Past Events at the Centre for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies
May 2024
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Tuesday, May 21st Event Postponed: Year Three: What’s Next in Ukraine’s War of Independence
Date Time Location Tuesday, May 21, 2024 3:00PM - 5:00PM Seminar Room 108N, 1 Devonshire Place, Toronto, ON, M5S 3K7 Registration Full Print this Event Bookmark this Event
Description
Yaroslav Trofimov, the author of “Our Enemies Will Vanish,” discusses the outlook for Ukraine as Russia renews its offensives and the international support for Kyiv starts to fray.
Yaroslav Trofimov is the author of three books of narrative non-fiction and one novel. He has worked around the world as a foreign correspondent of The Wall Street Journal since 1999, and has served as the newspaper’s chief foreign-affairs correspondent since 2018. Born in Kyiv, Ukraine, he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in international reporting in 2023, for his work on Ukraine, and in 2022, for his work on Afghanistan. His honors include an Overseas Press Club award for coverage of India as well as the Washington Institute gold medal for the best book on the Middle East.
If you are attending a Munk School event and require accommodation(s), please email the event contact listed above to make appropriate arrangements.
Disclaimer: Please note that events posted on this website are considered to be public events – unless otherwise stated – and you are choosing to enter a space where your image and/or voice may be captured as part of event proceedings that may be made public as part of a broadcast, webcast, or publication (online and in print). We make every effort to ensure your personal information is kept and used in compliance with the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA). If you have any questions please get in touch with our office at munkschool@utoronto.ca or 416-946-8900.
June 2024
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Thursday, June 6th The Poetics of War: The Experience of Contemporary Ukrainian Literature
Date Time Location Thursday, June 6, 2024 4:00PM - 6:00PM Seminar Room 108N, Seminar room 108N, 1 Devonshire Place, Toronto, ON, M5S 3K7 + Register for this Event Print this Event Bookmark this Event
Description
In Ukrainian literature, the war gave rise to a whole layer of works written by both veteran writers, combatants, and professional writers. These works are strikingly different from works written during the previous wars, including the literature of Ukrainian resistance. The specific realities of the Ukrainian-Russian war (such as its hybridity, the transfer of hostilities to the information space, the use of enemy propaganda and provocation, crimes against Ukrainian citizens in the occupied territories and the humanitarian consequences of the occupation, the problems of refugees and internally displaced persons, advocacy for Ukraine abroad, etc.) have led to the search for a new artistic language and new artistic means that Ukrainian literature has not yet had in its arsenal. War is an absurd reality in which each of us is looking for his or her own way to survive the trauma and maintain sanity. It is interesting to see what tools fiction has to describe the realities of war, to live through and comprehend the dramatic experiences and traumas that cannot be avoided in wartime. Using the material of the latest Ukrainian works about the war, Halyna Kruk will analyse the forms and formation of war narratives, the transformation of the documentary into fiction, the depth of existential experiences, and the possibilities of fiction as a therapeutic practice of talking through personal and collective traumatic experiences.
Halyna Kruk (1974) is a poet and prose writer, translator, and scholar from Lviv, Ukraine. She is the author of six books of poetry, The BookWar (2023), An Adult Woman (2017), Co(an)existence (2013), The Face beyond the Photograph (2005), Footprints on Sand and Journeys in Search of a Home (both 1997), collection of short stories Anyone but me (2021), and four books for children. Her Marko Travels Around the World and The Littlest One have been translated into 15 languages. She is a winner of numerous literary awards abroad and in Ukraine, among them The Sundara Ramaswamy Prize, The 2023 Women in Arts Award, The 2022 Kovaliv Fund Prize for her proze book Anyone but me, The Best Book Award of BookForum 2021, Smoloskyp Poetry Award, Bohdan Ihor Antonych Prize and “Hranoslov” Award. She has been shortlisted for shortlist for The 2024 Griffin Poetry Prize. Her works have been translated into more than 30 languages. The latest of Kruk’s books of poems A Crash Course in Molotov Cocktails (2023) and Lost in Living (2024) were published in biligual Ukrainian-English version in U.S. (in translation of Amelia Glaser, Yulia Ilchuk, Ali Kinsella and Dzvinia Orlowsky). Kruk holds a PhD in Ukrainian baroque literature (2001) and is a member of the Ukrainian PEN. She lives in Lviv and teaches European and Ukrainian baroque literature at the Ivan Franko National University in Lviv.
