Collection 0092 - Maryna Hrymych's interview with Dr. Bohdan Medwidsky

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Maryna Hrymych's interview with Dr. Bohdan Medwidsky

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    CA BMUFA 0092

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    Date(s)

    • 2009-011 (Creation)
      Creator
      Hrymych, Maryna
    • 2009-03-23-2011-06-17 (Creation)
      Creator
      Medwidsky, Bohdan
      Place
      Edmonton, Alberta

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    Physical description

    3 audio files
    Duration: 6:25 hours

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    Name of creator

    (born 1936)

    Biographical history

    Bohdan Medwidsky was born in 1936 in Stanislaviv in interwar Poland (present day Ivano-Frankivs'k in Ukraine) in the family of Konstantyn and Natalia (nee Lebedowych) Medwidsky. He was separated from his family at the age of 2, and grew up in Switzerland where he learned to speak French and German. When he was 12, he was reunited with his family in Vienne and that's where he first met his younger brother Wolodymyr. The family came to Canada on a ship from Hamburg to Quebec City as a post-WWII refugee in 1949. They settled in Toronto, where Bohdan's family operated a pharmacy. Both Bohdan and Wolodymyr were active in Plast, Ukrainian scouts organization. The family attended St. Nicholas Ukrainian Catholic church, a converted Presbyterian building, whose members were almost all also recent Ukrainian immigrants.

    Bohdan attended Huron school in Toronto in his first year, then switched to Howard Park. He attended Humberside High School. He enjoyed history best among all his subjects. When he completed high school, Bohdan continued on to university. He was interested in furthering his Ukrainian studies, and chose that as his major field. He was quite committed to academics, and knew early that he wanted to continue into graduate school. His parents didn’t particularly push him to become a Ukrainianist, but neither did they discourage it.

    Bohdan di his graduate studies at the University of Toronto. Toronto had a well developed Russian program, but little Ukrainian studies at that time. There were two graduate courses in Ukrainian literature, taught by Professor George Luckyj. Though Bohdan had declared a research interest in Ukrainian linguistics, he attended more classes on Russian literature than Ukrainian, and more on Ukrainian literature than linguistics. Professor Luckyj’s own research specialization dealt with Ukrainian literary politics in the early Soviet period. Bohdan’s classmate Danylo Struk pushed to be allowed to write his dissertation on a Ukrainian literature topic, rather than a Russian one, which in a way paved the way for Bohdan who wrote his doctoral dissertation on the language of Vasyl' Stefanyk's novels.

    After a short teaching contract at Carlton University in Ottawa, he moved to Edmonton in 1971, when he received a teaching position at the University of Alberta. In 1977, he offered his first class in Ukrainian Folklore. Soon after, several class offerings grew into a graduate program in Ukrainian Folklore, third folklore program in Canada to offer both master's and PhD degrees. Medwidsky became the founder of the Ukrainian Folklore Archives and in 1989, established the Ukrainian Folklore Archives Endowment Fund.

    Over the years, Dr. Medwidsky was very active in professional societies in Alberta, Canada, and abroad, as well as in numerous Ukrainian community organizations. In the late 1970s, he served to develop bilingual Ukrainian school programs in Alberta supported by the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies. He was a founding member of the Ministerial Advisory Board to the Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Village in 1982. Bohdan Medwidsky served on the board of the Friends of the Ukrainian Village Society, the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, the Association of Ukrainian Writers Slovo, the Alberta Society for Advancement of Ukrainian Studies, the Ukrainian Pioneers Association of Alberta, the Alberta Ukrainian Commemorative Society, the Western Canadian Branch of the Shevchenko Scientific Society, and many other organizations.

    Name of creator

    (b. 1961)

    Biographical history

    Maryna Hrymych is a Ukrainian scholar and novelist. She has a Ph.D. in Philology and History (Candidate of Philology, Doctor of History). Editor in Chief of the Publishing House Duliby. Producer of the literary project Lyuba Klymenko. Member of the Writers Union of Ukraine, member of the Ukrainian Association of Regional Ethnography. Leading researcher of the Research Institute of Ukrainian Studies.

    Maryna Hrymych was born on April 4, 1961 in Kyiv. Her father, Will Hrymych, was a translator, member of the Writers Union of Ukraine. Her mother, Halyna Hrymych, was a professor of the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv. Maryna's grandfather, Hryhoriy Hrymych, was a journalist and writer. He worked in the newspaper "Hudok" in Moscow together with Il'f, Petrov, and Zoshchenko.

    In 1983 Maryna Hrymych graduated from Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Department of Philology, Chair of Slavonic Studies. As a student Hrymych published her first translations from Slovenian, Serbian-Croat and Macedonian languages. At that time her first poems were published as well in Dnipro and Zhovten literary magazines. In 1990 she obtained Ph.D. in Philology (Candidate Ph.D.) from the Institute of Art History, Folkloristics and Ethnography of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian Soviet Social Republic. In 1991-1995, she worked as an Academic Secretary and Deputy Head of the International School of Ukrainian Studies at the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.

    Hrymych started her academic career as an ethnographer and folklorist at the M. T. Rylskyi Institute of Art History, Folkloristics and Ethnography of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. During her work at the International School of Ukrainian Studies developed methodology for teaching Ukrainian as a foreign language. At the Department of History of the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv she taught ethnology and social anthropology. Her cross-disciplinary Ph.D. thesis (Doctorate Ph.D.) on customary law relates to three scientific fields – ethnology, history and law. Between 1996 and 2006 she was an Associate Professor and later Professor of the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Department of History. In 2001-2006, Hrymych was the head of the Ethnology and Regional Studies of the Department. In 2004 she obtained her Ph.D. in History (Doctorate Ph.D.). In 2004 Maryna Hrymych founded and took the lead of the publishing house Duliby specializing in modern Ukrainian literature and scientific works of ethnological character. In 2004 and 2005 Duliby was awarded a number of prizes of the Lviv Publishers Forum.

    Hrymych is an experienced field-worker – she conducted ethnological and anthropological field work throughout Ukraine and in a number of other countries.

    In 2008-2010, she was a visiting professor at the University of Alberta, and together with other professors of the Kule Folklore Centre, taught Ukrainian Folklore courses.

    Maryna Hrymych is the author of 4 books, 2 textbooks, 8 novels, and a number of essays. She edited 7 scholarly publications, and initiated, compiled and edited 5 collections of articles. She is a prize-winner of the All-Ukrainian Literary Competition Koronatsiya Slova (special awards in 2000, 2001, first prize in 2002 for novel Egoist). She was awarded the Taras Shevchenko Award (Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv) for her monograph Property Institution in the Customary Law Culture of the Ukrainians in the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries (2004).

    Custodial history

    Scope and content

    The collection consists of two interviews Maryna Hrymych conducted with Bohdan Medwidsky in Edmonton in 2009

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    Immediate source of acquisition

    Deposited by Maryna Hrymych.

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    Language of material

    • українська

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      Permission for use required.

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      Associated materials

      Maryna Hrymych published a book based on these interviews: Hrymych, M. 2016. Narysy z ukrains'ko-kanads'koi fol'klorystyky: Bohdan Medvids'kyi. Kyiv: Duliby. The book is available at the BMUFA Library.

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      UF2017.44

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