The literary group of the «Jewish Heritage in Ukraine» project has announced the launch of a series of video essays designed to make academic research more accessible to a wider audience and to bring discussions about significant figures and cultural phenomena into the public sphere. The first episode is already available for viewing.
Professor Vira Aheieva’s video essay is dedicated to the figure of Jeremiah Aizenshtock – one of the most brilliant scholars of Ukrainian literature in the 1920s.
A student of Professor Oleksandr Biletskyi, Aizenshtock studied and popularized the ideas of Oleksandr Potebnia, developed formalist approaches to literary analysis as an alternative to dogmatic Marxism, and discovered and studied important texts by Taras Shevchenko, Ivan Kotliarevskyi, Hryhorii Kvitka-Osnovianenko and other Ukrainian writers of the 19th and early 20th centuries. He consciously chose a Ukrainian identity – a story of choice that resonates with particular urgency today. During 1930s and later in the post-war years, Aizenshtock was subjected to persecution and was effectively denied the right to live in Kyiv. Nevertheless, he continued to maintain close ties with Ukrainian literary figures, including Maksym Rylskyi.
You can watch the video essay and learn more about Jeremiah Aizenshtock’s role in the development of Ukrainian studies via the link on the YouTube channel.
The series of video essays has been created within the framework of the project «Jewish Heritage in Ukraine: interdisciplinary reflections through the lens of archival documents, culture, history and literature», implemented by the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy with the support of UNESCO and the European Union.
All publications within the project are produced with the financial support of the European Union. Its contents are the sole responsibility of the partner and does not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union.