Literatūros seminaras: “This beautiful Crimea, this tragic Crimea”: the peninsula on the mental map of “sites of memory” in contemporary Ukrainian literature for children and young adults
We cordially invite you to the Faculty’s Literature Seminar, which will be held in English, and will take place on Tuesday, 19 March, at 5 p.m. in Kazimieras Būga Auditorium. This time our speaker will be the post-doctoral fellow of the Institute for Literary, Cultural and Translation Studies Dr Daria Semenova.
“This beautiful Crimea, this tragic Crimea”: the peninsula on the mental map of “sites of memory” in contemporary Ukrainian literature for children and young adults
Abstract: In the early 2000s, Ukrainian authors turned to entertaining and attention-grabbing potential of children’s detective stories and adventure fiction to familiarize their young readers with topics from Ukrainian history. This presentation will characterize the peculiar genre conglomerate in which detective plots gravitated around historic artefacts and places where notable historic events took place – thus promoting a mental map of the national space and a narrative of collective memory. The Crimean Peninsula was given a very peripheral place on this mental map, if any, before the occupation in 2014. The second part of the presentation shows how, paradoxically, Crimea and its indigenous inhabitants, Crimean Tatars, get centered in stories for children and young adults about national memory more often since the late 2010s. The final part will analyze how contemporary historic fiction for children inscribes events from the history of Crimean Tatars into the kaleidoscope of multi-cultural stories that took place on the territory of present-day Ukraine.
Daria Semenova is primarily interested in the potential of genre fiction to shape the readers’ understanding of the world and themselves. She obtained her PhD in Slavic Languages and Literatures from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2023, with a dissertation entitled “At Home and Away: Community Belonging in Polish, Russian, and Ukrainian Adventure Fiction, 1918-1960.” The current presentation is part of her new research project dedicated to space and memory in Ukrainian fiction for children and young adults since independence, on which she is working as a post-doctoral fellow at Vilnius University.
This time we are offering cafés in:
Helene Schjerfbeck (1862 –1946) is one of the luminaries in Finnish art. Today, she is the best-known female artist from Scandinavia from the turn of the 19th and 20th century. She was one of the few artists of her generation who both created masterpieces in her Naturalistic and Impressionistic style and was also able to shift to an entirely Modernist mode in the 20th century. In both periods she was successful.
Leena Ahtola-Moorhouse MA is an art historian and was chief curator at the Ateneum Art Museum, Helsinki until 2013. She has written widely on Finnish art from the 19th and 20th centuries. She was invited as a scholar to the Weisman Art Museum, University of Minnesota, U.S.A. in 2000. She has curated many exhibitions especially on Finnish women artists. She is known as a specialist on Helene Schjerfbeck’s art. The Helene Schjerfbeck retrospectives in 1992 and 2012 were curated by her.
Renginio programa:
Prisistatydamas auditorijai rašytojas paminėjo, kad jo mama, sužinojusi, kur jis vyksta, papasakojo, kad jų šeimos istorijoje Vilnius yra labai svarbus miestas. Rašytojo senelis, XX a. pradžioje atvyko į Vilnių iš Kyjivo, kur neturėjo galimybės mokytis aukštojoje mokykloje, ir būtent čia įsitraukė į sionistų judėjimą ir galiausiai išvyko į tuometinę Palestiną. Susitikimo metu buvo daug kalbama apie Nevo romaną Trys aukštai, su kuriuo, kaip prisipažino rašytojas, jis iki šiol turi jautrų santykį dėl asmeniškai svarbių tėvystės, santykių šeimoje klausimų. Pirmieji romano skyriai buvo parašyti tuo metu, kai Nevo už eismo taisyklių pažeidimus neteko vairuotojo pažymėjimo ir buvo priverstas naudotis viešuoju transportu. Izraelyje viešajame transporte žmonės kalba telefonais arba bendrauja tarpusavyje labai garsiai. „Aš visada klausausi pokalbių, kurie skirti ne mano ausiai“, – sakė Nevo. Būtent tuomet jis supratęs, kad visi šie pokalbiai yra potencialios literatūrinės istorijos, kurias tik reikia užrašyti. Parašęs pirmąsias dvi dalis jis suvokė, kad savo sumanymui gali pritaikyti Sigmundo Freudo pasiūlytą triaukštę asmenybės struktūrą, kurią išdėstė ir savo knygoje. Taip Freudo dėka atskiros novelės įgijo ryšį ir tekstas tapo romanu. Diskusijoje buvo kalbėta apie rašymo procesą, atvirumo ir fikcijos santykį kūryboje, rašančiojo santykį su artimiausiais žmonėmis. Nevo juokavo, kad tai, ką jis sako, neturėtų išeiti už auditorijos sienų.
