Sorbonne University (Faculty of Letters), Paris; Doctoral School “Civilizations, Cultures, Literatures and Societies”
Deadline – 16 June 2023
International M/W doctoral contract on The construction of proto-national identity in Ukrainian historiography of the late 18th – early 19th century.
The subject of this thesis is very topical, at the crossroads of history, history of ideas, literature and philology. The study will focus on a well-known text, which remains at the same time rather enigmatic : Istorija Rusov. This text provides an overview of the history of Ukraine from the earliest times to the end of the 18th century. The last part of the text, representing the history of Ukraine within the Russian Empire in the 18th century, is of great interest, as it opposes a Ukrainian view of founding events and personalities to the Russian imperial narrative. Breaking with the tradition of scholarly history, the author is not attached to details and chronology, but attempts to creating motifs and characters in order to make judgments. Within this framework, Istorija meets the major developments in Enlightenment historiography.
While it is possible to identify the circle within which Istorija was written, its manuscript tradition and sources are not well documented. The research should also consider the reception of this text in the 19th century, when it played the role of a “meta-narrative” on the modern history of Ukraine. The corpus could be extended to other historiographical works of the period, if they have contributed to the constitution of the protonational identity.
For more information: https://emploi.cnrs.fr/Offres/Doctorant/UMR8224-SYLARC-002/Default.aspx?lang=EN
