With ProQuest Religion, one can easily limit
by type of religion – Christianity, Judaism, etc – as well as by “Jews.” The
subject terms are all very good ones, if one knows by what term they want to
limit their search to. Not very good for general browsing – note 2,703 full
text resources – but there are many very good subject limiters. Although the
subject “non-fiction” is a bit of an odd one (as "non-fiction" is a genre term, and I would have thought "history"/"historical" woulc have been better). Along with 999 Scholarly journals
(which is odd, as only 803 total results are peer-reviewed…), there are 1248
magazine results, 267 newspapers, 105 trade journals, and 84
Dissertations/theses. There are 14 results available in a language other than
English: German (8), French (5), and Polish (1). When one limits to a “person,”
the top result is Pope John Paul II (34) followed up with Barak Obama and
Vladimir Putin, who are tied at 11 results a piece. ProQuest databases tend to be good to use with lots of limiters in
place, but hard to just browse.
I clicked on a scholarly article titled “Religion and Nation in Modern Ukraine.” which turned out to be a book review (which is not one of the types of results to limit). It was found in The Catholic Historical Review, which UNC-G has full-text coverage from October 1995-present.
I clicked on a scholarly article titled “Religion and Nation in Modern Ukraine.” which turned out to be a book review (which is not one of the types of results to limit). It was found in The Catholic Historical Review, which UNC-G has full-text coverage from October 1995-present.
Database: Gale Religion
Search Term: Ukraine
Search Type:
General [Boolean]
Search results
[no limiters] : 966
There is no way
to limit to Full-Text in Gale Religion,
as well as nothing which says that the results are full-text. This
automatically fails Gale Religion –
what good are results that aren’t full-text when one is doing research? That
being said, there are a lot of document types offered, ranging from “brief
biography” (333) to “topic overview” (257), from “city overview” (166) to
“brief article” (153). Most of the subject limiters are related Judaism in some
form, holding 8 of the top 14 results, (along with 21 more results; for a grand
total of 29 of 50 total subjects). Given the amount of Anti-Semitism found in
Ukraine, and that there were many Concentration Camps in Ukraine during the
Holocaust, this is unsurprising. It is therefore unsurprising that 785 results
of 966 total are found in the Encyclopaedia
Judaica. The next publication is the New
Catholic Encyclopedia, with 63 results. A further strike against Gale Religion is that, while the list
of publications does expand, the full title are not shown, with Encyclopedia of American Religions
reading Encyclopedia of Amer… (18)
and all other publications are similarly truncated.
Database: Oxford Reference
Search Term: Ukraine AND [subject] Religion
Search Type:
General [Boolean]
Search results
[no limiters] : 42
[Limit – Full
Text] : Unknown – when a limit is set to full-text, the subject search is
removed
Oxford Reference
is like flipping through an encyclopedia without knowing how the encyclopedia
is organized, or even if said encyclopedia is organized. You can’t limit to
further subjects – there is no way to limit to a religion.
Database: Oxford Reference
Journal: The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World
Religions
Search Term: Ukraine
Search Type:
General [Boolean]
Search results
[no limiters] :
There is no way to actually search The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions, at least not in way that actually makes sense. One can click on a letter of the alphabet and get a list of entries beginning with that letter, but there is no way to search for a person, a place, an event, or even a religion. It is like browsing a print encyclopedia, only with no index to help.
There is no way to actually search The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions, at least not in way that actually makes sense. One can click on a letter of the alphabet and get a list of entries beginning with that letter, but there is no way to search for a person, a place, an event, or even a religion. It is like browsing a print encyclopedia, only with no index to help.
Database: ATLA Religion Database with ATLA Serials
Search Term: Ukraine
Search Type:
General [Boolean]
Search results
[no limiters] : 1,076
[Limit – Full
Text] : 163 [there, now wasn’t that easy?]
[Limit – Full
text AND Peer Reviewed] : 96 [again, wasn’t that easy?]
Of the 163
full-text results, 127 of them are from academic journals (which begs the
question of how only 96 of those results are peer reviewed), and the remaining
36 are book reviews. This means that a promisingly titled article doesn’t turn
out to be a book review in disguise. The subject include “peer reviewed” (96),
as well as subjects related to religion in Ukraine – church history, religion,
missions, types of religions, etc. One can limit to “Communism and Christianity”
and see only 5 total results. Or one can limit to “Ukraine -- Church History”
and see 22 results. The publication with the most results is Christian Century (16), followed by Journal of Mennonite Studies (14), and
publications include Religion in Eastern
Europe with a promising 12 results, Journal
of Church and State (7), the Journal
of Ecumenical Studies (5), and the Religion
and Culture in Early Modern Russia and Ukraine (4). However, all of the
results for the very promising Religion and Culture in Early Modern Russia
and Ukraine are reviews. Religion in
Eastern Europe, however, is held, full-text, in the ATLA Religion Database, from 1993 until 2012. The results are only
available in English and German, although only 3 results are in German.
Database: Academic Search Complete
Search Term: Ukraine AND Religion
Search Type:
General [Boolean]
Search results
[no limiters] : 360
[Limit – Full
Text] : 233
[Limit – Full
text AND Peer Reviewed] : 151
Academic Search Complete is searching through more databases, and
therefore has more results. It also shows that Religion and Culture in Early Modern Russia and Ukraine is a book,
and therefore not a journal with articles. There are several other books that
would make good starting places for research on this subject. There are more
politicians as subjects than ATLA
Religion Database, but no limiting to a type of religion. Those limiters
are available under “thesaurus terms,” along with “freedom of religion” and
“religion & state.” Academic Search
Complete also brings results from other journals into play, including First Things: a Monthly Journal of Religion
& Public Life (17), and the Journal
of Ukrainian Studies (8). UNC-G holds First
Things: a Monthly Journal of Religion & Public Life full-text from 2000
to present.
Database: JSTOR
Search Term: Ukraine AND [discipline] Religion
Search Type:
General [Boolean]
Search results
[no limiters] : 1,302
I keep saying
not-so nice things about JSTOR, but
I stand by those statements. I can’t narrow down to full-text. I know that
there are 1,302 results under a keyword search of Ukraine, with a discipline
limiter of Religion. But I can’t limit those results. What are the over 1300
results about? How many of them are in languages I can read? How many are only
references? How many are book reviews? I can’t limit by publications, types of
results, or subjects. In order to search these 1,302 results, I would have to
go through them one-by-one too see if I could find what I am looking for. I did
a manual Boolean limit to further limit to Judaism and still got 371 results,
with no way to further limit down. The very breadth that makes JSTOR great is it’s Achilles’ Heel.
Database: LexisNexis Academic
Search Term: Ukraine AND Religion
Search Type:
General [Boolean]
Search results
[no limiters] : 998
There is no
obvious or non-obvious way to limit to full text results. Most of the results
are newspapers. In fact, 884 of the 998 results are from newspapers. However,
the subject limiters are quite nice, as one can limit to a type of religion, as
well as topics related to religion. There is no apparent Christian bias, which
is very unique. This would be a very frustrating way to look for newspaper
articles, however.
Again, like
philosophy, I wonder if the results show more of what isn’t there, than what is
there. It would be interesting to search for a religions topic, and then see if
that topic relates to Ukraine. It is possible that there is a bias away from Ukraine,
as the country is predominately Eastern/Ukrainian Orthodox, as well as
celebrating its 24th year as an independent country. It is possible that
results that are related to Ukraine don’t show up because they are classes as
“Eastern-Bloc” or “Soviet-Bloc” or
“USSR” as opposed to “Ukraine.”
Journal Number 4 : Literature
I decided to
look into Taras Shevchenko. Shevchenko is considered the founder of Ukrainian
Literature as a genre, as well as founder of the modern Ukrainian language. He
was a poet, a painter, and an illustrator. He is to Ukraine what Shakespeare
was to England. He was an advocate for an independent Ukraine. He wrote in
Ukrainian while it was illegal to do so. The meaning in his works had to be
suppressed under communism, as he advocated for an independent Ukraine; instead
they pointed out the anti-Tsarist aspects of his works. He is unparalleled in
Ukraine, and few authors could match his historical significance to their home
countries. I thought that the literature available on Shevchenko would be a
good microcosm, a good starting point, as Shevchenko is one of the most
important writers in Ukrainian history.
In Academic
Search Complete, the Journal of Slavonic
and Eastern European Review has 5 book reviews and 2 articles with a subject
of “Shevchenko.” Result 1 (“Mountains, Masks, Metre, Meaning:
Taras Shevchenko's 'Kavkaz'”) is Rory Finnin’s argument that the
imagery described in the poem “Kavkaz” is not anti-colonial sentiment, but
rather post-colonial ambivalence. Whether Mr. Finnin will convince the
Ukrainian people remains to be seen. However, this shows that Shevchenko has
made it into literary circles. A critic wouldn’t analyze a poem without the
poem being considered literature.[2]
Result 2 (“Nationalism and the Lyric, Or How Taras Shevchenko Speaks to Compatriots Dead, Living, and Unborn”), also Mr. Finnin, is a take on the nationalism of the reader, and the nationalism of poetry. In his 28 page article, Mr. Finnin talks about how Shevchenko talks to the reader, through the use of lyrical address, as well as the presence and type of nationalism in the poem “My Friendly Epistle.” The link from Academic Search Complete to JSTOR is broken, but a JSTOR search for the title resulted in a downloadable pdf of the 28 page article.
Result 3 is a book review of a book written by Olga Shevchenko. Result 4 is a book review of a book written by Iulia Shevchenko. Result 5 is a collection of abstracts of articles on Slavonic and Eastern European arts and literature, including Mr. Finnin’s first article. Result 6 is a book review; it has nothing to do with any Shevchenko, but is a result because the author works at the National Taras Shevchenko University, Kyiv. Result 7 is a book review of a book in Russian, and is the same as Result 6: the author works at the National Taras Shevchenko University, Kyiv.
Another search
in Academic Search Complete was limited to Taras Shevchenko, which means that
the 12 results should be about Taras Shevchenko, not other Shevchenkos or
professors at the NTSUK.
