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Lunch Hour Lecture | Together and apart: remembering Jewish Ukraine in the context of empire and war
24 January 2023, 1:00 pm–2:00 pm
This lecture, marking Holocaust Memorial Day, will outline how Ukrainian and Jewish cultures, as they struggled to assert themselves within repressive imperial contexts, grew apart, yet also managed to find surprising moments of dialogue.
This event is free.
Event Information
Open to
- All
Availability
- Yes
Cost
- Free
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UCL Events
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About the Lecture:
Ukraine’s Jewish history has come into focus in multiple ways since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022. Russia has abused the history of World War II and the Holocaust in justifying its aggression, while the fact that Ukraine has a wildly popular Jewish president challenges notions of the country as antisemitic. Meanwhile, Russian bombs have fallen on important Holocaust memorial sites inside Ukraine. To better understand the significance of all this, it is important to examine the long, rich, and often difficult history of Ukrainian-Jewish cultural interaction and tension that lies behind it. The lecture will outline how Ukrainian and Jewish cultures, as they struggled to assert themselves within repressive imperial contexts, grew apart, yet also managed to find surprising moments of dialogue. This history, if it is recovered with sensitivity and openness, can be a great cultural resource in forging a new Ukraine after the ongoing war.
This lecture will be chaired by the Provost and marks Holocaust Memorial Day, which is on the 27 January 2023.
About the Speaker
Uilleam Blacker
Associate Professor of Ukrainian and East European Studies at UCL SSEES
Uilleam Blacker is Associate Professor of Ukrainian and East European Studies at UCL SSEES. He is the author of Memory, the City and the Legacy of World War II in East Central Europe: Ghosts of Others (2019) and co-author of Remembering Katyn (2012). His current research, which is funded by a Leverhulme Research Fellowship, explores Ukraine as a multi-lingual literary landscape in the 19th and 20th centuries. He is also a translator of Ukrainian literature and has published translations in, among others, The White Review, Modern Poetry in Translation, Words Without Borders and London Review of Books.