AAU Senior Lecturer Interviewed on Ukrainian Literature and Culture

AAU Lecturer, Andrew Giarelli, was interviewed by Euromaidan Press on a recent trip to Lviv, Ukraine as a guest lecturer on Shakespeare’s King Lear and 17th century English Metaphysical poetry in the Department of English Philology at Ivan Franko University. He also published an article in the Euromaidan Press titled

Giarelli is the author of The Lands Between: A Central European Journey* about the cultures that took shape across the former Habsburg lands, and it ends with a chapter on Lviv. He specializes in literature scholarship and journalism, bringing unique insight on Ukraine-related reporting that has appeared in U.S., Czech, Slovak, and Moldovan media.

During the interview, Giarelli discussed the suppression of Ukrainian literature, Russian propaganda, mistrust of news, and misinformation.

In a global context, Russian literature has really overshadowed the whole global impression of what Eastern European literature is, according to the interviewer Peeter Helme. Giarelli commented that while choosing course work for a European Literature class, there is a question of whether to include Russian literature because it is not European, but also major figures of literature make it easy to end up with only Western European representation.

Helme mentioned what philosopher Johann Gottfried von Herder said: that there are no small literatures, and, despite what Russian propaganda says, Ukrainian literature is older though less known.

鈥淭his is not only a war on the battlefield. It鈥檚 a cultural war, a war of historical re-evaluation, a war of ideas and images. And that鈥檚 why I worry about bots and trolls鈥攈ow easy it is to twist these arguments just by repetition. 鈥楴o, no, no. It鈥檚 all Russian.鈥� Over and over,鈥� said Giarelli.

Read the full interview on .

Among AAU’s initiatives and events related to Ukraine this academic year was the with Vasyl Zvarych, the Ambassador of Ukraine to the Czech Republic, Karel 艠ehka, Chief of the General Staff of the Czech Armed Forces and more, as well as the President of AAU鈥檚 trip to Ukraine which was part of a delegation from the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes that presented the book at Ivan Franko University and the Ukrainian Catholic University.

*The Lands Between: A Central European Journey is available on with a 20% discount for AAU students, faculty, and administration, using the promo code LANDS20.