Entangled History of Ukraine
Prof. Dr. Andrii Portnov
Collegium Polonicum 136
Ukraine is a borderland country, the ‘Gate of Europe’ (Serhii Plokhy) located at the crossroads of languages, religions and political cultures. It was defined as ‘Bloodlands’ (Timothy Snyder) – a place of the biggest mass crimes in 20th century.
But it is also a place which is closely related with activities of such women writers as Olha Kobylianska and Lesia Ukraїnka, such writers as Isaac Babel, Joseph Roth, and Bruno Schulz, such composers as Sergei Prokofiev and Karol Szymanowski, such painters as Kazimir Malevich and Olexandr Arkhypenko, such filmmakers as Oleksandr Dovzhenko and Sergei Parajanov.
Ukraine is a place where philosophy by Hryhorii Skovoroda, mathematic insights by Stefan Banach and physical explorations by Lev Landau were born.
Our Chair deals with Ukraine`s diverse, controversial, tragic, surprising and illuminating history, culture and society in transnational and interdisciplinary ways. We also consider Ukrainian studies as a field with numerous entanglements with Jewish, Ottoman, Polish, Russian, and Soviet history and cultural studies.
We bring such profound categories as ‘class’, ‘ethnicity’, ‘gender’, ‘religion’ into Eastern European context.
The lectures and seminars are offered in English and German. We also kindly invite you to participate in various activities of our Chair: conferences, summer and winter schools, photo exhibitions, film screenings, and excursions.