Mentor’s Name and Department: Dr. Elizabeth Masarik, History
Major and Class Year: History, Class of 2025
Long-Term Goals: I hope someday to work in the field of Public History, which has opportunities in not only providing a history of the public, but also a history more accessible to the public outside of the academic community. This could be working in a museum, or a National Park, or even in a town or city directly.
Project Description:
Examining 20th Century Ukrainian Immigration to the US as a whole, while also taking a special look at Upstate New York and specifically, Elmira. The question, “Why Elmira?” sparked the research in the first place. All over Upstate New York, there are Ukrainian communities in towns and cities that would seem unlikely locations a group would immigrate to. My family was one of the families that immigrated to these smaller areas as opposed to larger cities like NYC, Philadelphia, or even Rochester. This created the structure for research. The beginning was learning and reading about Ukrainian Immigration from a general lens. The Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How these people came to the US en-masse was the main idea for reading these sources. From these general histories, I chose a variety of categories to delve further into and place within a more specific idea of what it was like for these immigrants in these smaller cities and towns of Upstate New York. These categories include ideas of race, identity, education, culture, and language. This led the way for the rest of my research on these more specific ideas.
What is the most significant experience from your research?
Going to Elmira for a week and see the data/sources with my own eyes. While I have always been exposed to the direct impacts of the Ukrainian Diasporic communities through my family, I had never seen these smaller areas on which I had focused my research. I was able to see where these people first immigrated to, the places where the community once thrived, and where diasporic culture was brewed. I was also able to go into the city archives and see directly how Ukrainian stories are being actively preserved. It allowed me to be more connected than ever to not only the research, but also the public I was writing about.
This project was made possible thanks to the generosity of the Brockport Foundation.