By Olha Haidamachuk. The war forces you to hastily gather your whole life into a small emergency grab bag and urgently leave your home. Only your memories stay fully with you. The headlines in media outlets and their vocabulary set the tone for the perception by the reader and certain kinds of “emergency grab bags” of memories about a war.
By Mykola Homanyuk and Janush Panchenko. During the war so far, actors across information spaces and those making propaganda and counterpropaganda have been actively exploiting discourses about particular ethnic minorities. One of the most remarkable news from the first days of the war was the story that some Romani people from the village of Lyubymivka stole a Russian tank.
Микола Гоманюк, Януш Панченко. «Українець азербайджанського походження отримав звання Героя України», «папа римський Франциск звинуватив бурятів та чеченців у жорстокості», «мобілізовані до російської армії таджики розстріляли командира», «Туреччина евакуювала українських турків-ахиска» – з перших днів повномасштабної російської агресії проти України як в Росії, так і в Україні національні (етнічні) меншини почали регулярно потрапляти у новини.
Mykola Homanyuk’s research is dedicated to ethnic minorities, the transformation of war memorials, modern toponymic practices, and problems of social representation in contemporary documentary theater. Currently, he works with the Roma and Meskhetian Turks to find out how the Russian war in Ukraine and forced migration affected their sense of belonging and identity.
Olha Labur is a historian from Kyiv who researches women’s experiences in the 20th century. She works as an associate professor in the Department of History of Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute.
By Viktoriya Sereda. The unprecedented Russian full-scale attack on Ukraine brought the recent conflicts over memory in East Central Europe and in Ukraine to the attention of an international audience. Mass displacement also exposed millions of Ukrainians to new challenges that triggered intensive reinterpretations of the past – both the distant and the very recent – and a reevaluation of their memory through new experiences.
By Samad Alavi. Carolyn Forché’s Against Forgetting: Twentieth Century Poetry of Witness anthologizes poems that testify to some of the last century’s darkest political tragedies. In her introduction, Forché establishes her basic criteria for selection. First, she includes only poems, as she wishes to demonstrate that the old “arguments about poetry and politics ha[ve] been too narrowly defined” and that it is possible to understand poems as residing between the personal and the political.
By Arbia Selmi. Despite its important role in the history of Tunisia, the Tunisian General Labour Union (UGTT) is one of the most telling examples of the perpetuation of gender inequalities in Tunisia. The trade union environment is considered a male universe and is dominated by a patriarchal culture where women, until today, do not really find their place.
By André Bank. Internationally, the standing and profile of Tunisia’s General Labor Union (French: ‘Union Générale Tunisienne du Travail’, UGTT) has been shaped by three broad images: The first image emanated from the UGTT’s active participation in the so-called Jasmine Revolution in 2011, when its leadership and members protested the ‘ancien régime’ of President Zine Abidin Ben Ali.
By Elizabeth Bishop. A photograph near the bottom of the wall caught my attention at the Habib Achour exhibit in the Kerkennah branch of the Union Générale des Travailleurs Tunisiens (UGTT, General Union of Tunisian Workers). A caption provides the information that the black-and-white photograph was taken on 26 January 1978.
TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research is a platform for scholars in the humanities and social sciences who are interested in transregional exchange and research on current issues. TRAFO is the blog of the Forum Transregionale Studien (Berlin) and the Max Weber Stiftung – Deutsche Geisteswissenschaftliche Institute im Ausland (Bonn).
ISSN: 2199-2134
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