Galyna Fesenko

Fellows from Ukraine (12/2023-03/2024)

Holocaust Memory in Ukraine: Discourses of the Urban Memorial Landscapes

The project focuses on examining the key memorial transformations that took place on the sites of the Holocaust in Ukrainian cities from the end of the Nazi occupation to the present, as well as to analyse the extent to which these territories have become places of Holocaust memory. The project aims to describe the mechanisms of embedding this memory into the symbolic space cities (Dnipro, Kharkiv, Odesa). These cities were chosen for the study because they are the most sensitive to Holocaust memorial culture and public Holocaust museums function here. This is remarkable, since there is still no national Holocaust Museum in Ukraine. The project justifies the need to apply cultural analysis to each place of memory.

Galyna Fesenko, PD, Dr.Sc., Professor at the Department of History and Cultural Science at O.M. Beketov National University of Urban Economy in Kharkiv (Ukraine). A specialist in cultural urbanism, memory politics, gender studies, she has published extensively on these topics with a comparative focus on Ukraine and East-Central Europe. In recent years her research interests include genocide, searching for relevant approaches to the Holocaust memorial landscape (at the Institute of Culture Studies and Theatre History of the Austrian Academy of Sciences).