Kultura Moderna
Eight-week online course. 28 October – 16 December 2026
18:30 – 20:00 (London Time)

This eight-week course explores the vibrant and diverse culture of Ukrainian modernism through art, design, literature, music, architecture, and dance. Focusing on the late nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries, it examines how Ukrainian artists and cultural practitioners engaged with modernity while drawing on local traditions and transnational influences. Against the backdrop of rapid social and political change—from the final decades of the Russian and Habsburg empires through revolution, independence, and the formation of Soviet Ukraine—the course considers the complex historical circumstances in which new forms of artistic and cultural expression emerged.

Course objectives:
  • Introduce key developments in Ukrainian modernist culture and the historical context that engendered them.
  • Explore the diverse, multi-ethnic, and transnational dimensions of Ukrainian modernism across multiple fields, while challenging imperial narratives and reductive understandings of Ukrainian culture.
  • Examine how artists and cultural practitioners responded to questions of modernity, identity, tradition, and political transformation, and reflect on the enduring significance of these histories today.
Format and resources:
  • A live online lecture.
  • A moderated Q&A with the lecturer.
  • All sessions recorded for on-demand access.
  • Curated handbook of resources (book chapters, articles, podcasts, etc.) in English.
  • Optional discussion forum available only for students who have enrolled in the full course.
  • Digital certificate of completion.
Dates

 8 weeks: 28 October – 16 December 2026
18:30 – 20:00 (London Time)

The course will be held via Zoom and conducted in English.

Course co-curators: Constance Uzwyshyn and Katia Denysova 

Course coordinator: Olga Sydorushkina, Ukrainian Institute London, [email protected].

Fees

Early bird discount available until 19 October!

Full course: £260 general (£180 student) — includes a Certificate of Completion and full course materials.

Full course (early bird): £240 general (£170 student) — includes a Certificate of Completion and full course materials.

One seminar: £35 general (£25 student) — includes course materials and video recording for the seminar attended.

Friends and Benefactors of the Institute are also eligible for a discount. Please check your emails for the checkout code.
Full course: £236 general (£162 student).
One seminar: £31.50 general (£22.50 student).

How to enrol

You can join the Kultura Moderna course by booking your place for the full course or individual seminars via the links below.

Should you have any queries, please email us at [email protected]. We will aim to respond within five working days.

2026 course programme

Wed 28 October 18:30 - 20:00 GMT

Week 1 | Ukrainian Modernism. Context

Focus themes: socio-political transformations, cultural identity, empires and statehood

Description: This introductory lecture outlines the political and social context in which Ukrainian modernism developed. Particular attention will be paid to the formation of Ukrainian culture in 1920s and 1930s Soviet Ukraine during the period of Ukrainization. We will examine the role of the party, cultural officials, Ukrainian cultural managers, and artists in shaping the cultural landscape, as well as the implications this had for the broader artistic map in the Soviet Union.

Lecturer: Dr Olena Palko, University of Basel, Switzerland

Biography: Olena Palko is Assistant Professor at the Chair for East European History at the University of Basel in Switzerland. Olena is an historian of Ukraine, the Soviet Union, and modern Eastern Europe, with a particular focus on minorities history. She has held several research fellowships, including at the German Historical Institute in Warsaw, the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, and the Slavic-Eurasian Research Centre, in Sapporo, Japan. She is the author of Making Ukraine Soviet. Literature and Cultural Politics under Lenin and Stalin (2021), and co-editor of Making Ukraine: Negotiating, Contesting, and Drawing the Borders in the Twentieth Century (2022).

Set reading:

  • Halyna Hryn, ‘The Executed Renaissance Paradigm Revisited, Harvard Ukrainian Studies 27.1-4 (2004-2005): 67–96.
  • Mayhill Fowler, ‘Beyond Ukraine or Little Russia: Going Global with Culture in Ukraine’, Harvard Ukrainian Studies 34.1/4 (2015): 259–84.

Optional reading:

  • Olena Palko, ‘Mykola Khvyl’ovyy and the Making of Soviet Ukrainian Literature’, Connexe: Exploring Post-Communist Spaces 5 (October 2022): 29–52.

Wed 4 November 18:30 - 20:00 GMT

Week 2 | Ukrainian Modernism in the Making. Olha Kobylianska and Lesia Ukrainka

Focus themes: modernist literature, feminism

Focus personalities: Olha Kobylianska and Lesia Ukrainka

Description: Olha Kobylianska and Lesia Ukrainka, two modernist writers and close friends, had much in common. Both were intellectually adventurous. Kobylianska reacted in her novels to Darwinism and the thought of Friedrich Nietzsche, while Ukrainka’s historically erudite poetry, plays, and dramatic poems explored the meaning of freedom, the nature of knowledge and truth, and the ethics of responsibility to self and society. Both advocated for the rights of women to participate in all aspects of public life and freely express their emotional and intellectual identity. In their own time, the life and work of both Kobylianska and Lesia Ukrainka stimulated debate and even controversy. They continue to do so today.

