The lecture, entitled “The Destruction and Re-signification of Female Identity in the Prose of Tsitsi Dangarembga and Yuliia Salimovska,” also served as an opportunity to present and test scholarly material developed by Nataliia Yuhan within the framework of a German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) scholarship programme during her research stay at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf. The lecture thus provided an important opportunity to present the findings of her research within an academic environment and to receive expert feedback on the research material.

The lecture focused on the ways in which female identity is constructed, dismantled, and redefined in contemporary literature, as well as on the role of social, cultural, and traumatic factors in this process. Drawing on the novel This Mournable Body (2018) by Zimbabwean writer Tsitsi Dangarembga and the novella Vidpustka naoslip [Blind Vacation] (2025) by Ukrainian author Yuliia Salimovska, Professor Nataliia Yuhan examined different models of the formation and transformation of female identity. Particular attention was paid to the impact of social expectations, professional self-realisation, traumatic experience, war, memory, personal relationships, and space on the protagonists’ processes of self-determination.

An important component of the lecture was the theoretical conceptualisation of identity. The participants engaged with the ideas of Simone de Beauvoir and Judith Butler, focusing in particular on the social construction of gender, the interaction between personal experience and social norms, and the possibility of re-signifying one’s own identity.

A separate section of the lecture addressed the impact of traumatic experience and war on the protagonists’ self-perception. The analysis of the literary works demonstrated that an identity crisis may become not only a consequence of external circumstances but also a point of rethinking one’s life strategies, values, and place in the world.

Comparing the fictional worlds of Tsitsi Dangarembga and Yuliia Salimovska, Nataliia Yuhan highlighted both common and distinctive models of female experience. Particular significance was attached to the issues of autonomy, interdependence, memory, space, and the possibility of developing a new identity following a profound personal crisis.

The guest lecture constituted a continuation of the scholarly and academic activities of a professor at Luhansk Taras Shevchenko National University and, at the same time, exemplified the practical integration of international academic experience, research, and educational practice. Presenting the material developed within the framework of the DAAD scholarship programme to students contributes to the dissemination of research findings and to the development of academic dialogue between Ukrainian and German scholarly communities.

We sincerely thank Poltava University of Economics and Trade for the invitation and for the opportunity to engage in academic dialogue, present the findings of the research, and discuss topical issues in contemporary literary studies with future philologists!

Department of Literary Studies
Department of Foreign Languages