Cooling the Hot Zone: Transformations of Chornobyl Zone Image in Popular Culture
Speaker: Dr Tetiana Ostapchuk, BASEES Ukrainian Scholar at Risk
The image of Ukraine in popular culture has often been presented through lenses of a nuclear threat. When the Russian war against Ukraine dawned on 24 February, the Chornobyl Zone of Exclusion on the border with Belarus became one of the first territories fully occupied within the first days of the invasion. The violation of the state borders of the independent country, the intrusion of the foreign army and weaponry on the contaminated territory, and the Russian military control over the workers and settlers of the Zone brought back the fears of a new nuclear disaster. Thus, Chornobyl once and again became a contested space. In my talk, I suggest looking back at contradicting narratives oscillating between “Chornobylphobia” and “Chornobylphilia” in popular culture, periods of visibility and invisibility, and efforts of art(iv)ists to create, maintain, and re-interpret the image of Chornobyl from a space of absolute “doom and gloom” to a cool and internationally attractive borderscape.
Speaker
Tetiana Ostapchuk is a Ukrainian Research Fellow at the University College London (2022-2023), holding a PhD in Comparative Literature. She has published and lectured extensively on topics of Ukrainian American literature, memory and identity in Ukrainian and American narratives, representation of trauma and borders in contemporary literature and audio-visual art.
She co-edited and edited such volumes devoted to the problems of Cultural Border Studies as:
“(Pop) Cultures on the Move: Transnational Identifications and Cultural Exchange Between East and West.” Ed. by Astrid M. Fellner, Tetiana Ostapchuk, Bärbel Schlimbach. SARAVI PONTES - Saarland University Press, 2018;
“Crossing Borders: Representations of Ukrainian Diasporas.” Edited by Tetyana Ostapchuk. EUXEINOS -Culture and Governance in the Black Sea Region – Nr. 30- 12/2020. (https://gce.unisg.ch/en/euxeinos/archive/30).