Environments and Materialities in Mezhyhirya during the 1920s–1930s

Yuliia Karpets, Ph.D. in literature studies, is a researcher and a lecturer at the Literature Department, National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy (NaUkMA).

Karpets works with textual, visual, and material fabrics of the 1920s and the early 1930s to elaborate on the reciprocal relations between soil/ground/earth and modernist artists, sensitive to the Soviet modernization and its destructiveness. She combines literary studies, visual culture, and environmental history. This approach is a logical development of her Ph.D. dissertation, where she explored the intersecting heterogeneous biographies, archival practices, and pieces of literature of Ukrainian researchers and writers throughout the 1920s–1930s, as well as writing materiality that witnessed trauma after the First World War and revolutionary events of 1917–1921, drastic environmental changes, destroyed relations between humans and soil during Holodomor, and the terror of the 1930s.

During the UMIFRE fellowship, she plans to elaborate on the research project Environments and Materialities in Mezhyhirya during the 1920s–1930s. She will explore Mezhyhirya (a historical area in the north of Kyiv near Kyiv hydroelectric power plant) as an intensive assemblage of artistic modernist practice, cult architecture, and Soviet modernisation project throughout the first decades of the 20th century. This is the unique space where experiment of the new material culture were co-present with the pre-modern forms of community organization and artistic production.

CV

EDUCATION

2022–2026: Ph.D. in Literature Studies. National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy (Kyiv, Ukraine). Dissertation: The Phenomenon of Groundlessness in the Writings by Mykola Khvylovyi and Viktor Petrov-Domontovych.

2020–2022: MA in Theory, History of Literature and Comparative Studies. National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy (Kyiv, Ukraine). Thesis: Nathalie Sarraute`s Tropisme in the Philosophical Context of the Second Half of the XX Century.

2016–2020: BA in Germanic Languages and Literatures (including Translation). National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy (Kyiv, Ukraine)

FELLOWSHIPS & RESEARCH STAYS

March 2026 – October 2026: participant at Methodology Seminar for Art History in Ukraine (Bibliotheca Hertziana, Max Planck Institute for Art History). Research project: Vasyl Sedliar and Oksana Pavlenko at the Crossroads of Soviet Modernity: Environments and Materialities

2024–2026: fellow at Invisible Graduate School (IUFU, CEU). Research project: Thinking Environmentally about Ukrainian Literature of the 1920s–1930s

2025: junior research fellow at Imre Kertész Kolleg Jena. Research project: Thinking Environmentally about Ukrainian Literature of the 1920s–1930s

spring 2022: student at MA «English & American Studies» (Friedrich-Schiller-Universität, DAAD)

EXPERIENCE

2023–present: senior lecturer at the Department of Literature (NaUKMA).

2025–present: mentor and coordinator at Invisible University of Ukraine (Central European University).

2024: archivist at V. Domontovych. Digital Memory Storage project (NASU Institute of Archeology).

2022–2023: archivist and researcher at Wartime Art Archive.

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

Book projects

2026: Introduction to V. Domontovych’s Doktor Serafikus (Vikhola, 2026).

Academic Articles

1. Viktor-Petrov Domontovych’s Writing Scenes. No. 6–7 (2026): NaUKMA Research Papers. Literary Studies [in Ukrainian]. https://doi.org/10.18523/2618-0537.2026.6-7.19-28
2. Between a Word and Voice: the Auditory Space of “Tale of the Sanatorium Zone” (“Povisit pro Sanatoriinu Zonu”) by Mykola Khvylovyi. The Journal of V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University. Series “Philology”, 2025. https://doi.org/10.26565/2227-1864-2025-96-14
3. Seraphic Gender in “Doktor Serafikus” by V. Domontovych, Kyiv-Mohyla Humanities Journal, 2024. https://doi.org/10.18523/2313-4895.11.2024.160-178
4. Phenomenon of “Groundlessness” in Works by Viktor Petrov-Domontovych in Philosophical Contexts of the Second Half of the 20th Century. No. 4-5 (2024): NaUKMA Research Papers. Literary Studies [in Ukrainian]. https://doi.org/10.18523/2618-0537.2024.4-5.82-90
5. Post-Traumatic Relationships Between Sexes in Mykola Khvylovyi’s Prose. Siverian Chronicle (2), 2024 [in Ukrainian]. https://doi.org/10.58407/litopis.240213

Essays & Critical Texts

1. The Archaeology of the Absent and the Painting Florets of Karina Synytsia. Kontur, 2026 [in Ukrainian].
2. Archive of Forms by Anna-Mariia Kucherenko: Archive as Care,Suspilne kultura, 2025 [in Ukrainian].
3. On the Uprooted Existence of the Ukrainian Intellectual in Postwar Germany in the 1940s, Visible Ukraine, 2025.
4. Spaces for Living, Creating, and Caring. A Review of the Photo Book By Yevhen Nikiforov and Polina Baitsym, “CHIPS: UKRAINIAN NAIVE MOSAICS, 1950–90”. Sensor, 2024 [in Ukrainian].
5. Forests, almonds, hiking and cocktails: a review of At the Existentialist Cafe by Sarah Bakewell. Kontur, 2024 [in Ukrainian].
6. Inner Space: The Word in Ukrainian Art Amid The Full-scale War. Artslooker, 2023.
7. Tropism: The changing writing of Nathalie Sarraute. Kontur, 2023 [in Ukrainian]