Since the 1970s and 1980s, the study of immigration and ethnicity has grown to become an essential aspect of North American history. In Gathering a Heritage, Thomas M. Prymak uses the essays and articles he has written over the past thirty years as a historian of Ukrainian and Ukrainian Canadian history to reflect on the evolution of ethnic studies in Canada and the United States. The essays included in this book explore the history of Ukrainian and Slavonic immigration to North America and the literature through which these communities and their historians have sought to recapture their past. Each previously published essay is revised and expanded and several more appear here for the first time – including the fascinating story of French Canadian writer Gabrielle Roy’s connections with Ukrainian Canadians and her tumultuous affair with a Ukrainian Canadian nationalist in pre-war London.

In Byzantium there were two overlapping systems of dress: a semiotic one whereby dress was a code for rank and wealth, and a fashion system where dress was based on the desire to look a certain way. This book explains secular dress from the eighth to the twelfth centuries through an examination of painted representations.

A first attempt to present an approach to Ukrainian history which goes beyond the standard 'national narrative' schemes, predominant in the majority of post-Soviet countries after 1991, in the years of implementing 'nation-building projects'. An unrivalled collection of essays by the finest scholars in the field from Ukraine, Russia, USA, Germany, Austria and Canada, superbly written to a high academic standard. The various chapters are methodologically innovative and thought-provoking. The biggest Eastern European country has ancient roots but also the birth pangs of a new autonomous state. Its historiography is characterized by animated debates, in which this book takes a definite stance. The history of Ukraine is not written here as a linear, teleological narrative of ethnic Ukrainians but as a multicultural, multidimensional history of a diversity of cultures, religious denominations, languages, ethical norms, and historical experience. It is not presented as causal explanation of 'what has to have happened' but rather as conjunctures and contingencies, disruptions, and episodes of 'lack of history.'

The Russia-Ukraine war that began in 2022 turned the world's attention on Ukraine, the second-largest country in Europe and one of the leading global exporters of wheat and other valuable commodities. Though some Russian leaders have long denied and continue to reject Ukrainian sovereignty, this book presents a comprehensive picture of Ukraine that is both intertwined with and distinct from Russian history. From its days as Kyivan Rus and its inclusion in the Russian Empire to the fall of the Soviet Union, the Euromaidan demonstrations, and the outbreak of war with Russia, Ukraine, as this book demonstrates, has developed its own identity, territory, and culture. With an up-to-date timeline of events, short biographies of contemporary and historical figures, and a useful annotated bibliography, this book unpacks the historical claims and issues relevant to the conflict with Russia and provides an accessible introduction to Ukraine and its peoples.