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Friday Feb 24th: Reflecting on the War on Ukraine with Oksana Kis

Feb 24 (Hybrid session: online and in person at the CUNY Graduate Center: Room C 201). 2pm to 3pm (New York Time)

 CUNY Graduate Center, 365 5th Avenue, New York

HOLDING SPACE FOR UKRAINE AFTER ONE YEAR OF FULL-SCALE WAR

“Here is our front”: Hybridization of Normative Femininity During Russia’s War on Ukraine

Oksana Kis, Senior Research Fellow, Institute of Ethnology, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, visiting professor, the New School of Social Research

in discussion with Olena Nikolayenko, Professor of Political Science, Fordham University, and Karyn Grossman Gershon, CEO, Project Kesher

Register for Zoom link here:

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZcuduuprjMpEtZne19X-xropy6oVhBs0HRh

Ukrainian women’s responses to the Russian full-scale military aggression against Ukraine as well as the Ukrainian society’s perception (reaction) to those responses are striking. Women’s self-mobilization for defense efforts manifested itself in two seemingly different ways: on the one end – large scale voluntary enrollment to the military to serve at the battle front, on the other end – simultaneous massive grass-roots volunteer movement of humanitarian nature at the home front. As different (or even opposite) as they may appear at first glance, these two women’s ways of engaging with defense efforts share an important common feature: both claim their rootedness in Ukrainian normative femininity with direct references to national historical legacy and folk traditions. Instead of considering these women’s wartime roles as mutually exclusive, I argue that they represent different modalities of a hybrid femininity that offers a broad spectrum of socially acceptable social roles for modern women, with women’s active citizenship defining a value attached to respective activities.

Note for in-person: Effective January 25, 2023, non-CUNY visitors will no longer need to show proof of vaccination against COVID-19 to enter the building. Instead, they will be required to show a government-issued photo ID to the security officers at the lobby’s front desk.

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