Authors

Nadiia Chervinska¹;  ¹ Central European University, Austria

Discussion

The emergence of feminist discourse in Ukraine in the mid-1980s brought a methodological disruption to the study of Ukrainian literature. The leading role in this process was played by a group of female literary scholars—Solomiia Pavlychko, Tamara Hundorova, Vira Aheieva, and Nila Zborovska. This presentation examines how their introduction of feminist methodologies—often adapted from Western feminist theorists from Simone de Beauvoir to Kate Millet —to the study of Ukrainian modernist literature transformed Ukrainian literary studies. 

I look into the methodological strategies these scholars used between 1985 and 1999, and argue that by analyzing female authors through a feminist perspective—mainly Lesia Ukrainka and Olha Kobylianska— they legitimized discussions on female subjectivity and non-traditional sexuality, and showed the limitations of existing analytical frameworks within Ukrainian literary academia that often ignored or silenced these aspects. 

I aim to show that specific cases where feminist critique led to a renegotiation of canonical works, led to the methodological disruption that resulted in a reevaluation of Ukraine's cultural tradition, expanded the scope of literary criticism, and opened new ways of reading and writing about gender, identity, and modernity in Ukrainian literature.