Bodies in War: Women and Children in Cultural Representations of the Ukraine War

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Brief Description

This roundtable explores cultural representations of the body in the ongoing war in Ukraine, looking at both Ukrainian and Russian sources. Contributors examine the nexus of war, the body, and language, and visual culture, with a particular eye to the depiction of women and children. This roundtable includes four participants. Ewa Sułek offers a gendered analysis of ‘war bodies’ in contemporary Ukrainian art, showing how cultural representations of women’s bodies serve as a metaphor for the processes of invasion, occupation, and extermination, but also of resistance. Jenny Kaminer also focuses on women’s bodies, but in very different terrain: she examines the fascination with the female combatant in contemporary Russian war films, showing how these depictions challenge traditional representations of women, while also serve to legitimate violence against Ukraine. Connor Doak addresses corporeal imagery in the work of a prominent Russian woman poet who has positioned herself as a critic of the war: Maria Stepanova. Finally, Tatiana Filimonova looks at the affective power of images of children in war in autobiographical writing by Ukrainian author Olena Stiazhkina and Polina Zherebtsova’s diaries of the Chechen Wars.

Sub Unit

• Literature: 21st Century

Chair

• Jenny Kaminer, UC Davis

Roundtable Members

• Connor Brian Doak, U of Bristol (UK)

• Tatiana Filimonova, Dartmouth College

• Ewa Magdalena Sulek, Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Harvard University

Session Manager

• Aliide Naylor, Independent Scholar