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About Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed

Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed is a PhD candidate in the Department of Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures, Indiana University

NBN Episodes hosted by Nataliya:

Ukrainian Studies May 13, 2022

The Ukrainian Intelligentsia and Genocide

The Struggle for History, Language, and Culture in the 1920s and 1930s

Victoria A. Malko

Hosted by Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed
Victoria A. Malko's book The Ukrainian Intelligentsia and Genocide: The Struggle for History, Language, and Culture in the 1920s and 1930s (Lexington Books, 2021) focuses on the first group targeted in …
Ukrainian Studies February 22, 2022

In Isolation

Dispatches from Occupied Donbas

Stanislav Aseyev

Hosted by Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed
Stanislav Aseyev is a Ukrainian journalist and writer born in Donetsk, which at present remains occupied by Russia-backed militants. Sometime after the beginning of the occupation, he was captured for …
Ukrainian Studies February 8, 2022

Courage and Fear

Ola Hnatiuk

Hosted by Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed
Lemberg, Lwów, Lvov, Lviv… The city, which is located in the western part of Ukraine, evokes a highly entangled past that contains references to a number of nations, ethnicities, empires …
Literary Studies January 13, 2022

Küchlya, Decembrist Poet

Translated by Anna Kurkina Rush, Peter France, and Christopher Rush

Yuri Tynianov

Hosted by Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed
Küchlya (1925), the first novel of the great Russian formalist Yury Tynyanov gives us a vividly written and moving recreation of the childhood, youth, beliefs and adventures of an eccentric …
Eastern European Studies December 29, 2021

Eastern Europe!

Everything You Need to Know about the History (and More!) of a Region that Shaped Our World and Still Does

Tomek Jankowski

Hosted by Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed
When the legendary Romulus killed his brother Remus and founded the city of Rome in 753 BCE, Plovdiv―today the second-largest city in Bulgaria―was thousands of years old. Indeed, London, Paris …
Eastern European Studies November 16, 2021

Contemporary Ukrainian and Baltic Art

Political and Social Perspectives, 1991-2021

Svitlana Biedarieva

Hosted by Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed
Contemporary Ukrainian and Baltic Art (Ibidem Press, 2021) focuses on political and social expressions in contemporary art of Ukraine, Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia. It explores the transformations that art in …
Eastern European Studies November 9, 2021

Ukraine's Nuclear Disarmament

A History

Yuri Kostenko

Hosted by Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed
Yuri Kostenko’s Ukraine’s Nuclear Disarmament: A History (Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 2020) is a meticulous account of how the Ukrainian government made a decision in the 1990s to give up …
Eastern European Studies October 27, 2021

The Frontline

Essays on Ukraine's Past and Present

Serhii Plokhy

Hosted by Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed
Serhii Plokhy’s The Frontline: Essays on Ukraine’s Past and Present (Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 2021) includes discussions that focus on the major milestones of the history of Ukraine, ranging from …
Eastern European Studies August 13, 2021

Russian Energy Chains

The Remaking of Technopolitics from Siberia to Ukraine to the European Union

Margarita M. Balmaceda

Hosted by Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed
Margarita Balmaceda’s Russian Energy Chains: The Remaking of Technopolitics from Siberia to Ukraine to the European Union (Columbia University Press, 2021) is a meticulous exploration of a complex system of …
Literary Studies August 13, 2021

Disharmony and Other Plays

Translated by George Mihaychuk

Volodymyr Vynnychenko

Hosted by Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed
Volodymyr Vynnychenko is one of the most ambiguous and controversial Ukrainian writers of the twentieth century. In an intricate and highly entangled way, his persona combines an artist and a …
Literary Studies August 9, 2021

Kin

Translated by Russell Scott Valentino

Miljenko Jergovic

Hosted by Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed
Kin by Miljenko Jergović (Archipelago Books, 2021) is a family story that covers more than a century; it takes readers to various geographical places and introduces them to a kaleidoscope …
Literature June 9, 2021

Lilacs in the Dust Bowl

Diana Stevan

Hosted by Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed
Author Diana Stevan's sequel to the award-winning Sunflowers Under Fire. Lukia's story continues in Lilacs in the Dust Bowl (Peregrin Publishing, 2021),  an inspirational family saga about love and heartache during …
Eastern European Studies May 27, 2021

