CREES is pleased to Welcome Dr. Oksana Kis (Institute of Ethnology, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine). Dr. Kis will give a talk on March 2 in Forum C of the Burge Union at 7pm. Her talk is titled "Ukrainian Women at War: Historical Legacies and Present-Day Challenges."

This lecture will explore the phenomenon of women’s large-scale participation in the Ukrainian army during the current Russian war on Ukraine. It contextualizes Ukrainian women's military participation using the background of the historical legacy of Ukrainian women's military service during the two world wars as well as in the armed anti-Soviet nationalist resistance in 1940-50s. The events of the Euro-Maidan and subsequent Russia’s aggression on Donbas will be discussed as turning points in the changing public perception of women-soldiers towards further normalization of militant femininity in public discourse.

Oksana Kis is a feminist historian and anthropologist, a head of the Department of Social Anthropology at the Institute of Ethnology, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (in Lviv). 
She authored two books: Zhinka v tradytsiinii ukrainskii kilturi druhoi polovyny 19 – pochatku 20 stolittia (Lviv, 2008; 2n ed. in 2012) and Ukrainky v GULAGu: vyzhyty znachyt peremohty (Lviv, 2017; 2nd revised ed. 2020), the latter was included into the list of the 30 most significant books of the Ukrainian Independence by the Ukrainian Book Institute in 2021. Its English version Survival as Victory: Ukrainian Women in the Gulag (Harvard Series in Ukrainian Studies, 2021) was awarded the Translated Book Prize from Peterson Literary Fund (2021). She also edited and co-edited several volumes including the award-winning book Ukrainski zhinky u hornyli modernizatsii (Kharkiv, 2017).
Since 2010 she serves as a President of the Ukrainian Association for Research in Women’s History. She is also a co-founder and a vice-president of the Ukrainian Oral History Association. In 2014-2020 Oksana Kis was an Editor-in-Chief of the academic website Ukraina Moderna, and she is a member of the editorial team of Aspasia: The International Yearbook of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern European Women’s and Gender History. In 2018 she was elected to the Scientific Council of the National Research Foundation of Ukraine. 
Dr. Kis is a recipient of several academic awards, including the Fulbright Scholarship (2003 – Rutgers University; 2011 – Columbia University), Shklar Research Fellowship (2007 – Ukrainian Research Institute, Harvard University), Petro Jacyk Visiting Professorship (2010 Columbia University), and Stuart Ramsay Tompkins Professorship (2013 University of Alberta), Petro Jacyk Research Fellowship (University of Toronto). 
She has taught at Columbia University, University of Alberta, Free Ukrainian University, Ukrainian Catholic University, and Ivan Franko National University of Lviv. Currently Oksana Kis is a visiting professor of anthropology at the New School of Social Research. The areas of her expertise include Ukrainian women’s history, feminist anthropology, oral history, and gender transformations in post-socialist countries. Her current research focuses on everyday lives of the Ukrainian refugees in the displaced persons camps in post-WWII Europe.