Odesa City Myth Rethought and Reframed

Ukrainian Black Sea Narratives, Multidirectional Memory, and the Challenges of Decolonization

Few cities on the Black Sea coast can rival Odes(s)a in the richness and diversity of its cultural legacy. An oft-mythologized image of the city derived from Russian-language writings, especially from the early twentieth century, trickled into a stereotypical version exploited for decades both by the Soviet and the Russian post-Soviet mass culture, as well as by the city's own tourism industry. However, this outdated and now largely shed cliché narrative obscures many facets of the city's cultural diversity both past and present. This talk will trace several attempts to challenge and rethink the dominant stereotypes, including in the early twentieth century, in the 1960s, and in the twenty-first century.
At the center of Vitaly Chernetsky’s inquiry are the contemporary Odesa-focused multidirectional memory projects pursued, among others, by the writer Ivan Kozlenko, the philosopher and art curator Oksana Dovgopolova, the poet Boris Khersonsky, and the visual artist Oleksandr Roitburd, as well as the new impulse by local intellectuals to decolonize the Odesa narrative since February 2022, in the context of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Vitaly Chernetsky is a Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Kansas and a URIS Fellow at the University of Basel. Originally from Ukraine, he earned his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. He has written and edited several works on Slavic and East European literature, including the book Mapping Postcommunist Cultures (2007). He has also translated literary works, with a forthcoming translation of Sophia Andrukhovych’s novel Felix Austria. He holds leadership roles in Ukrainian and Slavic studies organisations and will be the 2024 President of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES).

This event will be moderated by Mariia Shynkarenko, Research Director: Ukraine in European Dialogue (IWM).