Petro Jacyk Program for the Study of Ukraine

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/1807/73503

Established in 2001 with the support of Petro Jacyk and the Petro Jacyk Educational Foundation, the Petro Jacyk Program for the Study of Ukraine focuses on contemporary Ukraine, as well as its history and culture. The major themes covered by the program focus on the challenges of independent Ukraine and include: building an effective state; foreign policy and international relations; education, culture and national identity.

The mission of the program is to promote scholarly understanding of the government, economy and society in contemporary Ukraine, as well as the country’s history and culture, primarily through the encouragement and support of collaborative projects (typically involving workshops, conferences, lectures, seminars, and visiting scholars) and through the support of graduate students studying Ukraine at the University of Toronto.

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    The Global Controversy Over Pussy Riot: An Anti-Putin Women’s Protest Group in Moscow
    (Michigan Publishing, 2012) Zychowicz, Jessica
    On February 21, 2012 a group of young women in the Russian punk band called Pussy Riot (PR), with colorful stockings pulled over their heads, staged an impromptu performance at the altar of Moscow’s Christ the Savior Cathedral. Their show was far from orthodox by punk standards: they were lip synching, they didn’t break or burn anything, and they were wearing dresses that could only be described as, well, pretty. The band was arrested after the performance, and the ordeal of the three jailed band members has drawn worldwide attention to the incident and to the social injustices they sang about in their “punk prayer” in which they yelled for the Virgin Mary to chase away Putin. After nearly half a year on trial, the three women who were taken into custody: Maria Alyokhina, 24; Yekaterina Samutsevich, 30; and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 23, were sentenced by Russia’s Superior Court on August 17th to two years in prison for “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred.” Prosecuting lawyers had pushed for three years. They could have gotten seven.
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    Two Bad Words: FEMEN & Feminism in Independent Ukraine
    (Indiana University, 2011) Zychowicz, Jessica
    “Now when people in America think of Ukraine they will add Femen to their list of vodka, snow, and the Orange Revolution,” my friend Lilya sighed in disappointment, “I’m embarrassed of them.” The Ukrainian women’s protest group Femen has been described in reports throughout western media over the past three years, including NPR, BBC, and The New York Times, as a new democratic initiative resonant with the Orange Revolution. Femen’s formula is at once simple and spectacular: scantily clad topless women stage highly theatrical demonstrations to draw attention to various facets of gender inequality in Ukraine. For example, in early 2008 they protested sexism in universities by re-enacting x-rated scenes of inequality in the classroom. Media reports have seized upon these street protests as the advent of a new kind of feminism. However, this may be an overestimation of the situation and a gross mishandling of the complexity of gender issues and their development over the course of Ukraine’s independence. While the group’s leader, Anna Hutsol, has publicly stated that Femen’s main motive is to spotlight the negative impact that sex tourism and prostitution have on Ukraine, this message often seems to get overshadowed by photos highlighting the “showier” elements of the group’s nude protest tactics. As distracting as such media reports may come across, Hutsol claims that Femen’s topless protests are absolutely necessary as the quickest way to draw attention to the exploitation of Ukrainian women. Towards these ends, the group maintains a broad campaign across Russian, Ukrainian, and English language social media sites. Given the urgency and breadth of their campaign, it hardly comes as a surprise that Hutsol hopes to form Femen into a parliamentary party by 2013—Europe’s “first all-women party.” Tracking Femen in the media and on their own sites since their formation in 2008, I have observed the creative methods with which the group satirizes symbols tied to post-soviet and post-orange discourse in unexpected ways. I believe that to categorize Femen as a simple ricochet of the Orange Revolution would be to severely limit their story. In thinking best how to research the group, I decided I needed to consult with them and other feminists in Ukraine in order to better understand the landscape of their movement in light of broader gendered discourses. Through my efforts, I hope to offer a new probing of recurrent issues for feminisms of many stripes, centering my inquiry on questions concerning equality and difference. The following are my initial post-fieldwork notes toward a deepening transnational feminist discussion.