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Olha Voznyuk: The Evolution of Ukrainian Cultural Identity in the Post-Maidan Period

This lecture presents the impact of modern Ukrainian culture, including literature and cinema, on the establishment and transformation of Ukrainian cultural values after 2014. How does literature influence cinematography, and what power does visual storytelling exert on the formation of sociocultural values? The talk also investigates the factors and ideas which influence the developing and shifting Ukrainian national identity in the post-Maidan period.


The Revolution of Dignity in Ukraine in 2014 has changed the direction of contemporary Ukrainian literature and culture. Modern Ukrainian literature has registered recent historical events in numerous works, which seek to recover Ukrainian historical narratives »lost« during the Soviet era and which in turn have influenced the Ukrainian film industry. The »blossoming« of cinematography has created new visual narratives of local and national history in the post-Maidan period. Rethinking the past and retelling the cultural and historical heritage of contemporary Ukraine clearly predominates in recent cinema. Many new films raise questions of the re-establishment and rebuilding of self-identity in contemporary Ukrainian cultural discourse, as well as the European values that were »cancelled out« during the Soviet era.

  Olha Voznyuk is a scholar, lecturer, and translator. She completed her first PhD in Comparative Literature at the National Academy of Sciences, Ukraine, and her second PhD in Slavic Studies at the University of Vienna. Currently she is ifk Research Fellow.