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Dr. Oleksandr Chertenko

Research fellow and part-time lecturer at the Chair of East and West Slavic Literatures 
(Prof. Dr. Dirk Uffelmann)

Office 511

Phone: +49 (0)641 99-31164

Fax: +49 (0)641 99-31169

 

Contact hour

  • By arrangement via email

 

Current focus of research

  • Ukrainian, Russian, Belarusian, and Polish literature and culture from the 19th to the 21st century
  • Wars and identity conflicts in post-socialist space
  • Postcolonial Studies and Eastern Europe
  • Gender Studies

 

Education and professional appointments

  • 1997–2002 — studies of German and English language and literature, National Pedagogical University (Kyiv)
  • 2002–2005 — doctoral candidate at the Department of World Literature, Shevchenko Institute of Literature of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (Kyiv)
  • 2006 — PhD, Shevchenko Institute of Literature
  • 2005–2015 — research fellow, Department of World Literature, Shevchenko Institute of Literature
  • 2015–2019 — second degree in East European Studies (Master of Arts), Freie Universität Berlin
  • August–October 2019 — guest researcher at the Center for East European and International Studies (ZOiS), Berlin
  • From November 2019 — research fellow (postdoc) and part-time lecturer at the Institute of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Justus Liebig University Giessen

CV [English]

 

Publications

Monograph

  • Zhyttia u frahmenti: proza Maksa Frisha mizh entuziazmom i sumnivom [Living in a Fragment: Max Frisch’s Fiction between Enthusiasm and Doubt]. Kyiv: Naukova dumka 2012, 216 pp.

Edited volumes (more recently):

  • [in preparation] Re-Thinking Post-Socialist War(s): Comparative Dimensions of the War in Ukraine [together with Valeria Korablyova; expected to be published in the summer/fall of 2026]
  • 2020 Über Grenzen [Across the Borders], Vol. 6: Perestupy kordoniv u literaturi ta kul’turi XX-XXI st. [Transgressions of Borders in Literature and Culture of the 20th and 21st Centuries]. Kyiv: Dmytro Buraho [together with Almut Hille, Petro Rychlo und Ievgeniia Voloshchuk]
  • 2018 Rivista di Estetica, No. 1 (67): Cultural Exclusion and Frontier Zones) [together with Zhanna Nikolaeva and Sergey Troitsky]

Actual articles and chapters in edited volumes:

