Online, 14 September 2022 – 16 November 2022, 21.00 – 22.30 (Kyiv)
Russia’s unprovoked military assault on Ukraine has created the single greatest refugee flow in Europe since 1945. Seven million people have been internally displaced and over five million have fled abroad. Among the displaced are many scholars, the majority of whom hope to return to their homes in Ukraine as soon as possible to contribute to the rebuilding of the country and the continued education of its people. The College of the Liberal Arts of Penn State University offers a Teach-In on Russia’s War in Ukraine that is open to all.
Zoom Link for all events: https://psu.zoom.us/j/3257831800 Meeting ID: 325 783 1800
Wednesday, September 14, 2022, 2:30-3:30
Tamara Martsenyuk, Associate Professor of Sociology, National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy
Women’s Participation in Defending Ukraine in Russia’s War
Tamara Martsenyuk will present the findings of sociological research conducted in 2015-2021, entitled “Invisible Battalion,” on the successes and challenges of gender equality implementation in the Ukrainian armed forces, the status of female veterans, and the problem of sexual harassment in the military. Her broader research interests include gender and social structure, and women’s access to the military.
Monday, September 26, 2022. 2:30-3:30
Oksana Yurkova, Leading Researcher at the Institute of Ukrainian History, Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences
Mykhailo Hrushevsky: Historian turned President
Oksana Yurkova is a specialist in Ukrainian historiography of the 20th century, focusing on the interwar period (1920s–1930s), the historian Mykhailo Hrushevsky, and his Kyiv historical school. She is also one of the creators of the influential website on Ukrainian history Likbez: The historical front. See https://likbez.org.ua/en/hrushevsky_east_slavs.html
Friday, October 7, 2022, 2:30-3:30
Oksana Kis, Senior Research Associate at the Institute of Ethnology, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine
Survival as Victory: Ukrainian Women in the Gulag
Based on the written memoirs, autobiographies, and oral histories of over 150 survivors, Oksana Kis details women’s resistance to the brutality of camp conditions, not only through the preservation of customs and traditions from everyday home life, but also through the use of regional and confessional differences as survival strategies.
Oksana Kis is a feminist historian, anthropologist, and head of the Department of Social Anthropology at the Institute of Ethnology, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (based in Lviv). She is a President of the Ukrainian Association for Research in Women’s History, and a co-founder and a vice-president of the Ukrainian Oral History Association.
Wednesday, October 19, 2022, 2:30-3:30
Marta Havryshko, Associate Researcher at the Department of Contemporary History, I. Krypiakevych Institute of Ukrainian Studies, Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences. (Lviv)
Women, Power, and Violence: Researching Sexual Crimes during the Holocaust in Time of Russia’s War in Ukraine
This presentation focuses on the peculiarities of wartime sexual violence compared to times of peace. Who are the primary targets of sexual assaults in conflict zones? How do women’s ethnic, political, and religious identities, social status, and age affect sexual aggression? Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has made Ukrainian women and girls particularly vulnerable to different forms of violence, as reported by Ukrainian authorities, human rights activists, volunteers, and ordinary citizens
Marta Havryshko is the Babyn Yar Interdisciplinary Studies Institute director of the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center in Kyiv. Her research primarily focuses on gender, sexuality, and violence during World War II and the Holocaust in Ukraine; feminism; nationalism; and militarism.
Monday, October 24, 2:30-3:30
Dmytro Vovk, Associate Professor and Director of the Center of Rule of Law and Religion Studies at Yaroslav Mudryi National Law University, Kharkiv, Ukraine
The Rule of Law in Ukraine
This talk provides an overview of how the rule of law requirements have been implemented in Ukraine’s legal system. Ukraine has been relatively successful in establishing and maintaining democratic institutions (competing political systems, independent media, freedom of speech, association and religion), but much less successful in establishing the rule of law in the narrow sense (independent judiciary, effective law enforcement system, fight against corruption, accountable government, oligarchic economy etc.). This has ramifications for the war and other challenges the country faces at this time.
Dmytro Vovk is an expert on constitutional law, rule of law and religious freedom. He is the author of numerous academic articles and op-eds on rule of law and legal reform, involving civil liberties and human rights, in post-socialist societies.
Wednesday, November 9, 2022, 2:30-3:30
Svitlana Shlipchenko, Senior Researcher, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and Director, Center for Urban Studies in Kyiv
Liberated Histories & Imperial Afterlives: The Changing Faces of Ukraine’s Cities
Empires are rarely content to seize the future of colonized peoples. They also seek to conquer their past. When identity and heritage become targets, architectural history becomes a battlefield. The process of recovering local identities in a post-colonial condition is complicated by the historical traces of empires that often remain, and at times become interwoven with a place and its peoples. This talk considers how Ukrainian cities have changed in the last decade, and how they surely will again after the war ends.
Svitlana Shlipchenko is one of Ukraine’s foremost experts in architecture and urban planning. She has written extensively on the use of public space in the USSR, on Ukraine’s efforts to desovietize its cities and monuments, and on architectural cultural preservation.
Wednesday, November 16, 2022, 2:30-3:30
Kateryna Iakovlenko, Public Program Curator, PinchukArtCentre
The Materiality of the Ruins: History, Trauma, and War in Ukrainian Contemporary Art
Facing civil revolution and war in 2014, Ukrainian contemporary art took a documentary and archival turn. Many artists and film directors began to take an interest in trauma, looking into the most unpleasant moments of their history. However, when the full-scale invasion started in February 2022 and brutality and violence increased, many creators searched for a new language. In her lecture, contemporary art researcher and writer Kateryna Iakovlenko will discuss why “ruin” is Ukrainian artists’ chosen material and how it serves as a strategy for artistic and civic resistance to violence.
Kateryna Iakovlenko is a Luhansk-born Ukrainian visual art researcher and writer. She worked as reporter and deputy web editor of „The Day newspaper” (2012-14), curator and program manager of the Donbas Studies Research Project at Izolyatsia (2014-15), and as researcher and curator of public programs at PinchukArtCentre (2016-21). Her current research touches upon the role of art and culture during political transformation and war.
