Chernenko, Alexandra

Chernenko, Alexandra or Lysiak-Rudnytsky, Alexandra [Черненко, Олександра or Лисяк-Рудницький, Олександра; Černenko or Lysjak-Rudnyc'kyj, Oleksandra], b 2 September 1923 in Piotrków-Trybunalski, Poland, d 24 June 2014 in Edmonton, Alberta. Literary scholar, poet, and literary critic; wife of Ivan Lysiak Rudnytsky. Chernenko emigrated to Austria in 1944 and then to Canada in 1947. She settled in Edmonton where she published her first collection of poetry Liudyna [A Human Being] in 1960. She studied Slavic literatures at the University of Alberta (MA in 1974) and at the Ukrainian Free University in Munich (PhD in 1986). Chernenko’s main contribution to literature studies are her monographs on Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky (Mykhailo Kotsiubyns'kyi – impresionist [Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky: An Impressionist], 1977) and Vasyl Stefanyk (Ekspresionizm u tvorchosti Vasylia Stefanyka [Expressionism in the Works of Vasyl Stefanyk], 1989). She also wrote a monograph on the impact of the Pereiaslav Treaty of 1654 on the Ukrainian intellectual tradition (Velyka triokhsotlitnia viina: Pereiaslavs'ka uhoda ta kryza natsional'noi samosvidomosti [The Great 300-Year War: The Pereiaslav Treaty and the Crisis of National Self-Awareness], 2004), a number of essays dedicated to Ukrainian literary modernism, and literary criticism. In the 1990s, she published two more collections of poetry V dorozi do druhoho bereha (On the Way to the Other Shore, 1992) and Palomnyk (The Pilgrim, 1993).

[This article was written in 2019.]