EUTIM Spring Conference Do 28 Apr 2022 – Sa 30 Apr 2022 | 15:30–17:30

100th Anniversary of Ukrainian Formalism

International Online Conference, convened by Galina Babak (EUTIM / CAS), Vitaly Chernetsky (University of Kansas) and Andrii Portnov (European University Viadrina / Prisma Ukraïna)

Online via Zoom

In the 1920s, the “technique of the craft of writing” became one of the main tools for the modernization of Ukrainian national art and literature. This partly explains the tremendous interest of Ukrainian critics, literary historians, and theorists in Formal theory. The “Formal method,” along with the “Marxist method,” were the two main competing approaches to literary analysis in the 1920s. In 1922, the Ukrainian critic Volodymyr Koryak published the article titled “Form and Content” which provoked a subsequent polemics around the problem of the dialectics of “form” and “content.” This was the first significant discussion in Ukrainian literary criticism in the 1920s, and it marked the starting point of the phenomenon which is often called “Ukrainian formalism.”

The aim of our conference is to examine Ukrainian formalism and to address its legacy in contemporary Ukrainian literary studies. At the same time, the topic of “Ukrainian formalism” also ought to be considered in the wider framework of the development of Formal theory in other East European countries between World War I and World War II (the Polish and Czechoslovak cases). This could help us distinguish the specific national features in the theoretical perspectives and in ways of cultural thinking.

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Meeting ID: 869 8724 3564
Passcode: 621724

Program

28 April 2022

Introductory notes

How the Russian Invasion of Ukraine May Transform the Future of Slavic Studies

Andrii Portnov (European University Viadrina)

Galina Babak (EUTIM Fellow at the European University Viadrina, Research Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study Sofia)

Vitaly Chernetsky (College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, The University of Kansas)

Coffee Break

Artistic Form as „New Ideology” of the 1920s: Modernism, Futurism and Marxism in Struggle for Literature

Moderated by Vitaly Chernetsky (College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, The University of Kansas)

Oleh S. Ilnytzkyj (Professor Emeritus, University of Alberta):
Ukrainian Futurism: The Formalist Aspects

Olena Haleta (Ivan Franko National University of Lviv / Ukrainian Catholic University):
Ukrainian Literary Criticism of the 1920s: Yurii Mezhenko’s Diary as Self-articulation

Olesia Omelchuk (T.H. Shevchenko Institute of Literature, Ukrainian Academy of Sciences):
Some Aspects of Volodymyr Koriak’s Marxist Criticism

29 April 2022

Ukrainian Formalism: Main Representatives and Ideas

Moderated by Galina Babak (EUTIM Fellow at the European University Viadrina, Research Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study Sofia)

Alexander Dmitriev (Center for European Studies, Bremen University):
Olexandr Biletskyi Between the “Old” and the “New” Literary Science

Nataliya Vusatyuk (National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy):
Borys Yakubskyi’s Concept of Literary Form and the Methods of Literary Analysis

Andrei Ustinov (Center for Open Studies, San Francisco):
Ieremia Aizenshtok and the “Kharkiv Formalist Circle” (1920s)

Oksana Pashko (National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy / European University Viadrina):
The Theory of Short Story in Hryhorii Maifet’s Works of the 1920s

Coffee Break

Polish Formalism: History, Context, Cultural Intersections

Moderated by Annette Werberger (European University Viadrina)

Andrzej Karcz (Institute of Literary Research, Polish Academy of Sciences):
On Some Native Components of Polish Formalism

Michał Mrugalski (Humboldt University of Berlin):
Polish Formalism / Structuralism and the Ukrainian School of Polish Romanticism

30 April 2022

In Search of Ukrainian Literary Canon: History and Nowadays Re-thinking

Moderated by Galina Babak (EUTIM Fellow at the European University Viadrina, Research Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study Sofia)

Book Presentation:
Mykhailo Nazarenko (Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv):
Besides “Kobzar”: An Anthology of Ukrainian literature, 1792–1883 (Kyiv, 2021)

Closing Remarks