Literatura: Contemporary literature of eastern Ukraine
Date and time:
Thursday 15 July, 2021
18:30 - 20:00
Location:
Eastern Ukraine had been perceived as a cultural wasteland long before it became the land torn by war and occupation. Serhiy Zhadan, the rock-star poet and writer from Kharkiv, and Olena Stiazhkina, the historian and writer from Donetsk, explore this space from within rewriting the genealogy of its people who had been alternately patronised and demonised throughout the decades of Ukrainian independence. From Zhadan’s novel of homecoming Voroshilovgrad (2010) to Stiazhkina’s poignant story of displacement and belonging In God’s Language, these authors revive the mythopoetics of this vast, windswept, and exposed eastern steppe. Their characters reconstruct their compromised Ukrainian identities while renegotiating the issues of post-totalitarian memory and responsibility.
You can either sign up to this seminar as a one-off via eventbrite, or enrol in the full Literatura course - full info here.
If you are a friend or benefactor of the Institute, you are entitled to a discount for the course. Please email us on info@ukrainianinstitute.org.uk to claim your discount and pay directly.
Included in the cost of the seminar:
- course handbook and materials, including English translations of texts studied as part of the seminar.
- access to video recording of the presentation by Dr Dovzhyk
Lecturer
Dr Sasha Dovzhyk
Sasha Dovzhyk is a Ukrainian writer and scholar based in London. She holds a PhD in English and Comparative Literature from Birkbeck, University of London. She has co-edited a scholarly volume of Aubrey Beardsley’s Decadent Writings, forthcoming with Modern Humanities Research Association, and has written on topics as diverse as the legacies of Chernobyl and transnational decadent aesthetics for various publications, including The Ecologist, British Art Studies, and Hong Kong Review of Books. She has recently featured as an expert on Lesia Ukrainka in the short film Fin de Siècle Ukrainian Feminism, produced by the Ukrainian Institute London.
