Bohdan Rubchak papers, 1928-2020

Bohdan Rubchak, born 1935 in Kalush, Galicia, was a poet and a literary scholar. In 1948, after being displaced by the Second World War, Rubchak settled in the United States. He studied comparative literature at Rutgers University in New Jersey (Ph.D., 1977) and between 1974 and 2005 was a professor at the University of Illinois, Chicago Circle. A member of the New York Group, Rubchak published five collections of poetry: Kaminnyi sad (Stone Orchard, 1956), Promenysta zrada (Bright Betrayal, 1960), Divchyni bez krainy (For a Girl without a Country, 1963), Osobysta Klio (Personal Clio, 1967), and Marenu topyty (To Drown Marena, 1980) and a volume of collected works, Krylo Ikarove (The Wing of Icarus, 1983). Numerous essays in both English and Ukrainian have appeared in various journals on the subject of Ukrainian poetry and poets, such as Bohdan Nyzhankiv'sky, Vasyl' Barka, George Tarnawsky, and Vira Vovk, as well as the topics of modernism, and emigre Ukrainian literature. Of special note are his comprehensive introduction to Ukrainian modernism in Ostap Luts'kyi - molodomuzets' (Ostap Lutsky, Member of the Moloda Muza, 1968), his annotations of and introduction to Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky in the translation of Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (1981), and his notes to Bohdan Ihor Antonych - Zibrani tvory (Bohdan Ihor Antonych: Collected Works, 1967). Together with Bohdan Boychuk, Rubchak edited and wrote biographical vignettes for the important two-volume anthology of contemporary Ukrainian poetry in the West, Koordynaty (Co-ordinates, 1969).

Marianna Rubchak, born in 1931 in Canada, was a cultural and literary scholar, as well as one of the first researchers to explore the topic of Ukrainian Feminism. Marianna met her future husband, Bohdan, while studying at the University of Manitoba, causing her to briefly pause her studies. Rubchak resumed her education a few years later, obtaining a B.A. from Douglas College in 1971, an M.A. from Rutgers University in 1973, and a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champagne in 1988. Soon after defending her dissertation, Marianna landed a permanent position at the Valparaiso History Department. In the 1990s, Rubchak conducted extensive field research in Ukraine, visiting and interviewing different artists, as well as took an active part in conference proceedings and parliamentary hearings on women's issues in Ukraine. Rubchak became more and more interested in women's issues at the turn of the century, publishing articles about FEMEN and the Pink Brigade, female participation in the Maidan protests, and even the role of female statues in establishing the social roles of women in Ukraine.

Rubchak also published two collections "Mapping Difference. The Many Faces of Women in Contemporary Ukraine" (2011), which aimed to illuminate the changing status of women in Ukraine, and "New Imaginaries. Youthful Reinvention of Ukraine's Cultural Paradigm (2012).