FSEM 116   Ukraine

Faculty Profile for Professor Sklyar

Examines the demographics, geopolitics, history, and present of the Ukrainian state, and the identity, everyday life, and family and kinship practices of Ukrainians in and outside of Ukraine, in wartime and peacetime. Special attention is paid to questions of ethnicity, language, civic nationalism, and counteracting Russian manipulations of Ukrainian history and politics. Further attention is paid to post-Soviet statecraft, corruption, and absurdity; relations with Russia, Europe, and the United States; and global diasporas – experiences shared by many Soviet, post-Soviet, and postsocialist nations and peoples. In addition to gaining a multidimensional understanding of the current Russian war on Ukraine, students gain a deeper understanding of specific historical traumas suffered by Ukraine and Ukrainians, including the Holodomor famine of 1932-1933, WWII and the Holocaust, forced migrations and exiles of Crimean Tatars and other peoples during the Soviet period, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident, the immediate post-Soviet moment of the 1990s, and the 2014 and 2022 Russian wars on Ukraine. Throughout, students engage with primary sources, such as the literature of Ukrainian writers, the voices of everyday Ukrainians under Russian siege, Ukrainian pop culture, films, and TV series.Students who successfully complete this seminar will receive course credit for CORE C135 and satisfy the Core Communities requirement.

Aleksandr Sklyar is a sociocultural anthropologist who loves languages and cultures. Sklyar was born in Ukraine and immigrated to the USA with his family at the age of seven, in 1995. His primary research focuses on family life and everyday decision-making about food, bodily integrity, residence, play, schooling, and so forth in the aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear disaster. He also researches Ukraine-Japan-USA knowledge flows about nuclear weapons, nuclear disasters, and nuclear technologies. In addition to language and culture courses in Russian and Eurasian Studies, he teaches courses on the atomic bomb, modernity, Japanese culture and society, Japanese language, environmental justice (U.S. and global), and medical and environmental anthropology. He looks forward to meeting you and accompanying you on your Colgate journey!