#  Bio 

 



Oleh Kotsyuba is a scholar of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Director of Pring and Digital Publications at Harvard University's Ukrainian Research Institute, Director of the *Ukrainica* project and Chief Online Editor at *Krytyka*, an independent Ukrainian intellectual journal ([www.krytyka.com](http://krytyka.com/)). Dr. Kotsyuba specializes in Ukrainian, Polish, and Russian 20th century and contemporary literature and culture.  
  
He earned a "Degree of a Specialist“ (equivalent to a B.A. degree plus a professional teacher's degree) *summa cum laude* in German as Foreign Language and German Literature, English Language and Literature, and World Literature at the State (now – National) Pedagogical University of Ternopil, Ukraine, in 2002.  
  
In 2006, he graduated from Wayne State University (Detroit, MI) with a Master of Arts degree in English.  
  
In 2008, he earned a Master of Arts degree *summa cum laude* in Comparative Literature, Computational Linguistics, and Computer Science at Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich, Germany.  
  
In 2015, he earned a Ph.D. in Slavic Languages and Literatures from Harvard University with a dissertation entitled "Rules of Disengagement: Author, Audience, and Experimentation in Ukrainian and Russian Literature of the 1970s and 1980s."  
  
**Dr. Kotsyuba's research interests include:**

- Contemporary Ukrainian literature and culture, especially vis-à-vis Europe and Russia
- Ukrainian and Russian literature in the late Soviet and post-Soviet periods; Polish literature of the socialist period and afterwards
- Literary process in countries under oppressive, socialist, or authoritarian regimes (Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Cuba, Venezuela)
- Colonial and post-colonial studies, concepts of state and nationhood, especially in former republics of the Soviet Union, including Central Asia
- Conceptualizations of literary history in terms of "change," "disruption," and "continuity"
- Russian-Ukrainian and Ukrainian-Polish literary, cultural, and political relations
- Soviet literature and film, in particular through the lens of *sotsrealism*
- Feminist theory and gender studies in Eastern Europe

#### **Conference Presentations**

November 2017: Convention of the Association of Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies (Chicago, IL). Panel "[Ukrainian Poetry of the 1970s and 1980s: Towards the Creation of an Alternative Cultural Identity](http://tinyurl.com/y7vdtr7d). Presentation title: "[Changing the Framework: Oleh Lysheha’s Interlocutors in Western Literature](https://convention2.allacademic.com/one/aseees/aseees17/index.php?cmd=Online%20Program%20View%20Paper&selected_paper_id=1267011&PHPSESSID=mliei0cmkdrt7lk222b0g6ch84)."

November 2016: Convention of the Association of Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies (Washington, DC). Panel: Back to the Future: Socialism in Contemporary Eastern European Culture, Politics, and Society. Presentation title: "Decommunized and Happy? Literary Reactions to Disappearing Soviet Symbols in Post-Maidan Ukraine, 2013-2016."  
  
November 2013: Convention of the Association of Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies (Boston, MA). Panel: Modernist responses to a "revolutionary' predicament in Ukraine. Presentation title: “Continuity in Disruption: Post-1991 Ukrainian Literature and its Soviet Heritage.”

November 2012: Conference of the American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages (Seattle, WA). Panel: Contemporary Ukrainian Literature. Presentation topic: “The Old Face of the New Ukrainian Literature: Lina Kostenko’s *Zapysky ukraïns’koho samašedšoho* \[Notes of a Ukrainian Madman\].”

January 2010: Convention of the Association of Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies (formerly: American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies) (Los Angeles, CA). Panel: Sexuality and Ukrainian Literature. Presentation title: “Feminism vs. Patriotism: Oksana Zabužko’s Experiments with «Womb Voice» and Coarse Language.”