Ringvorlesung: Ukrainian Literature during the Long Twentieth century and the Challenges and Promises of Polyglossia

Lecture by Prof. Dr. Vitaly Chernetsky, Kansas/Basel

Бо  що  є  рабство, як  не iнфiкованiсть  страхом, — вона  пiдсовує  пiд  лiкоть розгорнутого  блокнота, напiвсписаного такого  гатунку афоризмами, вiдяких — нi  тепло, нi  холодно, як у  пiдручнику  з  формальної  логiки. Рабство  є  iнфiкованiсть  страхом. А  страх  убиває  любов. А  без  любовi — i  дiти, i  вiршi, й  картини — все  робиться  вагiтне  смертю. П’ять балiв, дєвушка. You have completed your research.

(Oksana Zabuzhko, Fieldwork in Ukrainian sex, 1996)

Modern Ukrainian literature contains lots of cases of multilingualism and polyglossia. Code-switching has been an indelible part of Ukrainian writing since the days of Ivan Kotliarevs'kyi in the late eighteenth century. This lecture concentrates on cases from the 1890s to the early 2000s, discussing several crucial cases, from Olha Kobylians'ka to Oksana Zabuzhko, and considers the relationship between polyglossia and literary innovation and the impact of the sociopolitical contexts on it.

Prof. Dr. Vitaly Chernetsky is a native of Odesa, Ukraine, he completed his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory at the University of Pennsylvania. His research focuses on modern and contemporary cultures (literature, film, popular culture) of Ukraine, Russia, Central and Eastern Europe, and Central Asia, considered in a broader comparative/cross-regional and interdisciplinary contexts. He has also been researching, amongst other things, globalization and its cultural aspects, postcolonial theory & writing, questions of identity & community, diasporic cultures, nationalism & ethnicity, feminist theory, gender and queer studies, and translation studies. Chernetsky is the author of the book Mapping Postcommunist Cultures: Russia and Ukraine in the Context of Globalization (2007) and authored many other scientific work as well as translations. In 2024, Prof. Chernetsky is serving as the President of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES).

Weitere Informationen zum gesamten Programm der Ringvorlesung finden Sie hier.

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