Conference Program

All times are in US Central Time (Chicago); all events are held in the University of Illinois Main Library unless otherwise noted.

Thursday, October 2, 2025

9:00 am – Welcome and Opening Remarks [Room 106]

9:30-10:45am – Thursday Panel Block 1

Language and War [Room 106]

  • “The Favorite Letter of Ukrainians: Shifts in Language Ideologies During the Full-Scale Phase of the Russian War Against Ukraine” (virtual) — Natalia Kobchenko (National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy)
  • “Language and War: How Russia’s Full-Scale Invasion of Ukraine Affects Ukrainians’ Language Consciousness and Behaviour” (virtual) — Natalia Matveieva (Ternopil National Pedagogical Volodymyr Hnatiuk University; Institute of the Ukrainian Language of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine)
  • “Emotional Dynamics of Language Shift: The Role of Language Shame in Ukrainian Bilingual Refugees’ Language Practices” (virtual) — Olha Shevchuk-Kliuzheva (Borys Grinchenko Kyiv Metropolitan University)

Ukraine’s Role in Soviet Culture [Room 314]

  • “Ukrainian Folk Culture in Soviet Film after the USSR’s Annexation of Western Ukraine in 1939” (virtual) — Stefan Lacny (UCL SSEES)
  • “Українські митці в селах в період колективізації та Голодомору: гастролі чи примусові мобілізації?” (virtual)— Olga Ryabchenko (University of Cambridge)
  • “From Substitute to MVP: Ukraine’s Rise to the Top of Soviet Soccer (1945-1976)” — Yacov Zohn (University of Wisconsin-Madison)

Continuities and Ruptures in Writing [Room 428]

  • “Continuities and Disruptions in Ukrainian Literature: The Case of Early Ukrainian Modernism” — Nadiia Chervinska (Central European University)
  • “European read: Latin Books in the Propriety of the Orthodox Hierarchs in Early Modern Ukraine” (virtual) — Olha Maksymchuk (V. I. Vernadskyi National Library of Ukraine)
  • “Detraumatization and Decolonialization of Chornobyl Experience through Narration: Self-reflection of a Writer-liquidator-scholar” (virtual) — Sergii Mirnyi (Ukrainian National Museum “Chornobyl”)

Coffee Break [Room 106]

11:15am-12:30pm – Thursday Panel Block 2

Historical Memory and War [Room 106]

  • “Current State and Practice of Beliefs and Traditions in Ukrainian Army” (virtual) — Olesia Naumovska (Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv)
  • “Continuities and Ruptures in Old Industrial Region: Donbas in Historical Imagination in Ukraine and Russia, 2014-2024” (virtual) — Alexandr Osipian (Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe)
  • “People in the KGB Camps also Laughed! Historical References in Ukrainian Internet Discussions about Humor” — Kateryna Yeremieieva (Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich)

Ukrainian Politics before and after Independence [Room 314]

  • “Toppling Lenin and Pushkin: Reimagining Sites of Memory in Ukraine” — Olga Kiyan (Harvard University)
  • “Decentralization and Power Shifts in Ukraine: Has Local Elite Influence Increased or Decreased?” (virtual) — Uliana Movchan (V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University)
  • “The Totalitarian Regime in Soviet Ukraine: Colonial Dependence, State Terror, and the Path to Decommunization “(virtual) — Alina Soloviova (European University Institute)
  • “The Politics of Contingency: Ukraine’s Political Transformation under the Post-Soviet Legacy and Democratic Ethos” (virtual) — Dariia Synhaievska (National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy)

Holodomor [Room 428]

  • “Concept of the Four Components of Soviet Genocide: Problem of Authorship” (virtual) — Mykhailo Kostiv (National Museum of the Holodomor-Genocide)
  • “‘Why are They not Going Back to the Soviet Union?’ The 15th Anniversary of Holodomor in DP Camps as a Catalyst for Conflict in the Ukrainian Environment around Diverse Ukrainian Identities” (virtual)— Wiktoria Kudela-Świątek (University of the National Education Commission)

1:30-3:00pm – Thursday Panel Block 3

Self-Expressions of Ukrainian Identity [Room 106]

  • “The Granovskys: A Case Study in Generational Ukrainian Identity in the 20th Century United States” — Tabitha Cochran (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)
  • “Performing Ukrainian Identity in Turbulent Times: Women’s Voices in Social Media Communities” (virtual) — Nataliia Goshylyk (UC Berkeley)
  • “Between Pathos and Irony: Writing as a Search for Cultural Belonging in the Diary of Yur Mezhenko, 1919-1926” — Olena Haleta (Ivan Franko National University of Lviv; Humboldt University of Berlin)

Resisting Soviet Interpretations [Room 314]

