6.12.2018

The Department welcomes visiting Professor Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern

Prof. Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern, Crown Family Professor of Jewish Studies at the Department of History of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, is holding a month-long visiting professorship at the Taube Department of Jewish Studies this semester. His seminars with students in the masters program focus primarily on the cultural, economic, political and artistic interaction of Jews and Christians (primarily ethnic Ukrainians) in the lands of Ukraine after the partitions of Poland. Seeking to overcome stereotypes put forward by traditional historiography and to go beyond ethnocentric biased conceptualizations, Prof. Petrovsky-Shtern considers Ukrainian-Jewish relations – and the history and culture of the Jews in Ukrainian lands – as an inseparable part of Ukrainian history and as a dynamic phenomenon which should be placed in the broader context of Ukrainian history. During the interactive sessions based on an in-depth discussion of primary sources (in English translation), students will learn about the relations between, among others, Hasidic masters and the Habsburg authorities, between the leaders of Jewish national-democratic parties and the Ukrainian national-democrats, between Ukrainian and Jewish dissidents.