U-M is the only North American University to offer a minor in Ukrainian Studies. The academic minor in Ukrainian is a multi-faceted program that integrates Ukrainian studies into broader intellectual and policy agendas while promoting research and scholarly work on contemporary Ukraine in the United States.
Minor Requirements
Typical Courses Offered
Ukrainian Internship Opportunities
Ukrainian Language Studies Scholarship
Courses offered in Winter 2026
Ukrainian Cinema UKR 316
This course surveys Ukrainian cinema from its Soviet-era beginnings to the post-Soviet and wartime present, treating film as both art and cultural critique. We examine how directors reflected and contested narratives of empire, nation, race, and ethnicity across changing regimes— from the 1920s avant-garde and 1930s Stalinist propaganda to post-independence auteurs and contemporary frontline documentaries. Students engage closely with key films and contexts to see how cinema has served at once as state instrument and as cultural resistance.
Cultures of Ukraine SLAVIC 290 (section 5)
The course surveys the diverse cultures and subcultures of Ukraine, exploring the country’s rich history, languages, literatures, geographies, nationalities, and religions, alongside such other culture-shaping facets as sexual identities, political ideologies, underground movements, subcultures in the temporarily occupied territories, and diaspora communities.
Culture Under Occupation: Ukraine and Beyond SLAVIC 290 (section 6)
This course explores how cultures persist, adapt, and resist under conditions of occupation. Focusing on Ukraine’s currently occupied territories—particularly the Donbas and Crimea—it examines how artistic expression, language, and collective memory respond to censorship, displacement, and violence. Through comparative case studies from other regions and historical periods, students will analyze the mechanisms of cultural survival, collaboration, and resistance, considering what it means to speak up and make art, or conversely to go silent, under foreign control.
