Wednesday lecture
17 Jun 2026 · 6.30 pm

Tamara Hundorova (Wiko Berlin): “Crisis of Europe” and Postwar II Ukrainian Occidentalism

Venue: Leibniz-Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung, Eberhard-Lämmert-Saal, entrance Meierottostr. 8, 10719 Berlin
Organized by Matthias Schwartz

The crisis of Europe became one of the most resonant topics of the first half of the twentieth century. It was particularly relevant in the context of decolonisation and the transformation of the geopolitical landscape after World War II. Representatives of another Europe had a distinctive voice in discussions of the crisis, as thousands of displaced persons and war victims found themselves in displaced persons camps in the heart of Europe. The idea of a new Europe also emerged in the aftermath of this catastrophe.

This lecture focuses on the discourse of Occidentalism among intellectuals in Ukrainian displaced persons camps between 1946 and 1948, examining it through the lens of decolonial studies. The debate on the crisis of Europe provides a platform for conceptualising Ukrainian geocultural identity and historiographical narrative. It also signals a critique of Eurocentrism and an attempt to provincialising Europe.

 

Tamara Hundorova is a Ukrainian literary scholar. She is Chair of the Department of Literary Theory and Comparative Literature at the Taras Shevchenko Institute of Literature of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (NAS). She is also a professor and dean at the Ukrainian Free University and Associate of the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute. Currently, Hundorova is a Fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, working on the project “The Idea of Occidentalism and Post-World War Ukrainian Cultural Imagination (1945–1949).”

Publications (selection):

  • Transit Culture and Postcolonial Trauma, translated from Ukrainian by Tanya Savchynska. Newton, Mass.: Academic Studies Press 2025
  • The Ukrainian Underground: Aesthetics, Resistance, and Performance, in: Mark Lipovetsky et al. (eds.): The Oxford Handbook of Soviet Underground Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press 2024, 277–302
  • Lesja Ukraїnka: knyhy Syvіlly. Charkіv: Vivat vydavnyctvo 2023
  • Die Provinzialisierung des Russischen – Demaskierung des Imperiums, in: Kateryna Mishchenko, Katharina Raabe (eds.): Aus dem Nebel des Krieges: die Gegenwart der Ukraine. Berlin: Suhrkamp 2023, 227–244
  • The Post-Chornobyl Library. Ukrainian Literary Postmodernism of the 1990s, translated from Ukrainian by Sergiy Yakovenko. Boston: Academic Studies Press 2019