On October 17, 2024, at 12:00 p.m., Nataliia Yuhan, Professor at the Department of Oriental Philology and Translation of Luhansk Taras Shevchenko National University (Poltava, Ukraine), DAAD scholarship holder at Heinrich Heine University of Düsseldorf, Doctor of Philological Sciences, and Associate Professor, gave a lecture titled “Existential Problems of Modernity in the Dimension of (Eco)Feminism and Ecocriticism (Based on the Material of Modern Austrian and Ukrainian Drama)”. The meeting was attended both online and in the conference room 1-0130 by lecturers and students from the Department of Philology and Translation at Kyiv National University of Technologies and Design, who are the future translators and teachers of Ukrainian and English, and who study the academic discipline “Foreign Literature and Literature of English-Speaking Countries”. The meeting was moderated by Svitlana Dvorianchykova, Associate Professor at the Department.
Nataliia Yuhan introduced the audience to a wide range of works by modern Ukrainian and foreign playwrights, revealed the features of the cycle of plays by the Austrian playwright Elfriede Jelinek, reported on the artistic interpretation of the existential crisis of women in the dominant system of patriarchy, and outlined ecofeminism as a method of analyzing artistic texts at the intersection of feminism and ecocriticism. Today, eco-studies substantiate this form of ecological consciousness, characterized by a fundamental shift in the worldview, focusing on the absence of opposition between humanity and nature, and the perception of natural objects as full-fledged subjects and partners of humans.
The research of various works of Ukrainian authors, centered on stories about domestic animals, has sparked interest in society. The lecturer presented the audience with different approaches to analyzing war discourse in modern foreign and Ukrainian literature. Nataliia Yuhan’s interdisciplinary approach illustrated the possibilities of dramaturgy in the embodying the principles of “cat therapy”.
At the end of the meeting, the lecturer invited students and colleagues to reflect on the powerful psychotherapeutic potential of modern dramatic works with eco-symbolism.
Nataliia Yuhan’s informative, multifaceted, and emotionally rich lecture introduced the audience to the latest trends in the development of both world and Ukrainian literature in Ukraine, modern works, and the search for artistic solutions to contemporary complex issues.
22.10.2024
