Honorary Member of UARWH, American historian of Ukrainian origin, civic leader.
Martha Bohachevsky-Chomiak was born on June 24, 1938, in Sokal, Galicia. In the late 1940s, she emigrated with her family to the United States, where she went on to receive a distinguished academic education.
Her university path began at the University of Pennsylvania, from which she graduated in 1960 with Phi Beta Kappa honors. She continued at Columbia University, earning a master’s degree in History in 1961 and completing her doctoral dissertation in 1968, specializing in Russian intellectual history.
She began teaching in the mid-1960s at Fairleigh Dickinson and Seton Hall Universities. From 1968 to 1986, she was Professor of History at Manhattanville College in New York, and in 1974–1975 a visiting professor at the Catholic University of America. From 1985 to 1987, she taught at Johns Hopkins University while serving in a senior position at the National Endowment for the Humanities and teaching at George Washington University — posts she held until 2000.
At the turn of the millennium, she headed the Fulbright Program office in Ukraine (2000–2006), making a significant contribution to academic exchanges between the two countries. She has also taught at Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, and the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv, where she currently chairs the advisory board of the Ukrainian National Women’s League of America Center for Women’s Studies.
Her research interests encompass Ukrainian and Russian intellectual history and — what has become her life’s true calling — the history of the Ukrainian women’s movement and the complex interplay of feminism and nationalism. Her landmark work is “Feminists Despite Themselves: Women in Ukrainian Community Life, 1884–1939” (Edmonton: CIUS, 1988).
Following Ukraine’s independence, the book was published in Ukrainian as “Bilym po bilomu: Zhinky u hromadskomu zhytti Ukrainy. 1884–1939” [White on White: Women in Ukrainian Community Life, 1884–1939] (Kyiv: Lybid, 1995) and reissued by the Ukrainian Catholic University in 2018. An updated edition — with a foreword by Oksana Kis and Alla Shvets — was published in 2026 by Creative Women Publishing (https://www.creativewomenpublishing.com.ua/product/bilym-po-bilomu/).
Her scholarly achievements have been recognized with numerous awards, including a National Endowment for the Humanities award (1971) and Fulbright fellowships for research in Poland (1976) and Ukraine (1992, 1997). Her 1988 monograph Feminists Despite Themselves received two prestigious honors: the Barbara Heldt Prize from the Association of Women in Slavic Studies for the best book on women in Slavic studies, and the Antonovych Prize for the best book in Ukrainian studies (1989). In 2013, the Ukrainian Catholic University conferred upon her the title of Doctor Honoris Causa. She has also been awarded the Order of Princess Olha, Third Class.
Martha Bohachevsky-Chomiak is one of the most distinguished scholars of the Ukrainian women’s movement, and her works have become foundational for understanding the role of women in Ukrainian social and intellectual history. She maintains close ties with women’s history researchers in Ukraine, contributes to scholarly and educational initiatives, and supports the advancement of women’s history studies. It was thanks to her generous donation that UARWH was able to launch the redesign of its website.
In recognition of her outstanding contribution to Ukrainian women’s history, Martha Bohachevsky-Chomiak was granted the title of Honorary Member of UARWH in the spring of 2026.
See also
Nationalism and Feminism: Two Sides of the Same Coin (in Ukrainian)
The Epic of Ukraine in the Feminine Gender (in Ukrainian)
Interview with Martha Bohachevsky-Chomiak on the women’s movement in Ukraine (in Ukrainian)
It seems I have spent my whole life clearing barely visible paths (in Ukrainian)
Feminism was more deeply understood by women from former empires (in Ukrainian)