Entangled History of Ukraine

Wir freuen uns sehr auf neue Projekte im Viadrina Center of Polish and Ukrainian Studies (VCPU)! Der Senat der Universität hat am 12. Juli beschlossen, zu diesem Zweck das seit 2011 bestehende Zentrum für Interdisziplinäre Polenstudien zu erweitern. Mit diesem Schritt werden zusätzliche Möglichkeiten für die intensive akademische Beschäftigung mit der Geschichte und Kultur, Politik und Gesellschaft der Ukraine in ihren europäischen Bezügen und globalen Verflechtungen geschaffen. Das Center wird dazu neue Forschungsprojekte entwickeln, einschlägige Lehrangebote auflegen und einen auch für die allgemeine Öffentlichkeit gut zugänglichen Transfer von Wissen über die Ukraine in die Gesellschaft anbieten .

          

Prof. Dr. Andrii Portnov

portnov@europa-uni.de

Collegium Polonicum 136

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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 20^th 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.