Lecturer: Dr Marko Pavlyshyn, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia

Biography: Marko Pavlyshyn is an Emeritus Professor of Ukrainian Studies at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. His scholarly specialisation is modern and contemporary Ukrainian literature. His publications include Ukrainian Literature: A Wartime Guide for Anglophone Readers (Cambridge UP, 2025), the Ukrainian-language books Olha Kobylianska: Interpretations (Akta, 2008) and Canon and Iconostasis (Chas, 1997), and many scholarly articles, chapters, and edited and co-edited books. Marko is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and an International Member of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.

Set reading:

  • Anastassya Andrianova, ‘A Postcolonial Reading of Lesia Ukraïnka’s Orhiia’, Modern Drama 58.1 (Spring 2015): 25–45.
  • Marko Pavlyshyn, ‘Rereading the Classics in a Post-Soviet World: The Case of Olha Kobylianska’, Journal of Ukrainian Studies 27.1-2 (Summer–Winter 2002): 33–50.

Optional reading:

Wed 11 November 18:30 - 20:00 GMT

Week 3 | Ukrainian Artistic Modernism. Between the East and the West

Focus themes: visual arts, cubism, and futurism

Focus personalities: Alexander Archipenko, Alexandra Exter, Oleksandr Bohomazov, the Burliuk brothers

Description: This seminar examines the reception and interpretation of cubism and futurism across the territories of Ukraine during the first two decades of the twentieth century. Focusing on the centres of Lviv, Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Odesa, we will trace the origins of radical artistic experimentation, situating avant-garde developments in Ukraine between the Italian, French, Polish, and Russian formulations of cubism and futurism while foregrounding the contributions of artists from Ukraine to these international movements.

Lecturer: Dr Katia Denysova, University of Tübingen, Germany

Biography: Katia Denysova is an art historian and curator. In 2022–26, she co-curated the travelling exhibition In the Eye of the Storm: Modernism in Ukraine and co-edited the accompanying catalogue (Thames & Hudson, 2022). Katia is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Tübingen in Germany. She held the Ukrainian Research in Switzerland (URIS) fellowship at the University of Basel in 2025 and the Lesia Ukraїnka Junior Visiting Fellowship at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna in 2026. 

Set reading:

  • Selected essays from the catalogue In the Eye of the Storm: Modernism in Ukraine, Modernism in Ukraine, 1900–1930s, ed. by Konstantin Akinsha, Katia Denysova, and Olena Kashuba-Volvach (Thames & Hudson, 2022).
  • Katia Denysova, ‘From Kyiv to Paris: The Cosmopolitanism of Alexandra Exter’, pp. 18–23.
  • Olena Kashuba-Volvach, ‘The Beginning: The First Avant-Garde Exhibitions in Ukraine’, pp. 24–29.
  • Myroslava M. Mudrak, ‘Nova heneratsiia (1927–1930)’, pp. 78–83.

Optional reading:

  • Other essays in the catalogue In the Eye of the Storm: Modernism in Ukraine, Modernism in Ukraine, 1900–1930s.

Wed 18 November 18:30 - 20:00 GMT

Week 4 | Architectural Modernism in Early Soviet Kharkiv

Focus themes: architecture and urban planning

Focus personalities: Pavlo Alyoshin and Petr (Petro) Shpara

Description: This seminar focuses on the experimental modernist architecture and urban planning of Kharkiv during the years when the city served as the first capital of the Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic (1919–1934). As a new post-revolutionary capital, Kharkiv acquired an expanded political role while its population and industrial infrastructure grew rapidly, making it an important site for experimenting with new forms of socialist space-making and architectural expression. Our primary focus will be on New Kharkiv (1930–32) as a case study to discuss the benefits of modern architectural iconography, functionalism, and design standardisation, while also questioning the ethics of construction during a time of forced famine.

Lecturer: Dr Christina E. Crawford, Emory University, USA

Biography: Dr Christina E. Crawford is an architectural and urban historian, a trained architect, Masse-Martin NEH Associate Professor of Art History at Emory University, and affiliated faculty at the Kharkiv School of Architecture. Her research focuses on the transnational exchange of ideas about housing and urban form in the twentieth century. Her first book, Spatial Revolution: Architecture and Planning in the Early Soviet Union (Cornell University Press, 2022), follows the development of socialist urban theory and practice in three seminal industrial sites: Baku, Magnitogorsk, and Kharkiv. She is co-editor of Detroit-Moscow-Detroit: An Architecture for Industrialization, 1917–1945 (MIT Press, 2023), and is currently writing a book about interwar exchanges of worker housing expertise between the US and Europe using Atlanta, Georgia as a primary node. Crawford received her PhD and MArch from Harvard University, and her BA from Yale University. She was a Fulbright student in Kyiv in 2001–2002, during which she researched the emergence of post-independence Ukrainian architecture. 