If you are attending a Munk School event and require accommodation(s), please email the event contact listed above to make appropriate arrangements.
Disclaimer: Please note that events posted on this website are considered to be public events – unless otherwise stated – and you are choosing to enter a space where your image and/or voice may be captured as part of event proceedings that may be made public as part of a broadcast, webcast, or publication (online and in print). We make every effort to ensure your personal information is kept and used in compliance with the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA). If you have any questions please get in touch with our office at munkschool@utoronto.ca or 416-946-8900.
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Friday, June 7th What Ukraine's Case Teaches Us About Morality, Law and Humanity
Date Time Location Friday, June 7, 2024 6:00PM - 8:00PM External Event, This event will take place at Innis Town Hall, Innis College, 2 Sussex Ave, Toronto, ON M5S 1J5 and online via Zoom Registration Full Print this Event Bookmark this Event
Description
Oleksandra Matviichuk is a human rights defender working in Ukraine and the OSCE region. At present she heads the human rights organization Center for Civil Liberties and also coordinates the work of the initiative group Euromaidan SOS. Aimed at protecting human rights and establishing democracy in Ukraine and the OSCE region, the Center for Civil Liberties develops legislative changes, exercises public oversight over law enforcement and judicial agencies, conducts educational activities for young people, and implements international solidarity programs.
The Euromaidan SOS initiative group was created in response to the brutal dispersal of a peaceful student rally in Kyiv on November 30, 2013. During three months of mass protests that were called the Revolution of Dignity, several thousand volunteers provided round-the-clock legal and other aid to persecuted people throughout the country. Since the end of the protests and beginning of Russian aggression in Ukraine, the initiative has been monitoring political persecution in occupied Crimea, documenting war crimes and crimes against humanity during the hybrid war in the Donbas, and conducting the #LetMyPeopleGo and #SaveOlegSentsov international campaigns to release political prisoners detained by Russian authorities.
Oleksandra Matviichuk has experience in creating horizontal structures for massive involvement of people in human rights activities against attacks on rights and freedoms, as well as a multi-year practice of documenting violations during armed conflict. She is the author of a number of reports to various UN bodies, the Council of Europe, the European Union, the OSCE, and the International Criminal Court.
In 2016 Matviichuk received the Democracy Defender Award for "Exclusive Contribution to Promoting Democracy and Human Rights" from missions to the OSCE. In 2017 she became the first woman to participate in the Ukrainian Emerging Leaders Program of Stanford University.
With the new armed aggression in February 2022, Matviichuk, together with other partners, created the “Tribunal for Putin” initiative to document international crimes under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court in all regions of Ukraine which were attacked by the Russian Federation.
In 2022 Oleksandra Matviichuk was awarded with the Right Livelihood Award and recognized as one of the 25 most influential women in the world by The Financial Times. The same year, the Center for Civil Liberties, which Oleksandra Matviichuk heads, received the Nobel Peace Prize.
This event is part of the Canadian Speaking Tour of Oleksandra Matviichuk, initiated by the Canada-Ukraine Foundation
If you are attending a Munk School event and require accommodation(s), please email the event contact listed above to make appropriate arrangements.
Disclaimer: Please note that events posted on this website are considered to be public events – unless otherwise stated – and you are choosing to enter a space where your image and/or voice may be captured as part of event proceedings that may be made public as part of a broadcast, webcast, or publication (online and in print). We make every effort to ensure your personal information is kept and used in compliance with the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA). If you have any questions please get in touch with our office at munkschool@utoronto.ca or 416-946-8900.
