LFJCC Mandelbaum Lecture Series: "Mine from ’33, Yours from ’41:” Translating Trauma in Contemporary Ukrainian Poetry with Dr. Amelia Glaser

The Mandelbaum Family Lecture Series returns with the 2022-2023 season! To kick off this incredible year of lectures is Dr. Amelia Glaser, Endowed Chair in Judaic Studies at UC San Diego, who will speak on the topic of contemporary Ukrainian poetry and how it informs and is informed by current-day Ukraine.

"Mine from ’33, Yours from ’41:” Translating Trauma in Contemporary Ukrainian Poetry with Dr. Amelia Glaser

At many points in modern history, Ukrainian identity has been bound up with the Ukrainian language, Ukrainian forms of Christianity, and the trauma of the Ukrainian famine. Over the past decade, however, poets in Ukraine have sought to correct the failures of both Soviet Nationalities Policy and post-Soviet Ukrainian national identity-formation by weaving Jewish, Ukrainian, and Crimean Tatar histories of collective trauma into their writing. In this talk, Dr. Amelia Glaser will discuss recent works by contemporary poets, whose attempt to bridge seemingly irreconcilable histories can be read as part of what scholars have identified as a recent shift from viewing Ukrainian identity as an ethnic category to a civic one. This shift helps to understand the ongoing war in Ukraine, as well as how global conversations about empathy and identity are present in Eastern Europe.