Women's Dimensions of the Past: How History Becomes Reality

We invite you to join the conversation about the new old and found meanings of past studies in the context of a full-scale war for the future.

The reason for the discussion will be the collective monograph "Women's Dimensions of the Past: Perceptions, Experiences, Representations" edited by Oksana Kis, which the Center for Urban History and the Ukrainian Association of Women's History Researchers will soon publish with the support of the Heinrich Böll Foundation. Based on the conference of the same name held in June 2021, the book unites 22 co-authors whose works reveal little-known aspects of the historical experience of Ukrainian women in the context of prevailing social perceptions, legal norms, social institutions, and common practices of the particular era and social strata (from the late seventeenth to the early twenty-first century). The publication of this book during the war was a personal challenge for everyone involved.

What happens to a researcher of women's historical experiences when the subject she has been studying suddenly becomes part of her own real life? How does this personal war experience influence our research — how and what we write about, what questions we ask about the past, and what new answers we find in seemingly familiar sources? What exactly motivates us (not) to continue research during the war, what aspects of research remain significant and essential, and what meanings are (temporarily or permanently) lost? To what extent are our (scholarly) texts also historical testimonies about this war? What is the mission and responsibility of a historian who finds her/himself inside historical events? What theories of interpreting women's historical experiences have (not) withstood the test of the reality of the Russo-Ukrainian war, and what does this mean for the study of women's history in Ukraine and beyond?

The conversation will be joined by Olena Haleta, Ivanna Cherchovych, Mariana Baidak, and moderator Oksana Kis

The meeting is part of the project "Women's Dimensions of the Past: Perceptions, Experiences, Representations. A Collective Monograph" with the support of the Heinrich Böll Foundation, Kyiv – Ukraine office.

Credits

Cover Image: collection of Andriy Otko / Urban Media Archive of the Center for Urban History

Gallery: Bohdan Yemets