Result 1 (The Feminine Ideal and the Critique of Gentry Sentimentalism in Taras Shevchenko's "Khudozhnik") is a short story review by Myroslave Shkasndrij. The review is just that – a critic of sentimentalism and feminism in the poem “Khudozhnik.” The review is a thorough run-through of the story, and uses many elements of Shevchenko’s life to critic what he was writing, as the story is considered auto-biographical. It is a fascinating take on Shevchenko.
Result 2 and 3
have already been discussed – they are Mr. Finnin’s from the previous search.
Result 4 (“Literary Travel: Ukrainian Journeys Toward the National and the
Modern”) is Marko Pavlyshyn’s discussion of how the travel writing of the 19th
and 20th centuries help shape Ukrainian nationalism. Mr. Pavylshyn uses a
post-colonial analysis in his work.
Result 5 is an
untitled poem by Taras Shevchenko, presumably written during his imprisonment
after his 1847 arrest, but before his trial and subsequence exile. Result 6 is
a New York Times article about a March 2014 rally in Kyiv celebrating the 200th
anniversary of Shevchenko’s birth, as well as an attack on a rally in
Sevastopol. Result 7 is in German, with no English abstract given. Result 8 is
a collection of trivia from a New York Times article. Result 9 is a newspaper
article about what was happening in April 2001 in Kyiv, specifically on the
plans of the government commemorating Shevchenko. Result 10 is an article
critiquing the fact that Washington, DC, doesn’t have any memorials to public education.
The author brings up that there is a statue of Shevchenko in DC, but not of US
public education. Result 11 is in German. Result 12 is about the March 2014
vote which happened in Crimea.
This shows that,
while there isn’t much in the way of literature about Shevchenko, people are
interested in his works.
By happenstance I noticed that one of the articles had a subject of “Ukrainian Literature.” I clicked on that, and got 35 total results. There are some fascinating journal articles about literature. There are many articles about Ukrainian authors/poets/playwrights other than Shevchenko. All of the articles date to after Ukraine became an independent country, so I yet again think that their may be a terminology issue. Given that Ukraine was under the Russian Empire and then the USSR, it is possible that Ukrainian authors are considered Russian, and therefore their work considered Russian Literature, regardless of the author’s feelings on the subject.
While 12 of the
results are book reviews, book reviews show an interest in the literature.
Several of the books being reviewed are themselves critiques of Ukrainian
literature. Some of the articles of interest include “Normalising a Ukrainian
Intellectual Identity in the Nineteenth Century: The Role of Marko Vovchok
(1833-1907),” “Literary CombiNation: Memory and Space in Contemporary Ukrainian
Anthologies,” “Thesaurus of the Unspeakable: Thanatopraxis in Kharkiv's Tales
of Trauma,” and “Travel and Ukrainian Literary Modernism,” amongst others. The
consensus is that there is a lot of literature about Ukrainian literature, if
one knows where to look. While there will never be as many results as “Hamlet,”
there are still many reviews about how literature has shaped Ukraine, and
critiques of literature.
Journal Number 5 : Theatre, Dance, and Performing Arts
Ukraine has a
long history with the performing arts. There are theatres in most Rayon seats
in the country, with emphasis put on theatre and dance in schools. My Gymnasium
has mandatory dance/choreography lessons for all students. In fact, Kirovograd
City [now called "Kropyvnytskyi;" name changed July 2016] was where the first Ukrainian professional theatre was founded. Its
founder (Marko Kropyvnytsky), can be considered the father of Ukrainian
theatre. The Kyiv Ballet has had world-famous dancers grace the company and the stage. The Odessa Opera and Ballet Theatre is one of the most famous buildings
in Odessa. Its address is even 1 Tchaikovsky Street. Side note: “Kyiv” is the
preferred spelling of the city, as “Kiev” is the transliteration from the
Russian. Ukraine and Kyiv have chosen to use Kyiv as the official
transliteration of the city. However, many thing still use the older spelling,
as a search for “Kyiv” won’t turn up as much material as “Kiev.” I mean, the
Wikipedia entry for the National Ballet of Ukraine is called “Kiev Ballet.”
This could lead to results getting misplaced or not found due to the spelling.
Database: International Bibliography of Theatre &
Dance with Full Text
Search Term: Ukraine
Search Type:
General [Boolean]
Search results
[no limiters] : 250
[Limit – Full Text] : 122
There are many, many, interesting articles and even a few reviews found with this basic search. Articles include “A Postcolonial Reading of Lesia Ukraïnka's Orhiia” (Anastassiya Andrianovna, Modern Drama), the “huh?” of “Heroes with a Half Life: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and American Repression of Radiophobia after Chernobyl” (Nicky Falkof, Journal of Popular Culture), the technical “TRAINING Costume Designers in Odessa, Ukraine” (John Hofland and Sam Schroeder, Theatre Design and Technology), as well as reviews of productions and even of the circus. There are articles about Ukraine’s resurgence during and after EuroMaidan, as well as anti-piracy negotiations and trade sanctions. One can narrow to “subject,” “company,” or “geography” when searching. One can also add an “AND” to the Boolean search, such as “Ukraine” AND “Ballet.” This limit reveals 19 full-text results. Most of them are articles from dance magazines/periodicals, but they could be very interesting to read, if one is interested in reading about ballerina Alina Cojocaru and her recovery from a possibly career-ending case of whiplash, other articles about ballerinas during the Russian Empire or the Soviet Union, or other aspects of ballet in Ukraine.
[Limit – Full Text] : 122
There are many, many, interesting articles and even a few reviews found with this basic search. Articles include “A Postcolonial Reading of Lesia Ukraïnka's Orhiia” (Anastassiya Andrianovna, Modern Drama), the “huh?” of “Heroes with a Half Life: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and American Repression of Radiophobia after Chernobyl” (Nicky Falkof, Journal of Popular Culture), the technical “TRAINING Costume Designers in Odessa, Ukraine” (John Hofland and Sam Schroeder, Theatre Design and Technology), as well as reviews of productions and even of the circus. There are articles about Ukraine’s resurgence during and after EuroMaidan, as well as anti-piracy negotiations and trade sanctions. One can narrow to “subject,” “company,” or “geography” when searching. One can also add an “AND” to the Boolean search, such as “Ukraine” AND “Ballet.” This limit reveals 19 full-text results. Most of them are articles from dance magazines/periodicals, but they could be very interesting to read, if one is interested in reading about ballerina Alina Cojocaru and her recovery from a possibly career-ending case of whiplash, other articles about ballerinas during the Russian Empire or the Soviet Union, or other aspects of ballet in Ukraine.
When searched
with the Boolean “Ukraine”
AND “Theatre,” the
database Humanities & Social
Sciences Index Retrospective: 1907-1984 (H.W. Wilson) has two results.
The first is the abstract-less, 1971 article from the Slavonic & East European Review Journal titled “Mykola Kulish
in the modern Ukrainian theatre.” Could be very interesting. A quick hop over
to JSTOR later, and the full-text is available (still no abstract). The other
article is titled “Ukrainian theatres” and dates to 1920. Not much use to
a contemporary scholar, but possibly very useful from a historical perspective.
UNC-G does not hold this resource. At all. When searched with “Ukraine” AND “Ballet,” no results are
found. Same for “Ukraine”
AND “Dance.”
When searched
with the Boolean “Ukraine”
AND “Theatre,” the
database Art Index Retrospective (H.W.
Wilson) has two results, both of which are different from the ones found in
Humanities & Social Sciences Index
Retrospective: 1907-1984 (H.W. Wilson). The first result is the article
“State theatre of the Ukraine Kharkov 1930 {O. Stonorov}”
which dates to 1972 in the Italian language periodical, L'Architettura. No full-text. The other result is in German, but is
tagged to be about Kharkiv and Theatres. My limited German makes me think that
the article is about musicals. The article is also from 1932, and is likely
only important from a historical perspective. One would have to read German for
said historical perspective, of course. Not that UNC-G has a full-text copy, for what that is worth. No
results were found for “Ukraine”
AND “Dance,” nor
were any results found for “Ukraine”
AND “Ballet.”
Ebsco’s Academic Search Complete. The database
to end all databases. I searched for “Kiev Ballet” and was given 6 results. 2 reviews of
performances, 2 New York Times
articles about various ballerinas, 1 magazine article about Alina Cojocaru, and
one journal article about both ballet in Kiev and glassblowing in Toledo (the
article is a brief overview of the articles found within a 2007 issue of the Teaching Artist Journal.)
The search of “Ukraine” AND “Theatre” gives 79 results (40 full-text). Of those 40 results, several are short Encyclopedia entries, including “Odessa” and “Eastern Europe: Ukraine” (it’s about musical festivals and theatres in Ukraine). There are some absolutely fascinating titles available for perusal: “The Theatre Tsar” (Dimiter Kenarov, Virginia Quarterly Review; about Theatre in Krimea and director Anatoly Kovikov), “The Russians Aren’t Coming” (no author, American Theatre; about the Ukraine-Russia Conflict and how that affected a planned Russian Drama festival in Washington, D.C.), and “Kiev is Burning” (Chris Godfrey, Advocate; article about the arson attack at the Zhovten movie theatre in Kyiv, and whether the attack was violence against the LGBT community). Other results include periodical articles about performers (cellists, flutists, conductors), as well as some that may be a bit out of place: “Bombs Away” (about US nuclear weapons policy), a skating tournament in Norway, the importance of Soccer in Ukraine’s economic future, a Jewish character in Waiting for Godot, Liquid Natural Gas votes, and other results with have ONLY “Ukraine,” not the “AND Theatre” portion of the search.
“Ukraine” AND “Ballet” returns 14 full-text results, which include many result found under “Theatre.” Some of the interesting ones include: “From Ukraine, With Love” (Tamara Johnson, Dance Magazine; about two Ukrainian ballet dancers with American companies), “Dancing Athwart History” (James Lileks, National Review; this article looks at the international policy reaction to Russia after Krimea, specifically about how arts boycotts are unlikely to be effective), and the wonderful “Experimental Investigation of the Bearing Capacity of Piles Injected into Predrilled Holes in the Foundation Bed of the Odessa Opera and Ballet Theater” which (as the title suggests) is about strength and bearing of the foundation of the Odessa Opera and Ballet Theatres.
