Multicultural dialogue in Ukrainian literature with Uilleam Blacker | Literatura 2024

Ukrainian literature in dialogue: Ivan Franko and Sholem Aleichem

NB: registration will close 10 minutes before the seminar, 18:20 BST on 11 July.

In the sixth seminar of the Literatura course, we will go back in time to understand how the peoples of Ukraine have coexisted with Dr Uilleam Blacker, Associate Professor in Ukrainian and East European Culture at University College London. 

‘Solomon Rabinovich (1859–1916), better known as the classic Yiddish-language writer Sholem Aleichem, and Ivan Franko (1856–1916), a giant of Ukrainian literature, were close contemporaries who came from and wrote about the multicultural borderlands between the Russian and Austro-Hungarian Empires — present-day Ukraine. Their works were foundational for their respective literary traditions, redefining what was possible in ‘minority’ languages and cultures that were not backed by powerful states. Yet despite writing about the same problems and places around the same time, these writers are rarely read together. This seminar will compare their work in order to throw light on the intersections of nation, empire, and modernity around the turn of the twentieth century in Ukraine.’

Dr Blacker teaches at University College London’s School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies (UCL SEES); he also is a prominent translator of Ukrainian literature into English. You can learn more about him here.