Travel to Ukraine with Northwestern Professor Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern

This exclusive, Northwestern trip is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to travel alongside a Northwestern faculty member who has intimate knowledge of Ukraine. Additionally, the organizer of this tour, the Mir Corporation, is a leading travel vendor in the former eastern block with more than 20 years of experience. Professor Petrovsky-Shtern and Mir will highlight the beauty and history of this compelling country. 

Meet Professor Petrovsky-Shtern before you embark on this incredible journey:

1) What first sparked your love and interest of this region of the world? What is your connection to Ukraine? 

Petrovsky-Shtern: I was born in Ukraine and spent my first thirty years of life there. I survived Communism in Ukraine. I barely survived its perestroika—I came to like its nation-state endeavors. I know Ukraine like the palm of my hand, I’ve traveled through its breadth and width, and I love it.

2)  What are you most excited to see and experience while hosting this tour?

P-S: I would love to learn how people react to what they see, what questions they ask, and what they find fascinating.

3) Could you tell us about your recent book about Ukraine? 

P-S: This is the first, book-length, English-language study of a cultural encounter between Ukrainians and Jews. It tells the story of five Jewish writers and poets who chose to integrate with Ukrainian culture—a culture that was considered by their Eastern European contemporaries as second-rank, stateless, and colonial. The marginality of these literati as Jews fueled their sympathy for Ukrainians and their national cause. The book brings the reader from the late nineteenth century up to the turn of the twentieth century, illuminating each author’s development by extensive historical background, biographical detail, and engaging analysis of poetry and prose. It provides a consistent evaluation of each author’s Jewish identity and its bearing on his or her Ukrainian identification. Ukrainian national revivalism, quite often checked either by the Russian or by the Soviet empire, frames the book. The choice of the colonial Ukrainian, rather than the metropolitan Russian, challenges the assumptions of modern Jewish acculturation and suggests a major revision of Ukrainian-Jewish relations.

4) What topics do you hope to broach with your passengers on this trip?

P-S: Life of ordinary people under a Communist regime, the encounter of Ukrainians with the country's multi-ethnicity, Ukrainian art, and Ukraine’s contribution to Jewish culture.

5) Anything else you would like to add? 

P-S: Another 500-single space pages that briefly convey my fascination with that part of the world!

Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern teaches Early Modern, Modern, and East European Jewish History and Culture at Northwestern University. He holds a PhD from Moscow University in Comparative Literature (1988) and a PhD from Brandeis University in Modern Jewish History (2001). He has published multiple articles in Judaic Studies and comparative literature, and authored two books: Jews in the Russian Army, 1827-1917: Drafted into Modernity, (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming) and The Anti-Imperial Choice: the Making and Unmaking of a Ukrainian Jew, (Yale University Press, forthcoming). He is currently working on a new book manuscript, Shtetl As It Was.

Find out more about our Journey Through Ukraine
or contact the NAA Travel Program at 847.491.7987.