Events by Day

On April, 4, 2017, Olena Haleta delivered a lecture on "Explosive Words: Ukrainian Literature of the 1990s." The event was part of the lectures and discussions program "Transformations in East Europe: 27 Years After."

The Ukrainian 1990s started with a Big Bang of the 1980s – the Chornobyl Nuclear power plant disaster and the "explosive wave" of political and social change, the undermining of the canon and explosive clash of words with the reality. The boundary of the modern times moved close to the present day and forced out entire generations from the literary domain, while attracting new aesthetes and enlighteners. Experimental and performative, social and ironic, literature was entering into dialogue with similarly unpredictable past and future. The languages we speak were born back in the 1990s but the works written in them need reading over and contextualization.

Olena Haleta – is a Doctor of Philology, professor at Ivan Franko National University in Lviv and Ukrainian Catholic University. She was teaching in Berlin, Zagreb, and Cracow. She did her research in the universities and scholarly institutions in Poland, Austria, Germany, Canada, and the USA. She authored the monograph "From Anthology to Ontology: Anthology as a Means to Represent Ukrainian Literature of the late 19th. – early 20th c.", and also multiple publications on literature as a means of creating new forms, senses, and values in the epoch of modernism and post-modernism, as well as on reading practices and ways of reading over.