VISIONS OF ECOLOGY on Art and the Environment in Eastern Europe and Eurasia
EVENT #4: THE MAKING AND UNMAKING OF THE “BLACK MYTH” OF DONBAS | TUESDAY, MARCH 28, 2023
DR. VICTORIA DONOVAN SENIOR LECTURER, UNIVERSITY OF ST. ANDREWS “THE MAKING AND UNMAKING OF THE ‘BLACK MYTH’ OF DONBAS: ART AS WITNESS TO DEINDUSTRIALIZATION, ECOCIDE, AND WAR IN UKRAINE, 2014-2023”
Victoria Donovan is a Senior Lecturer in Russian and Director of the Centre for Russian, Soviet, Central and East European Studies at the University of St Andrews. Her current research is on the industrial history and heritage of the Ukrainian East, also known as Donbas, questions of heritage management and manipulation and the role of the industrial past in forming community identities and politics. Victoria is the co-author with Darya Tsymbalyuk of “Limits of Collaboration: Art, Ethics and Donbas” (Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, 2022), and co-editor with Iryna Sklokina of “Donbas Imaginaries: Heritage, Culture, and Community,” a special collection published with REGION: Regional Studies of Russia, Eastern Europe and Central Asia in 2021. Before she began her research in Ukraine, she worked on Russian cultural nationalism and heritage politics in the historic northwest of the country. Her monograph, “Chronicles in Stone: Preservation, Patriotism and Identity in the Russian Northwest” as published with NIUP imprint at Cornell in 2019 https://bit.ly/40pFWcL Victoria’s current research engages with the public, civic and engaged humanities, and her methodological writing in this area has been published in Modern Languages Open and is forthcoming in 2023 with Canadian Slavonic Papers. Victoria’s research and knowledge transfer work has been recognized with prestigious national prizes and grants, including an Arts and Humanities Leadership Fellowship, British Academy Rising Star Engagement Award, and an AHRC/BBC New Generation Thinker award. Her new book “Monotown: Tales of Resistance” from the Ukrainian East will be published by Daunt Books Publishing in 2024. The Urban Media Archive https://uma.lvivcenter.org/en The Freefilmers collective https://help-freefilmers.network/ Mariupol Memory Park https://www.mariupolmemorypark.space/en/ VISIONS OF ECOLOGY is a year-long series on art and the environment in Eastern Europe and Eurasia supported by the Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies (REEES) program at the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale University. https://reees.macmillan.yale.edu/visions-ecology
Read event recap on the Yale REEES website: https://bit.ly/3mP4lKU