The Future of the Field: Highlighting Graduate Student Work in Ukrainian Studies
The Future of the Field: Highlighting Graduate Student Work in Ukrainian Studies

Summary/Abstract: The two articles in this issue that came out of Platforma represent that next generation and evoke the breadth of Ukrainian Studies, from rich work in the humanities and literature to the social sciences and political geography. In the first article, Darya Semenova uses popular adventure books from the 1930s-40s to explore the development of a Ukrainian Soviet identity. She argues that these adventure stories shaped both the borders of the Soviet world and the contours of belonging to the Soviet community for Ukrainian youth. In these stories, the tenets and functions of Socialist Realism permeate, while the stories largely follow the conventions of the adventure story genre, which are rooted in the colonial efforts to bring order and civilization into spaces of chaos, backwardness, and barbarism. This combination reinforces Soviet identity, behaviour, and community at the cost of de-emphasizing the protagonists’—and the young readers’—Ukrainian-ness.

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