Last fall, Olha Tytarenko introduced Yale’s first Ukrainian language course taught by an on-campus instructor. That course, “Elementary Ukrainian I,” evolved into a particularly powerful cultural experience for her students, who found themselves deeply drawn to Ukrainian poetry.
Now, Tytarenko, a senior lector I and an associate research scholar in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures in Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, is building on that course to embed more Ukrainian studies in the university’s broader curriculum. Next fall she will also teach an intermediate Ukrainian language course and a course on Ukrainian cinema.
“The main idea is to establish a Ukrainian studies program that not only offers counter-narratives to Russia-centric narratives, given the current war, but also provides a vantage point that enriches our understanding of Ukraine,” she said.