Searches for
specific companies, locations, dancers, and/or conductors turned up no results,
except for ballerina Alina Cojocaru. Her 8 results include 4 reviews (2 each
for The Sleeping Beauty and Giselle; all 4 are for DVD-Video Discs).
The four other results are: “Cojocaru Lands at ENB” (no author, Dance Magazine; Alina Cojocaru will be dancing
for the English National Ballet), “The Royal’s Alina Cojocaru” (Margaret
Willis, Dance Magazine; a profile of
Alina Cojocaru, then with The Royal Ballet), “Delicate Charm Meets Steely
Technique” (Margaret Willis, Dance
Magazine; a feature story on Alina Cojocaru), and finally “Bring in the
Ballerinas” (Joan Acocella, New Yorker;
article on the American Ballet Theatres use of foreign[3]
guest stars and criticizes the use of[4]
ballerinas such as Alina Cojocaru).
Journal Number 7 : Film and Television
Ukraine has a
long TV and film history, starting with silent films during the Soviet era and
films are still being produced now. There are Ukrainian produced shows on
television today. One of the most popular show in Ukraine is Tancyuyut Vsi! (Everybody Dance!),
a show based on So You Think You Can
Dance. In fact, if you ask secondary students what their favorite TV show
is, more than half will say this program. Other popular programs include X-Factor Ukraine.[5]
Most films and
TV serials (the terminology in the British-English-speaking Ukraine) are dubbed
into Ukrainian. Badly. If one listens closely, one can hear the original
dialogue track running under the Ukrainian. Most films and serials are dubbed
into Ukrainian, not Russian. Not even the bad guys speak Russian. There are
some theatres which dub big motion picture films into Russian, but they are
few-and-far-between.
Ukraine has 5
state owned film companies (a lot for a country not even the size of Texas),
and three film distribution companies, which dub and release films in Ukraine
(they do not appear to be state-owned). Ukraine has 8 times had a film
represented at the Academy Awards, although they were disqualified one year. At
the 2014 Academy Awards – the one when Benedict Cumberbatch managed to
photobomb the entirety of U2 (including the wives) – the film The Guide was chosen to represent
Ukraine, but was not nominated for the award. Ukraine has never been nominated
for Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards.
A Russian-language Ukrainian film, My Joy, was selected to complete for the Palme d’Or at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival; it did not win. My Joy is said to be a haunting look at Russia. A yet-to-be release documentary – Winter On Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom – chronicles the EuroMaidan Protests. It won an award at the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival. Another film about EuroMaidan, Maidan, was filmed during the Revolution of Dignity, at Maidan. It premiered at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival. Finally, the blockbuster Viy (Forbidden Empire), a 2014 horror-fantasy based on the horror short story by Nikolai Gogol of the same name. Don’t forget the viral YouTube video “I am a Ukrainian” shot the night before the liquidation of EuroMaidan protest, by a British journalist and featuring an unnamed Ukrainian woman, who speaks about why Ukraine was protesting. As she says in the video, no one at Maidan knew what was going to happen, or if they were going to survive the night.
A Russian-language Ukrainian film, My Joy, was selected to complete for the Palme d’Or at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival; it did not win. My Joy is said to be a haunting look at Russia. A yet-to-be release documentary – Winter On Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom – chronicles the EuroMaidan Protests. It won an award at the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival. Another film about EuroMaidan, Maidan, was filmed during the Revolution of Dignity, at Maidan. It premiered at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival. Finally, the blockbuster Viy (Forbidden Empire), a 2014 horror-fantasy based on the horror short story by Nikolai Gogol of the same name. Don’t forget the viral YouTube video “I am a Ukrainian” shot the night before the liquidation of EuroMaidan protest, by a British journalist and featuring an unnamed Ukrainian woman, who speaks about why Ukraine was protesting. As she says in the video, no one at Maidan knew what was going to happen, or if they were going to survive the night.
Ukraine has many film festivals; the best known would be the Odessa International Film Festival, which hopes to one day be the Cannes of Eastern Europe.
All of this adds
up to what when looked at through the lens of research materials found at UNCG?
Database: Film & Television Literature Index with Full Text
Search Term: Ukraine
Search Type:
General [Boolean]
Search results
[no limiters] : 340
[Limit – Full Text] : 130
[Limit – Full Text] : 130
Results from :
1995-2015
The very first
result is “Competition from Ukraine: VUFKU and the Soviet Film Industry in
the 1920s,” a 2009 article by Bohdan Y. Nebeio in Historical Journal of Film, Radio & Television. The article is
specifically about the Soviet Ukraine’s Film Association (the Vseukrains'ke
Foto Kino Upravlinnia (VUFKU)), and how it competed with Soviet Russian
association during the 1920s.
Another article is “The war as spectacle: images of warfare in the films of Igor' Savchenko,” a 2012 article in Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema by Sergei Karterev. This article talks about the spectacle found in the war films produced and directed by Russian director Igor Savchenko.
In an article in the April 2014 edition of the Hollywood Reporter, writer Andrew Tyndall reamed CNN for covering the disappearance of Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 (MH370) for three straight weeks in order to drum up ratings, instead of focusing on the situation brewing in Ukraine at the time – a crisis with international considerations, given the history between the US and Russia (“What CNN Sacrificed for Missing-Plane Ratings”). This shows a bit of what Ukraine is to the outside world – the fate of MH370 was more important to CNN than the crisis in Ukraine, where Putin was annexing Krimea, and conflict was starting in the Donbas region of the country.
There is a fascinating look at the Ukrainian-Russian Language divide in Ukraine, by Laada Bilniuk, in the 2010 International Journal of the Sociology of Language. In “Language in the balance: the politics of non-accommodation on bilingual Ukrainian–Russian television shows,” she looks at the preference of speaking one's native language, regardless of the native language of the other person in the conversation, and how that effects Ukraine, based on the game shows and other TVs shows in Ukraine.
Another article is “The war as spectacle: images of warfare in the films of Igor' Savchenko,” a 2012 article in Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema by Sergei Karterev. This article talks about the spectacle found in the war films produced and directed by Russian director Igor Savchenko.
In an article in the April 2014 edition of the Hollywood Reporter, writer Andrew Tyndall reamed CNN for covering the disappearance of Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 (MH370) for three straight weeks in order to drum up ratings, instead of focusing on the situation brewing in Ukraine at the time – a crisis with international considerations, given the history between the US and Russia (“What CNN Sacrificed for Missing-Plane Ratings”). This shows a bit of what Ukraine is to the outside world – the fate of MH370 was more important to CNN than the crisis in Ukraine, where Putin was annexing Krimea, and conflict was starting in the Donbas region of the country.
There is a fascinating look at the Ukrainian-Russian Language divide in Ukraine, by Laada Bilniuk, in the 2010 International Journal of the Sociology of Language. In “Language in the balance: the politics of non-accommodation on bilingual Ukrainian–Russian television shows,” she looks at the preference of speaking one's native language, regardless of the native language of the other person in the conversation, and how that effects Ukraine, based on the game shows and other TVs shows in Ukraine.
Daily Variety has an article which states that there
are reports that Steven Spielberg has plans to create a Holocaust documentary
about Ukraine, focusing on the 1941 Bara Yari Massacre (“Spielberg plans docu
on Ukraine Holocaust”). Given that the article was written in 2005,
I’ll believe it when I see it. Again, this shows just what is available about
Ukraine. Google “the Last Jew of Vinnitsa” if you want to see a Nazi photograph.
There were many death camps and countless mass graves from where the Nazis did
their work as they marched across Ukraine, bound for Russia; according to reports,[6]
upwards of 3 million of the 11 million deaths were in Ukraine alone.
In 2008, Variety
wrote an article (“Ukrainian releases suffer dub dilemma”) on the distribution
problems found with Russian-language dubbing in films. The problem – no
distribution licenses on films dubbed into Russian, even with Ukrainian
subtitles. Blockbuster “I Am Legend” even fell victim to this. It would be
fascinating for there to be a follow-up articles, especially after EuroMaidan,
as the language issues are being dragged to the surface.
There are
reviews of films, reviews of films being released on DVD, Entertainment Weekly articles about actors and films, articles
about Eurovision, articles on digital piracy found in Ukraine, articles about
Ukrainian TV broadcast channels, you name it, you can probably find it full
text in this database.
What is
interesting, is again, that the results are only from 1995 onwards. Nothing
published pre-1995 shows up in a search for Ukraine. The Soviet Union had art
houses and film studio, some located in Kyiv. I wonder if, yet again, the very
history of Ukraine is making it harder to find information about Ukraine
pre-Independence.
A quick search of Gale Virtual Reference Library, for Ukraine and under “Arts” has 35 results. Most of these results are directors, found within the International Directory of Film and Filmmakers. Other results include the Encyclopedia of Clothing and Fashion, which would be useful to someone looking up costumes and clothing, either for a film or for anthological research. There are a few results from American Folk Art: A Regional Reference, as well as the mandatory titled ““Back in the U.S.S.R.” (Lennon-McCarthy).”
JSTOR, limited to “Ukraine” and “Film Studies” turns up 73 results, most of which can be found in Film & Television Literature Index with Full Text. It would be interesting to see which of the articles in FTLIFT which did not have full-text can be found in JSTOR full-text, but that is a search for another time. Again, one of the issues with JSTOR is that there are no subject keywords to help with the search. There is a one to four sentence extract, but the extract doesn’t help much with figuring out if this article is the one I am looking for. What makes JSTOR great (it’s full-text holding) is the very thing that makes it frustrating. I love JSTOR, I really do, but I wish it had keywords like the Ebsco-owned databases to make it easier to figure out what the article is about. I also wish there was an easier way to figure out what those 73 results are about, more than just “Ukraine” and “film studies.” What type of films? How many are simply reviews of a film or a DVD release?
