Postcolonial Thought and Ukraine: Broadening the Field

The inaugural panel of our new event series discusses the role and limits of postcolonial knowledge in the contemporary world, addressing the transformations it has undergone in the context of Russia’s war in Ukraine. Bringing together interdisciplinary voices of international and Ukrainian scholars, it investigates the tensions and possibilities that arise in the changing field of postcolonial studies with its expansion and inclusion of previously invisible and marginalized communities and territories, as well as new methods, themes, and concerns. The speakers explore how language and culture mediate knowledge production across old colonial divides, and what happens when once-dominant epistemologies violently confront formerly subaltern societies in a postcolonial world.

Speakers:

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak is an influential thinker in the fields of literary theory, feminism, and postcolonial studies. She is a University Professor at Columbia University and co-founder of the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society. With her translation of Derrida's “De la grammatologie” and her book “A Critique of Postcolonial Reason,” she established her name as a critical founder of postcolonial theory. Spivak taught worldwide, received numerous awards, and was honored with the Kyoto Prize (2012) and the Holberg Prize (2025), among others.

Marci Shore is the Chair in European Intellectual History at the Munk School for Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto. She was previously Professor of History at Yale University. She is the translator of Michał Głowiński's "The Black Seasons" and the author of "Caviar and Ashes: A Warsaw Generation's Life and Death in Marxism, 1918-1968" and "The Taste of Ashes: The Afterlife of Totalitarianism in Eastern Europe." A new edition of her third book, "The Ukrainian Night: An Intimate History of Revolution," was published in 2024.

Tamara Hundorova is a Fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, an Associate of Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, and a Principal Research Fellow at the Institute of Literature of the NAS of Ukraine. She has authored numerous books, including "The Post-Chornobyl Library: Ukrainian Postmodernism of the 1990s," and several books in Ukrainian, among them a book on the transit culture and postcolonial trauma. She has written extensively on modernism, postmodernism, feminism, postcolonial studies, and the history of Ukrainian literature.

Vitaly Chernetsky is a Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Kansas. He is the author of "Mapping Postcommunist Cultures: Russia and Ukraine in the Context of Globalization" (2007). His translations into English include Yuri Andrukhovych’s novels "The Moscoviad" (2008) and "Twelve Circles" (2015). He is a past President of the American Association for Ukrainian Studies (2009-2018) and of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES) (2024), currently serving as the President of the Shevchenko Scientific Society in the U.S.

Moderator:

Svitlana Biedarieva is an art historian, artist, and curator. She is the author of the book "Ambicoloniality and War: The Ukrainian–Russian Case" (2025), the editor of "Art in Ukraine Between Identity Construction and Anti-Colonial Resistance" (2024) and "Contemporary Ukrainian and Baltic Art: Political and Social Perspectives, 1991–2021" (2021), among others. She is the General Editor of "The Harvard History of Ukrainian Art" book series (forthcoming). She serves as President-Elect of the Society of Historians of East European, Eurasian, and Russian Art and Architecture (SHERA) and is the Founder of Ukraine Decolonial Studies Network.

Organizer:

Ukraine Decolonial Studies Network (UDSN) is a global community of researchers, cultural practitioners, and policy-makers dedicated to the interdisciplinary exploration and analysis of Ukraine’s past and present. The Network engages with, and moves beyond, established methodological frameworks of postcolonial and decolonial theories to examine and situate Ukrainian experiences of colonialism, resistance, and cultural development within a global context. Russia’s war against Ukraine has underscored the urgent need to address the colonial entanglements affecting Ukrainian society, including cultural appropriation and the deliberate destruction of heritage. Founded in 2022, the Network provides a platform for both scholarly and public-facing dialogue on decolonial transformation and anti-colonial resistance in Ukrainian society, culture, and the arts. It is an affiliated group of the Association of Slavic, Eastern European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES).