Undergraduate Course: Christianity in Ukraine (988 to the present) (DIVI10119)
Course Outline
| School | School of Divinity |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 10 (Year 3 Undergraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | Having adopted Christianity from Constantinople (988), Prince Volodymyr made not only a religious but also a geopolitical choice. Yet for centuries Ukraine has been a home not only to the Eastern Orthodox, but also to Catholics, Greek Catholics, and Protestants, as well as to non-Christians, primarily Jews and Muslims. The course offers a more than a thousand-year long overview of the Christian presence in Ukraine, focusing on a link between religion and politics from the introduction of Christianity in Rus¿ (988) until current Russo-Ukrainian war. |
| Course description |
Academic Description
The course discusses more than a thousand-year-long history of Christianity in Ukraine, starting with the baptism of Rus¿ (988) under Prince Volodymyr and continuing up to the current Russo-Ukrainian war, in which Russia makes historical claims to the medieval state of Rus¿ and thus to Ukrainian territories at large.
Outline Content
Having adopted Christianity from Constantinople, Rus¿ entered the Byzantine world and defined Eastern Orthodoxy as a default religious choice for the majority of Christians who lived in these territories. Yet there were plentiful links to Western Christianity, especially during the time when Ukrainian territories belonged to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The case in point is the emergence of the largest Eastern Catholic Church, known now as the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, at the Union of Brest (1596). The course also analyses differences in the imperial policies towards various Christian denominations, as they were employed in the Catholic Habsburg Empire and the Orthodox Russian Empire. The Ukrainian territories were ruled by the Habsburgs and Romanovs between the partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the late eighteenth century and the fall of both empires at the end of the First World War. Close attention is paid to the Soviet religious policy in Ukraine in relation to the Orthodox, Greek Catholics, Roman Catholics, and different Protestant groups. Finally, the course looks at the surge of different Christian denominations in the early 1990s, after Ukraine gained its independence in 1991. A significant focus is put on the role of religion in the Maidans and in the current Russo-Ukrainian war.
Student Learning Experience
The course combines lectures and seminars. For seminar discussions, the students will be generally assigned readings from primary sources and secondary literature. Additionally, the students will be asked to deliver one oral presentation and write two essays during the semester. The tentative list of essay topics will be provided by a lecturer.
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | None |
Course Delivery Information
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| Academic year 2024/25, Available to all students (SV1)
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Quota: None |
| Course Start |
Semester 1 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
200
(
Lecture Hours 11,
Seminar/Tutorial Hours 11,
Feedback/Feedforward Hours 1,
Revision Session Hours 1,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
172 )
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| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
100 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
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| Additional Information (Assessment) |
10% oral presentation
30% mid-term course essay (1000 words) based on the analysis of a source
60% research essay (3000 words) on a given topic |
| Feedback |
Feedback during seminars; oral or written feedback on essay idea and outline |
| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Demonstrate an understanding of the complexities of the history of Ukraine based on original sources
- Demonstrate an improvement in skills of analysing primary sources from different historical periods
- Critically assess different academic discourses of the history of Christianity in Ukraine
- Present a coherent account of a topic in the Ukrainian religious history, using slides
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Reading List
Week 1: Introduction to the course
Plokhy, Serhii. The gates of Europe: a history of Ukraine. New York: Basic Books, 2021.
Snyder, Timothy. The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569¿1999. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008.
Week 2: Christianity during the rise and fall of the medieval state of Rus¿
Cross, Samuel Hazzard; Sherbowitz-Wetzor, Olgerd P. (transl. and ed.)
The Russian Primary Chronicle. Laurentian text. Cambridge, 1953.
Franklin, Simon; Shepard, Jonathan. The Emergence of Rus, 750-1200. London: Longman, 1996.
Franklin, Simon. Kievan Rus¿ (1015¿1125). In: Perrie M, ed. The Cambridge History of Russia. Cambridge University Press, 2006: 93-97.
Griffin, Sean. ¿Byzantine Liturgy and the Primary Chronicle¿. eScholarship, University of California, 2014.
Plokhy, Serhii. The origins of Rus¿. In: The Origins of the Slavic Nations: Premodern Identities in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. Cambridge University Press, 2006: 10-48.
Week 3: Reformation and Counter-Reformation in Ukrainian lands
Kim, Ho-woog; Chung, Jun-ki. History of Protestantism in Ukraine. Bogoslovni vestnik/Theological Quarterly 83.2 (2023): 465¿478.
Williams, George H. ¿Protestants in the Ukraine during the period of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth¿, Harvard Ukrainian Studies 2.1 (1978): 41¿72.