Communication and Mass Media Complete has 154 full-text results, but most of them are on the academic disciplines of Communications and Mass Media. While films and film studies can easily be tucked under the umbrella of communications and mass media, most of the results are on the languages and language issues of the bilingual Ukrainian population. There are some articles which look absolutely fascinating, but which look at newspapers in Japan (“Risk Assessment of Nuclear Power by Japanese Newspapers Following the Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster”), Internet and cell phones during the Orange Revolution (“Code Orange: How the Internet, cell phones and new technologies helped shape the Ukrainian Revolution of 2004”), the language situation in Kharkiv (“Language practices and the language situation in Kharkiv: examining the concept of legitimate language in relation to identification and utility”), minority languages (“Minority language as identity factor: case study of young Russian speakers in Lviv”), other articles about the sociology of languages, as well as numerous articles about the news coverage of Chernobyl, and the censorship found therein. There is also the French article (“L'événement comme avènement: la logique et les enjeux symboliques dans la présidentielle ukrainienne de 2004”) found in the Romanian Journal of Journalism & Communication / Revista Romana de Jurnalism si Comunicare- RRJC (which, yes, is primarily in Romanian).
A quick search of Gale Virtual Reference Library, for Ukraine and under “Arts” has 35 results. Most of these results are directors, found within the International Directory of Film and Filmmakers. Other results include the Encyclopedia of Clothing and Fashion, which would be useful to someone looking up costumes and clothing, either for a film or for anthological research. There are a few results from American Folk Art: A Regional Reference, as well as the mandatory titled ““Back in the U.S.S.R.” (Lennon-McCarthy).”
JSTOR, limited to “Ukraine” and “Film Studies” turns up 73 results, most of which can be found in Film & Television Literature Index with Full Text. It would be interesting to see which of the articles in FTLIFT which did not have full-text can be found in JSTOR full-text, but that is a search for another time. Again, one of the issues with JSTOR is that there are no subject keywords to help with the search. There is a one to four sentence extract, but the extract doesn’t help much with figuring out if this article is the one I am looking for. What makes JSTOR great (it’s full-text holding) is the very thing that makes it frustrating. I love JSTOR, I really do, but I wish it had keywords like the Ebsco-owned databases to make it easier to figure out what the article is about. I also wish there was an easier way to figure out what those 73 results are about, more than just “Ukraine” and “film studies.” What type of films? How many are simply reviews of a film or a DVD release?
Communication and Mass Media Complete has 154 full-text results, but most of them are on the academic disciplines of Communications and Mass Media. While films and film studies can easily be tucked under the umbrella of communications and mass media, most of the results are on the languages and language issues of the bilingual Ukrainian population. There are some articles which look absolutely fascinating, but which look at newspapers in Japan (“Risk Assessment of Nuclear Power by Japanese Newspapers Following the Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster”), Internet and cell phones during the Orange Revolution (“Code Orange: How the Internet, cell phones and new technologies helped shape the Ukrainian Revolution of 2004”), the language situation in Kharkiv (“Language practices and the language situation in Kharkiv: examining the concept of legitimate language in relation to identification and utility”), minority languages (“Minority language as identity factor: case study of young Russian speakers in Lviv”), other articles about the sociology of languages, as well as numerous articles about the news coverage of Chernobyl, and the censorship found therein. There is also the French article (“L'événement comme avènement: la logique et les enjeux symboliques dans la présidentielle ukrainienne de 2004”) found in the Romanian Journal of Journalism & Communication / Revista Romana de Jurnalism si Comunicare- RRJC (which, yes, is primarily in Romanian).
Journal Number 11 : Art
There is a lot
of art to be found in Ukraine. When I was in Pre-Service Training in Obukhov,
Ukraine, I was introduced to a unique type of painting. The painter would first
dip their brush in the white paint, and follow that up with any other color.
Sometimes two colors, with a dash of white in the middle. Think the Irish
Tricolor. When you paint, you angle the brush so that the white is under the
other color. The effect is something that has to be seen. It is beautiful. I
haven’t seen that type of painting again, and we were told that it is popular
in, and might have originated in Obukhov.
Another type of
art I’ve seen here in Ukraine is one that the biology teacher at my Gymnasium
had her students do. They painted fallen leaves, then pressed the painted leaf
onto the paper. After that, they carefully touched up the area where the leaf
was pressed, giving the final painting a very surreal, impressionist look.
My Gymnasium is
covered in paintings and murals dedicated to the history of Ukraine, as well as
the history of the natural sciences. There is a mural dedicated to calculus,
which is quite something as calculus is mostly an abstract term.
Once we slide into architecture, there is a lot in Ukraine. Her cities are a mix of classic European and Soviet. There are Soviet-style apartment complexes in the same cities as neo-classical opera houses. The L’viv Opera House is just beautiful. Ukraine’s unique and complicated history blends together to create a style of art and architecture not found in many other places.
Once we slide into architecture, there is a lot in Ukraine. Her cities are a mix of classic European and Soviet. There are Soviet-style apartment complexes in the same cities as neo-classical opera houses. The L’viv Opera House is just beautiful. Ukraine’s unique and complicated history blends together to create a style of art and architecture not found in many other places.
But, what does
that mean?
Art and Architecture Complete
“A Gold Plate in
the Collection of the Museum of the Historical Treasures of the Ukraine
and the Motif of the Recumbent Wild Boar in the Scythian Animal Style”
(Anatoliy Kantorovich and Anna Gribkova, Ancient
Civilizations from Scythia to Siberia, 2014). This article is about, well,
exactly what it says on the tin. The authors looked a gold plate with a
recumbent wild boar motif etched on it, and dated it. They looked at the
history of where the object was found. They looked at other objects found
nearby. They looked at other objects dated to the same time period. And the
looked at history of the peoples of Eastern Europe, specifically the Scythians.
The museum which holds the artifact is located in Kyiv, and holds a treasure
trove of artifacts uncovered in various archeological digs around Ukraine and
Ukrainian Territories.
This database
holds a lot of archeological and anthropological articles, as well as many
which seem to focus on Russia and Putin with regards to the Conflict in the
Donbas region of Ukraine
“The chronology
of the Mariupol-type cemeteries of Ukraine re-visited” (D. Telegin,
et al, Antiquity, 2002). The main
problem with this article and its abstract is… what, exactly, is a
Mariupol-type cemetery? Mariupol is a town (and an oblast) in the south-east of
Ukraine, and while I knew it has to have cemeteries, I don’t know what makes
them different from cemeteries in the rest of Ukraine. Are they more crypts
than cemeteries? Are they catacombs? The article is specifically about the
radiocarbon dating of the bones and other fossils found in grave sites in the
Mariupol-type cemeteries. So, obviously, they are not the mass-graves of the
Nazi Occupation. More accurately, they are looking at the burial ground of
Neolithic and Eneolithic societies.
After finding
result after result that does not seem to be about art (ex: “The Resurrection:
Just outside Cheimohyrs exclusion zone, a generation of children has grown up
wondering about the future,” Maria Vassileva, Virginia Review Quarterly; it’s
about the planned community of Slavutych, which was built after the Chernobyl
explosion. It specifically looks at the life of the children, who grew up
learning about how their parents lived through this catastrophe), I clicked on
“subject” to see if I could learn some more. I don’t know a lot about art, but…
“non-fiction,” “reviews,” “ Ukraine conflict 2014-?,” “Chernobyl Nuclear
accident,” “raw materials,” “technical chemistry,” “escherichia coli,” “porous
materials,” and “alkali metals” don’t seem very art-related to me. I’m probably
wrong. Then there are articles like the following.
“Simulating the
Hippodrome: The Performance of Power in Kiev's St. Sophia,” (Elena Boeck, Art Bulletin, 2009). This article is
about St. Sophia in Kyiv. I’ve never been in St. Sophia, but I have been in St.
Mikhail (located directly across the Square). St. Sophia was modeled after the
Hippodrome in Constantinople, complete with a fresco of the Hippodrome. St.
Sophia was to the most magnificent church (Orthodox Christian) of her time period,
and legitimized the Byzantine Empire’s claim on Ukraine. What’s interesting is
that the subject keywords are not ones found under the above “subject” search.
Another good
article with subjects not found in the subject terms search is “Fidelity or fiction?
Elizabeth Thompson's Balaclava and
the art of re-construction” (Racbel Anchor, British
Art Journal; 2011). This article is about the British Elizabeth Thompson’s
painting of the 1854 Battle of Balaclava during the Crimean Wars, specifically
the Light Brigade. The author specifically looks at how faithful her Balaclava is to the history of the
battle.
There are fascinating results found in this database. Fascinating articles about the results of Chernobyl and post-Soviet life in the various Eastern-Bloc countries. And then there’s an article about dune maintenance in Romania. What I find the most interesting is what is not covered in the subject headings search. The articles on art (paintings, plaques, art museums, collectors, antiquities, etc) are not covered under the subject headings. Much like Ukraine herself, the subject headings overlook the cultural aspects and focus on war and Chernobyl. I don’t see many articles about the Russian tendency to pillage art from places they conquered, or the Soviet tendency to do the same thing. Or the Nazis, who were known for stealing arts and artifacts, specifically Jewish-owned art and artifacts, and shipping them all over the world. There are still lawsuits today over the ownership of Nazi loot.
There are fascinating results found in this database. Fascinating articles about the results of Chernobyl and post-Soviet life in the various Eastern-Bloc countries. And then there’s an article about dune maintenance in Romania. What I find the most interesting is what is not covered in the subject headings search. The articles on art (paintings, plaques, art museums, collectors, antiquities, etc) are not covered under the subject headings. Much like Ukraine herself, the subject headings overlook the cultural aspects and focus on war and Chernobyl. I don’t see many articles about the Russian tendency to pillage art from places they conquered, or the Soviet tendency to do the same thing. Or the Nazis, who were known for stealing arts and artifacts, specifically Jewish-owned art and artifacts, and shipping them all over the world. There are still lawsuits today over the ownership of Nazi loot.
I also don’t see any articles on the embroidery common in Ukraine. Just the other day, on my 14.5 hour overnight train ride from L’viv, I saw my conductor embroidering. There is a specific style of embroidery found in Ukraine, and it is found on pretty much everything, the Vyshyvakny being the main example. Or on the eggs, the Pysanky.[7] These Pysanky are common all over Ukraine, specifically in the tourist towns, and even more common around Easter time. There are legends surrounding these eggs. They are decorated very carefully, and the colors and pattern mean different things.
