Alex Averbuch is a scholar, poet, and translator. Currently he is the Izaak Walton Killam Memorial postdoctoral fellow at the University of Alberta. He earned his PhD in Slavic and Jewish studies at the University of Toronto with a dissertation on the history of the genre of solicitory poetry in Ukrainian, Russian, and Hebrew. Averbuch’s research explores commodity culture; gender and critical race theory; epistolarity; photography; theatricality and performance; translation; and creative writing in foreign language pedagogy. He is the author of three books of poetry and an array of literary translations between Hebrew, Ukrainian, Russian, and English. His latest book Zhydivs’kyi korol' (The Jewish King) was a Shevchenko National Prize finalist.

Session Two | 10:15AM, May 15, 2023

“Propaganda, Censorship, Subversion: Visual Rhetoric in the Correspondence of Ukrainian Ostarbeiters.”

Dr. Andriy Kohut is a Director of the Branch-Wise State Archive of the Ukrainian Security Service. The Archive stores the largest collection of declassified KGB files. He received his Ph.D. in History from the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, and his M.A. in History from Ivan Franko Lviv National University. He had to suspend his 2021-2022 Fulbright Fellowship at Stanford University. His academic and professional interests cover various topics related to Soviet deportations, communist secret services history, memory politics, and cultural diplomacy.

Session Five I 10:00AM, May 16, 2023

“From World War II to the Cold War: Transformations of Postal Censorship as a Mirror of Social Change.”

Jars Balan is the Director of the Kule Ukrainian Canadian Studies Centre at CIUS. A specialist in Ukrainian Canadian history and culture, he has spoken and published extensively on the Ukrainian experience in Canada, especially Ukrainian-language theatre and literature, religious life, and the contributions made by leading community activists. In recent years much of his research has been focused on the coverage devoted to Ukrainians and their organizational life in the mainstream Canadian press, including reporting on the impact of Stalin’s First Five-Year Plan and the genocidal famine of 1932-1933, as well as the participation of Ukrainians in Canada’s Armed Forces during the Second World War. He has been involved in CIUS almost since its inception in 1976, as an editor, conference organizer, translator and research associate, and as the driving force behind the Kalyna Country Ecomuseum project, launched in 1991 to mark the centenary of Ukrainian settlement in Canada.

Session One | 8:15AM, May 15, 2023

“From the Inside to the Outside World: Letters from the Soviet “Famine-lands” as reported in Canada’s Daily Press, 1932-1934.”

Nataliya Bezborodova is a PhD Candidate at the Department of Anthropology, University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada. She currently works as a Tutor at the Department of Anthropology, University of Edinburgh, UK, and a Lecturer (online) at the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv, Ukraine. She also worked as a Lecturer at the Department of Anthropology and Teaching & Research Assistant at the Kule Folklore Centre and The Bohdan Medwidsky Ukrainian Folklore Archives, University of Alberta.

She is interested in interdisciplinary approaches including anthropology, ethnography, cultural and religious studies. Her doctoral project focuses on the meaning of space and place in migrations, multilayered identity, and the role of religion in the social and political turmoil on the example of “Flying Community,” a group that connects members from Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, and Italy. In 2016, Nataliya got her MA degree focused on the social media representations of the Maidan protests in Ukraine.

Session Three | 1:00PM, May 15, 2023

"“In life, things can happen, so it’s better for one not to write letters and give their photos”: Peter Krawchuk files in the KGB Archives"

Emily D. Johnson is co-director of the Romanoff Center for Russian Studies and the Brian and Sandra O’Brien Presidential Professor of Russian at the University of Oklahoma. She is the author of How St. Petersburg Learned to Study Itself: The Russian Idea of Kraevedenie (Penn State University Press, 2006), the editor and translator of Arsenii Formakov, Gulag Letters (Yale University Press, 2017), and, along with Julie Buckler, co-editor of Rites of Place: Public Commemoration in Russia and Eastern Europe (Northwestern, 2013). Most recently, she co-edited the volume Rethinking the Gulag: Identities, Sources, Legacies (Indiana University Press, 2022) with Alan Barenberg.

Session Two | 1:00PM, May 15, 2023

“We Sent What We Could: Postal Communication between Ukraine and the Soviet Gulag in the Post-War Period."