Set reading: 

  • Svitlana Smolenska, ‘Kharkiv in the 1920s–1930s as the Capital of Victorious Modernism’, Docomomo Journal 70 (2024): 8–17.

Note from the lecturer: I highly recommend skimming the entire issue, which has fantastic maps, photographs, drawings, and articles on other modernist architecture sites in Kharkiv. You can view it here: https://doi.org/10.52200/docomomo.70.

  • Christina E. Crawford, ‘From Tractors to Territory: Socialist Urbanization through Standardization’, Journal of Urban History 44.1 (2017): 54–77.

Wed 25 November 18:30 - 20:00 GMT

Week 5 | Modernist Theatre

Focus themes: theatre and scenography

Focus personalities: Les Kurbas, Mykola Kulish, Vadym Meller

Description: An innovative theatre director, Les Kurbas staged experimental productions in Kyiv and Kharkiv during the 1920s, transforming our idea of what theatre can be. The seminar explores his work in these two cities, focusing on shows that examined fundamental issues in world theatre and innovated with its formal qualities. We will also place Kurbas in dialogue with his principal collaborators, the writer Mykola Kulish and the artist Vadym Meller.  

Lecturer: Virlana Tkacz, Yara Arts Group, New York City

Biography: Virlana Tkacz is a theatre director, curator, poet and translator. She is the founding director of Yara Arts Group, a resident company at La MaMa Experimental Theatre in New York. With Yara, she has created over forty original theatre pieces since 1990. Virlana graduated from Columbia University with an MFA in theatre directing, writing her thesis on Les Kurbas. In 2010 together with Irena Makaryk, she edited Modernism in Kyiv, published by University of Toronto Press. From 2017 to 2018 she co-curated a series of museum exhibitions, culminating in Kurbas: New Worlds at Mystetskyi Arsenal National Art and Culture Museum Complex.

Set reading:

  • Virlana Tkacz, ‘Towards a New Vision of Theatre: Les Kurbas’s Work at the Young Theatre in Kyiv’ and ‘Les Kurbas’s Early Work at the Berezil: From Bodies in Motion to Performing the Invisible’, in Modernism in Kyiv: Jubilant Experimentation, ed. by Irena R. Makaryk and Virlana Tkacz (University of Toronto Press, 2010): 278–309 and 362–385

Optional reading:

Wed 2 December 18:30 – 20:00 GMT

Week 6 | Printing Modernity. Graphic Design and Book Art

Focus themes: publishing and graphic design

Focus personalities: Heorhii Narbut, Mykhailo Semenko, Vasyl Yermilov

Description: This seminar investigates how books, magazines, typography, and graphic design became powerful tools for cultural experimentation in Ukraine during the turbulent years of revolution and state-building in the early twentieth century. At a moment when political institutions and cultural identities were being reimagined, artists, writers, and designers turned to the printed page to ask a fundamental question: what should a modern Ukrainian culture look like? Focusing on the emergence of a vibrant print culture in Kyiv and beyond, the seminar examines how print, illustration, and design became instruments of artistic innovation and cultural expression.

Lecturer: Lauren Warner-Treloar, Kingston University London

Biography: Lauren Warner-Treloar is an art historian, curator, and translator specialising in Ukrainian and transnational art histories, print culture, graphic design, and book history. She is an AHRC Techne-funded PhD candidate in Art & Design History at Kingston University London, where she examines the intersections of typography, publishing, and experimental book culture in Ukraine and across Eastern Europe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. She is the founder and editor of Lodestar East, a newsletter exploring culture, memory, books, art, and cinema across Eastern Europe. She served as co-chair of the British Association for the Study of Ukraine’s Arts & Culture Working Group.

Set reading:

  • Konstantin Akinsha, ‘Constructor Vasyl Yermilov: A Captive of the Material World’, in In the Eye of the Storm. Modernism in Ukraine, 1900-1930s, ed. by Konstantin Akinsha, Katia Denysova, and Olena Kashuba-Volvach (Thames & Hudson, 2022): 60–65.
  • Oleh S. Ilnytzkyj, ‘Under Imperial Eyes in Kyiv and Kharkiv Magazines: Ukrainska khata (1909-14), Muzahet (1919), Mystetstvo (1919), Katafalk iskusstva (1922), Semafor u maibutnie (1922), Honh komunkul’ta (1924), Nova generatsiia (1927-30), Avangard: Al’manakh proletars’kykh myttsiv Novoi generatsii (1930)’, in The Oxford Critical and Cultural History of Modernist Magazines: Vol. 3: Europe 1880s–1940, ed. by Peter Brooker, Sascha Bru, Andrew Thacker, and Christian Weikop (Oxford University Press, 2013): 1341–1362.

