Slavic Colloquium: Uilleam Blacker: Realm of Freedom and Threat: Literary Contestations of the Ukrainian Steppe

Please join the upcoming Slavic Colloquium talk entitled, "Realm of Freedom and Threat: Literary Contestations of the Ukrainian Steppe" by Uilleam Blacker (University College of London).

The Ukrainian steppes have always been crucial for Ukraine’s geopolitical predicament. They are notoriously vulnerable to external conquest and yet have also provided space for escape from political and socioeconomic oppression. These paradoxical and protean landscapes have appeared in many literary and artistic works over the last two centuries. Their meaning is constantly slipping back and forth between national and imperial perspectives and inflected variously by Romanticism, Orientalism, and modernism. This talk will trace the shifting significance of the steppes in multiple literary traditions from the early 19th century to the early 20th century.