Transcultural Contact Zones in Ukraine2015-ongoing

Research team (led by dr.Ulrich Schmid and dr.Carmen Scheide) propose to continue the research on regionalism in Ukraine by using the concept of "contact zones" previously established by Mary Louise Pratt. The term refers to social spaces where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power. This concept can fruitfully be applied for the analysis of heterogeneous cultural and social phenomena such as Ukrainian regionalism. Ukrainian contact zones are not so much places of arrival and immigration, but rather places that historically were claimed by different nation states and empires. Ukrainian “contact zones” should therefore be described as dynamic cultural spaces. The project seeks to understand the many cultural layers present in individual biographies, educational canons or symbolic interpretations of a given territory.

A number of individual and group projects are conducted within the larger framework of “Ukrainian contact zones”, including:

  • Bukovyna as a Contact Zone (Nadia Bureiko, Teo Moga)
  • The Carpathian region in Ukraine: the Prospects for Social Changes (Nataliia Pohorila)
  • Competition and interaction of languages in the Ukrainian-Romanian borderlands from mid-XIXth to early XXI century (Serhii Vakulenko, Kateryna Karunyk)
  • Ukrainian-Jewish entaglement: the case of Dnipro(petrovsk)/Katerynoslav (Andrii Portnov, Tetiana Portnova)
  • Border Crossings: Jewish Migrations from East Europe, 1870-1920 (Oleksii Chebotarov)
  • Subcarpathia as a literary contact zone (Alexander Kratochvil)
  • Contact Zone Moldova and Bessarabia (Constantin Ardeleanu)
  • Transcarpathia as a contact zone (Julia Richers, Ayse Turcan)
  • Revisiting the Ukranian-Russian Border in the Times of War (Tetiana Zhurzhenko, Daria Skibo)
  • Norm Diffusion from Western Ukraine to the rest of Ukraine after the Euromaidan: the fusion of the OUN-UPA and ATO struggles (Oksana Myshlovska)
  • Contact zones/conflict zones: (re)negotiating ethnic heritages in local history museums in Ukraine (late 1980s-today) (Anna Chebotarova)
  • Historical Memory in the 'Inter-regional' Families of Ukraine (Uku Lember)
  • Polesia - and beyond. Ukrainian-Belarusian contact zones (focus on literature) (Gun-Britt Kohler)

Projects