Art Index Retrospective
Search Term: Ukraine
Search Type:
General [Boolean]
Search results
[no limiters] : 71
Search results
[limit – English] : 49
Search results
[years] : 1928-1983
The subject
headings in this database make a lot more sense, for art and architecture, with
“antiquities,” “museums,” “art galleries,” “art,” “animals in art,” “church
architecture,” and many others. Most of these have a subheading of which
country they are talking about.
There is the wonderful, 1933 Art and Archeology article “Wooden churches of Ruthenia.” While there is no linked full text, the subject headings show that it would be about the wooden churches of Zakarpats’ka Oblast in far western Ukraine.
There are some
fascinating articles about museum construction during Soviet times, as well as
articles about various Stone-Age civilizations in modern-day Ukraine (or the
Soviet Union when the articles were written).
In 1942, Samuel
Hazzard Cross wrote an article on the murals in St. Michael’s in Kyiv for American Slavic Review. He specifically
looked at the mural of the Lord’s Supper. Again, there is no linked full-text.
In 1973, the Guide illustré de la galerie des peintures was published in the Gazette des Beaux Arts. It is tagged to be about a state museum in Odessa. There is no author, nor is there a link to the full text.
In 1973, the Guide illustré de la galerie des peintures was published in the Gazette des Beaux Arts. It is tagged to be about a state museum in Odessa. There is no author, nor is there a link to the full text.
Unfortunately,
most of these articles are abstract-less, and have one tag. That one tag tends
to be the same as the title, which makes figuring out what the article is about
tricky. Some of the articles look to be a wonderful look back on the art and
architecture of Ukraine during the Soviet era.
The North Carolina Museum of Art has a
couple of pieces of the collection respond to a search of “Ukraine.” One of them is
the “Esther Scroll (Megillah) and Case,” found in Galicia, which is modern-day
Poland and Ukraine. As Poland has historically welcomed the Jewish peoples and
Ukraine once had one of the highest number of Jewish citizens,[8]
it would be unsurprising for the artifact to be from either country.
ArtSTOR
First thing
first, I don’t like ArtSTOR. It don’t like how it’s coded. I don’t like how it
looks, and I don’t like how it opens things in new windows. However, it does
have some very nice images of various types of art found in Ukraine. I like the
way that one can use a “clarification” to narrow down the type of art, or
filter by geography. Although, I’m not sure what filtering by geography does.
Possibly limits to only objects held in Ukraine, or only objects found in
Ukraine. That would be a very important clarification. This would be very
fascinating to look through if one knew what they were looking for. For
instance, I would love to spend a few hours going through the various
clarifications and looking at the images of the works found there. It would
also be interesting to see how they organized things. Specifically with the
Soviet Union and Ukraine’s history.
BHA and RILA
Search Term: Ukraine
Search Type:
General [Boolean]
Search results
[no limiters] : 692
Search results
[limit – English] : 164
In order to use
this database, one must speak French, and should probably have a working
understanding of German, if not Russian. Under subjects, I can limit to
basically anything, as long as it relates to art. I can limit to a style of
art. I can limit to an artist. I can even limit to a work of art. This
particular database would be perfect for a person looking for something like that.
A style of art, as seen in Ukraine. The history of art, as seen in Ukraine. You
name it, this database probably holds it, in both English and French. This
database looks awesome. One can limit to a journal title, which would be a
great way to go and find an article, if you know which journal you’re looking
for. You can limit to a language, which means no more scrolling through German
articles and hoping for a translation. In fact, a limit of “Ukraine” and
“English” give a very manageable 164 results. Especially as one can still limit
to cities, types of art, and countries. I can limit to paintings, or general
history of art or exhibitions or even photography.
Again, I think
that Ukraine’s history could be acting against her. As she was under Soviet
rule for so long, some of the articles about her art were written when she was
Russian. This also raises the question of what is art. Are the Pysansky art?
Are the Vyshyvanky art? If so, why aren’t they in these databases?
Journal Number 11 : Music
Ukraine’s
history will be against her again in this search. For so much of her history,
she was under the authority of another empire, another country. So, how do you
decide who is Ukrainian? Is Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev Ukrainian or
Russian? He was born in modern-day Ukraine, but spoke and composed in Russian.
The Oblast he was born in, Donetsk, sits on the Russian border, and has one of
the highest concentrations of ethnic Russians in Ukraine. If asked, Prokofiev
would have called himself Russian. But, he was born in Ukraine…
Given Ukraine’s
Soviet past, how does researching music go? Stalin made Russification a thing,
even going so far as to create and manipulate a famine in order to promote
Russification and Collectivization. Russification meant the outlawing of the
native language, imprisoning those who would use the native language, and
enforcing Russian language and culture on the separate ethnicities of the
Soviet-Bloc Countries. So, is Prokofiev Russian? He was ethnically Russian, and
he was a Russian-speaker. Or, is Prokofiev Ukrainian? After all, he was born in
Ukraine.
Database: Historical Abstracts
Search Term: Ukraine AND Music
Search Type:
General [Boolean]
Search results
[no limiters] : 59 [results from 1959-2015]
While English is
the top language of these searches, it makes some sense, since 34 of the 59
results are from 1991 on. 1991 being the year Ukraine gained independence from
the CCCP. Of those 34 results, 24 are in English. A lot of them are research
about Ukraine during parts of her history. For instance, Bohdan Klid’s article
in the Journal of Ukrainian Studies,
“Songwriting and Singing: Ukrainian Revolutionary and Not So Revolutionary
Activities in the 1860s,” in which he looks at and analyses songs written in
support of an independent Ukraine during the peasant and Cossack revolts of the
1860s. Or Sergei Zhuk’s 2013 article for Russian History, “Popular Religiosity
in the "Closed City" of Soviet Ukraine: Cultural Consumption and
Religion during Late Socialism, 1959-1984,” where he looks at the connections
between rock music religiosity in the industrial city of Dnepropetrovsk in
western Ukraine. He specifically focused on DP[9]
because the KGB closed it to foreigners when the Soviets opened a gigantic
missile factory. This made DP a unique Soviet cultural Petri dish of a
microcosm.
Have you ever heard of Wadym Kipa? Nope? Me, neither. He was a composer and pianist born in Kyiv and educated in Kharkiv[10] before moving to New York. Why do I mention him? Well, in the Spring-Winter 2012 edition of Ukrainian Quarterly, Taras Filenko wrote an eight page biography of him (“Wadym Kipa”).
Have you ever heard of Wadym Kipa? Nope? Me, neither. He was a composer and pianist born in Kyiv and educated in Kharkiv[10] before moving to New York. Why do I mention him? Well, in the Spring-Winter 2012 edition of Ukrainian Quarterly, Taras Filenko wrote an eight page biography of him (“Wadym Kipa”).
Bohdan Klid wrote another article, this one in the March 2007 edition of the Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics, where he looked at the intersection of Pop, Rock, and Politics during the 2004 Election and Orange Revolution, appropriately titled: “Rock, Pop and Politics in Ukraine's 2004 Presidential Campaign and Orange Revolution.” This is important because of then-growing authoritarian powers of Viktor Yanukovych, and the politicizing of the musicians supporting his rival Viktor Yushchenko (no, that isn't confusing in the least to Peace Corps Volunteers learning about Ukrainian history...).
In 1998, Daniel
Beauvois wrote an article about Russia’s attempt to remove the Polish and
Catholic influence from Western Ukraine. This was during the Romanov Dynasty.
In a 25 page journal article for Revue
des Études Slaves, he wrote “Les Russes
et la "Depolonisation" Religieuse de l'Ukraine rive droite (1863-1914)” where he explains what the
Romanov dynasty did to the Catholic Church in far western Ukraine. The Romanovs
must have been taking notes from the British Empire, as what they did was
pretty similar to the Penal Laws imposed on Ireland. This probably marks the
beginning of Russification and the pushing of the Russian Orthodox Church on
the Ukrainian people.
In a 1991
edition of Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas,[11]
Patricia Kennedy Grimsted wrote an article about the fate of the Ukrainian
Archives before, during, and after World War II, paying specific attention to
who actually destroyed what historical archives. In “The Fate of Ukrainian
Cultural Treasures During World War II: the Plunder of Archives, Libraries, and
Museums Under the Third Reich,” she argues that most of the damages to
Ukrainian archives was done by the Soviets, not the Nazis.
There are many
more articles where those came from, most of them focusing on various
historical periods in Ukraine, such as “Manuscript Collections of
Seventeenth-Century Russian Songbooks” (Olga Dolskaya-Ackerly, Australian Slavonic & East European
Studies; 1991), “Remembrance of things past: 'Klezmer' Musicians of
Galicia, 1870-1940” (Walter Zev Feldman, Polin;
2003), “Les' Kurbas: Createur du Theatre Moderne Ukrainien” (Olga Mandzukova-Camel, Revue des
Études Slaves; 2001), and “How It Was Sung in Odessa: At the Intersection
of Russian and Yiddish Folk Culture” (Robert A. Rothstein, Slavic Review; 2001).
Database: American Musicological Society: Doctoral Dissertations in Musicology
Search Term: Ukraine
Search Type:
General [Boolean]
Search results
[no limiters] : 3
Taras Filenko
was awarded a Ph.D. in Ethnomusicology from the University of Pittsburgh in
1998 for Ethnic Identity, Music, and
Politics in Nineteenth-Century Ukraine: The World of Mykola Lysenko. Victor
Kozlov was awarded a Ph.D. in Musicology and Music Theory from the Ryl'sky
Institute for Art, Folklore and Ethnology of the NAS of Ukraine in 1977 for Prinzipy organisaziyi formy instrumentalnoi
muzyki Cloda Debussy [Principles of Organization of Form in Instrumental Music
of Claude Debussy]. Olga Kushniruk was awarded a Ph.D. in Musicology from
the Ryl'sky Institute for Art, Folklore and Ethnology of the NAS of Ukraine in
1996 for Rysy impressionizmu v
ukrajins'kij muzytsi [The Features of Impressionism in the Ukrainian Music].
