Presented by Dmytro Yesypenko

In-person only (at Kule Folklore Centre)

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About Presenter:

Dmytro Yesypenko is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Modern Languages and Cultural Studies. His Ph.D. research focuses on epidemics in Ukrainian and Polish literatures and folklore. Dmytro serves as a research assistant at the Kule Folklore Centre. His academic interests include Ukrainian historical and literary developments, Slavic studies, digital and medical humanities. Dmytro is the author of Borys Hrinchenko’s Novels: The History of Texts and Texts in the History (in Ukrainian; Kyiv: Naukova Dumka, 2015) and co-author, with Mariya Mayerchyk and Jelena Pogosjan, of Lena and Thomas Gushul: Life in Front and Behind the Camera (Edmonton: Peter and Doris Kule Centre for Ukrainian and Canadian Folklore, 2022–2023). He edited Borys Hrinchenko: Novels (in Ukrainian; Kyiv: Krytyka, 2020), Cossacks in Jamaica, Ukraine at the Antipodes: Essays in Honor of Marko Pavlyshyn (with Alessandro Achilli and Serhy Yekelchyk; Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2020), and Oksana Kowacka: Ukrainian Postcoloniality in Texts and Contexts (in Ukrainian; with Karol Kowacki; Brusturiv: Discursus, 2022).

About Presentation:

Plague, cholera, typhus—these and other contagious diseases have been constant companions of humankind for centuries. Thanks to the works of Ukrainian folklorists and, in part, to writers of the 19th and early 20th centuries, we have textual evidence of how Ukrainians experienced encounters with these diseases and whom they blamed for their spread. Dmytro’s presentation will highlight some of these surprising and striking stories, focusing on the personification of epidemics and the influence of these narratives on literature and popular culture.