History in Times of War. Part IV: Ukraine

This webinar series looks at how Russia’s war on Ukraine and other conflicts in the region have impacted the researching, writing, and teaching of history, especially Soviet history and the history of Russian imperialism more broadly. The series is hosted by the Research Initiative on Post-Soviet Space (RIPSS) (formerly the Melbourne Eurasianist Seminar Series, MESS) in the University of Melbourne’s Faculty of Arts, convened by Prof. Mark Edele, Dr Julie Fedor, Dr Oleg Beyda and Dr Natasha Wilson in the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies.

Part IV: Ukraine

Speakers:

• Prof. Olena Stiazhkina

• Dr Darya Tsymbalyuk

• Dr Oleksa Drachewych

Speaker bios:

Olena Stiazhkina was born on 25 February 1968 in Donetsk. Until the Russian occupation in 2014, she lived in Donetsk, where she taught in the history department at Donetsk National University. After fleeing occupation, she founded a nonprofit called “Deoccupation. Homecoming. Education.”. Olena Stiazhkina is a Ukrainian writer, Doctor of Science, Professor of History, Leading Research Fellow at the Department of Ukrainian History in the second half of the 20th century at the NAS Institute of History of Ukraine; member of the Ukrainian PEN. She lives and works in Kyiv.Her recent books include:

• (history): Stigma of Occupation: Soviet Women in Self-Vision of the 1940s (Kyiv: Dukh i Litera) (in Ukrainian); Zero Point Ukraine: Four Essay on World War II (Ukrainian Voices series) (Stuttgart: ibidem Press, 2020) (in English); A Taste of the Soviet: Food and Eaters in the Art of Life and the Art of Cinema (Kyiv: Dukh i Litera, 2021) (in Ukrainian); Minusnyky: Punished by Space (Kyiv: Tempora, 2021) (in Ukrainian);
• (prose): In God’s Language (Kyiv: Dukh I Litera, 2016) (in Ukrainian); Rozka (Kharkiv, Folio, 2017); The Lion Cecil’s was not in vain (Lviv, Staryi Lev, 2021).

Forthcoming books: Cecil the Lion Had to Die(translated by Dominique Hoffman) (Harvard Library of Ukrainian Literature (2023); Ukraine, War, Love A Donetsk Diary (translated by Anne O. Fisher) (Harvard Library of Ukrainian Literature, 2023)

Darya Tsymbalyuk writes, researches, and draws. Her work lies at the intersection of environmental humanities and artistic research, and is based on feminist and decolonial methodologies. Darya is a Max Hayward Visiting Fellow at St Antony’s College, University of Oxford (2022-2023). She has received her PhD in 2021 from the University of St Andrews, Scotland, and her dissertation was dedicated to human-plant relations in stories of displacement and war. Her articles and essays appeared in Nature, Journal of International Relations and Development, IWMpost, Open Democracy, Antennae: Journal of Nature in Visual Culture, NiCHE: Network in Canadian History & Environment, Arcadia: Environment & Society Portal, Springs: The Rachel Carson Center Review, to name a few. Together with Kateryna Voznytsia, Yulia Serdyukova, and Viktor “Corwic” Zasypkin, Darya is a co-author of a docufiction animation Displaced Garden. Based on Darya’s PhD research, the film tells stories of humans and plants displaced from the east of Ukraine as a result of the Russian invasion of the region in 2014.

https://daryatsymbalyuk.com/

Twitter: @DaryaTsymbalyuk

Dr Oleksa Drachewych is an assistant professor of history at Western University in Ontario, Canada. He is a specialist in the history of the Soviet Union, international communism, and Soviet foreign policy, especially during the interwar period. He is the author of The Communist International, Anti-Imperialism and Racial Equality in British Dominions (Routledge, 2018) and the co-editor of Left Transnationalism: The Comintern and the National, Colonial & Racial Questions (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2020). He is currently working on a book discussing the lessons from and parallels of Soviet atrocities during and after the Second World War to Russian atrocities in Russia’s War against Ukraine. This project is under advance contract with University of Toronto Press.

Next session in this series:

Friday 22 September: Part V: The Baltic States (Dr Tomas Balkelis, Dr Una Bergmane, Dr Ammon Cheskin)

Image: Portrait of the artist Lyubov Panchenko in Borodyanka; instagram.com/christianguemy