Politics of Identity in Ukraine

This course will examine various aspects of the politics of identity in Ukraine before and during Russia's invasion of the country. It will explore how the state and non-state actors such as media, businesses, churches and NGOs have molded citizens' ethnonational, linguo-cultural, social, local/regional, and other identities. At the heart of analysis will be the politics of language and their relation to ethnonational identity and power relations, the former prioritizing Ukrainian and the latter often giving advantage to Russian. At the same time, the course will also examine the politics of ethnicity, citizenship, memory, religion, and foreign policy. We will discuss legislation, political statements, media materials, protest campaign slogans, urban landscape tokens, and other textual and visual representations of certain policies asserting certain identities. We will learn how these practices constructed Ukraine as different from Russia and how the latter's attempt to impose - politically, culturally, and militarily - the similarity of the two peoples ultimately led Ukrainians to embrace a more radically anti-Russian identity.