Report

The project "(Un)Disciplined: Pluralising Ukrainian Studies - Understanding the War in Ukraine" (UNDIPUS) is a collaborative project uniting six sub-projects, four disciplines and three locations, i.e. the universities of Greifswald, Regensburg, and Giessen. In terms of content, the UNDIPUS project strives for an institutional strengthening and methodological pluralization of Ukrainian Studies, which also requires comprehensive networking in Germany and on the global scale. To meet this requirement, a multifaceted perspective on current developments in Ukraine is of extraordinary importance. It is crucial to study the influence of the war not only on the processes of identity formation, but also on the instrumentalisation of Ukrainian studies within authoritarian and essentialist discourses. Methodologically, the joint project is oriented toward cultural studies and draws, i.a., on the fields of postcolonial research, trauma theory, and psychoanalysis while also addressing some important issues central to linguistics and literary studies. A constructive dialog on the attempts to "discipline" and mobilize our field of research should be facilitated by an interdisciplinary exchange that encompasses not only Slavic Studies, but also some other disciplines.

The first step in this direction was a workshop organized at the University of Greifswald in May 2022. It was also conceived as a kick-off event for the whole UNDIPUS project. The expertise of the international guests as well as joint project participants formed a good basis for an in-depth discussion. In what follows, I will briefly summarize the papers presented during this event.

The first thematic block focused on geopolitical, historical and linguistic aspects of Ukrainian Studies. First, Sergiy Kudelia (Baylor University, Waco/USA) tried to conceptualize the meaning of territory for Russia’s war against Ukraine. Hereafter, Roman Dubasevych (University of Greifswald) addressed the topic of Trauma, Heroism, and War - Never Ending. The transition to linguistic issues was marked by the paper of Alla Nedashkivska from the University of Alberta (Edmonton/Canada), who presented on The Main Players in the Landscape of Languages in Ukraine: Ukrainian and Russian in Practices, Beliefs, Challenges, and New Realities. In his contribution entitled Scaling the Linguistic Map of Bessarabia, Martin Henzelmann (University of Greifswald) examined the situation with minority languages in the Budzhžak region situated in the southern part of Ukraine and of the Republic of Moldova.

The second thematic block dealt with local and regional studies with a special focus on the relevance of certain historical areas, but also on their potential geopolitical brisance. Kai Struve from the Martin Luther University in Halle outlined the specificity of Upper Silesia between Germany and Poland: Politics, Society, and Competing Historical Narratives in 19th and 20th c. The subsequent presentation on Re-Awakened Separatist Sentiment in the Donbas: From Potential Threat to 'People's Republics' by Marta Studenna-Skrukwa (Adam Mickiewicz University Poznan) delved into some complex aspects of secessionist tendencies in the Donbas. The presentation entitled A Region in Literary Studies: Possible Perspectives on a Research Object by Oleksandr Zabirko and Alina Strzempa (both University of Regensburg) juxtaposed various views on region and regionalism in historical, cultural, and literary studies.

Tarik Cyril Amar (Koç University, Istanbul) delivered his keynote lecture online. In it, he tried to re-think the conflict between Russia and Ukraine from the perspective of a "proximity" and/or "distance" between the two countries and their cultures.

The third thematic block examined political, cultural and literary trends in or around Ukraine. First, Valeriya Korablyova from the Charles University Prague delivered her talk on Getting 'Away from Moscow': Ukraine's Performative Decolonization and its Phronetic Citizenry, in which she described the patterns of grassroots resistance to Russian aggression in Ukraine. Maria Sonevytsky (Bard College, New York) presented the third chapter of her monograph in progress devoted to Unlearning the 'Russkiy Mir': Punk Rock, Politics of Language, and Colonial Consciousness in Late Soviet Kyiv, focusing on the album "Tanci" (Dances) by well-known Ukrainian ethno-punk rock band "Vopli Vidoplyasova" (1989). Alexander Chertenko from the Justus Liebig University Giessen gave a paper on the complex relationship between the feminine and the military in the works of Ukrainian woman writers published after 2014 ("Oh God [...] tame the berserk in us": On Difficulties of Writing "Nationally Minded" Herstories of War). Finally, Olga Plakhotnik from the University of Greifswald theorized on Sexual Citizenship in Ukraine: Borderland, Border-Thinking and War. Hereby, she addressed the multiple notions of belonging and identity contested and negotiated in LGBT+ communities in Kharkiv.

In summary, the workshop effectively shed light on the circumstances surrounding the current armed conflict on Ukrainian soil from very different perspectives and thus allowed to outline a common theoretical framework for the UNDIPUS joint project. In fact, the individual subprojects also perceive themselves as a platform for an exchange on these topics. Therefore, they would also like to contribute in the future to a critical monitoring of the events as well as to a self-reflective scientific reappraisal of the cultural, political, economic, historical, and linguistic processes behind them.

Martin Henzelmann