Natalie Kononenko

Groupsourcing Folklore Sound Files: Involving the Community in Research

Abstract Digital technologies make possible new ways of managing folklore field recordings. Two programmers, a graduate student, and the author developed a database that allows the user to go directly to the point in a sound file where a particular topic is discussed. This is a research tool and the task here was to create a modified site for the general public. The technique used was crowdsourcing, asking the public to transcribe and translate songs, stories, and accounts of belief. The project revealed how heritage issues affect public participation. People who expressed initial enthusiasm were reluctant to participate because they were timid about their language knowledge. Paradoxically, formal instruction leads to the timidity we observed. People who did contribute to our project transcribed and translated songs only. Language is retained in song even as it is lost elsewhere. Songs are also familiar material, associated with the past. Contributions driven by interest in new material directly from Ukraine did not materialize. A romanticized image of the past and suspicions that Ukraine has been Sovietized and Russified encourage preservation of the old and work against interest in the new.

Vernacular religion on the prairies: negotiating a place for the unquiet dead

ABSTRACT The study of vernacular religion looks at faith as it is lived and emphasizes praxis. Research conducted among Ukrainian Canadians living on the prairies shows that the location where beliefs are expressed plays a role in the relationship between individual religion, folk religion, and official religion. Vernacular religion is freely expressed in the home, while its expression within the confines of the church is constrained. Negotiation, sometimes leading to change in church policy, takes place in cemeteries. As parishioners change their definition of personhood and see stillborn babies as human, as they come to consider suicide to be the result of illness rather than sin, their new views can affect the burial practices of their church, forcing it to include previously excluded persons in the sanctified ground of the cemetery.

Ukraine Alive—A Teaching Website that Continues to Teach Its Creators

Ukraine Alive is a digital resource built to support elementary education and available at http://ukrainealive.ualberta.ca . The site features contemporary cultural material from Ukraine and is rich in interactive units where students can explore content, play games, and perform tasks online. Google Analytics shows that Ukraine Alive (and its related Alive sites) are popular with teachers and used throughout Alberta and beyond. The creators of Ukraine Alive are working on more sophisticated games to test if gaming can teach culture effectively. Ukraine Alive is also used to teach students at the university level. By generating content for the Alive series of sites, university students learn how to write for publication online, producing formal text and combining it with visuals and audio. Teaching university students the humanistic aspect of formal composition for presentation online is an area of instruction that is only now being recognized.

Galina I. Yermolenko, ed. Roxolana in European Literature, History and Culture.

Galina I. Yermolenko, ed. Roxolana in European Literature, History and Culture. Franham, Surrey, England and Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2010. xi, 318 pp. Illustrations. Appendices. Bibliography. Index. Cloth.

Collecting Ukrainian Heritage: Peter Orshinsky and Leonard Krawchuk

Most discussions about collectors of folk art focus on financial issues, examining what makes an object valuable and worth collecting. But financial gain is not the primary motivation of all collectors. When it comes to folk art associated with heritage, collectors are driven by a desire to connect to a past. Often this is a past with which the collectors themselves had no direct contact, but one which they feel they need to understand in order to make sense of their own identity. Folk art objects make the past tangible; they allow a physical link to something that needs to be grasped to be understood. Peter Orshinsky and Leonard Krawchuk are two important collectors of Ukrainian folk art. Their lives provide instructive case studies that help us understand heritage collecting.La plupart des travaux sur les collectionneurs d’art populaire sont focalisés sur les problèmes financiers; on y étudie ce qui rend un objet précieux et digne d’être acquis. Mais le profit n’est pas la motivation principale des collectionneurs. Quand il s’agit d’art populaire associé à un patrimoine, c’est plutôt le désir de se connecter à un passé qui les y pousse. Il n’y a souvent rien de commun entre eux et ce passé, mais ils éprouvent le besoin de le comprendre afin de donner du sens à leur propre identité. Les objets d’art populaire donnent au passé une réalité que l’on peut toucher, ils permettent d’avoir un lien physique avec quelque chose que l’on doit saisir pour le comprendre. Peter Orshinsky et Leonard Krawchuk sont deux collectionneurs importants d’art populaire ukrainien. Leur vie nous fournit une étude de cas fort instructive qui nous aide à comprendre l’acquisition d’objets patrimoniaux.

Ukrainian Ballads in Canada: Adjusting to New Life in a New Land

Abstract Folklore is the artistic expression of belief. The various forms of folklore change and adapt to reflect changing circumstances and changing views of the world. When Ukrainians came to Canada, they brought their folklore, ballads included, with them. In the new land, ballads helped voice the struggles of the Ukrainian Pioneers. Examining a collection of ballads made approximately sixty years after Ukrainians began arriving on the Prairies shows that the ballads performed in Canada spoke of real problems, problems attested in both folk sources and historical records. These include the physical hardship of life on an acreage, male absence as they went to work on the railroad, and the tension between women and their daughters-in-laws, who were left to struggle on their own. Ukrainian girls attracted to non-Ukrainians were seen as problematic, as were men seeking solace in alcohol and infidelity. And there were many other Canadian issues for which traditional ballads provided a powerful means of expression. The ballad tradition was modified through selection, i.e., only relevant songs continued to be performed. It was also changed internally and individual ballad texts were altered by the addition of new terminology and new ideas. This is especially true when attitudes in Canada differed from those in Ukraine. A very important change in attitude applies to magic. While the use of magic is treated ambiguously in ballads performed in Ukraine, it is routinely condemned in those performed in Canada.