On the Minefields of Memory: Rethinking past and present in the shadow of war against Ukraine

The lecture will shed light on the main changes in the memory politics and memory culture in Ukraine since 2014.

Main focus will be made on the shifts that took place in the context of the Revolution of Dignity, Russia's annexation of Crimea, and the beginning of war in 2014 and the transformations of memory culture after Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022. Since 2014, Ukraine has been actively re-evaluating both its past and its present. It is impossible to understand the country's history politics without taking into account the formation of memory of the ongoing war.

Memory scholars in Ukraine describe the post- 2014 culture of memory as the New Memory Culture. Without understanding this new memory culture, it is impossible to fully understand the changes in approaches to the past in the present-day Ukraine. The lecture will address the main features of this New Memory Culture and trace how they reframe the old memory nodes and form new genres and forms of remembrance. The lecture will focus on both state institutions and civic initiatives that shape these emergent trends in Ukraine's memory culture. 

Bio

Yuliya Yurchuk is Associate Professor of History of Ideas at Södertörn University, Stockholm, Sweden. She specializes in memory studies, history of religion, and the study of nationalism in East European countries. She is the author of the book Reordering of Meaningful Worlds: Memory of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army in Post-Soviet Ukraine (Acta 2014) and one of the editors of “Memory and Religion from a Postsecular Perspective” (Routledge, 2022, co-edited with Zuzanna Bogumil). She also translates Swedish literature into Ukrainian and is an author of the book “Sweden: a model kit” (Vihola, 2022, in Ukrainian).

Now she is finishing the manuscript on memory culture which will be published by Vihola Publishing House in 2025 (in Ukrainian). Currently she is also working on two research projects: one in the field of the transnational intellectual women's history and another in the field of cultural heritage in the context of the ongoing war.