The Center for Slavic and East European Studies will be hosting a lecture for scholars and Feminist Critique editor-in-chiefs Maria Mayerchyk and Olga Plakhotnik, titled "Feminist Protest in Post-Maidan Ukraine: Between 'Nation Time' and 'Feminist Time'."
Dr. Maria Mayerchyk is a senior researcher at from the Institute of Ethnology of National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. With a Ph.D in History, Dr. Mayerchyk's main interests are in anthropology and the history of sexuality, history of ideas, ethnology, and modern feminist and LGBTIC movements in Ukraine. She teaches author training courses throughout the year on feminist theory and constructivist theories of sexuality and gender. She has also published several academic articles, such as "The invention of 'sexuality': capitalism, nationalism and the production of ethnographic knowledge at the end of the XIX - early XX century" and Ukrainian Feminism at the Crossroad of National, Postcolonial, and (Post) Soviet: Theorizing the Maidan Events."
Olga Plakhotnik is a doctoral research student of Psychology from The Open University. Her primary research interests include feminist studies and queer theorizing. Olga studies narratives of LGBT+ communities in Ukraine through concepts of citizenship, epistemologies and knowledge economies, and feminist and LGBT+ activism in Ukraine and in general post-socialist socities. She has authored several reviews and articles, including "Gender Policy and Education in Contemporary Ukraine" and "Non-heterosexual families in Ukraine: to keep silence- to talk- to hope?"
Abstract:
Analyzing the 2013-2014 events in Ukraine - the peaceful #EuroMaidan protests, the violent Maidan conflicts, annexing of Crimea, civil unrests in Eastern regions of Ukraine and Russian military aggression towards Ukraine - became a big challenge for transnational feminist theory. What kind of critique did Ukrainian feminists elaborate for violent protests, nationalist excitement, and war? How could an interpretation of Ukrainian events by feminist, left, and liberal democratic intellectuals be situated at the intersection of national, post-Soviet, and post-colonial perspectives, and in the context of critical feminist/ queer studies?
Our study is an endeavor to open a critical feminist dialogue about feminisms in post-Maidan Ukraine. We analyze the discursive mechanisms of empowerment and othering, resistance and commodification of the protest conducted by different communities within different forms of civic activism. Juxtaposing a postcolonial feminist critique and a feminist theorising of temporality, we call for deconstruction, de-naturalization, and de-essentialization of the concepts of nation, women, Ukrainians, feminist, contesting their historical-geopolitical localities, temporalities, and contextualities.
This event is hosted by the Center for Slavic and East European Studies, and co-sponsored by Human Rights in Transit, the Department of Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures, and the Department of Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies.
