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16 WWW.UNWLA.ORG “НАШЕ ЖИТТЯ”, СІЧЕНЬ 2020 Natalie Kononenko : From DP to Award - Winning Professor Accolades to a UNWLA Member at Large Submitted by Ivanka Olesnycky, Liaison for UNWLA Members at Large Natalie Kononenko was born in 1946 in the Displaced Per sons Camp at Cornberg, Germany. Her grandfather Konstantyn Kononenko , an agricultural economist , was politically active, trying to stop the policies that devasted the Ukrainian countryside and eventually led to the Holodomor. Because of his activism on beh alf of farmers, he was repeated jailed. The family knew they could not survive and fled West , and it was in a camp in the American - held sector of Germany that Natalie was born. The family emigrated to the United States in 1951 , and Natalie grew up in Boon ton, New Jersey . Graduating as high school valedictorian , Natalie went on to study at Cornell, then Radcliffe, then Harvard University , earning a joint PhD in Slavic Languages and Literatures and in Near Eastern Languages, Literatures, and Folklore. Her Ph D research was conducted in the rural areas of Eastern Turkey among Turkish bards called A shiks. She taught Russian Language and Slavic Folklore at the University of Virginia and also served as Assistant Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and as Chai r of the Slavic Department. When the Soviet Union began accepting international scholars, Natalie l ed some of the first student groups to visit the USSR in the 1970 s and 1980s. In 1987 she was one of the first US scholars to be allowed to live and work ou tside of Moscow. She chose placement in Ukraine and lived in Kyiv for three months , conducting archi val research at the University of Kyiv and at the Folklore Institute of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. This research led to the publication of Ukrainian Minstrels: And the Blind Shall Sing , a book that earned the Kovaliv Prize and won the American Asso ciation for Ukrainian Studies best book award. After the break - up of the USSR, Kono - nenko was able to do folklore fieldwork in rural Ukraine. Such work had previously been forbidden : scholars were restricted to major cities . A llowed to collect materials i n the countryside, Kononenko did so with gusto, partnering with colleagues from the Folklore Institute to travel, live in, and document rural life, ritual p ractices ( such as weddings ) and numerous stories . From 1998 on ward Kononenko has been visiting villages in Central Ukraine. This work has resulted in over 200 hours of interviews , and her research has led to a sound file database (see http://www.artsrn.ua lberta.ca/UkraineAudio/ ). Ko nonenko has also produced many articles that will be documented in a book she plans to write. Natalie Kononenko was recruited by the University of Alberta to assume the position of Kule Chair in Ukrainian Ethnograpy, a position funded with a generous gift from Canadian Ukrainian philanthropists Peter an d Doris Kule. Natalie accepted the position in 2004 and went on to teach some of the most popular courses in the Department of Modern Languages and Cultural Studies. Her publicati ons during this period include Slavic Folklore: A Handbook ( a widely used uni versity textbook ) and Champions of Philanthropy ( a book honoring the Kules and edited with the help of Serge Cipko ) . Kononenko also served as editor of Folk - lorica , the j ournal o f the Slavic and East European Folklore Association. This journal achieved international recognition and was instrumental in re establishing the dialogue between folklore scholars in the former Soviet Union and their colleagues in the West. Ever a dedicat ed field researcher, Ko - no nenko joined the Sanctuary Project, a pro - ject ai med at document ing Ukrainian sacral cul ture on the Canadian prairies. Her job was to conduct
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