The international interdisciplinary conference "(Un)Safe Plurality: Ukraine and Beyond” is the concluding event of the joint project “(Un)Disciplined: Pluralizing Ukrainian Studies—Understanding the War in Ukraine” (UNDIPUS), funded by the German Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space. Focusing on the multi-faceted repercussions of the full-scale war in Ukraine on politics, history writing, and culture in Ukraine and beyond, the conference assesses the changes in academic fields and societies involved and examines the results of the pluralization efforts that have dominated East European Studies, literary and cultural theory since 2022. To this end, the conference situates the war in Ukraine within a broader comparative and historical context to avoid essentializing it and to identify common patterns. Furthermore, it revisits established and emerging critical theories, such as post-/decolonial, transnational, gender, queer, spatial, and diversity studies, language management, cultural transfers and entangled history, to determine the extent to which these frameworks retain their subversive power and pluralizing potential during wartime. Ultimately, it asks what kind of knowledge can provide ethical guidance in turbulent times, promote peace, and help build a better future.

PROGRAM

Monday, 29.09

4:30–6:00 p.m.

Jules B-Part (Grace) (Luckenwalderstraße 6b, 10963 Berlin)

Introduction to the exhibition "Treibende Kräfte" (for the conference participants only)

Podium discussion with artists and curator Bettina Klein (Berlin)

Discussant: Jessica Zychowicz (Warsaw)

Participating artists: Olha Marusyn, Lada Nakonechna, Mykola Ridnyi, Eugene Shimalsky

6:30–8:00 p.m.

Laura Mars Gallery (Bülowstraße 52, 10783 Berlin)

“Treibende Kräfte” Exhibition (for the conference participants only)

Artists: Olha Marusyn | Lada Nakonechna | Mykola Ridnyi | Dana Kavelina | Library of Visual Phenomena (Olga Gaidash / Eugene Shimalsky)

Curated by: Bettina Klein

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Tuesday, 30.09

Venue: Free University of Berlin, Institute for East European Studies (Garystraße 55, 14195 Berlin)

9:30–10:00 a.m.

Conference opening, room 55a

10:00–11:15 a.m.

Panel Presentations

Room 55a

Christoph Augustynowicz (Vienna)
The Economic Historian and Marxist Roman Rosdolsky in the USA: Spotlight on a Marginalized Figure

Alexander Dmitriev (Prague)
The Ukrainian Idea in the Distance, 1905/1991: Olgert Ipolyt Bochkovsky, Dmytro Chyzhevsky, and Yuri Barabash

Room 55b

Valeria Korablyova (Prague)
De-Centering Eastern Europe, Creolizing the Theory: Strategic Inter-Imperiality in Ukraine’s Wartime Cultural Production

Matthew Blackburn (Oslo)
Is Peace More Dangerous than War? The Triumph of Identity and Ideology over Realism in Europe

11:45 a.m.–1:30 p.m.

Panel Presentations

Room 55a

Alla Koval (Berlin)
Agency and Structural Vulnerability: Coping with Potentially Traumatic Experiences among Ukrainian Women in Germany

Svitlana Odynets (Newcastle-upon-Tyne)
Lost in Recognition: The Unseen Dynamics of Gendered Ukrainian Displacement after 2022 as a Form of Hermeneutical Injustice

Olga Plakhotnik (Greifswald) and Maria Mayerchyk (Kleve)
New Mobilities, Old Vulnerabilities: Colonial Design of the War-Related Migration

Room 55b

Roman Dubasevych (Greifswald)
“My Thoughts Are Silent”: Voices Lost in the Noise of War

Oleksandr Chertenko (Giessen)
Voiny sveta vs. voiny Svety: Gendering Crisis in Belarus and Ukraine

Sofie Rose (Copenhagen)
“I Used to Be a Patriot”: Exploring Experiences among Ukrainian Men who Flee the Full-Scale War

3:00–4:30 p.m.

Keynote lecture, room 55a

Serhiy Kudelia (Waco, Texas)
Strategic Neglect: The West and Ukraine’s Unfulfilled Security Aspirations after the Cold War

Moderator: Matthew Blackburn

5:00–6:45 p.m.

Panel Presentations

Room 55a

Oleksandr Zabirko (Regensburg)
Decolonizing the Wasteland: The Evolution of the STALKER Game Series

Svitlana Pidoprygora (Innsbruck)
Contested Narratives and (Un)Safe Plurality: Ukraine in International Documentary Comics

Matthias Schwartz (Berlin)
“I, You, He, She”: Plurality, Gender, and Resentment in Post-Soviet Film Comedies

Room 55b

Mikhail Kizilov (Mainz)
Is There an Indigenous Population in Crimea? Discourses on Crimea’s Ethnopolitical History before and after 2014

Alina Strzempa (Regensburg)
The Donbas and the Environmental Humanities

Veronika L. Sharova (Halle/S.)
Post-Socialist, Post-Colonial, and Post-Crisis: Symbolic Urbanscapes in the Cities of Contemporary Ukraine

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Wednesday, 01.10

Venue: Free University of Berlin, Institute for East European Studies (Garystraße 55, 14195 Berlin)

10:00–10:15 a.m.

Briefing on the previous day

10:15–11:30 a.m.

Panel Presentations

Room 55a

Joanna Kula (Wrocław)
Russian or Russophone Literature? The New Linguistic Sensitivity in the Context of the Russo-Ukrainian War (The Case of Alisa Ganieva and Other Authors)

Nadine Menzel (Bamberg)
Particularities and Interconnections of the Ukrainian Avant-Garde

Room 55b

Yuliia Soroka (Kharkiv/Geneva)
Wartime Society's Hate Speech: How Our Own Weapons Are Turning against Us

Natalia Kudriavtseva (Kryvyi Rih)
Researching Language in the Time of War: A Critical Ethnographic Sociolinguistic Approach

12:00–1:30 p.m.

Keynote lecture, room 55a

Manuela Boatcă (Freiburg i. Br.)
Whose Times Are Turning? On Interimperiality and Semiperipherality in Unequal Europes

Moderator: Maria Mayerchyk

3:00–4:15 p.m.

Panel Presentations

Room 55a

Dirk Uffelmann (Giessen)
Strategic Essentialism in Ukrainian Appeals for Decolonization

Svitlana Biedarieva (Mexico City)
Introducing Ambicolonial Theory: Epistemic Borderlines, Colonial Desire, and Neocolonial War

Room 55b

Eka Tchkoidze (Tbilisi/Halle-Wittenberg)
Greece and the Russian Invasion of Mariupol

Martin Henzelmann (Greifswald)
Multilingualism and Language Management in Moldova and Ukraine

4:45–6:00 p.m.

Panel Presentations

Room 55a

Tatjana Hofmann (Graz)
Escaping National Narcissism(s): Marta Havryshko’s Facebook Chronicles as “Literature of Fact”

Marta Havryshko (Worcester, US/online)
Dangerous Liaisons: Feminism and Nationalism in Wartime Ukraine

Room 55b

Ljudmila Popović (Belgrade)
Language Diversity in Ukraine from the Perspective of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages

Bartłomiej Chromik (Warsaw)
On Political and Scientific Revolutions: Studying Languages in Independent Ukraine

6:00–6:45 p.m.

Common discussion and closing remarks, room 55a