Robert Romanchuk

Hellenic Research Fellow, Tsakopoulos Hellenic Collection, California State University, Sacramento, Summer 2025

Ukrainian Studies Fund Research Fellow, Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, Harvard University, Fall 2018

Robert Romanchuk (Ph.D., Slavic languages and literatures, University of California, Los Angeles) is the Pribic Family Associate Professor of Slavic in the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics. His fields are philology, oral tradition, psychoanalysis, and philosophy.

He researches the creolized malorosiis'ka slovesnist' (“Little Russian literature”) out of which the Ukrainian/Russian romantic writer Nikolai Gogol emerged, and the implication of the Gogolian text in the Freudian field; Slavic oral-traditional epic song of the Ottoman Ecumene, in particular Bosniak, Serbian, and Ukrainian epic; and the Byzantine written epic Digenis Akritis and its medieval Slavic reception.

For his teaching, Professor Romanchuk has been recognized with an FSU Undergraduate Teaching Award.

Courses Taught

Nikolai Gogol and Ukrainian Romanticism

Epic Song in Southern and Eastern Europe

Introduction to Historical Linguistics and Indo-European Studies

History of the Ukrainian and Russian Languages

Hermeneutics and Rhetoric of Kyivan Rus' Literature

The Slavic Vampire

Russian and Ukrainian Fairy Tales

Soviet Russian Cinema

Slavic Culture and Civilization

Ukrainian and Russian Languages (various levels and skills)

Selected Publications

• Romanchuk, R. (2024). Borrowings from the Old Slavic Digenis Akritis in the Muscovite Buovo d'Antona (Bova Korolevich). Canadian-American Slavic Studies, 58 (1-2), 190-203.
• Romanchuk, R. (2023). Slavic Oral-Traditional Epic in the Ottoman Ecumene. In Pamela J. Lothspeich (Ed.), The Epic World (pp. 382-395). Routledge.
• Romanchuk, R., Hostetler, B., Herrington, M. W., Timm, C., & Simmons, S. (2022). “Daniel the Exile,” Ekphrasis of Hippodrome Scenes: Cathedral of St. Sophia in Kyiv? In Foteini Spingou (Ed.), Sources for Byzantine Art History, Volume 3: The Visual Culture of Later Byzantium (1081–c.1350) (part 1: pp. 564-584). Cambridge University Press.
• Romanchuk, R. (2019). “Intellectual Silence” and Intellectual Endeavor in Medieval Slavia Orthodoxa. Russian History, 46 (2-3), 193-212.
• Romanchuk, R. (2018). The Old Slavic Digenis Akritis: Its 'Formulaic Style' and Problems of Its Edition. In Judith D. Kornblatt (ed.), American Contributions to the Sixteenth International Congress of Slavists. Volume 2: Literature (pp. 187-210). Slavica Publishers at Indiana University
• Koropeckyj, R. and Romanchuk, R. (2017). Harkusha the Noble Bandit and the 'Minority' of Little Russian Literature. The Russian Review, 76 (2), 294-310.
• Romanchuk, R. (2016). Mount Athos. In David Wallace (ed.), Europe: A Literary History, 1348-1418 (vol. 2: pp. 376-402). Oxford University Press.
• Romanchuk, R. (2016). Writing, Reading, and Rhetoric: 'Lettered Education' in Kyivan Rus'. In Frank Sysyn (ed.), Mykhailo Hrushevsky. History of Ukraine-Rus'. Volume 3. To the Year 1340 (pp. 511-524). Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press.
• Romanchuk, R. (2013). Confronting Ukrainian Modernism: Some New and Recent Translations of Poetry. Slavic and East European Journal, 57 (3), 465-475.
• Romanchuk, R. (2010). The Idea of the Heart in Byzantium and the History of the Book. In Orietta Da Rold, & Elaine Treharne (eds.), Textual Cultures: Cultural Texts, 1000-2010 (Essays and Studies 63) (pp. 163-186). Boydell and Brewer.
• Romanchuk, R. (2009). Back to 'Gogol's Retreat From Love': Mirgorod as a Locus of Gogolian Perversion. (Part II: 'Vii.'). Canadian Slavonic Papers, 51 (2-3), 305-331.
• Romanchuk, R. (2007). Byzantine Hermeneutics and Pedagogy in the Russian North: Monks and Masters at the Kirillo-Belozerskii Monastery, 1397-1501. University of Toronto Press.
• De Lossa, R., Koropeckyj, R. R., & Romanchuk, R. (2005). Rozmovljajmo! Let's Talk. A Basic Ukrainian Course with Polylogs, Grammar, and Conversation Lessons. Slavica Publishers at Indiana University.
• Koropeckyj, R., & Romanchuk, R. (2003). Ukraine in Blackface: Performance and Representation in Gogol's Dikan'ka Tales, Book I. Slavic Review, 62 (3), 525-547.

Current Research Projects

• The Old Slavic Digenis Akritis (The Deeds of the Brave Men of Old): A Critical Reconstruction with English Translation
• The Ukrainian reception of Plato’s writings
• Gogol’s Mirgorod: Four Ways to Write a Perverse Symptom (monograph in progress)
• Nikolai Gogol and malorosiis'ka slovesnist'/“Little Russian literature” (article series with Roman Koropeckyj, UCLA)
• Textbooks of the medieval Kyivan/“Old Rusian” language (with David J. Birnbaum, emeritus, U Pittsburgh) and of the literature of the early Romantic period in Ukraine (in Russian and Ukrainian)