Course director: Andrii Portnov (Centre for Advanced Study Sofia)
The complicated and controversial relations between Poland and Ukraine, decisive for the entire European continent are often perceived and analyzed on a bilateral basis with their ideological, territorial, religious, and economic dimensions. This course offers an alternative perspective, providing a critical analysis of the histories and memories of two countries and societies within a broader European context, examining them through various methodological perspectives, such as imperial, colonial, and transnational.
The aim of our course is to develop a critical, contextual reading of different types of sources in order to grasp the dynamic and vivid picture of the historical entanglements and memory asymmetries of two societies in the context of European history. Topics covered in our sessions include: “The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth from an Imperial, Colonial, and Transnational Perspective,” “The Myths of Galicia and the Habsburg Empire,” “Interwar Poland and Ukrainian Nationalism: Searching for a Transnational Perspective,” and “The Second World War: The Holocaust, the Volhynian Massacre, and Their Memories in Two Countries,” “Imagining Reconciliation and the Common Future.”