“Ricerche slavistiche” and the Beginnings of the New Ukrainian Studies in Italy: Between the Italian Philological Tradition and International Collaborations

Abstract

In this article I offer an overview of the articles published in “Ricerche slavistiche” pertaining to Ukrainian Studies. Although quantitatively not abundant, articles devoted to Ukraine and its culture and language published in “Ricerche slavistiche” have played since the 1980s an important role in normalizing the presence of Ukrainian Studies in the broader scholarly context of Italian Slavic Studies. In accordance with the traditional attention that “Ricerche slavistiche” has paid to early modern and medieval Slavic languages and literatures, most Ukraine-related articles in the journal touch on issues regarding the 17th and the 18th centuries and their connections with earlier periods. A particularly important milestone for both “Ricerche slavistiche” and Italian and international Ukrainian Studies was the publication in the 1990 issue of the proceedings of the conference on the perception of the Middle Ages in Slavic cultures of the Baroque period held in Urbino in 1989. The Ukraine-related articles published in these proceedings by scholars from various countries and with different foci, as well as the overall architecture of the issue, in which Ukraine figured alongside with Russia and Poland as a fully fledged object of research, can be said to have opened a new phase in the study of Ukraine in Italy and beyond. Giovanna Brogi’s role in promoting Ukrainian studies and their presence in “Ricerche slavistiche”, inspired by the open-mindedness of such leading Italian scholars as Sante Graciotti and Riccardo Picchio, can hardly be overestimated. In more recent years, “Ricerche slavistiche” has also hosted a number of contributions on modern Ukrainian literature and Ukrainian linguistics.