“UCulture”: a Professional Project about the Ukrainian Culture

Larysa Dovga, Maria Lihus

Public interest in the Ukrainian culture, its history and the modern trends is rapidly growing in Ukraine and abroad. After the full-scale Russian invasion in February 2022, a clear request was formed to dive into the Ukrainian history, to debunk imperial historical myths, and to reconsider a settled outlook on the Ukrainian culture as being secondary to the culture of the metropolises, which at different times included Ukrainian lands. After all, relying on the powerful moral, axiological, and political potential of the national culture based on democratic civilizational values, the Ukrainian society, to the surprise of the entire world, has been successfully resisting a strong and insidious enemy for already two years.

At the same time, the burst of interest in Ukraine highlighted the systemic problems of the academic study of the Ukrainian culture, which in principle should shape the narratives about the subjectness of the Ukrainian nation and culture in various public spaces, both national and global. Since the 2000s, the Ukrainian scientific and educational discourse has repeatedly raised the question of the need to develop a modern comprehensive approach to the study of the Ukrainian culture, abandoning the Russian imperial and totalitarian Soviet ideological clichés, as well as, critically reviewing the outdated narratives of national historiography that appeared at the turn of the 20th century. However, this problem is still unsolved.

The innovative educational project “UCulture” founded by National University of "Kyiv-Mohyla Academy" (NaUKMA) professor and culturologist, Larysa Dovga, in cooperation with NaUKMA professor and historian, Natalia Yakovenko, as well as two young researchers, Anastasiia Avetysian, PhD, and Mariia Lihus, PhD, is designed to offer an alternative and relevant way of a professional presentation of the Ukrainian culture and its history.

Project’s motto: “About Ukrainian culture without sharovarshchyna and clichés”.

Project’s mission: to contribute to the discovery of ways and means of social agreement and reconciliation at all levels by narrating about the interesting, modern, successful, creative and diverse Ukrainian culture, its creators, and carriers.

At first, the project was prepared as a digital textbook on the history of the Ukrainian culture, but during its preparation (2021-2022), this goal was significantly scaled since “History of the Ukrainian culture” as an academic discipline and a research field is of exceptional importance in the formation of the modern national identity of Ukrainian citizens and the brand of Ukraine in the world. “UCulture” has accumulated a unique professional educational resource and a social and educational mission. In particular, the platform contains a comprehensive academic course on the history of the Ukrainian culture presented in the chronological order and a series of interviews devoted to various aspects of the Ukrainian culture. Currently, the platform has about a hundred different videos, audio and text materials. The lectures given by leading Ukrainian and foreign researchers provide a generalized conceptual perspective of the Ukrainian culture, building a kind of a map on which events and artifacts should find their place, whereas the interview is a look at culture “through a microscope” when individual phenomena are examined in detail, filling the general scheme created in the lectures with the pulsation of real human life.

The academic lecture course is the first and still the only course in Ukraine on the history of the Ukrainian culture in a digital format, which fully meets the requirements of the educational program of Ukrainian higher educational institutions. At the same time, the educational platform “UCulture” is addressed not only to teachers and students, but it is also aimed at a wide audience interested in getting acquainted with the development of the Ukrainian culture.

All the project team members are convinced that the basis of any culture is a system of values inherent to the creators, carriers, and consumers of a cultural product. Cultural studies carried out from an anthropological and axiological perspective will never be final and exhaustive. Therefore, one of the project’s important tasks is to constantly provide the users with an access to the latest research and concepts regarding the interpretation of various phenomena of national culture, creating a panoramic view of the Ukrainian culture that will never become complete or dogmatic. For this purpose, the content of the platform is constantly updated, and all its materials are available for free. Despite the academic direction, the materials are presented in a clear and easy to understand way. As mentioned above, their focus is on people and social values embodied in the Ukrainian culture at various historical stages of its development. That is why, in the presented materials, Ukrainian culture is not reduced to a set of dates, names, and facts, but it is reinterpreted in a multitude of its forms (values, cultural practices, customs, etc.) and their relationship to the present. The systematization and adaptation of modern research on the Ukrainian culture and its history are also ensured by the inclusiveness of the project. Lectures and interviews have video, audio and text formats, and the library’s sources include scientific monographs and articles as well as a wide range of media materials in which leading researchers and experts participate.

In 2023, the “UCulture” project progressed from its launch in Ukraine (opening of the website and presentation of the educational platform to teachers and students of NaUKMA) to the opening of its prospects as a professional medium in the European environment. Currently, “UCulture” is represented not only by the main educational platform but also by profiles on social networks and media platforms in the Ukrainian and Polish languages.

In particular, the academic lecture course on the history of the Ukrainian culture was translated into Polish in partnership with the Department of Polish-Ukrainian Studies of the Faculty of International and Political Studies of the Jagiellonian University (Krakow, Poland). The translation of the project for the Polish-speaking audience was prompted by the need to revise the colonial historical and cultural narratives that still divide the European humanitarian discourse, as well as to overcome the destructive influence of the stereotypical, prejudiced, and ideologically distorted ideas about the Ukrainian culture and history in Poland. In 2024, the partnership between “UCulture” and the Jagiellonian University is planned to continue. New expert interviews on the history of the Ukrainian culture, in particular on the culture of the Ukrainian diaspora in Poland, will be uploaded to the Polish page of the “UCulture” platform. These materials, together with an adapted lecture course and other academic texts, will be included in a Polish-language book about the Ukrainian culture, which will be prepared for publication in the Republic of Poland.

See more: https://uculture.com.ua/