Something that is very interesting is that this database does not include
abstracts. As my musical knowledge is limited to pretty much U2 and how
politics influences Rock and Roll (and conversely how Rock and Roll influences
politics), I don’t know what these three doctoral dissertations are about. The
other interesting things is that this database does not indicate what language
the doctoral candidate wrote in. I can assume that Dr. Filenko wrote in English,
given that he was working at U. Pitt when he was awarded his degree, and I can
assume that Drs. Kozlov and Kushniruk were writing in… well, were they writing
in Russian or Ukrainian? Dr. Kozlov was most likely writing in Russian, since
his degree was awarded in 1977, but Dr. Kushniruk could have written her
dissertation in either language. It would be helpful to know which language
they were writing in, as a researcher would need to know that in order to
request an ILL of the thesis. If they were writing in a language the researcher
can’t understand, there is very little reason to look any further into these
dissertations.
Database: Alexander Street: Garland Encyclopedia of
World Music
This isn’t a database so much as an online encyclopedia of music. I clicked on volume 8 (Europe) and then chose Ukraine from the index. It is a good overview of the music and musical traditions of Ukraine.
Database: Alexander Street: Music and Performing Arts
If I knew more
about music, I would love, love, love, this resource. You can search for just
about any keyword, composer, creator, or subject, and get a list of music. When
I searched for “Ukraine,”
I found a total of 318 results. I could narrow from there down to format, a
performer, a composer, an ensemble, the content type, a performer, genre, date
written/performed, place written/performed, publisher, date published/released,
and finally, language of edition. This would not be a good starting point for
“huh, I wonder what Ukrainian music sounds like,” but if someone knew a bit
more – “Ukrainian music during the Soviet Union” or “Ukrainian music before
Communism” – this would be a vital resource.
Database: RILM Abstracts of Music Literature (1967 to Present only)
Wow. Just Wow.
16 Full-text out of 2,143 total results. 289 results in English, with Russian
and Ukrainian at 618 and 877, respectively. This database clearly shows the
need to have a working knowledge of many languages, especially the ones popular
with the music/region you are researching. Someone doing in-depth music
research on Ukraine must speak either Russian or Ukrainian, and probably should
speak both. And then there are 184 results in German. However, one can easily
Boolean again to see if “Ukraine”
AND “Politics” gets
better results, depending on what the researcher is looking for.[12]
Database: Naxos Music Library
Where do I
start? No, really, where do I start? 808 keyword results for “Ukraine.” Most of them
seemed to be performed by the Ukraine National Symphony. But… Are my results
sheet music? Reviews? Books? Live streaming? When I go to the advanced search
feature, I can search via just about anything music related. I think Naxos
needs to come with a set of instructions… This is probably easier to use than
youtube to find and listen to music, especially since one can search via
instrument and country, or country and time period, or genre and instrument, or
even composer and instrument. This would make the resource invaluable. It does
make it a bit daunting for the layperson, though.
Journal Number 12 : History
Ukraine has had
only a few truly important moments in her history. The Soviet Union, the
Famine, the Second World War, gaining independence, the Orange Revolution, and
of course, the Revolution of Dignity. Ukraine was almost completely within the
Soviet Union, so what is now Ukraine was once Russia. Yalta. Donetsk. Krimea.
The Nazis killed millions of people in concentration camps and mass graves all
along the west of the country. Ukraine gained her independence in 1991, and has
forever been in Russia’s shadow. The Orange Revolution was a peaceful protest
which was the result of the 2004 election being rigged and corrupt. It ended
when Ukraine’s Supreme Court ruled the run-off invalid and ordered a new one.
Under an international eye, the new run offs were fair and valid, and
Yanukovych lost. The Revolution of Dignity is better known as Euromaidan, as it
was when the protests broke out in Maidan Square in Kyiv, when then-President
Yanukovych decided that he would not sign an agreement with the EU, going back
on his promises. These protests led to the removal of Yanukovych and the Peace
Corps evacuation.
But, the most
important part of Ukraine’s history, one of the few parts taught in US World
History classes, is the famine. Even then, it is barely glanced at, as Ukraine
isn’t that important to the US. The Irish Potato Famine is covered in detail,
but not the Ukrainian famine. The Holodomor, which means Extermination by Famine in Ukrainian. The Great Starvation.[13]
Stalin had rejected outside aid, had all food reserves collected from peasants,
and further restricted internal and external movement of the people. This has
led historians to discuss the importance of the famine, as well as how much
forethought and planning went into it. This famine left a huge impact on the
Ukrainian people.
Database: ArchiveGrid
Search Term: Ukraine
Search Type:
General [Boolean]
Search results
[no limiters] : 2,394
Not a place to
start a search, but a lot of information available. There are thousands of
results, and all seem to be on Ukraine. Some, such as Harvard University’s “Ukraine – Nationalism” have no
information about the collection, and the researcher must contact the library
to see if the collection is what they are looking for. Others, such as the
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s “Selected
records from the Ukraine Central State Archive (Reischskommissariat für den
Ukraine and Einsatzstab Rosenberg) correspondence lists orders reports”
have both a more informative title, and significantly more preliminarily
overview of what is in the collection. If one is after information about the
German occupation and Holocaust within Ukraine, here would be a good starting
place. Still others, such as the National Library of Australia’s “Ukraine Famine 1932-1933 [manuscript]”
has the entire finding aid available through ArchiveGrid. One of the best feature is that there is the “more
like this” section, where one can see related archive collections. However, the
“more like this” selection have only the titles and holding institution, which would
be difficult to figure out which is needed. Also useful are the “topics,” etc,
sections, where one can click on a subject, a place, a person, or a genre, and
see more archival collections with that subject. For instance “Soviet Union Economic Policy 1928-1932”
returns 14 results about, yes, the economic policies practiced by the Soviet
Union during the depression, specifically collectivization, industrialization,
the first five year plan, and the Ukrainian Famine.
Database: American: History and Life
Search Term: Ukraine
Search Type:
General [Boolean]
Search results
[no limiters] : 489
Search results
[full-text] : 90
Of those 90
results, 22 of them are about the 1945 Yalta Conference, 12 are on WWII, 6 on
the Cold War, 6 on NATO, 6 on the 2014-current Ukraine Conflict, and more from
there. The first result is Michael Gentile’s May 2015 article for Annals of the Association of American
Geographers, “The Post-Soviet Urban Poor and Where They Live:
Khrushchev-Era Blocks, “Bad” Areas, and the Vertical Dimension in
Luhansk, Ukraine.” The article is about the urban poor in Ukraine, both
during and post-Communism in Lugansk, specifically the Soviet and post-Soviet
era apartment blocks. The most interesting part of this is that there are
keywords and abstract in two languages, English and Spanish. However, American: History and Life has it
tagged as being in FRENCH. What a mistake to make.
One of the next
results looks at how the 1932-1933 Ukrainian Famine was reported in Edmonton,
Alberta (“Edmonton Newspaper Reports about the 1932-1933 Famine
in Ukraine,” Serge Cipko; Journal of
Ukrainian Studies, 2010-2011). This looks specifically at how the famine
was reported, and how the two Edmonton newspapers being looked at reported the causes.[14]
In May 2015,
Stephen Bittner wrote an article title “American Roots, French Varietals,
Russian Science: a Transnational History of the Great Wine Blight in
Late-Tsarist Bessarabia[15],”
for Past and Present, where he
detailed how scientist Aleksandr Kovalevskii attempted to keep the wine blight
of phylloxera
vastatrix from spreading through this
region.
Bringing up the
Ukrainian Famine, Cormac Ó Grada wrote an article about food security and
wonders if the worry of an Earth-wide famine is behind us. In “Famines Past,
Famine's Future” (Development and Change,
Jan 2011), he talks about the Ukrainian and Ethiopian famine, and talks about
how the causes and the symptoms of famine have shifted. I wonder if he brings
up the issue of monocultures and how they can cause famines?[16]
This database contains main journal articles and book reviews about Ukraine. About Jewish life in Ukraine, both before and after the Second World War. About NATO and US foreign policy. This database’s strength is also its weakness – it is specifically full of American publications. While this is advantageous in that it lowers the total number of results, it is also a problem, as that there could have been more articles in non-American publications. But, I wouldn’t have gotten the gem that is “The Fractured Land of the Sky: The Image of Western North Carolina during the 1986 Nuclear Waste Controversy,” (Gordon McKinney, North Carolina Historical Review; July 2005), in another database. The article is only tangentially related to Ukraine, in that it mentions the nuclear melt-downs at the time – Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. Although, had Western NC been decided on as a nuclear waste depository,[17] the jokes about Asheville, Western, and AppState might have been better.
Database: Historical Abstracts
Search Term: Ukraine
Search Type:
General [Boolean]
Search results
[no limiters] : 11,362
Search results
[full-text] : 721
Historical Abstracts has all the journals not in America: History and Life, as well as
the ones in America: History and Life.
The very first article is about urban poor in Lugansk. But, this database also
includes journals such as Central
European History (Occupying Ukraine: Great Expectations, Failed
Opportunities, and the Spoils of War, 1941–1943), Contemporary European History (City Mayors, Raion Chiefs and
Village Elders in Ukraine, 1941–4: How Local Administrators Co-operated
with the German Occupation Authorities), International Affairs (Russian
'deniable' intervention in Ukraine: how and why Russia broke the rules),
the Journal of Slavic Military Studies
(The Politics of World War II in Contemporary Ukraine), and East European Politics (Reforms in the
judiciary of Ukraine: domestic practices and the EU's policy instruments)
which were not included in the other one. There are more and better subjects to
choose from. This is all very good from a research perspective, but it also
means that there are almost 600 more results to look through. A quick Boolean
of “AND famine” or
“AND WWII” would
help with that search. As would limiting the results to only having a subject
of Chernobyl or Russia.
Database: Humanities & Social Sciences Index Retrospective: 1907-1984 (H.W. Wilson)
Search Term: Ukraine AND History
Search Type:
General [Boolean]
Search results
[no limiters] : 60
Search results
[full-text] : 1
Search results
[peer-reviewed] : 47
Only one
full-text result, and it doesn’t have an abstract – “News of the false messiah:
reports on Shabbetai Zevi in Ukraine and Muscovy” (Daniel Clarke
Waugh, Jewish Social Studies; Summer
79). I have noticed that most of the articles don’t seem to have an abstract,
and have only one or two subject headings. This leads to the researcher not
knowing what the article might be about. Further, the lack of full-text
holdings mean that the material is not particularly available.
