From an Exotic Plant to a Symbol of Modern Culture: A (Brief) History of Sunflower in Ukraine
Dr. Iryna Skubii
University of Melbourne18.9.2025, 18:30
Conference Room of the Center for Urban History
We invite you to a lecture by Iryna Skubii on the emergence and spread of sunflower and sunflower oil in everyday life and consumer practices of Ukrainian society.
Like many other crops, this plant was brought to Europe from North America in the early sixteenth century, and from the late eighteenth century it spread to Ukrainian lands. It was only in the early nineteenth century, when the valuable flavoring properties of sunflower oil were discovered, that local botanists and agronomists began to study the new plant and its physical properties. As a result, compared to wheat, sunflower can hardly be included in the list of "traditional" agricultural and oilseed crops of Ukrainian lands.
With the growth of its physical presence in Ukrainian fields and gardens, the geography of sunflower spread quickly went beyond the village. The sunflower has become one of the sources of comprehension in artistic and literary works of the relationship between man and the environment, village and city, nature and culture. Since the twentieth century, the image of the sunflower has become an element of urban culture, from architecture, mosaics, and murals to memorial practices during the Russian-Ukrainian war.
In her lecture, the researcher will examine how and why the new plant and its oil became an element of the new modern culture and the embodiment of a new taste, and how and why knowledge about the sunflower changed. Based on archival documents, botanical reference books, statistical materials, memoirs, literary and artistic works, the historian will trace how the new exotic plant became not only a part of the environment and economic life, but also entered the everyday life and material culture of modern Ukrainian society.
Dr. Iryna Skubii
University of MelbourneHistorian, Mykola Zerov Research Fellow in Ukrainian Studies at the University of Melbourne, where her research projects include the history of sunflower in Ukraine as a plant, commodity, and cultural symbol in local and global contexts. She is the author of the monograph “Trade in Kharkiv during the NEP (1921-1929): History and Everyday Life” (2017) and a number of articles on the history of consumption, materiality, famines, and animal history in Soviet Ukraine in the 1920s-1940s. Research interests: history of consumption, food and material culture, history of the environment, animals and agriculture, history of famines and survival practices in Ukraine, economic history.
The lecture will be held as part of the public series on the experiences of modernity in cities, "Let’s Have a City".
Credits
Cover Image: A mural with a sunflower and a bird on the wall of the Ukrainian House in Essendon, Melbourne, in support of Ukraine. Created by Amanda Newman, #Art4UkraineAus, 2022. Photo by Iryna Skubii, 2025.
Gallery: Mariia Varanytska