Marusya Bociurkiw

Early years

Bociurkiw was born in Edmonton, Alberta to Vera Anne (née Wasylyshyn) and Bohdan Rostyslav Bociurkiw, and sibling to Taras, Michael, Roman (deceased), Jeannie, and Lydia. Her father was co-founder of the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies. While most of her childhood was spent in Edmonton and Ottawa, Bociurkiw also lived in London, England for two years (1964–65 and 1972–73) while her father was a Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics. Ukrainian history and culture were central to Bociurkiw's childhood and instilled in her a sense of Ukrainian identity and history, as well as a desire to rewrite that history. This is a common thread throughout Bociurkiw's books, essays, and films: reflecting critically and intersectionally on what it means to be Ukrainian, Canadian, feminist, and lesbian.

Education and career

During high school, Bociurkiw was active in drama and fine arts programs. This led to her pursuit of a Bachelor of Fine Arts (1982) at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (NSCAD) University. While there, she discovered feminist art practice and the new field of video art. She studied with Bruce Barber and Garry Neill Kennedy. She was part of what Bruce Barber has called "the gathering momentum of a feminist movement at NSCAD ",", co-founding the Women Artists' File at the NSCAD Library, which later inspired the Toronto-based Women's Art Resource Centre. She was active on the board of the Centre for Art Tapes in Halifax, where she curated a Toronto-Halifax exchange of activist performance art entitled "Performance As Resistance" (1985), which featured dub poets Lillian Allen & Clifton Joseph, humourist Sheila Gostick and Halifax a capella group Four The Moment. After graduating from NSCAD, she moved to Toronto and in 1983, collectively produced the documentary, Our Choice, A Tape About Teenage Mothers, (Women's Media Alliance). In 1984, she co-founded the feminist video collective, Emma Productions, which produced several works, including "No Small Change: The Story of the Eaton's Strike" (dir. Ruth Bishop & Marusya Bociurkiw 1985) and "Bullets for a Revolution" (dir. Marusya Bociurkiw 1988). These films were produced and screened in the context of a dynamic feminist media culture in 1980's Toronto. These were followed by several single-authored works, including "Unspoken Territory", about the history of racial profiling in Canada, and the most recent This is Gay Propaganda: LGBT Rights and the War in Ukraine (2015). This film explores the role of queer activists in Ukraine's Euromaidan Revolution and the Russian occupation that followed, through interviews with LGBT Ukrainians. Bociurkiw's films have screened at film festivals on several continents.

Bociurkiw is also an award-winning writer and media studies scholar. In 1994,Bociurkiw published her first book, The Woman Who Loved Airports (Press Gang) a collection of short stories, followed by a poetry collection, Halfway to the East (Lazara Press 1999). In 1999, she completed an MA in Social and Political Thought, at York University (Toronto, Canada). Bociurkiw's creative and scholarly careers have always been intertwined. While teaching sessional positions, completing a PhD in Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of British Columbia (2005) and later working as a Professor in the Radio and Television Arts (RTA) School of Media, Ryerson University (2007 to present), she completed her first novel, The Children of Mary (Inanna 2006), and the award-winning memoir, Comfort Food for Breakups (Arsenal 2007). In 2011, she published the academic book, Feeling Canadian: Television Nationalism & Affect' (Wilfrid Laurier University Press) '

Bociurkiw promotes feminist and anti-racist pedagogy and research through the Studio for Media Activism and Critical Thought, a research hub at Ryerson University that blurs the boundaries between media art, activism, and scholarly investigation. It organizes a yearly speakers' series, symposia, student mentorship, and an online graduate journal. In 2015, the Studio's Speaker Series, which is open to Ryerson students, faculty and the public, featured Indigenous Scholar, Dr. Raven Sinclair, media artist Deanna Bowen, anti-Poverty Activists, Cathy Crowe and Dr. Abramovitch, and disability studies scholar and activist, Dr. Eliza Chandler.

Activism

As the founder of the feminist video collective Emma Productions, and as an out queer, Bociurkiw was very active in the Toronto and Vancouver feminist movement, peace, and LGBT social movements throughout the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. In the 1980s, she was active in Women's Action for Peace, International Women's Day Coalition, the pro-choice movement, the Latin American solidarity movement, and Women for Economic Justice While living in Montreal, she co-designed and co-taught the first course on LGBT cinema in Canada, at Concordia University, with Thomas Waugh. She was among the first group of women in Canada to enter the male-dominated field of media art, and to use film and video to draw attention to women's, labour and other issues.

Bociurkiw's most recent film, This is Gay Propaganda: LGBT Rights and the War in Ukraine, highlights the role of LGBT activists in the 2013 Euromaidan and 2014 Ukrainian revolution which culminated in the expulsion of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. LGBT people in Ukraine had a lot to lose from the rise of Russian political influences in Ukraine. As a result of the illegal occupation and annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation in 2014, bringing it under the Russian LGBT propaganda law, many LGBT Ukrainians from Crimea and Donetsk were forced to flee to safe houses in Kiev and Odessa. Although the law criminalizing same sex sexual activity under Soviet Union law was revoked in 1991 when Ukraine achieved Independence, there remains a high level of social censure. Political leaders in Ukraine, before and after Euromaidan, have been reluctant to pass anti-discrimination legislation, despite pressure to comply with the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. After many delays, a law banning sexual orientation or gender identity discrimination at work was finally passed on November 12, 2015 (see: LGBT rights in Ukraine). Russian and religious influences continue to threaten the safety and social recognition of LGBT people in Ukraine. Bociurkiw's film draws attention to this struggle and gives voice to the heroes of the Ukrainian LGBT rights movement.

Dr. Bociurkiw continues to engage in activist research, teaching and production, initiating courses like Social Justice Media and #Activism. In 2016, she published the article "Big Affect: The Ephemeral Archive of Second Wave Feminist Video Collectives in Canada," the result of several years' research into Canadian feminist media history and its intersections with broadcast technologies and activism.

Literary works

Films

Awards

Bociurkiw's memoir, Comfort Food for Breakups: The Memoir of a Hungry Girl, received Foreword Magazine's INDIEFAB Book of the Year Award (2007), the Independent Publisher Book Awards (silver) for Best Autobiography/Memoir (2008), and was short-listed for the Golden Crown Literary Award, Lesbian Short Story Essay Collection, and the prestigious Kobzar Literary Award and the Lambda Literary Award (2008). Bociurkiw was the 2013 recipient of the Deans' Scholarly, Research and Creative Activity Award at Ryerson University. In 2014, she was artist-in-residence at Can Serrat International Artists' Centre in Spain, and a research fellow at the Heinrich Boll Foundation in Kiev, Ukraine. Her short story "A Girl, Waiting", was shortlisted for the 2015 CBC Creative Non-Fiction Award