Gale Virtual Reference Library has a collection of encyclopedias
available in electronic form. Unless the researcher knew what they were looking
for, I would suggest starting here. With (entries about Ukraine in)
encyclopedias such as the Worldmark
Encyclopedia of National Economies, World
Education Encyclopedia, Worldmark
Encyclopedia of Religious Practices, From
Famine to Fast Food : Nutrition, Diet, and Concepts of Health around the World,
Europe Since 1914: Encyclopedia of the
Age of War and Reconstruction, the Encyclopedia
of Russian History, Europe 1789-1914: Encyclopedia of the Age of Industry and Empire, and the Encyclopedia of Genocide and Crimes Against
Humanity, this database is a treasure trove of information about Ukraine. I
would suggest that the researcher know about the transliteration differences
between Ukrainian and Russian, as I have seen both in the articles found in the
Encyclopaedia Judaica. But, as
always, start with your encyclopedia.[18]
Journal Number 13 : Folklore
The problem with
folklore is… how much there is, what is part of the academic disciplines within
the Humanities, and what is accessible from overseas. Meaning, what can I find
in materials which are not in the stacks at an academic library. I remember
writing a paper at Appalachian State about vampires and vampire lore, and
finding several anthologies and encyclopedias in the stacks. These books
started with the movie versions, an ended with the folklore and myth versions.
As I was looking for the myths and legends, these books were what I wanted. As
I don’t have the ability of going to the stacks and flipping through all of the
books on myth, legend, and folklore, I’m stuck with the online and other
electronic references.
Database: Oxford Reference
Search Term: Ukraine AND Folklore
Search Type:
General [Boolean]
Search results :
57
The first result
is found is the “Ukraine” entry in The
International Encyclopedia of Dance. While mostly about the types and
styles of dance found in Ukraine, there are a few references to a few theatre
dances being taken from classic folklore. These references are found within
“Folk dance onstage” and “Theatrical Dance.”
Another result is the entry “Kurbas, Aleksandr (Les Kurbas)” found in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Theatre and Dance. This entry states that he directed several plays by Ukrainian nationalists during the Soviet era in a folkloric style, before being “disappeared.”
Another result
in the entry, “Gogol, Nikolai Vasilevich” in The Oxford Companion to English Literature (7 ed.). Gogol’s first
series of stories were based on Ukrainian folklore. He continued into the realm
of urban fantasy and horror.[19]
Perhaps one of
the best entries is found within The
Oxford Dictionary of the Middle Ages, entitled “literatures: Slavic folk
literature and poetry.” While it is a simple overview of the folk literature
and poetry found in the Slavic countries during the middle ages, it gives a
good overview of the types of materials found. This entry was connected to
another, found in the same book, entitled “folklore and myth: Slavic.” This
entry goes into much more detail, and includes references to stories still told
today, including “Baba Yaba.”
Another entry,
entitled “Glière, Reinhold” and found within The International Encyclopedia of Dance, talks about how Glière
used folklore and folkloric dance styles in his compositions and ballets. This
can be see in The Red Poppy, a
milestone Soviet Ballet, due to the incorporation of then current events, as
well as the appearance of elements of both Slavic and Chinese folklore.[20]
A very
interesting entry, “Slavic Religion,” can be found in The Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature. This is a very good
overview of the types of religion found within the Slavic peoples. Much like
“Celts,” “Slavic” has many meanings, many languages, and cultures which are
specific to the individual groups.
In The Oxford Companion to World Mythology,
there is an entry titled “Slavic Mythology.” The myths, legends, and folklore
are talked about in this overview, and they bring up the myths, legends, and
stories known today. This overview also brings up the different types of Slavic
folklore.
In the “ethnomusicology” entry of The Oxford Companion to Music, the importance of folklore and music is brought up. The different beliefs held by ethnomusicologists all over the world, including Ukraine, are mentioned.
In the “ethnomusicology” entry of The Oxford Companion to Music, the importance of folklore and music is brought up. The different beliefs held by ethnomusicologists all over the world, including Ukraine, are mentioned.
In what might be
the longest encyclopedia entry ever, “European Traditional Dance,” (The International Encyclopedia of Dance),
the focus is more general, with emphasis on the history of traditional dance
found throughout Europe. As traditional dances are taken from folklore and folk
dances, this is a very easy connection to make. Ukraine herself is not
mentioned, but this is still a good article about traditional dance. The
Russian Empire and its influence on cultures, however, is mentioned.
The subsection
of “Europe” entitled “Greece,
Rome, The Celtic Lands, Northern and Eastern Europe” found within A Dictionary of World Mythology, talks
all about the history and myths of the people. While more emphasis is placed on
the Celts, the Greeks, and the Romans, there is still some information on
Ukraine, specifically western Ukraine. This is probably because nobody cares
about Ukraine and her history, but everyone cares about the Celts of Ireland.
In yet another
entry in The International Encyclopedia
of Dance, “Zakharov, Rostislav,” the traditions of Ukrainian folklore are
brought up. Zakharov composed several dances and ballets to Gogol’s stories,
modernized Prokofiev’s “Cinderella,” and remastered Glière’s “The Red Poppy.”
An entry in The Oxford Companion to the Photograph
led me, via links, to “Mikhailov, Boris.” The first entry, “documentary
photography,” talks about the history of, well, documentary photography. It
talks about how photographs can be used to document folk traditions, as well as
war. At the very end of the article, there is a list of notable documentary
photographers not otherwise mentioned, and one of them is Boris Mikhailov, from
Ukraine. He takes documentary photographs which shows the extreme difference
between rich and poor, as well as the homeless in Kharkiv. The Kharkiv photos
mad me think “huh, that sounds familiar…” Well, back in the beginning of June,
fellow Peace Corps Volunteer CW[21]
brought the group of us to the Pinchuk Art Centre in Kyiv, to see their collection called
“Borderline.” Pinchuk is known to have modern and edgy
collections. “Borderline” is a collection of edgy works depicting the end and
fall of Communism through the decade or so after independence. I’ve seen some
of Mikhailov’s work.[22]
Database: Gale Virtual Reference Library
Search Term: Ukraine AND Folklore
Search Type:
General [Boolean]
Search results
[no limiters] : 147
As I don’t have
access to the physical reference books gathering dust in Jackson Library, I
decided that the Gale Virtual Reference
Library was a good place to look. I’m not sure how Boolean the results are,
as I doubt there is much on folklore and mythology found within the “Ukraine”
entries in Europe 1789-1914: Encyclopedia
of the Age of Industry and Empire or Worldmark
Encyclopedia of National Economies. However, the “Ukraine” entry in Countries and Their Cultures has a lot
of information on the history and culture of the Ukrainian people. Some of the
cultural elements can be traced back through myth, legend, and folklore.
There are a lot
of entries found within the Encyclopedia
of Jewish Folklore and Traditions, 21 in total. This is completely
unsurprising, given Ukraine’s Jewish history. There are also 38 entries found
in the Encyclopaedia Judica.
Most of the
entries are overview entries about Ukraine as a whole, with few, if any,
references back to the folklore of the region. Oxford Reference was a better online collection of encyclopedias.
Database: Gale Literature Resource Center
Search Term: Ukraine AND Folklore
Search Type:
General [Boolean]
Search results
[no limiters] : 12
When I first
went to the tab with the Gale Literature
Resource Center, I had to wonder what Seamus Heaney had to do with Ukraine.
Then I realized I was on the landing page an quickly did a Boolean search for
my topic.
Result number one is “Demonology in contemporary Ukraine: folklore or "postfolklore"?” by Inna Golovakha-Hicks in the Journal of Folklore Research. This article focuses on the study of contemporary folklore, which is very different from the studies conducted by Charles Perrault and the Brothers Grimm.
The next result is a book review, on the folklore of Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. Or possibly on the series World Folklore Series, with 6 separate volumes dedicated to the folklore of various regions. One, The Magic Egg and Other Tales from Ukraine, would be a very good book to try to get a hold of for this section.
Another results is a Choice review of “Lesiv, Mariya. The return of ancestral gods: modern Ukrainian paganism as an alternative vision for a nation,” where Mariya Lesiv talks about contemporary paganism in Ukraine. The book was recommended
Result number one is “Demonology in contemporary Ukraine: folklore or "postfolklore"?” by Inna Golovakha-Hicks in the Journal of Folklore Research. This article focuses on the study of contemporary folklore, which is very different from the studies conducted by Charles Perrault and the Brothers Grimm.
The next result is a book review, on the folklore of Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. Or possibly on the series World Folklore Series, with 6 separate volumes dedicated to the folklore of various regions. One, The Magic Egg and Other Tales from Ukraine, would be a very good book to try to get a hold of for this section.
Another results is a Choice review of “Lesiv, Mariya. The return of ancestral gods: modern Ukrainian paganism as an alternative vision for a nation,” where Mariya Lesiv talks about contemporary paganism in Ukraine. The book was recommended
The next result is a Kirkus Reviews book review of “Fire and Wings: Dragon Tales from East and West. (Children's Books),” a book about enchanting dragons found in folklore.
Booklist reviewed “The Cat and the Rooster,” a
Ukrainian folktale revamped by Ivan Malkovych. Booklist highly recommends it.
Database: MLA International Bibliography
Search Term: Ukraine AND Folklore
Search Type:
General [Boolean]
Search results
[no limiters] : 748
[Limit – full
text] : 5
Result number
one is Inna Golovakha-Hicks’s “Demonology in contemporary Ukraine: folklore or
"postfolklore"?” I prefer this version as there is an abstract, which
allows the researcher to gain an overview of the topic before deciding if they
want to read the article, instead of reading the article to decide if they
really wanted to read the article. The next result is C. Scott Littleton’s
“Yamato-takeru: An 'Arthurian' Hero in Japanese Tradition” (Asian Folklore Studies, 1995), which is
all about Japanese folklore. The relation to Ukraine is that the author argues
that the tribes who influenced “Arthurian Heros” in Western Europe and Japan
originated in the steppes of Russian and Ukraine.
