From October 2 – October 4 I was in Urbana-Champaign, U.S.A. to attend the Dmytro Shtohryn International Ukrainian Studies Conference. This fantastic conference was at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, organised by the Slavic Reference Service and the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures. This included a fantastic keynote address from Dr. Emily Channel-Justice (Harvard University) and a piano recital by Pavlo Gintov, including a performance with Olga Zaitseva-Herz.
The content of the conference was inspiring. I had a very quick look at library materials and found some great working spaces on campus. My paper, ‘Historical Continuations in Personal Testimonies from the Holodomor’ is about the role and responsibility of art to bridge literal truth with imaginative reality, based on Lawrence L. Langer’s theories of the literary imagination. I spoke about my archival work with Jerry Berman’s letters including inspiration from literature using principles of ‘endogenesis’ materials created by an author, and ‘exogenesis’ sources, external texts and references.
This was my first time in Chicago. On my first night I experienced Harold’s Chicken, the Carbide and Carbon Building and Chicago Board of Trade at high speed. On my return journey I had time for lunch in the Ukrainian village. On my return I had the absolute pleasure of welcoming Professor Simon Morris to SODA for a talk about his editorial work with Inscription journal for Creative Digital Design apprentices, followed by pizza.
Pendry (Carbide and Carbon Building) (Burnham Brothers, 1929)
Jerry Berman: Digital Letters from Ukraine in the Holodomor. Source: https://bermanarchives.online/
Varenyky at Old Lviv restaurant, Chicago.
Simon Morris and pizza.