Last fall, Olha Tytarenko introduced Yale’s first Ukrainian language course taught by an on-campus instructor. That course, “Elementary Ukrainian I,” evolved into a particularly powerful cultural experience for her students, who found themselves deeply drawn to Ukrainian poetry.
Now, Tytarenko, a senior lector I and an associate research scholar in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures in Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, is building on that course to embed more Ukrainian studies in the university’s broader curriculum. Next fall she will also teach an intermediate Ukrainian language course and a course on Ukrainian cinema.
Olha Tytarenko
“The main idea is to establish a Ukrainian studies program that not only offers counter-narratives to Russia-centric narratives, given the current war, but also provides a vantage point that enriches our understanding of Ukraine,” she said.
Born in Ukraine before it declared its independence in 1991, and having lived in both Moscow and western Ukraine, Tytarenko is fluent in Ukrainian and Russian. Her research interests beyond language pedagogy include 19th-century Russian literature, Russian religious thought, cultural history, and political mythology. She is also a prolific literary translator.
Tytarenko recently sat down with Yale News to talk about the intrinsic connection between language and culture, why poetry is a valuable medium for connecting students with language, and her plans for a Ukrainian film festival at Yale during the 2025-26 academic year. The conversation was edited for length and clarity.
Why is it important that Yale offer instruction in the Ukrainian language?
Olha Tytarenko: It’s important to introduce Ukrainian language courses, complemented with Ukrainian cultural studies, at this historic moment. The current war has revealed gaps in our collective understanding of the conflict. The dominant frameworks and discourse are mainly Russia-centric and lack sufficient Ukrainian perspective and context. The Ukrainian language course not only offers instruction in the language; it offers an understanding of culture, an understanding of our historic relationships with the Russian Empire, with the Soviet Union, with Russia.
How do you meld the two in your teaching?
Tytarenko: I don’t see how the language can be taught outside of the culture because the language is the culture. You can learn so much about the culture through the language and through the etymology of the words. In addition to learning the language and reading text in Ukrainian, I expose my students to various cultural expressions. A lot is happening during the classes, but also a lot is happening outside of the classes.
For example, last year we hosted a famous Ukrainian poet, Marianna Kiyanovska, who gave readings of her poetry. My students then met with her for two hours, talking with her about her poetry, about the meaning of poetry in the current war, and how poetry helps process traumatic experiences in everyday life. That was a valuable experience for my students, and it inspired us to look at Ukrainian poetry more closely.
Olha Tytarenko reads the poem “Forgive me, I cannot forgive” by the Ukrainian poet Marianna Kiyanovska in Ukrainian and in an English translation.
Olha Tytarenko reads the poem “Forgive me, I cannot forgive” by the Ukrainian poet Marianna Kiyanovska in Ukrainian and in an English translation.
Poetry is such a convenient medium to get an intimate connection with the language. We can analyze vocabulary, we can analyze grammatical connections, but we can also talk about the meaning. And that then inspired my students to work on translation. We turned our Friday classes into cultural encounters in which we worked on poetry translation. What would normally be a 50-minute class would turn into a two-hour workshop.
And this all evolved organically?
Tytarenko: Absolutely organically. Some of my students submitted their translations to Yale’s Journal of Literary Translation and two poems in translation were published. After that they didn’t want to stop. So, we focused on poems written by soldiers on the front lines — there is this cultural project in Ukraine to highlight the poems written on the front lines. It was a meaningful way to engage with the current situation.
Tell me about the new course you’re teaching this fall: “Cinematic Ukraine: Culture, Identity, and Memory.”
Tytarenko: I’ll start by explaining how it came to be. Since I’m representing Ukrainian culture at Yale in the Slavic department, it is important for me to organize various cultural initiatives. I met with the Ukrainian-American film director David Gutnik, who lives in the New Haven area. He had recently completed a documentary, “Rule of Two Walls,” about Ukrainian artists’ resistance and resilience through their art. We had a screening of the film on campus last fall, and it was very well received.
Then this past April, David and I organized a screening on campus of “Timestamp,” a new documentary about the life of young Ukrainian students during the time of war. We brought the film crew from New York, and we had a Q&A and a reception. It was very successful — we had more than 80 people in the audience. So we felt like there was a niche at Yale to support and talk about Ukrainian cinema. We decided to launch a film series during the next school year. This initial idea grew, and I thought about offering a film course on Ukraine, along with a year-long film series that would culminate in a film festival and symposium. So now we are planning all these events for the next year.
The film course will be part of this cultural program that will center on studying Ukrainian cultural identity formation, historical memory, and artistic innovations through film. It will feature avant-garde experiments of the 1920s, through Ukrainian poetic cinema of the ’60s, and contemporary filmmaking. It will shed light and provide counter-narratives to perspectives that have emphasized imperial or Russia-centric viewpoints, which I think is very important in academia right now.
When will the film series begin?
Tytarenko: The film series will start this September, then we will have screenings in October, January and February, and the film festival will take place in April.
How do you envision future growth in the Ukraine curriculum?
Tytarenko: For me, it’s a kind of holistic vision. Where every project that we start will have a meaningful continuation and be impactful not just for Yale but for the field. There are so many possibilities to be explored and so many meaningful ways to collaborate on various projects that would involve experts in Ukraine — cross-departmental, interdisciplinary, and cross-institutional collaborations. I think this is the way to go to expand the classes, to continue the conversation about Ukrainian studies and what is important to teach across the institutions, and exchange experience and knowledge.
