Ukrainian avant-garde theatre with Mayhill Fowler | Literatura 2024

Mykola Kulish: the avant-garde in context

NB: registration will close 10 minutes before the seminar, 18:20 BST on 27 June. 

In the fourth seminar of the Literatura course, Associate Professor in the Department of History at Stetson University, Dr Mayhill C. Fowler, will take you backstage at the Ukrainian avant-garde theatre of the early twentieth century. 

‘We will explore the life and work of leading Soviet Ukrainian playwright Mykola Kulish (1892–1937). We will discuss two of his most provocative plays, 1927’s The People’s Malakhy and 1930’s Sonata Pathétique. We will also, however, situate his work in the complicated nexus of arts and politics in the Soviet borderlands. Our goal will be to understand creativity in context, and to explore the world of artists, audiences, and state officials in Soviet Ukraine’s explosive avant-garde. Finally, we will think about the “geography” of culture, how centres, peripheries, and canons are constructed, and what we can do to change readers’ and audiences’ mental maps to not only include Ukrainian literature, but also to understand how including Ukrainian literature shifts our entire picture of the avant-garde. Kulish resisted the pull of empire in his work, and we, as scholars, readers, and audience members, must push against the epistemic injustice that continues to ignore his legacy.’