Freedom’s liberator: Taras Shevchenko and the idea of modern Ukraine with Rory Finnin | Literatura 2025
Date and time:
Tuesday 10 June, 2025
18:30 - 20:00
Location:
ONLINE
NB: registration will close 10 minutes before the seminar, 18:20 BST on 10 June.
In the first seminar of Literatura 2025, Rory Finnin, Professor of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Cambridge, will lead us through the birth of Ukrainian literature, and the forging of the modern idea of Ukraine.
‘Ukraine is the largest country within the European continent, situated at a geopolitical crossroads determining our future. It is bound together not by one language, or one church, or one ethnicity, or even one historical inheritance. Ukraine is united by an idea. The roots of this idea are the rhythms and rhymes of Taras Shevchenko (1814–1861). His innovative poetry has long been Ukraine’s source code, a cultural algorithm in pursuit of personal, national, and universal human freedom. Today it helps fuel widespread grassroots resistance against a Russian war of aggression and conquest that threatens all of Europe. In this lecture, we explore the idea of modern Ukraine and navigate new inroads through Shevchenko’s biting satire and mournful elegy, which condemn the greed and violence of imperial elites while inspiring new modes of anti-colonial solidarity within Ukraine and beyond Ukraine.’
Lecturer
Rory Finnin
Professor Finnin launched Cambridge Ukrainian Studies in 2008; you can find out more about him here.