  • [in preparation] Wild Wild East: Mapping Ukraine as Kresy in Polish Books of Interviews with Ukrainian Intellectuals and Politicians after 2014 [to be published  in the conference volume “Re-Thinking Post-Socialist War(s): Comparative Dimensions of the War in Ukraine” in 2026, see above]
  • [in preparation] Fortress Donbas—Going Back to a Wild Field? Cultural Accounts of a (Former) Industrial Region after 24.2.2022 [to be published in the conference volume „Shifting Borders, Fluid Landscapes: Exploring Industrial Regions in Transition” in 2026]
  • [in preparation] Nationalizing Women: Has’ka Shyian’s Behind the Back and the End of Ukrainian Female Emancipation [to be published in Greifswalder Hefte in 2025]
  • [in preparation] The Rise and Fall of Gender Hybridity in Times of War: The Case of Nadiia Savchenko [to be publushed in Zeitschrift für Slavische Philologie 2025-26]
  • 2025 Decolonizing Hybridity? Ukrainian Russophone Authors Switching to Ukrainian. In: Gianluca Cosentino/Angela Daiana Langone/Alessandro Achilli/Ilaria Meloni (eds.): Constructing and Deconstructing:(Self-)Identity at the Crossroads of Linguistics and Literature. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, pp. 139-156. URL: https://verlag.koenigshausen-neumann.de/oaopen/94086/
  • 2024 Sasha Filipenko. In: Kritisches Lexikon zur fremdsprachigen Gegenwartsliteratur. 36 pp.
  • 2022 Large-Scale Projects Revisited: Ecology, Territory, and Memory in Russian and Belarusian Village Prose (Farewell to Matera by Valentin Rasputin and The Virgin Ground by Viktar Kazʹko). In: Zeitschrift für Slavische Philologie, Vol. 78/2, pp. 409-455.
  • 2021 Mit Facebook im Krieg. Ost- und südukrainische Blogs nach 2014 zwischen Regionalbewusstsein und (Selbst-)Kolonisierung am Beispiel von Olena Stepova und Boris Chersonskij [With Facebook to the War: Eastern and Southern Ukrainian Blogs after 2014 Between Regionality and (Self-)Colonization (Olena Stepova and Boris Khersonskii)]. In: Weimarer Beiträge 3 (67), pp. 378-407.
  • 2021 […] die Ideologie der Volksrepublik Doneck wird in der Abkürzung SSSR ihren Ausdruck finden. Die Rekonstruktion der Sowjetunion in Zachar Prilepins Vsjo, čto dolžno razrešit’sja… Chronika iduščej vojny [… the Ideology of the Donetsk People’s Republic Will Find Its Expression in the Abbreviation SSSR: Re-Constructing the Soviet Union in Zakhar Prilepin’s Vsio, chto dolzhno razreshit’sia… Khronika idushchei voiny]. In: Iris Bauer/Yvonne Drosihn/Eva Kowollik/Tijana Matijević/Joanna Sulikowska-Fajfer (eds.): Close Reading – Distant Reading. Spannungsfelder der slavistischen Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaften [Close Reading—Distant Reading: Areas of Conflict in Slavic Literary and Cultural Studies], pp. 317-328. [=Reflexionen des Gesellschaftlichen in Sprache und Literatur. Hallesche Beiträge, Bd. 9.] URL: https://opendata.unihalle.de/bitstream/1981185920/37203/1/Reflexionen%20des%20Gesellschaftlichen_Ba nd%209_Close%20Reading%20%e2%80%93%20Distant%20Reading.pdf  
  • 2021 Die Moskauer Sonne scheint überall. Die sowjetische Hauptstadt als Raum der Utopie in Das neue Moskau (1938) und Die Schweinepflegerin und der Hirt (1941) [The Moscow Sun Shines Everywhere: The Soviet Capital as a Utopian Space in The New Moscow (1938) and Swine-Herd and Stableman (1941)]. In: Studia Rossica Posnaniensia 46/2, S. 51-68. URL: https://bibliotekanauki.pl/articles/1837560.pdf
  • 2020 Die ukrainische Literatur zum Krieg im Donbass [Ukrainian Literature on the War in the Donbass]. In: Ukraine-Analysen 240, pp. 2-6. URL: https://laender-analysen.de/ukraine-analysen/240/die-ukrainische-literatur-zum-krieg-im-donbas/
  • 2020 Zavoiuvannia porozhnechi. Ukraiina mizh kolonizacieiu ta travmoiu u nimets'kykh „podorozhakh na Skhidnyi front” (na prykladi shchodennyka Iozefa Liaitgeba Na kraiu viiny. Notatky z Ukraiiny, 1942) [Conquering the Void: Ukraine Between Colonization and Trauma in German “Travels to the Eastern Front” (On Josef Leitgeb’s Travel Report Am Rande des Krieges. Aufzeichnungen in der Ukraine, 1942]. In: Almut Hille/Peter Rychlo/Ievgeniia Voloshchuk/Alexander Chertenko (eds.): Perestupy kordoniv u literaturi ta kul’turi XX-XXI st. [Transgressions of Borders in Literature and Culture of the 20th and 21st Centuries] Kyiv: Dmytro Buraho, pp. 151-179.

List of publications and paper presentations

 

Ongoing research projects

  • Subproject „After Masculinity: Female Perpectives on the War in Ukraine” as part of the joint project “(Un)Disciplined: Pluralizing Ukrainian Studies—Understanding the War in Eastern Ukraine” (UNDIPUS). Project duration: February 2022 to January 2026. Funded by the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR), program “Small Disciplines—Great Potential.” Website: https://www.uni-giessen.de/en/faculties/f05/slavistics/lehre-1/forschung/jp-1/joint-project?set_language=en
  • The War in the Donbass in Post-Imperial Literatures (Ukraine, Russia, Poland, Germany) (Habilitation)

 

Teaching

More recently:

  • Re-Thinking Post-Socialist Wars: Literature and Culture in Times of Turmoil (JLU Giessen, SoSe 2025) [in German]
  • Socialist Children in Literature and Cinema (JLU Giessen, WiSe 2024/25) [in German]
  • Constructing Heroes in Slavic Literatures and Cultures (JLU Giessen, SoSe 2024) [in English]
  • Love, Peace, and Harmony? Gender Relations in Late Socialist Cinema (JLU Giessen, WiSe 2023/24) [in German]
  • The Sovietization of Eastern and Central Europe: Ukraine, Poland, Belarus [together with Prof. Dr. Thomas Bohn] (JLU Giessen, SoSe 2023) [in German]
  • (Hi)Stories of Displacement and Exile in Eastern Europe and the Balkans (19th and 20th Century) [together with Prof. Dr. Nicole Immig] (JLU Giessen, WiSe 2022/23) [in English]
  • Re-Thinking Ukrainian Donbas in Fiction, Memoirs, and Visual Arts [together with Dr. Olha Poliukhovych, Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, Ukraine] (JLU Giessen/online, WiSe 2022/23) [in English]
  • Pop Goes Protest: Pop Music and Dissent under Socialism and Today (JLU Giessen, SoSe 2022) [in German]