Iryna Yakovenko

Regarding the Chornobyl catastrophe as one of the perilous points in the contemporary history of Eastern Europe, as ecocide and cultural trauma, this interdisciplinary research project aims to explore literary discourses and visual representations of the Chornobyl nuclear disaster in contemporary fiction and nonfiction writings in Ukraine and the USA, and in cinematographic productions of Ukrainian documentary film artists. The research project analyzes literary, photographic, and cinematographic representations of the Chornobyl catastrophe and its memorialization, including the sarcophagus and New Safe Confinement, geo- and ecopoetics of Pripyat, and the Exclusion Zone.