Symbolic Geography, Contested Identities and Mass Violence: Ukrainian History in European Contexts

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Symbolic Geography, Contested Identities and Mass Violence:

Ukrainian History in European Contexts

Central European University / Invisible University for Ukraine Spring Term

Elective Course – 4 ECTS credits

Coordinator: Vladimir Petrovic, Democracy Institute, Central European University

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Learning Outcomes:

The program offers an intensive learning experience, placing questions relevant for Ukrainian students into a transnational comparative perspective. It aims at familiarizing the students with various cutting-edge interpretative paradigms and methodological traditions. The program is not meant to replace or duplicate the existing online education in Ukrainian universities, but to support them and provide help for filling the lacunae that temporarily emerged due to the Russian military invasion. At the end of this course, students will have expanded their knowledge on key issues of Ukrainian history in a European transnational context.

This course seeks to situate Ukrainian history in multiple comparative and transnational frameworks. It explores the past and the present of the board of the European continent frequently described as liminal. It examines the perceptions of Central and Eastern Europe, regions whose importance for the European historical experience is evident, yet poorly understood. By thematizing symbolic geography, the course investigates the construction and deconstruction of European mental maps and their limitations. It provides methodological reflection to place the overlapping and competing national historiographical canons into context. Reflecting on the imperial heritages and borderland experiences, it also creates spaces for better understanding of the complex process of formation of collective identities and the role that mass violence played and unfortunately still plays in this part of the world.

Learning activities and teaching methods:

This course consists of two components: a lecture and a public discussion. The lecture will be in English and will focus on key scholarly issues linking the Ukrainian and transnational themes. It can also take the form of a dialogue or a mini-roundtable involving multiple scholars. In order to facilitate participation, students will also get a short English-language reading on the topic, as well as a larger pool of readings which they can use in their future academic work as well. The open discussion will focus on the lecture and the reading, as well as the thematic questions of the students related to the broader topics of the class. The classes are offered in a hybrid format (online teaching with a possibility of campus presence for those students who are in Budapest).

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Assessment:

This course is taken for a pass/fail grade. Passing the course means that the students have participated in the classes actively. For those students whose conditions make it impossible to listen to the classes synchronically, an asynchronic mode will be made available, with the lectures uploaded and questions they are asked to answer on the basis of watching/listening to the lecture.

The program is taught by prominent scholars linked to the Central European University (including members of its faculty, as well as researchers of CEU Democracy Institute and the Open Society Archives), international partners, as well as Ukrainian and Polish partner institutions. The additional smaller groups meetings will be conducted by the international team of CEU PhD students who volunteered to take part in the program as a sign of academic solidarity with Ukrainian students.

The program categorically excludes any cooperation with scholars having current affiliation with any Russian state institutions or anyone supporting the Russian aggression. Some

prominent Russian colleagues who protested against the Russian invasion in Ukraine, gave up their position, and emigrated, after being targeted by the authorities for their critical stance, will also contribute to co-teaching some of the classes. Also, some current CEU PhD students of Russian background who publicly condemned Russian invasion in Ukraine will take part in the additional small group seminars.

Lectures will be at 5 P.M. CET in the digital classroom. Outside the lectures, please use this Zoom Room at your disposal to meet and discuss when you want to:

https://ceu-edu.zoom.us/j/95486691899?pwd=MVBUQUZjSkh4b204a1pUc2VpMnIxUT09

Code: 283278

Meeting ID: 954 8669 1899

CLASS TOPICS

• M o d u l e 1 . S y m b o l i c G e o g r a p h y : s h a r e d s p a c e s – c o n t e s t e d p l a c e s

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Recommended readings for Module 1: (Not mandatory!)

Jürgen Kocka, “Asymmetrical Historical Comparison: The Case of the German Sonderweg,”. History and Theory 38 (1999), 40-51.

Laszló Kontler (1999) Introduction: Reflections on Symbolic Geography, European Review of History: Revue européenne d'histoire, 6:1, 9-14,

Ostap Sereda, I my v Evropi ! / We are also in Europe! (…for real?), in: East Central Europe , vol.41 2014, 112-118.

Mishkova Diana, Trencsényi Balázs: Conceptualizing Spaces within Europe: The Case of Meso-Regions, In: Steinmetz, W; Freeden, M; Fernández-Sebastián, J (ed.) Conceptual History in the European Space, Berghahn Books (2017) pp. 212-235.

Stefan Troebst "Historical Meso-Region": A Concept in Cultural Studies and

Historiography (2012) http://ieg-ego.eu/en/threads/theories-and-methods/historical-meso- region

Franz Leander Fillafer, “Whose Enlightenment?”, in Austrian History Yearbook 48 (2017), 111-25

• Ostap Sereda, I my v Evropi ! / We are also in Europe! (…for real?), in: East Central Europe , vol.41 2014, 112-118.Single File Uploaded 22/04/22, 23:19

• Franz Fillafer, Whose Enlightenment?Single File Uploaded 22/04/22, 23:17

• Debate on Ukrainian (and East European) Studies NowLink

• kocka sonderwegSingle File Uploaded 24/04/22, 15:53

• Kontler_Reflections on Symbolic GeographySingle File Uploaded 26/04/22, 11:46

• Mishkova Diana, Trencsényi Balázs, Conceptualizing Spaces within EuropeSingle File Uploaded 28/04/22, 00:09

• C l a s s 1 ( A p r i l 2 8 ) : M e n t a l m a p s a n d m e s o - r e g i o n s i n i n t e l l e c t u a l t r a d i t i o n s

Mental maps and meso-regions in intellectual traditions

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Soundfile: Mental maps and meso-regions in intellectual traditions Password: IUFU2022

Instructors: Ostap Sereda, Balazs Trencsenyi and Vladimir Petrovic

Reading:

Frithjof Benjamin Schenk, Mental Maps: The Cognitive Mapping of the Continent as an Object of Research of European History, 2013

Optional readings:

• Benedict Anderson, Imagined communitiesSingle File Uploaded 28/04/22, 20:12

• Edward Said, OrientalismSingle File Uploaded 28/04/22, 23:45

• C l a s s 2 ( M a y 3 ) : S c a l i n g E u r o p e a n r e g i o n s – G a l i c i a , U k r a i n e , E a s t e r n E u r o p e

Instructor: Larry Wolff, in dialogue with László Kontler

Reading:

Larry Wolff. Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of

the Enlightenment. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1994, 17-25, 89-94, 305- 315.

• Wolff_Inventing Eastern EuropeSingle File Uploaded 26/04/22, 11:44

• C l a s s 3 ( M a y 5 ) : L o n g u e d u r é e c o n t i n u i t i e s o f s y m b o l i c g e o g r a p h i c a l s c a l e s , d i s c o u r s e s a n d h i e r a r c h i e s – f r o m O r i e n t a l i s m t o S on d e r w e g

n a r r a t i v e s ; " C o n t a c t z o n e " : i s t h e c o n c e p t a p p l i c a b l e t o U k r a i n i a n s i t u a t i o n ?

Instructors: Kateryna Dysa and Maciej Janowski

Reading:

Maciej Janowski, 2015. “‘Multiple Sonderwegs’ : The Specificity of

Historical Development of East Central Europe in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Century (Introductory Remarks).” Acta Poloniae historica 111(111): 5-27

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