Events
Conference “Between the Local and the Global: Unpacking Environmental History of Ukraine”
25 September @ 09:00 - 26 September @ 17:30
The EnvHistUA Research Group is pleased to inform that the conference “Between the Local and the Global: Unpacking Environmental History of Ukraine” will be held on 25-26 September 2024 at the Centre for Advanced Study (CAS), Sofia, Bulgaria.
The significant impact of the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war on the environment of Ukraine has consequences far beyond the borders of the country which have gained visibility locally and globally. Scholars and practitioners across diverse disciplines have undertaken various projects intended to document environmental destruction and have organized a number of events. The media reports about the devastating impacts of everyday hostilities on flora and fauna, soil and water. NGO and state institutions collect data to recognize Russia’s actions towards nature as an act of ecocide. This unprecedented interest has brought the topic of Ukraine’s environment and ecological crises to the forefront of global media and scholarship. The Kakhovka dam disruption by the Russian military has uncovered deeper historical contexts of ecological issues. Unravelling current and similar historical relationships stand as the primary objective of environmental historians seeking to elucidate the complexity of the engagement of human with the surrounding environment.
EnvHistUA Research Group is organizing this scholarly conference in order to advance and consolidate the environmental history of Ukraine as a research field and address related challenges. The event aims to bring together scholars to discuss epistemological aspects and practical implications of researching and writing environmental histories of Ukraine that go beyond the realm of disasters and catastrophes. An imperative aspect of this endeavour involves writing, rethinking and diversifying the existing historical narratives about Ukraine’s environment. Our starting point is to expose, conceptualize and analyze the multifacetedness of nature–culture, human/society – environment interactions and developments through time and across Ukrainian lands. Secondly, we place great emphasis on transnational, trans-imperial, transborder, and global nexuses Ukraine’s environments were a part of. This epistemological approach holds the potential to unveil hitherto untold narratives, thereby enriching the fabric of history. Finally, the event engages with the question of what environmental history can offer to Ukrainian and European studies, as well as global studies, and vice versa. This knowledge is invaluable in addressing present and future environmental challenges sustainably and responsibly.
If you have any questions, please write to [email protected].
Agenda
09:00 AM – 09:45 AM EEST
Registration
09:45 AM – 10:45 AM EEST
Opening Disscussion
Welcome messages:
Julia Malitska, Södertörn University, Sweden
Oleksii Chebotarov, University of Vienna, Austria
Anna Olenenko, University of Alberta, Canada; Khortytsia National Academy, Ukraine
10:45 AM – 11:15 AM EEST
Coffee Break
11:15 AM – 12:30 PM EEST
Session 1: Narrating Landscapes
Chair: Oleksii Chebotariov
Presenters:
Igor Serdiuk, How to Write an Environmental History of the Hetman Region? Source Base and Promising Methodologies
Iryna Papa, Ukrainian Landscapes in 1711 Through the Eyes of a Danish Diplomat
Discussant: Tetiana Perga
12:30 PM – 02:00 PM EEST
Lunch
02:00 PM – 03:30 PM EEST
Keynote Lecture by Marianna Szczygielska
“Colonial Creatures and Imperial Beasts: Global Animal History in Eastern Europe”
Writing a global history of animals requires special attention paid to the frameworks of coloniality and imperiality. These two forms of domination are intertwined but they manifest differently in environmental histories of any given region. Far too often more-than-human histories set in Eastern Europe fall between the cracks of the global East/West or South/North divides that structure knowledge production. This lecture will address the epistemological tensions between the colonial and the imperial using the example of captive animal management in Poland at the turn of the twentieth century. Asian elephants and European bison will serve as companions to the reflection on writing global animal history from a local perspective of Eastern Europe. As representatives of charismatic megafauna, these animals inspired colonial longings, anti-imperial resistance, and national sentiments. Historically contingent ideas about exotic and Indigenous species are bound up with global dimensions of wildlife trade, species conservation, and cultural politics practiced at the edges of empires. Recognizing the limits and ambivalences of the colonial/imperial archives can aid environmental historians in situating localized interspecies relations within the global arena without losing the grasp of the specificity of the semi-peripheral context.
Speaker: Marianna Szczygielska
Moderator: Julia Malitska
03:30 PM – 04:00 PM EEST
Coffee Break
04:00 PM – 05:30 PM EEST
Session 2: Cultivating Nature
Chair: Julia Malitska
Presenters:
Vladyslav Hrybovskyi, Seasonal Rhythms of the Location of the Zaporozhian Cossacks, Noghais and Crimean Shepherds in the Great Meadow
Anthony Amato, The Great Hutsul Plow-Up: Nature, Culture, or What?
Discussant: Laura Kuen
07:00 PM EEST
Welcome Dinner
09:00 AM – 10:15 AM EEST
Session 3: Contested Waterscapes
Chair: Anna Olenenko
Presenters:
Dzhulietta Avanesian, Changing the Dnipro: Discussions on the River Modernization in Imperial Periodicals
Illia Malyk, Understanding River History: Modern Ukrainian Historiography
Discussant: Volodymyr Kulikov
10:15 AM – 10:45 PM EEST
Coffee Break
10:45 AM – 12:30 PM EEST
Session 4: Extractivism and Environment
Chair: Julia Malitska
Presenters:
Kristina Hook, Ecological and Educational Gaps in Ukrainian Human-Environmental Relations: Enduring Impacts of Moscow’s Extractive Policies and the 1930s Ukrainian Holodomor
Volodymyr Kulikov, In the Service of Resources: Extractive Company Towns in Eastern Ukraine Across Twentieth-Century Political Regimes
Kseniia Lopukh, Ecological Economics and the Contribution of Ukrainian Intellectuals S.Podolynskyi, S.Ostapenko, and V.Vernadkyi
Discussant: Iryna Zamuruieva
12:30 PM – 02:00 PM EEST
Lunch
02:00 PM – 03:15 PM EEST
Session 5: Struggle for/against Nature
Chair: Oleksii Chebotariov
Presenters:
Anastasiia Khovtura, The Struggle for Cleanliness: Waste Management in Kharkiv at the Turn of the 19th and 20th centuries
Tetiana Perga, An Unequal Struggle: Gophers in Ukraine amid Soviet Modernization and Totalitarian Regime
Discussant: Marianna Szczygielska
03:15 PM – 03:45 PM EEST
Coffee Break
03:45 PM – 05:00 PM EEST
Session 6: Environment and War
Chair: Anna Olenenko
Presenters:
Iryna Zamuruieva, A Field from afar
Karolina Koziura, Agriculture, and Farmers’ Anxieties along the East European Frontier
Discutant: TBA
05:00 PM – 05:30 PM EEST