The Image of Catherine II in Russia’s War against Ukraine

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

The proposed panel seeks to explore the work of historical imagination in the current war of Russia against Ukraine by focusing on the image of Empress Catherine II – one of the key figures of Russian imperial history. In contemporary pro-Kremlin propaganda, “Catherinian discourse” is used to legitimize Russian claims to Southern Ukraine; in turn, such claims are counterbalanced by alternative readings of the eighteenth century on the part of Ukrainian citizens who reside in the region. Using the Black Sea port city of Odesa as a local case study, the panelists intend to present an analysis of a series of tropes of the imperial historical imagination, which were developed in the age of Catherine and which still retain their power and influence in the present day. Topics under discussion include the image of Catherine II in contested narratives of Odesan urban mythology; the reasons and consequences of such a narrative constellation; as well as the use of anti-Catherine political pornography as a means of deconstructing Russia’s “Catherinian myth.” The focus of the panel is the liberation impulses of memory work in the context of decolonial studies.

Sub Unit

• Anthropology, Cultural Studies

Chair

• Oksana Dovgopolova, Kyiv School of Economics (Ukraine)

Papers

• Deconstructing the Classicist Ways to Imagine Empire - Aleksey Kamenskikh, U of Bremen (Germany)

• Odesa’s Catherinian Myth: Power and Liberation - Oksana Dovgopolova, Kyiv School of Economics (Ukraine)

• Liberating Laughter?: Anti-Catherinian Political Pornography in Wartime Odesa - Ernest Alexander Zitser, Duke U

Discussant

• Martha M. F. Kelly, National Humanities Center