In Fall 1982, Vance Keply, Jr., wrote an article for Film Criticism, “Folklore as Political Rhetoric: Dovzhenko's Zvenigora.” With no abstract, it is difficult to figure out what the article is about. Specifically, what aspects of folklore are being used as political rhetoric in Dovzhenko’s Zvenigora? The subject terms indicate that it might be “supernatural” or “superstition” which are not very helpful.
In Fall 1982, Vance Keply, Jr., wrote an article for Film Criticism, “Folklore as Political Rhetoric: Dovzhenko's Zvenigora.” With no abstract, it is difficult to figure out what the article is about. Specifically, what aspects of folklore are being used as political rhetoric in Dovzhenko’s Zvenigora? The subject terms indicate that it might be “supernatural” or “superstition” which are not very helpful.
The next article
is “Chornobyl's Folklore: Vernacular Commentary on Nuclear Disaster” (Larisa
Fialkova, Journal of Folklore Research;
Sept-Dec 2001). Again, no abstract. And, that’s not the “accepted” way to spell
Chernobyl. This article is a very
good representation of the Russification aspects of Ukraine and transliteration.
“Chornobyl” is the Ukrainian transliteration, while the more accepted
“Chernobyl” is the Russian transliteration. Doing research in the “Chernobyl
Nuclear Reactor Disaster”[23]
just got that much more complicated.
The last result
is “Gogol's Research on Ukrainian Customs for Dikan'ka Tales,” (Paul A. Karpuk,
Russian Review: An American Quarterly Devoted to Russia Past and Present; April
1997). When Nikolai Gogol was writing his collection of short stories, Evenings on a
Farm Near Dikanka, how did he research
the Ukrainian customs found in the collection? As there is no abstract, I don’t
know if Gogol actually did his research into the cultural traditions and
customs for his collection of short stories, or if this is more like the
Vampire lore found within Bram Stoker’s Dracula.[24]
Final Reflection
Search: General Humanities
Search Term: Ukraine [confirm] [y]
I started this
semester with a joke search term. No, really. It was Ukraine’s 24th
Independence Day, and I was writing my first journal entry. So, I chose Ukraine as my search
term, figuring that I would be choosing a different search term each week. Then
class roles around, and Dr. Carmichael says what search terms we’ve chosen, and
I’m stuck with Ukraine.
No matter, I loved being able to search for information on my adoptive country.
What was
interesting in the results was not what wasn’t there, but what was there. As
Ukraine’s history was working against her in every single one of my searches,
the sheer number of results was very interesting. There were results from as
far back as the databases were able to go, which was much farther back than the
24 years I was expecting. One database held a few indexed articles from the
1930s. In German and without full-text, but still indexed.
The
transliteration issue is an interesting one, as there are two languages one can
transliterate from: Russian or Ukrainian. Most of the mainstream resources use
the Russian transliterations, but a few use the Ukrainian transliterations,
especially in resources from the last decade or two. This can be interesting,
as there are a few minute differences, which could completely throw a search.
Is it Chernigov or Chernihiv? Is it L’vov or L’viv?[25]
Is it Kirovograd or Kirovohrad [actually, it's Kropyvnytskyi, as the city changed its name as a result of decommunization in July 2016]? Is it Obukhov or Obukhiv? Is it Kiev or Kyiv?
Is it Aleksandriya or Oleksandriya?[26]
And those are place names with two possible transliterations. That’s not
talking about people, like Tchaikovsky, with hundreds of variations (including
the slightly more phonetically accurate Tchaïkovsky).
With a country
like Ukraine how much of anything is Ukrainian? I ask the question that way
because there were so many other countries and empires invading and conquering
them. What about Ireland? There were 400 years of oppression before the Easter
Rising. How much Irish culture was left when they gained independence? Ukraine
was almost always under the yoke of a larger and more powerful country,
starting with the Russian Empire, and Peter the Great (I think). The town of
Kirovograd [Kropyvnytskyi] was renamed under Soviet rule to be named after Sergei Kirov. It was
originally called Yekaterinburg, after Katherine the Great of Russia. How much
of Ukraine is still there, after multiple rounds of oppression and suppression,
multiple centuries of enforced-Russification,[27]
a man-made famine, a World War, Chernobyl, and the illegalization of the
Ukrainian language.[28]
The answer is
that a lot of Ukraine is left. There is a boatload of culture that survived.
The Ukrainian language, for one, survived centuries of Russification, and is
still spoken in its purest form in far-Western Ukraine, such as L’viv and
Lutsk. The famous eggs, the Pysanky, survived. There have been some updating of
the patterns, but the traditional patterns can still be bought today. They are
available in both wooden and eggshell versions, and in a variety of colors. The
Vyshyvanky survived. A Vyshyvanka is a traditional shirt, with traditional
embroidery patterns. It can come in all sorts of colors and patterns, as every
region has their own traditional pattern. They can be worn at any time, but it
has become traditional to wear them on important days – Independence Day, First
Bell, Dignity and Freedom Day, Christmas, New Years, and Last Bell, amongst
others. Most girls learn to embroider them, both for themselves and their
future families. Other forms of art survived, and the country is covered in
art. The Children’s Library in Oleksandriya has a reading room covered in folklore
and other stories. Mostly Russian folktales, but the stories are found in both
countries.
I think what I’m
trying to say is that there is a lot of information about Ukraine to be found
in the databases available to UNCG students. A lot of information. But that
there is also a lot of information missing. Whether that is because of
Ukraine’s history or because there is not a lot of research into Ukraine
remains to be seen.
[1] Selkies are a creature from Irish myth.
They are seals who, when they leave their skin/pelt on the beach, become
beautiful women. If one steals their skin, they are bound to the person who
stole the skin. However, if they ever find their skin, they will flee to the
sea, leaving everything behind.
[2] Note the use of nouns: “critic,” not
“university student” or “university professor.”
[3] Her words, not mine
[4] Again, her words, not mine.
[5] I watched a fair amount of both during
Pre-service training. I got pretty good at understanding most of what the
Russian-speaking judge had to say.
[6] Okay, guilty as charged, I Wikipediaed
the number (I was checking the spelling of the photo titled “The Last Jew of
Vinnitsa”); but I remember my Language and Cross-Cultural Facilitator as well
as my Technical and Cross-Cultural Facilitator giving a number about this high
during Pre-Service Training in 2013.
[7] Would you like me to bring you one? If
so, which color? It will be a wooden version, as the real egg ones don’t travel
particularly well. And it is very bad luck to break one.
[8] Poland had one of the lowest death rates
in during the Bubonic Plague, as it welcomed the Jewish peoples, who brought
bathing to Poland. Also, around 3 million of the 11 million total Holocaust
deaths were in Ukraine alone.
[9] Peace Corps abbreviation of the Oblast
(and Oblast Centre) of Dnepropetrovsk
[10] This is yet another example of the
Ukrainian/Russian language transliteration issue. In Russian, cities end in
“(g)ov” or “grad.” In Ukrainian, cities end in “(h)iv” or “hrad.” So, the
Ukrainian transliterations are Kharkiv, Chernihiv, and Kirovohrad, while the
Russian transliterations are Kharkov, Chernigov, Kirovograd. Most interestingly,
Microsoft Word likes the Russian transliterations.
[11] Google Translate says: Yearbooks for the History of Eastern Europe
[12] It does, 39 total results. Most on
ethnomusicology or similar.
[13] “The Great Starvation” is how some Irish
people refer to the Potato Famine (much like how some Southerners refer to the
American Civil War (I’ve spent way too long studying history not to put a
country identifier before “civil war”) as the War of Northern Aggression) as
the British government had all edible food shipped off of Ireland. While the
potato crop was decimated, the famine was as bad as it was because the British
started to ship wheat, barley, and meat off of the island.
[14] The Soviet Union and Russia have long
held that the famine was completely natural in nature, and that, while Ukraine
suffered the most, other parts of the Soviet Union were suffering. Ukraine has
long held that the famine was instigated by the Soviets in order to subdue the
Ukrainian people.
[15] Modern day Moldova and Ukraine
[16] The Irish potato crop failed due to the
potato blight, which is still around today. The country of Ireland and the
state of Idaho are at the most risk if it does make a full comeback. Basically,
if all you are growing is a monoculture, what do you have left if it fails?
Given that many states/countries have jumped on the monoculture bandwagon, this
leads to the potential for another, widespread famine.
[17] Very bad idea, that stuff needs to be as
far away from people as possible. As in, Death Valley, the moon, maybe Mars.
[18] And, when that fails, Wikipedia it and
check the sources at the bottom of the page for more/better information.
[19] When I was researching for my Film and
TV entry, I found Viy (Forbidden Empire), a 2014 horror-fantasy
movie based on the horror short story by Nikolai Gogol of the same name.
[20] There is, of course, an entry for “The
Red Poppy” found within The International
Encyclopedia of Dance. It gives the plot, history, themes, as well as
information about the composer, the lead ballerina, and why it was so important
to the Soviets when it was first performed.
[21] Name redacted
[22] I’m going to be honest, the entire
exhibit was just plain creepy. Fascinating, but just plain creepy.
[23] Actual Wikipedia entry title for the
article (I was checking the transliterations).
[24] Bringing us full circle from my intro,
the paper I was writing was about how Dracula had the powers and weaknesses
associated with Irish Fairies, not Romanian Vampires. According to his
strengths and weakness, Dracula is an Irish Fairy, not a Romanian vampire. I
discovered this through finding and reading several encyclopedias of folklore,
myths, and legends.
[26] All places I’ve been and seen both
transliterations. The timetables found on the train website use the Ukrainian
transliterations, but CW once found a train schedule in Russian when she was
looking for a long stop. Which meant we had to figure out a few town names in
Russian, as they are completely different.
[27] Yes, Microsoft, that is a real word.
[28] It was called “little Russian” when
Taras Shevchenko was tried and convicted of writing it. Funny, as Ukrainian is
the older of the two languages, and is believed by some to be the oldest of the
Slavic languages.
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