Week 4: Union of Brest (1596)
Reunion Treaty of Brest. Access: https://www.ewtn.com/catholicism/library/reunion-treaty-of-brest-1474
Gudziak, Borys A. Crisis and Reform: The Kyivan Metropolitanate, the Patriarchate of Constantinople and the Genesis of the Union of Brest. Cambridge, MA: Ukrainian Research Institute, Harvard University, 1998.
Sysyn, Frank E. ¿The Formation of Modern Ukrainian Religious Culture: The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries¿, in Church, Nation and State in Russia and Ukraine, ed. by Geoffrey A. Hosking, Edmonton: CIUS, 1990, 1-23.
Week 5: Cossacks and Orthodoxy
Ukrainian Draft Treaty of 1654. A Byelorussian Copy of the Articles sent by the Cossack Envoys Samoylo Bohdanov and Pavlo Teterya on the 14th day of May, 7162 (A.D. 1654). In Palko, Olena; Férez Gil, Manuel (eds.). Ukraine¿s Many Faces. Land, People, and Culture Revisited. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, 2023: 41-44.
Plokhy, Serhii. The Cossacks and Religion in Early Modern Ukraine. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.
Plokhy, Serhii. ¿Russia and Ukraine: Did They Reunite in 1654?¿, The Frontline: Essays on Ukraine¿s Past and Present. Cambridge, MA and London, England: Harvard University Press, 2021, 37-54.
Snyder, Timothy. The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569¿1999. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008, 105-117.
Week 6: Religion, conflict, and nation-building during the ¿long nineteenth century¿
Himka, John-Paul. ¿Priests and Peasants: The Greek Catholic Pastor and the Ukrainian National Movement in Austria, 1867-1900¿. Canadian Slavonic papers 21.1 (1979): 1¿14.
Himka, John-Paul. ¿The Greek Catholic Church and Nation-Building in Galicia, 1772-1918¿. Harvard Ukrainian studies 8.3/4 (1984): 426¿452.
Skinner, Barbara. ¿Borderlands of Faith: Reconsidering the Origins of a Ukrainian Tragedy¿. Slavic Review 64.1 (2005): 88¿116.
Week 7: Religious life during the Nazi Occupation of Ukraine (1941-1944)
Lewin, Kurt I. A Journey Through Illusions. Santa Barbara: Fithian Press, 1994.
Interview with Kurt Lewin, 30 January 1997, New York, U.S.A. Interviewer: Naomi Rappaport, Visual History Archive of the USC Shoah Foundation, 25423. Access: www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUBKuLL0rGc&t=4467s
Himka, John-Paul. ¿Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky and the Holocaust¿, Polin 26 (2013): 337-359.
Krawchuk, Andrii. Christian Social Ethics in Ukraine: the Legacy of Andrei Sheptytsky. Toronto: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press, 1997.
Week 8: Ukrainian Churches under Communism
Kis¿, Oksana. Survival as Victory: Ukrainian Women in the Gulag. Cambridge, MA and London, England: Harvard University Press, 2021, 227-246.
Wanner, Catherine. Communities of the Converted: Ukrainians and Global Evangelism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007, 55-96.
Week 9: Rebirth of Worship: Religious Transformations in Post-Communist Ukraine
Dyczok, Marta, Andreas Umland, and Andriy Kulykov. ¿Resurrection of Christianity in Ukraine. Prof. Jaroslav Skira on Religion and Politics, and Newly Created Orthodox Church of Ukraine¿. Ukraine Calling. Vol. 6. Germany: Ibidem Verlag, 2021.
Shlikhta, Natalia. ¿Eastern Christian Churches Between State and Society: An Overview of the Religious Landscape in Ukraine (1989¿2014)¿. Kyiv-Mohyla Humanities Journal 3 (2016): 123¿142.
Wanner, Catherine. Everyday Religiosity and the Politics of Belonging in Ukraine. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2022, 1-24.
Week 10: Churches and the Russo-Ukrainian War
Németh, Thomas Mark. ¿Pope Francis and Russia¿s war against Ukraine¿. Studia Universitatis Babes¿-Bolyai. Theologia Catholica¿ Latina 68.1 (2023): 92¿109.
Smytsnyuk, Pavlo. ¿The War in Ukraine as a Challenge for Religious Communities: Orthodoxy, Catholicism and Prospects for Peacemaking¿. Studia Universitatis Babes¿-Bolyai. Theologia Catholica¿ Latina 68.1 (2023): 26¿70.
Week 11: Final discussion
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Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
¿ Curiosity for learning
¿ Courage to deal with new difficult topics
¿ Ability to critically assess different sources of information
¿ Understanding of how the past can be instrumentalized for current political purposes
¿ Improved communication skills
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| Keywords | Christianity,Orthodoxy,Greek Catholicism,Ukraine |
Contacts
| Course organiser | |
Course secretary | |
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