Natalia Khanenko-Friesen is an oral historian and cultural anthropologist currently serving in the roles of the director of the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies and Huculak Chair in Ukrainian Culture and Ethnography, both in the Faculty of Arts, University of Alberta, Canada. Her research interests include oral history, vernacular culture, diasporic and ethnic identities, labor migration, and immigrant letter writing. She authored or (co)edited the following books monographs, "Ukrainian Otherlands: Diaspora, Homeland and Folk Imagination in the 20th Century (U of Wisconsin Press, 2015); "The other world, or ethnicity in action: Canadian Ukrainianness at the end of the 20th century" (Smoloskyp Press, 2011); "Orality and Literacy: Reflections Across Disciplines" (U of Toronto Press, 2011) and "Reclaiming the Personal: Oral History in Post-Socialist Europe" (U of Toronto Press, 2015). Dr. Khanenko-Friesen is the founding editor of Canada's scholarly journal Engaged Scholar Journal: Community-Engaged Research, Teaching and Learning. Her current book project has the working title “Decollectivized: The Last Generation of Soviet Farmers Speak Out."

Session Five | 10:00, May 16, 2023

"It Takes Three to Tango: Epistolary Transatlantic Adventures in Love, Art, and Diasporic Longing."

Colin P. Neufeldt is a Professor of History at Concordia University of Edmonton. His most recent publications include: “Perspectives on the Mennonite Experience During the Holodomor (1932-33): Resources in North American Archives and Libraries”; “Divided Loyalties: The Political Radicalization of Wymyśle Niemieckie Mennonites in Interwar Poland (1918–39)”; and “Hitler, Mennonites, and the Holodomor: The Rise of Nazi Germany during the 1932-33 Famine in Ukraine and the Reinvention of Mennonites into Nazi Enemies of the USSR” (forthcoming). Colin also practices law in Edmonton.

Session One | 8:15AM, May 15, 2023

Presenting "Weaponizing Words: Censorship, Surveillance and Resistance in Mennonite Communities in Soviet Ukraine (1920s-1930s)"

Jelena Pogosjan received her PhD (1997) from Tartu University (Estonia). She taught at Tartu University from 1990 to 2002, and from 2002 onward at the University of Alberta. Her major areas of expertise lie in 18th century Russian literature and official culture, Early Modern image studies, in particular the history of Russian icon painting. Between 2016 and 2022, Jelena served as the director of the Peter and Doris Kule Centre for Ukrainian and Canadian Folklore. Since 2016, Jelena has developed interests in the area of immigration and community studies, in particular, immigrant letter-writing and photography.

Session Five | 10:00AM, May 16, 2023

"“To Improve the Quality of Document Processing”: Transition from Military Postal Control to Secret Postal Control (1946) and its Impact on Letter-writing Practices."

Frank E. Sysyn is director of the Peter Jacyk Centre for Ukrainian Historical Research at the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, professor in the Department of History and Classics at the University of Alberta, and editor in chief of the Hrushevsky Translation Project. A specialist in Ukrainian and Polish history, he is the author of Between Poland and the Ukraine: The Dilemma of Adam Kysil, 1600-1653 (1985), Mykhailo Hrushevsky: Historian and National Awakener (2001), and studies on the Khmelnytsy Uprising, Ukrainian historiography, and early modern Ukrainian political culture. He is also coauthor, with Serhii Plokhy, of Religion and Nation in Modern Ukraine (2003). He is editor in chief of the publication of the collected works of Mykhailo Zubrytsky (1856-1919).

Session Three | 1:00PM, May 15, 2023

“Under the KGB’s watchful eye: A Photo that bound generations and continents.”

Anindita Mukherjee is a PhD candidate in English and Film Studies at the University of Alberta. She has held research fellowships at Holocaust Research Institute, Royal Holloway, and United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Her research focuses on literature and philosophy of catastrophes in the Twentieth Century. She is also a poet and writer, and her debut collection of poems Nothing and Variations have been featured in the top ten young Indian voices in 2022. 

Session Four | 9:15AM, May 16, 2023

"Waldsee, the fiction and reality of a Name: Final Correspondence from the Victims of the Holocaust"