¾ÅÐãÖ±²¥

In 2008-2010, along with my colleagues in Ukraine, I coordinated a large-scale oral history project that was conducted in 11 oblasts and documented in-depth life histories shared by the former collective farmers. The project focused on a 'life story' of a particular generation of rural Ukrainians who, having spent their entire lives in the socialist agricultural system, were abruptly decollectivized in the 1990s. Following 170 in-depth life histories recorded by the project, and focusing in particular on how the villagers remembered the famine of 1947, I discuss in this presentation how the tropes of food, and memories of its shortage, presented in rural narratives frame this generation's understandings of what lives they lived.

WHEN: November 27, 2020, 12 pm

WHERE: Zoom. Please email lynnien@ualberta.ca to RSVP

Natalia Khanenko-Friesen is a professor and Huculak Chair in Ukrainian Culture and Ethnography, Department of Modern Languages and Cultural Studies, and the Director of Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, Faculty of Arts, ¾ÅÐãÖ±²¥, Edmonton, Canada.Her research interests include oral history, postsocialism in Europe and Ukraine, diasporic identities, labour migration and Ukrainian Canadian culture. Her book projects include three co-edited collections of essays on oral history and two monographs, Ukrainian Otherlands: Diaspora, Homeland and Folk Imagination in the 20th Century (University of Wisconsin Press, spring 2015) and The Other World or Ethnicity in Action: Canadian Ukrainianness at the end of the 20th century // Inshyj svit abo etnichist u dii: kanads’ka ukrainskist kintsia 20 stolittia (Smoloskyp Press: Kyiv, Ukraine 2011). Dr. Khanenko-Friesen served as the Prairie Centre for the Ukrainian Heritage Director at the University of Saskatchewan and was a Founding Editor of the Engaged Scholar Journal: Community-Engaged Research, Teaching and Learning, Canada’s prime academic journal on collaborative scholarship of community engagement.