John-Paul Himka

John-Paul Himka (born May 18, 1949) is an American-Canadian historian and retired professor of history of the University of Alberta in Edmonton. Himka received his BA in Byzantine-Slavonic Studies and Ph.D. in History from the University of Michigan in 1971 and 1977 respectively.

Life Himka is of mixed ethnic background, Ukrainian (on father's side) and Italian (on mother's). Initially, he wanted to become a Greek Catholic priest and studied at St. Basil Seminary in Stamford, Connecticut. However, due to the radicalization of his political views to the left by the end of the 1960s he did not pursue that vocation. He became full Professor in 1992 and retired from the university in 2014. and the J. Gordin Kaplan Award for Research Excellence.

Himka, who traveled to Ukraine to conduct research since 1976, began to work with academics at Lviv University's Department of History. Initially Himka focused on Galicia's social history in the 19th and 20th centuries.

In his 1996 article, Krakivski visti and the Jews, 1943: A Contribution to the History of Ukrainian-Jewish Relations during the Second World War, published in the Journal of Ukrainian Studies, based on earlier Ukrainian-language versions presented in 1991 in Kyiv and 1993 in Jerusalem at Ukrainian-Jewish relations conferences, Himka wrote that the history of Ukrainian-Jewish relations during WWII remained surprisingly underinvestigated. Himka cited Raul Hilberg's "monumental study", The Destruction of the European Jews as the source used by historians. In response to this lacuna, Himka presented his detailed study of the publishing of a series of antisemitic articles in 1943 in the "flagship of Ukrainian journalism under Nazi occupation," Krakov's daily newspaper Krakivs'ki Visti. The primary sources for his study included the articles as well as the records of the Krakivs'ki Visti maintained by Ukrainian-Canadian Michael Chomiak, who was born in Ukraine in the 1910s as Mykhailo Khomiak and changed his name to Michael Chomiak when he emigrated to Canada at the end of WWII. The Provincial Archives of Alberta acquired Chomiak's records in 1985 following Chomiak's death. He was the chief editor of Krakivs'ki Visti from 1940 to 1945. Himka is his son-in-law. The second, Galician Villagers and the Ukrainian National Movement in the Nineteenth Century was published in 1988. The third, Religion and Nationality in Western Ukraine: The Greek Catholic Church and the Ruthenian National Movement in Galicia, 1867–1900, which is "devoted to the interrelations between church and state", was published in 1999. In a book review in the Harvard Ukrainian Studies, Larry Wolff described Religion and Nationality in Western Ukraine as a subtle, sophisticated and insightful account of an "important and profoundly complex historical problem." Wolff writes that Himka's research "makes the case for a contingent and evolutionary perspective on nationality in which several different forms and inflections of national identity jostle one another in cultural competition, enhanced or diminished by various historical forces, including religion, without any predetermined outcome." Himka, "engaged with the all-important issue of national identity, makes a brilliant contribution, not just to the history of Ukrainian nationality, but also to the general theoretical understanding of modern nationalism." Himka employs "concepts of nationality and nationalism developed by Ernest Gellner, E.J. Hobsbawm, and Miroslav Hroch. Himka observed that the "Greek Catholic case in Galicia" is "a stunningly transparent instance of how much agency and choice can be involved in the construction of nationality." he examined material that emerged from an important Ukrainian-Jewish relations conference held in 1983, that happened to be held on the 50th anniversary of the Soviet famine of 1932–33. as well as "current electronic media and recent years of The Ukrainian Weekly, supplemented with a retrospective sampling of articles from Svoboda."

In his chapter Ethnicity and the Reporting of Mass Murder: Krakivs′ki visti, the NKVD Murders of 1941, and the Vinnytsia Exhumation, Himka examined how the Krakivs'ki Visti, an "important [Ukrainian] nationalist newspaper" "reported on two cases of mass violence by the Soviets, the 1941 NKVD prisoner massacres and the 1943 Vinnytsia massacre. Himka wrote that Krakivs'ki Visti "ethnicized both perpetrators and victims, ascribing primarily Jewish identity to the former and depicting the latter as almost exclusively Ukrainian."

Personal life John-Paul Himka is married to Chrystia Chomiak, who was an editor of the Ukrainian antisemitic newspaper Krakivs'ki Visti. Himka learned of this only after Chomiak died in 1984. He is also the uncle of former Deputy Prime Minister of Canada Chrystia Freeland. Himka and Chomiak have two children.

Antonovych prize (1988) Rutherford Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching (2006) Philip Lawson Award for Excellence in Teaching J. Gordin Kaplan Award for Research Excellence