Her article “Gender and Violence in Ukraine: Changing How We Bear Witness to War”, was inspired by her talk at the Trinity Long Room Hub’s discussion on “Ukraine—Changing how we bear witness to war” as part of the Institute’s popular Behind the Headlines series and in collaboration with its Democracy Forum.
The Heldt Prize recognizes the accomplishments of Barbara Heldt, one of the founding mothers of Slavic Studies in the United States and of the Association for Women and Slavic Studies (AWSS).
Announcing the prize winners, the AWSS commended Dr Kulick’s article for how it “really helps to focus attention on an issue in real time and that it functions as a vital call to action. It is an essay, but this does not take away from its scholarly importance. During this time of ongoing war in Ukraine, Kulick’s paper is a necessary intervention.”
“The committee was collectively moved by key questions: What would it look like to view the war through the lives of women, through the experiences of sexual violence and terror? The article poses difficult and challenging questions, but ultimately, questions that demand attention in this current moment. Kulick calls scholars out as a means of calling them in to question how the war is framed, and how we bear witness to its atrocities.”
Dr Kulick is Assistant Professor at the University of Manitoba and a former Trinity Long Room Hub Early Career Research Fellow. During her time at the Trinity Long Room Hub, she worked alongside colleagues on COURAGE, a Horizon 2020 funded research project that explored the cultural heritage of dissent in former socialist countries, and now a continuing focus of the Trinity Centre for Resistance Studies which is dedicated to the study of resistance in all its forms. Dr Kulick was also the curator behind a Trinity Long Room Hub sponsored exhibition entitled ‘War and Revolution: Framing 100 Years of Cultural Opposition in Ukraine.’
Speaking on the Behind the Headlines discussion on the Ukraine, she scrutinised Russian motivations for the war against Ukraine. She warned that approaching this question solely from “a geopolitical, an internationalist perspective…loses the texture of what is happening on the ground” as she reflected on the horrors inflicted on civilians and in particular, the women and children who are being targeted.
Professor Eve Patten, director of the Trinity Long Room Hub congratulated Dr Kulick on her prize-winning publication and underlined the value of public humanities initiatives like the ‘Behind the Headlines’ series in giving researchers the opportunity to comment on issues of great societal concern, and in bringing the long-term perspectives of Arts and Humanities to bear on these challenging circumstances.
Read full article here: “Gender and Violence in Ukraine: Changing How We Bear Witness to War.” Canadian Slavonic Papers 64:2-3 (2022), 190-206.