Ostap Sereda, Associate Professor in History at the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv and recurrent guest professor at CEU
Vladimir Petrovic, Research Professor, Institute of Contemporary History, Belgrade, and CEU Democracy Institute
Balazs Trencsényi, CEU, Professor, History Department, lead researcher of History WG, CEU Democracy Institute
This course aims at discussing the main challenges for the studies on history, culture and society of Ukraine, in the academic centres in Ukraine and abroad that emerged after the collapse of USSR in 1991 and especially since the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. It will offer a wide range of perspectives on how Ukrainian studies can both contribute to and profit from the current global discussions in humanities and social studies. In the introductory part of the course, we will trace down the Cold War growth of Russian, Slavic and Soviet studies in the Western academia, and focus on the academic culture and identity politics of Ukrainian scholarship in the West after the WWII. In particular, we will discuss whether and how the exiled East European scholars changed the paradigm of Western studies on Eastern Europe and offered an alternative to the Soviet academic projects. In the main part of the course, we will discuss with the key figures in Ukrainian studies in both English- and German-language academia the intellectual and political challenges of making Ukraine visible internationally. The concluding classes will highlight how the international academic projects can contribute to the reconstruction of Ukraine after the war.