Folklore Fieldwork and Research in Ukraine

I am a Ph.D. candidate in Slavic folklore at the University of Virginia. I recently went to Ukraine for four months to do research for my dissertation on Ukrainian funerals and beliefs about the dead in Ukraine. As a graduate student, I needed to collect as much material on my topic as possible at as low a cost as possible. In order to do this, I made arrangements with the Kherson branch of the Institut Mystetsvoznavstva. Fprklora ta Etnohrafii (Institute of Art, Folklore and Ethnography, or IMFE) to do archival and field work in Ukraine, working with native scholars. Kherson IMFE helped me access archival material and set up my fieldwork. I spent a month at Kiev IMFE, where I examined archival material on funerals and beliefs about the dead. Kiev IMFE has a large repository of folklore sources and some excellent scholars. Kherson IMFE also chose locations for my fieldwork, with the goal of giving me a survey of as many areas of Ukraine as possible. I did fieldwork in Cherkas'ka obi., Khersons'ka obi., and L'vivs'ka and Ivano-Frankiv'ska obi. Fieldwork in western Ukraine is difficult, due in large part to problems with transportation. It is now possible to do fieldwork in Ukraine, although a high degree of flexibility is necessary, due to the current economic situation and transportation problems. Salaries and fieldwork funding for native scholars are irregular, and bus and train routes have been cut. Public transportation, primarily intraoblast* buses, is the primary means of traveling to villages, unless one has access to a private car. Travel on intra-oblast buses is particularly difficult,