Special Guest Talk co-hosted by UNET at ZOiS, Forum Transregionale Studien, KIU and Prisma

11:30-12:45 - presentation and Q&A

12:45-13:30 - lunch, informal Q&A 

Moderated by Viktoria Sereda

Since the Maidan (Revolution of Dignity) and the beginning of Russia's war against Ukraine in the spring of 2014, public discourse on normative femininity in Ukraine has changed considerably. There has been an increasing normalisation of the image of a woman-warrior. In my presentation, I argue that this process should be understood as the development and expansion of normative femininity to include the idea of a woman who is good to fight back (in the most general sense). I examine textual and visual materials from conventional and social media to show how women's historical legacies of political leadership and military service are used to assert women's right to participate in the defense of the country today. At the same time, persistent references to folk culture and the revival of magical thinking work to prove women's aptitude to defend and fight back. A complex image of a militant woman (for both soldiers and civilians) is emerging and gaining momentum as a hybrid form of femininity that is more inclusive in terms of its diverse and seemingly contradictory components. This process is unfolding against the backdrop of growing gender sensitivity in the media's representation of women in the military, both in terms of content and language used, as well as the state's perceptible appreciation of women's contribution to the country's defense.  

Oksana Kis is a feminist historian and anthropologist. She is Senior Research Fellow and Head of the Social Anthropology Department at the Institute of Ethnology, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (in Lviv). She is also President of the Ukrainian Association for Research in Women's History. Her most recent book, Survival as Victory: Ukrainian Women in the Gulag, was published by Harvard University Press in 2021. She is the recipient of several academic awards, research grants, and fellowships. Her research interests include women’s lives in traditional Ukrainian peasant culture and society, women’s experiences of the Holodomor (Great Famine of 1932-33), women’s participation in the Ukrainian nationalist anti-Soviet underground in the 1940 and 1950s, as well as gender transformations in post-socialist countries.

Please register at events(at)zois-berlin(dot)de.