This event corresponds with our Fall 2024 book club: you do not have to register for the book club to hear OIena Stiazhkina speak, but consider doing so!
Join us for a discussion about Ukraine at war: Havighurst Center Director Stephen Norris will lead a conversation with the historian and author Olena Stiazhkina and photographer Ira Lupu.
We are delighted to announce the return of our co-sponsored book club with the Temerty Contemporary Ukrainian Program at Harvard University's Ukrainian Research Institute. The Book Club will read Olena Stiazhkina’s "Ukraine, War, Love: A Donetsk Diary," translated by Anne O. Fisher and published by HURI Publications. By registering for the Book Club, you will receive weekly emails from TCUP Director Dr. Emily Channell-Justice and from Havighurst Center director Dr. Stephen Norris to guide your reading. Suggested reading schedule and additional details about events will be provided in September. Registration is open!
More information about the book.
A historian by training, Olena Stiazhkina is a prolific Ukrainian writer and journalist with numerous scholarly publications and eleven books of fiction. Until the occupation of the city of Donetsk, she taught Slavic history at the Vasyl Stus National University in Donetsk (1993–2015) and then at the Mariupol State University (2015–2016). Her scholarly interests focus on women's history, life in the Soviet Union, and the history of the Donbas. Since 2016, she has served as the senior research fellow at the Institute of History of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. Her works of fiction comprise collections of short stories, novels, and detective stories (under the pen name Olena Iurska). She is the recipient of such awards as the Coronation of the Word (2000), Belkin Prize (short list for the main prize and winner in the category "The Teachers' Belkin," 2012), and Russian Prize (2014). In 2016, she was nominated for the prestigious Vasyl Stus Prize, which is awarded by PEN Ukraine to artists and public figures for their exceptional contribution to Ukrainian culture and for their courageous public stance. Having written almost exclusively in Russian before, Stiazhkina has been transitioning to writing in Ukrainian following the Russian aggression against Ukraine in 2014. Most recent scholarly book: The Stigma of Occupation: Self-Perception of Soviet Women in the 1940s (in Ukrainian, 2019). Most recent book of fiction: Cecil the Lion's Death Was Not in Vain (in Ukrainian; English translation forthcoming from Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute in 2023).
Ira Lupu is a photographer, writer, and multimedia artist born in Odesa, Ukraine. She is a graduate of the New Media Narratives program at the International Center of Photography, New York. Ira’s work explores the intersection of documentary and metaphorical space, and spans projects on the youth of Kazakhstan, Donbas war veterans who committed suicide, and avant-garde artists of North America. An important part of her work is centered around global women’s issues, including “Model at Home”, a long-term photo project on a fashion model living in a town with the highest crime rates in Ukraine, and “On Dreams and Screens”, an extensive transmedia project on webcam models and the psychological aspects of remote communication in Ukraine and the US. Ira has photographed, written, and tailored projects for media outlets worldwide, including Vogue, Dazed, Vice, InStyle, DIS, Calvert Journal, Folha de S.Paulo, and museums like Dallas Contemporary. She is a participant of Eddie Adams XXXIII, Fotofestiwal Łódź workshop, and part of Women Photograph Chapter Kyiv. She has received grants and awards from Women Photograph, Tbilisi Photo Festival, Prince Claus Fund, Shevchenko Scientific Society, and Prada Journal. Her recent work has documented her homeland since the Russian full-scale invasion (the cover photo is part of this project). You can read about it and see some of her photographs here: https://containerlove.art/.../ira-lupu-documenting.../