  • “Existentialist Motifs in Lina Kostenko’s Works” — Mariia Lupak (University of Cambridge)
  • “The Cinematic Landscape and Ideology: Reimagining the Dnipro Wetlands in Dovzhenko’s ‘Poem of the Sea'” (virtual) — Anna Olenenko (University of Alberta)
  • “Breaking the Soviet Conspiracy of Silence: Queer Ukrainian Subjectivity in the Nineties” — Ioana Zamfir (University of Oxford)

Empire and Ethnicity [Room 428]

  • “Russian Imperial Bureaucracy in Southern Ukraine: Social and Ethnic Composition” (virtual) — Oleksandr Kravchuk (University of Bristol)
  • “In the Shadow of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Imperial Myths: The Kyivan Synopsis (1674) As a Record of the Ukrainian Language and Identity in the 17th Century” (virtual) — Halyna Naienko (Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv; University of Lodz)

Coffee Break [Room 106]

3:15-4:45pm – Thursday Panel Block 4

Displacement and War [Room 106]

  • “Human Trafficking Recruitment During Russia’s War in Ukraine” — Laura Dean (Millikin University)
  • “Pushing the boundaries of Europe: Ukrainian forced migrants with disabilities in the EU” — Sarah Phillips (Indiana University)
  • “Cultural and Military Mobilization through Music: Ukrainian Resistance in Exile and Occupation” — Olga Zaitseva-Herz (University of Alberta)

Writers’ Resistance to War [Room 314]

  • “Translating Occupation: Translator’s Agency as Resistance Effort in Stanislav Aseyev’s In Isolation” (virtual) — Anna Antonova (University of Alberta)
  • “Traumatic Displacements: Ukrainians Writers Post-2022” — Sophie Shields (University of Toronto)
  • “Drama as Testimony: Bearing Witness to Russia’s War Against Ukraine” — Oleksandra Wallo (University of Kansas)

5:00pm – Keynote Address [Room 220]

Emily Channell-Justice (Harvard University), “A Drop in the Ocean: Ukraine’s Euromaidan Protests and New Imagined Communities”

Reception [Room 220]

Friday, October 3, 2025

9:00-10:15am – Friday Panel Block 1

Art and War [Room 106]

  • “Inter Arma Silent Musae? The Institutional Reception of Ukrainian Art in Poland after 24th of February 2022” (virtual) — Patrycja Ignaczak (University of Warsaw)
  • “The Image of the Cossack in Contemporary Ukrainian Visual Culture: Interpretative Frameworks, Continuities, and Shifts in the Social Imagination and Art” (virtual) — Mariana Levytska (Lviv Polytechnic National University)
  • “New Icons of War: Religious Motifs in Ukrainian Digital Popular Art during the Russo-Ukrainian War” (virtual) — Alina Mozolevska (Petro Mohyla Black Sea National University)

Institutions of Memory – Collections and Archives [Room 314]

  • “Інституційні перетворення в культурно-освітній сфері Галичини впродовж радянської окупації 1939–1941 років  (на прикладі реорганізації бібліотечних та архівних установ Львова)” (virtual) — Petro Chorniy (Institute of Ethnology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine)
  • “Historical Continuations in Personal Testimonies from Holodomor: Jerry Berman’s Letters Archive” — Sara Nesteruk (Manchester Metropolitan University)
  • “Digital Heritage: Preserving the Ukrainian Diaspora in the USA” (virtual) — Khrystyna Vintoniv (Ivano-Frankivsk National Technical University of Oil and Gas)

War and National Identity [Room 428]

  • “The Fluidity and the Content of National Identity in Ukraine after the Full-Scale Invasion” (virtual) — Lena Surzhko Harned, Nataliia  Kasianenko (Penn State University, California State University)
  • “The Struggle of National Movements of Native Ethnic Minorities of Russia in Armed Forces of Ukraine for their Independence” (virtual) — Grygoriy Riy (V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University)
  • “Anti-Corruption and Anti-Russian: Emergence of a New Ukrainian Identity” — Marina Zaloznaya (University of Iowa)

Coffee Break [Room 106]

10:45am-12:00pm – Friday Panel Block 2

Ukrainians in Diaspora [Room 106]

  • “Українці за кордоном та їх роль у збереженні історичної пам’яті” (virtual) — Iryna Telehuz (Dragomanov Ukrainian State University)
  • “Socio-Demographic Dimension of Russian Aggression against Ukraine in the 20th and 21st centuries” (virtual) — Roman Tesliuk (National Museum of the Holodomor-Genocide)
  • “Ідейно-художні засади діяльності Григора Лужницького в український та діаспорний періоди творчості” — Nataliia Vivcharyk (Vasyl Stefanyk Precarpathian National University)

Ethnography [Room 314]

