Course Director: Volodymyr Ryzhkovskyi (Independent Scholar)
Course Coordinator: Yuliia Karpets (NaUKMA)
Course Mentors: Tetiana Shyshkina (Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen), Oleksandra Kokhan (ZOiS), Anastasiia Morozova (CEU), Alina Bila (NaUKMA), Asya Kurtuldu (CEU), Yuliia Karpets (NaUKMA),
COURSE OVERVIEW
This course offers a critical perspective on twentieth-century Ukrainian history by bringing into sustained dialogue three interrelated but analytically distinct conceptual and historiographical fields: modernization, modernity, and modernism. Rather than approaching the century through teleological narratives of national fulfillment or linear progress, the course equips students with conceptual tools to interrogate how claims to being “modern,” “advanced,” or “forward-looking” functioned historically and politically.
At the core of the course lies a simple but generative question: how did material transformations reshape ways of living and imagining the future, and how were these shifts articulated, contested, or reworked through cultural and artistic forms? Industrialization, state planning, war mobilization, technological infrastructures, and late socialist economies form the material frameworks through which new forms of subjectivity and temporality emerged. These lived experiences of modernity, in turn, found expression in avant-garde experimentation, documentary practices, countercultures, architectural visions, and everyday cultural production.
Drawing on visual art, literature, architecture, economic history, and everyday practices, the course traces the construction and contestation of modern selves across the twentieth century. In light of the current war and its global reverberations, Ukraine emerges not only as an object of historical inquiry but also as a powerful site for rethinking broader theoretical questions about modernity, socialism, capitalism, technological change, and alternative futures.
CONTACTS
With questions related to enrollment certificates, registrations, stipends, and access to learning materials, please contact the course coordinator, Yuliia Karpets, yu.karpets@ukma.edu.ua. With any other course-related or non-related questions and comments, please contact the course director Volodymyr Ryzhkovskyi, vryzhkovskyi@gmail.com.
You can always contact your mentors:
Yuliia Karpets, yu.karpets@ukma.edu.ua
Tetiana Shyshkina, Tetiana.Shyshkina@gcsc.uni-giessen.de
Oleksandra Kokhan, kokhan_sasha@student.ceu.edu
Anastasiia Morozova, Morozova_Anastasiia@phd.ceu.edu
Alina Bila, alina.bila@ukma.edu.ua,
Asya Kurtuldu , Kurtuldu_Asya@phd.ceu.edu
Instructors: Volodymyr Ryzhkovskyi, Daiva Terescenko
Course Coordinator: Yuliia Karpets (NaUKMA)
Course Mentors: Tetiana Shyshkina (Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen), Oleksandra Kokhan (ZOiS), Anastasiia Morozova (CEU), Alina Bila (NaUKMA), Asya Kurtuldu (CEU), Yuliia Karpets (NaUKMA),
COURSE OVERVIEW
This course offers a critical perspective on twentieth-century Ukrainian history by bringing into sustained dialogue three interrelated but analytically distinct conceptual and historiographical fields: modernization, modernity, and modernism. Rather than approaching the century through teleological narratives of national fulfillment or linear progress, the course equips students with conceptual tools to interrogate how claims to being “modern,” “advanced,” or “forward-looking” functioned historically and politically.
At the core of the course lies a simple but generative question: how did material transformations reshape ways of living and imagining the future, and how were these shifts articulated, contested, or reworked through cultural and artistic forms? Industrialization, state planning, war mobilization, technological infrastructures, and late socialist economies form the material frameworks through which new forms of subjectivity and temporality emerged. These lived experiences of modernity, in turn, found expression in avant-garde experimentation, documentary practices, countercultures, architectural visions, and everyday cultural production.
Drawing on visual art, literature, architecture, economic history, and everyday practices, the course traces the construction and contestation of modern selves across the twentieth century. In light of the current war and its global reverberations, Ukraine emerges not only as an object of historical inquiry but also as a powerful site for rethinking broader theoretical questions about modernity, socialism, capitalism, technological change, and alternative futures.
CONTACTS
With questions related to enrollment certificates, registrations, stipends, and access to learning materials, please contact the course coordinator, Yuliia Karpets, yu.karpets@ukma.edu.ua. With any other course-related or non-related questions and comments, please contact the course director Volodymyr Ryzhkovskyi, vryzhkovskyi@gmail.com.
You can always contact your mentors:
Yuliia Karpets, yu.karpets@ukma.edu.ua
Tetiana Shyshkina, Tetiana.Shyshkina@gcsc.uni-giessen.de
Oleksandra Kokhan, kokhan_sasha@student.ceu.edu
Anastasiia Morozova, Morozova_Anastasiia@phd.ceu.edu
Alina Bila, alina.bila@ukma.edu.ua,
Asya Kurtuldu , Kurtuldu_Asya@phd.ceu.edu
Instructors: Volodymyr Ryzhkovskyi, Daiva Terescenko
- Instructors: Volodymyr Ryzhkovskyi, Daiva Terescenko, Balazs Trencsenyi