“Drahomanov School by Lesia Ukrainka: Classes for Decolonization” (lecture and presentation of the book “Леся Українка. Книги Сивілли” )

February 17, 2024

Dr. Tamara Hundorova

Principal Research Scholar at Shevchenko Institute of Literature (Kyiv) and Associate Fellow at Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute

Lesia Ukrainka was named Mykhailo Drahomanov’s intellectual daughter and his “right hand.” How the relationship between the uncle and niece developed, how Larysa Kosach’s three renaming of herself are related to him, and how Drahomanov became the father of Ukrainian modern nationalism. All of this and much more will be addressed in the lecture by  the  well-known literary critic Tamara Hundorova as part of the presentation of her book  “Леся Українка. Книги Сивілли” (2023).

Prof. Tamara Hundorova is Principal Research Scholar at Shevchenko Institute of Literature (Kyiv) and Associate Fellow at Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute. Currently she is Research Scholar and Lecturer at Princeton University. She is the member of PEN Ukraine.

She is the author of Lesia Ukrainka. Knyhy Sybilly (2023), The Post-Chornobyl Library. The Ukrainian Postmodernism of the 1990s (2019), Tranzytna kul’tura. Symptomy postkolonial’noi travmy (2013), Kitsch i Literatura. Travestii (2008), Franko i/ne Kameniar (2006); Femina melancholica. Stat’ i kul’tura v gendernij utopii Ol’hy Kobylians’koi (2002) and others.

Her field of interests are modernism, postmodernism, feminism, postcolonial studies and history of Ukrainian literature.

She taught the courses at Harvard University (USA), Toronto University (Canada), Greifswald University (Germany), Ukrainian Free University (Germany), Kyiv-Mohyla University (Ukraine), Kyiv National University (Ukraine). Prof. Hundorova is a former Fulbright Scholar (1998, 2009), Visiting scholar of Monash university (Australia, 1991) and a recipient of Yacyk Distinguished Fellowship (2009), Shklar fellowship (HURI, 2001-2002), Foreign visitors fellowship (Hokkaido University, 2004), MUNK School of Global Affair fellowship (University of Toronto, 2017), and Fellowship of Philipp Schwartz-Initiative of Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung (University of Giessen).