  • “The 20th-century Hutsul: An Imaginable Community” — Oksana Lebedivna (National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy)
  • “‘We are Modern People’: Panteleimon Kulish’s Zapiski o Iuzhnoi Rusi as a Collectively Composed Text” — Isabella Palange (University of Wisconsin-Madison)
  • “Карпатозавчі розсліди у етнографічних дослідженнях Любові Сухої 1910 – 1988” (virtual) — Mariana Tsurkan (Інститут народознавства НАН України)

Memory [Room 428]

  • “Towards a Multidirectional Memory: How Ukrainian Literature Reflected on the Holocaust in the 1940s–1960s” — Hanna Protasova (University of Western Ontario)
  • “Transgenerational Trauma and Memory in Ukrainian Women’s Writing: Amadoka by Sofia Andrukhovych and Forgottenness by Tania Maliarchuk” (virtual) — Olena Saikovska (Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen)
  • “Missing Objects and Found Meanings: Post-Independence Ukrainian Children’s Detective Stories on Historical Themes and the Collective Memory Narrative” (virtual) — Daria Semenova (Vilnius University)

1:00-2:30pm – Friday Panel Block 3

The 1917 Revolution [Room 106]

  • “Hegemonic Struggles and Imperial Realities: Rethinking the 1917 Revolution in Ukraine” (virtual) — Hanna Perekhoda (University of Lausanne)
  • “Ukrainian-Jewish Alliance in Revolution: Hopes and Discontents, 1917-1920” — Olga Petrova (Central European University)

Ukraine and European Politics [Room 314]

  • “Wartime Enlargement: Threats and Possibilities of Ukraine’s Accession to EU” — Oleksiy Kandyuk (University of Konstanz)
  • “The New Era of Ukraine’s Foreign Policy towards the EU” — Alina Nychyk (Zurich University of Applied Sciences)
  • “Feminization in Ukraine’s Path to European Integration: A Postcolonial Perspective” (virtual) — Olena Synchak (Ukrainian Catholic University)

Gender and War [Room 428]

  • “Women’s Participation in Defending Ukraine in Russia’s War: 10 Years of Resistance” (virtual) — Tamara Martsenyuk (University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy)
  • “Maintaining Bonds, Overcoming Ruptures, and Vice Versa: LGBTQ+ Ukrainians’ Wartime Embodied Relationalities” (virtual) — Eugenia Seleznova (Central European University)
  • ” Women, War, and Willpower: Ukrainian Women’s Image amidst Wartime in Andrey Kurkov’s Grey Bees” — Oksana Vykhopen (University of Kansas)

Coffee Break [Room 106]

2:45-4:15pm – Friday Panel Block 4

Continuities and Ruptures in Cultural Heritage [Room 106]

  • “From Baroque to Folk Art: To the Sources of the Ukrainian Avant-Garde” — Kseniia Konstantynenko (University of Padua)
  • “The Decolonization of Theatre Culture in Ukraine and Belarus” — Alesia Mankouskaya (UCL SSEES)
  • “Plagues and Poetic Visions: Ukrainian and Polish Romantic-Era Texts and Contemporary Cultural Resonances”(virtual) — Dmytro Yesypenko (University of Alberta)

Music as Resistance [Room 314]

  • “Transformations in the Kharkiv Music Scene During the Full-Scale War” (virtual) — Viktoriia Grivina (St Andrews University)
  • “Ukrainian Classical Chamber Music as a Form of Resistance” (virtual) — Zachary Senick (University of Toronto)
  • “The Audiomatrix of Ukrainofuture Dreams: Ukrainian Sonic Fictions” — Olya Zikrata (Simon Fraser University)

History of Higher Education [Room 428]

  • “Deleted: Translation Studies as a Multifaceted University Discipline in Early Soviet Ukraine, Its Branches and Scope” (virtual) — Lada Kolomiyets (Dartmouth College)
  • “The Impact of World War II on Lviv Polytechnic: Community, Books, and Space” (virtual) — Andrii Tsebenko (St. Andrew’s College in Winnipeg)

7:00pm – Piano Recital, Pavlo Gintov [Smith Memorial Room]

Saturday, October 4, 2025*

*All Saturday events are held in the Literatures, Cultures, and Linguistics Building, Room 2090B

9:00- 10:30am – Professionalization Workshop

10:45-11:45am – Roundtable: The State of Publishing in Ukrainian Studies

Speakers: Olena Odynoka (Ukrainian Book Institute, Deputy Director for International Cooperation), Artem Bidenko (Ukrainian Publishers Association, Head) and Frances Pinter (Supporting Ukrainian Publishing Resilience and Recovery, Founder)

12:00-1:00pm – Lunchtime Poetry Reading

1:15pm – Closing Remarks