From "the Ukraine" to Ukraine

A Contemporary History of 1991-2021

Georgiy Kasianov, Matthew Rojansky, and Mykhailo Minakov

Hosted by Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed
In 2021, Ukraine celebrates its thirty-year independence anniversary. During this relatively short period of time—when considered in historical terms—Ukraine underwent a number of drastic changes that have so far shaped …
Literary Studies May 5, 2021

Quiet Spiders of the Hidden Soul

Mykola (Nik) Bazhan's Early Experimental Poetry

Mykola Bazhan

Hosted by Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed
Quiet Spiders of the Hidden Soul: Mykola (Nik) Bazhan’s Early Experimental Poetry (Academic Studies Press, 2020) presents a collection of early works by Mykola Bazhan, one of the most enigmatic …
Literary Studies April 26, 2021

The Orphanage

A Novel

Serhiy Zhadan

Hosted by Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed
The Ukrainian literary scene today is particularly vibrant. The voice of Serhiy Zhadan is distinct, well-known, and easily-recognizable. In 2021, Yale University Press published his novel titled The Orphanage (Yale …
Eastern European Studies April 14, 2021

Survival As Victory

Ukrainian Women in the Gulag

Oksana Kis

Hosted by Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed
Oksana Kis’s Survival as Victory: Ukrainian Women in the Gulag (Harvard Series in Ukrainian Studies, Ukrainian Research Institute, Harvard University Press, 2021) fundamentally contributes to the Gulag studies through its essential intervention …
Eastern European Studies March 18, 2021

The Politics of Bureaucratic Corruption in Post-Transitional Eastern Europe

Marina Zaloznaya

Hosted by Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed
Using a mix of ethnographic, survey, and comparative historical methodologies, Marina Zaloznaya's The Politics of Bureaucratic Corruption in Post-Transitional Eastern Europe (Cambridge UP, 2017) offers an unprecedented insight into the corruption …
Eastern European Studies March 5, 2021

Normalizing Corruption

Failures of Accountability in Ukraine

Erik S. Herron

Hosted by Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed
Erik S. Herron’s Normalizing Corruption: Failures of Accountability in Ukraine (University of Michigan Press, 2020) zeroes in on the mechanisms that sustain corruption and minimize accountability: aspects that play a …
Eastern European Studies January 12, 2021

Ukraine

What Everyone Needs to Know

Serhy Yekelchyk

Hosted by Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed
In 2020, Oxford University Press published a second edition of Serhy Yekelchyk’s Ukraine: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford UP, 2020). This series is based on the reference format that …
Eastern European Studies January 8, 2021

Making Ukraine Soviet

Literature and Cultural Politics under Lenin and Stalin

Olena Palko

Hosted by Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed
Olena Palko’s Making Ukraine Soviet: Literature and Cultural Politics under Lenin and Stalin (Bloomsbury Academic Press 2020) offers an intriguing investigation that zeroes in on the intersection of history and …
Literary Studies January 8, 2021

Radical Animism

Reading for the End of the World

Jemma Deer

Hosted by Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed
Jemma Deer’s Radical Animism: Reading for the End of the World (Bloomsbury Academic Press, 2020) invites the reader to take a moment and to ponder on the way of reading …
Literary Studies December 30, 2020

Avant-Garde Art in Ukraine, 1910-1930

Contested Memory

Myroslav Shkandrij

Hosted by Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed
Myroslav Shkandrij’s Avant-Garde Art in Ukraine, 1910-1930: Contested Memory (Academic Studies Press, 2019) offers an insight into the development of the Ukrainian avant-garde, a topic which still remains unjustifiably understudied …
Eastern European Studies December 3, 2020

Cossacks in Jamaica, Ukraine at the Antipodes

Essays in Honor of Marko Pavlyshyn

Alessandro Achilli, Serhy Yekelchyk and Dmytro Yesypenko

Hosted by Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed
Cossacks in Jamaica, Ukraine at the Antipodes: Essays in honor of Marko Pavlyshyn (Academic Studies Press, 2020) is an impressive volume of essays on a variety of topics and issues …
Russian and Eurasian Studies December 2, 2020

Conspiracy Culture

Post-Soviet Paranoia and the Russian Imagination

Keith A. Livers

Hosted by Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed
Conspiracy theories prove to be popular and widely-spread. As a rule, we do not tend to take them seriously, but it would be wrong to suggest that audiences are not …