Talk by Matthias Schwartz on “Borderlands in Polish Popular Culture” in Giessen

Program of the conference “Re-Thinking Post-Socialist War(s): Comparative Dimensions of the War in Ukraine (2014-2024)” (31 January – 2 February 2025)

31 January 2025

9.30–12.30 Panel 1: CHALLENGES OF POSTSOCIALIST WARS

Chair: Vitaly Chernetsky (U of Kansas)

Monika Wingender (Giessen): Language(s) and War in Ukraine: Problems, Challenges, and Perspectives in Dealing with the Soviet Legacy

Miranda Jakiša (Vienna): University at War: The Impact of Conflict on Disciplines

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Chair: Mark R. Beissinger (Princeton U)

Valeria Korablyova (Prague): From Hope to Fear and Back: The Geopolitics of Emotion after 1989

Mikhail Minakov (Milan): War-Making as Autocracy-Building: Autocratization through Wars in Post-Soviet Countries

14.00–15.20 Panels 2A & 2B

2A. HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES ON WAR(S)

Chair: Thomas Bohn (Justus Liebig University Giessen)

Semion Goldin (Jerusalem): Russian Army and Jewish Population During WWI: Some Lessons for Ukraine

Aliaksei Bratachkin (Hagen): The War in Ukraine and the Discursive Legacy of WWII Memory in Belarus: Radicalization of Changes?

2B. WAR & MEMORY

Chair: Oleksandr Zabirko (U of Regensburg)

Anna Ivanova (Giessen): Wartime Memory Politics and the City: Competing Approaches in the Production of Space in Kharkiv, Ukraine

Iryna Tarku (Giessen): Narrative Construction of Memory and Identity in Donbas War Prose

15.40–17.40 Panels 3A & 3B

3A. POST-WAR TEMPORALITIES

Chair: Tatjana Petzer (U of Graz)

Dagmar Gramshammer-Hohl (Graz): Imagining Generations in Times of War

Iryna Orlova (Graz): Temporalities of Displacement

Tatjana Petzer (Graz): Transforming the Post-War(s) Environment

3B. HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS & WAR

Chair: Dmitry Dubrovsky (Charles U, Prague)

Irina Rebrova (Berlin): The Future of the Holocaust Remembrance in Contemporary Russia

Alexander Cherkasov (Prague): The Chain of Wars, the Chain of Crimes, the Chain of Impunity: Russian Wars in Chechnya, Syria, and Ukraine

Dmitry Dubrovsky (Prague): The Notion of the “Genocide of the Soviet People” in Putin’s Propaganda

18.00–19.30 KEYNOTE LECTURE

Mark R. Beissinger (Princeton): Imperial Decline and Post-Socialist Wars: Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine in Comparative Perspective

Moderation: Valeria Korablyova

1 February 2025

9.00–10.20 Panels 4A & 4B

4A. UNRAVELLING THE POST-COMMUNIST SPACE I

Chair: Andreas Langenohl (Justus Liebig U Giessen)

Aleksandar Životić (Belgrade): Geopolitical Consequences of the Collapse of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia: Similarities and Differences of the Wars in Yugoslavia and Ukraine

Alessandro Achilli (Cagliari)/Marco Puleri (Bologna): Intellectuals and the Nation (Yesterday and Today): Pluralism and the Responsibility of Culture

4B. WAR AND/IN SOCIAL MEDIA

Chair: Matthias Schwartz (ZfL Berlin)

Ewa Wróblewska-Trochimiuk (Warsaw): What Happened to homo sovieticus ? Reshaping Ukrainian Society in Social Media

Dirk Uffelmann (Giessen): (Dis-)Unities in Ukrainian Poets’ Blogging since 2022

10.40–12.00 Panels 5A & 5B

5A. UNRAVELLING THE POST-COMMUNIST SPACE II

Chair: Valeria Korablyova (Charles U, Prague)

Péter Hevő (Budapest): The End of the Visegrád Cooperation? The V4 and the War in Ukraine

Jochen Kleinschmidt (Dresden): From Realpolitik to Surrealpolitik? Russia’s War in Ukraine and the Discursive Antinomies of the Berlin Republic

5B. OTHERS’ WAR(S) I

Chair: Dirk Uffelmann (Justus Liebig U Giessen)

Alexander Chertenko (Giessen): Voices from Periphery: Mapping Ukraine after 2014 in Polish Books of Interviews (Andrukhovych & Savchenko)

Matthias Schwartz (Berlin): Kresy as a Combat Zone: Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Russian Borderlands in Poland’s Popular Culture

13.30–15.30 Panels 6A & 6B

6 A. WAR AND GENDER

Chair: Olga Plakhotnik (U of Greifswald)

Andreas Langenohl (Giessen): Queering Warfare: LGBTQI+ Presences On and Off Military Scenes

Roman Dubasevych (Greifswald): From patsan to Veteran: Masculinity and War in Ukraine

Tania Arcimovich (Erfurt): War and Epistemology: Displaced Scholars’ Perspectives

6 B. OTHERS’ WAR(S) II

Chair: Alexander Chertenko (Justus Liebig U Giessen)

Alina Strzempa (Regensburg): Unravelling War and Peace in Contested Regions: A Comparison of Upper Silesia and the Donbas from a Literary Perspective

Aleksei Surin (Tel Aviv): Toppling Idols, Redefining the Past: Russian-Israeli Poetic Strategies Responding to the War in Ukraine

Namita Kumari (Delhi): Narratives about the Ukraine War in India: A Study of National Newspapers

16.00–17.30 KEYNOTE LECTURE

Vitaly Chernetsky (Kansas City): Comparatist Approaches to Ukrainian War Trauma and Its Cultural Challenges

Moderation: Alexander Chertenko

18.45–20.45 Film screening and discussion: THE HAMLET SYNDROME

(directed by Elwira Niewiera & Piotr Rosołowski, GER/PL 2022)

Moderation: Alexander Chertenko & Valeria Korablyova

2 February 2025

10.00–12.00 Panels 7A & 7B

7A. DYNAMICS OF CONFLICT

Chair: Jochen Kleinschmidt (TU of Dresden)

Oksana Myshlovska (Bern): Contesting the New “Legitimate Political Order”: Conflict Escalation and Local-Level Peacebuilding in Ukraine from February to April 2014

Roman Horbyk (Zurich): From Participative Warfare to Participatory Attrition: Technology and the Russo-Ukrainian War

Andrei Vazyanau (Vilnius): Disintegration via Infrastructure: A Case of Public Transport Activists from Donetsk Region

7B. WAR IN POPULAR CULTURE

Chair: Alessandro Achilli (U of Cagliari)

Oleksandr Zabirko (Regensburg): Microraion as Battleground: Post-Socialist Landscapes in Video Game Warfare

Beata Waligórska-Olejniczak (Poznań): Turning Trauma into Art of Life: New Ukrainian Cinema in Time of War

Svitlana Pidoprygora (Innsbruck): Violence of War via Comics: The Perspective of the Ukrainian Comic Magazine INKER

12 .00–15 .00 Final discussion

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