Talk by Matthias Schwartz on “Borderlands in Polish Popular Culture” in Giessen
Talk by project member Matthias Schwartz “Kresy as a Combat Zone: Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Russian Borderlands in Poland’s Popular Culture” at the conference “Re-Thinking Post-Socialist War(s): Comparative Dimensions of the War in Ukraine (2014-2024)” at the University of Giessen.
Where: GCSC (International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture), University of Giessen, Otto Behaghel Str. 12, 35394 Giessen
When: 1 February 2025, 10:40 am
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