Optional reading:



Wed 9 December 18:30 - 20:00 GMT

Week 7 | Modernism and Ukrainian Dance

Focus themes: ballet, choreography, folk dance

Focus personalities: Bronislawa Nijinska, Pavlo Virsky

Description: The seminar examines the subject of Ukrainian dance from two perspectives. On the one hand, modernist dance can be ‘Ukrainian’ by geographical criteria—by being danced on Ukrainian territory. On the other hand, modernist dance can be thought of as ‘Ukrainian’ by symbolic criteria—symbolising Ukraine or Ukrainian culture while using modernist aesthetics and tropes. The first phenomenon will be studied through Bronislawa Nijinska’s productive five-year period in Kyiv (1915–1921). The second will be explored through the Soviet choreographer Pavlo Virsky, most famous for his folk-staged work with the Ukrainian State Dance Ensemble

Lecturer: Dr Andriy Nahachewsky, University of Alberta, Canada

Biography: Andriy Nahachewsky is Professor Emeritus at the University of Alberta, where he occupied the Huculak Chair of Ukrainian Culture and Ethnography (1990–2018) and served as founding Director of the Kule Centre for Ukrainian and Canadian Folklore (2001–2016). His research interests and publications deal with Ukrainian dance, the Ukrainian Canadian experience, diaspora, changing Ukrainian traditions with modernity, and ethnographic methodology. He has conducted fieldwork projects on Ukrainian culture in Ukraine and in ten countries of the Ukrainian diaspora and was the curator of the Bohdan Medwidsky Ukrainian Folklore Archives, a large multimedia repository of resources on Ukrainian culture.

Set reading:

Wed 16 December 18:30 - 20:00 GMT

Week 8 | Musical Modernism in Ukraine. Between Inheritance and Innovation

Focus themes: music, folk song and modernist musical composition 

Description: This class introduces and examines the musical environment and key figures of the modernist era in Ukraine. Given the political division of the country, we will focus primarily on composers in Kyiv and Kharkiv, including Borys Liatoshynsky, Levko Revutsky, Mykola Roslavets, Mykhailo Verykivsky, Valentyn Kostenko, and Pylyp Kozytskyy, with some discussion of Jozef Koffler, Vasyl Barvinsky, and Stefania Turkevych in Lviv. Through their activities and works, we will explore the Ukrainian modernist tension between the inheritance of folk traditions and the drive towards innovation that is seen throughout the culture of the era.

Lecturer: Dr Leah Batstone, Montclair State University, USA

Biography: Leah Batstone is an assistant professor and area head of music history at Montclair State University. Her research focuses on the intersections of music, politics, and philosophy in Central and Eastern Europe. Her first book, Mahler’s Nietzsche: Politics and Philosophy in the Wunderhorn Symphonies, was published by Boydell and Brewer in 2023. Her scholarship has appeared in numerous peer-reviewed journals, including Music and Letters, 19th Century Music, Journal of the Royal Musical Association, and the Journal of the American Musicological Society. She is currently writing a monograph on Ukrainian musical modernism and a handbook to Stefania Turkevych’s Symphony No. 1 (1937) for Cambridge University Press. She is also the co-editor of the forthcoming collection Music in Ukraine: An Introduction to Nation, Identity, and Sound for Indiana University Press. In 2020, she founded the annual Ukrainian Contemporary Music Festival in New York City.

Set reading:

  • Dagmara Turchyn-Duvirak, ‘Kyiv, the 1920s, and Modernism in Music’, in Modernism in Kyiv: Jubilant Experimentation, ed. by Irena R. Makaryk and Virlana Tkacz (University of Toronto Press, 2010): 322–341.
  • Leah Batstone, ‘“Every Kind of Art Began to Flourish”: Ukrainian Music in the Modernist Context’, Scientific Herald of the National Music Academy of Ukraine 136 (2023): 49 –59 (https://doi.org/10.31318/2522-4190.2023.136.276554).

Optional reading: 

  • Leah Batstone, ‘When Imperial Narratives Fail: Or Constructing a History of Musical Modernism in Ukraine’, Journal of the American Musicological Society 79.1: 1–43.

Previous courses

22 September – 10 November 2025

Kultura. Exploring Ukraine’s visual culture

23 September – 18 November 2024

Kultura. Exploring Ukraine’s visual culture