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Mail: kis@ucu.edu.ua
Oksana Kis (b. 1970, Lviv, Ukraine) is a feminist historian and anthropologist, head of the National Research Foundation of Ukraine (since March 2025). In 1994-2025 she worked at the Institute of Ethnology, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, as head of the Department of Anthropology (2020-2024), Senior Research Fellow (2009-2019), Research Fellow (20023-2009) and Junior Research Fellow (1994-2002). She obtained her “doktor nauk” degree (habilitation equivalent) in History/Ethnology in 2018, and her “kandydat nauk” degree (Ph.D. equivalent) in History/Ethnology in 2002. She graduated in History from Franko State University of Lviv in 1992 and completed her postgraduate studies in Psychology in 1994 at the same university. Her book Ukrainky v GULAGu: vyzhyty znachyt peremohty (Lviv, 2017) was included in the Ukrainian Book Institute’s list of the 30 most significant books of Ukraine’s Independence 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). Dr. Kis edited and co-edited several volumes on women’s history. She was also a recipient of several academic awards, including two Fulbright Research Fellowships (2003 and 2011). She taught elective courses at Columbia University (USA, 2010, 2012), University of Alberta (Canada, 2014), Ukrainian Free University (Germany, 2017), New School of Social Research (USA, 2022-23), University of Richmond (USA, 2023-24), Franko National University of Lviv (2001-2006), Ukrainian Catholic University (2006-2008, 2012), Kyiv School of Economics (2024, 2025).
Militant Femininity: Elements of Historical Legacy and Folk Culture in the Creation of Women's Public Images in Wartime Ukraine
Since the Maidan (Revolution of Dignity) and the beginning of Russia’s war on Ukraine in spring 2014, there have been substantial changes in public discourse on normative femininity in Ukraine, with a noticeable trend toward the normalization of the image of a woman-warrior. I argue that this process can be understood as the evolution and expansion of normative femininity through the adoption of the idea of a woman who is capable of fighting back (in the broadest sense) as an integral part of it. Through a discourse analysis of textual and visual materials from conventional and social media, as well as some recent cultural works (visual arts, literary works, crafts, films etc.) I show how the image of the militant woman (pertaining to both female soldiers and civilian women) evolves and gains momentum as a hybrid form of femininity. To justify their right and ability to be full participants in this existential battle, Ukrainian women refer to the historical legacy of Ukrainian women (including female warriors and political leaders of the past) and seek to legitimize the unique potential of women to defend their homeland by drawing on elements of Ukrainian folk culture that are considered areas of female expertise and power. By revisiting, revising, and sometimes reinventing episodes of Ukrainian history and gendered elements of folk traditions, authors invest them with new meaning, thereby upholding and promoting women’s claims to active citizenship. The timeframe of the study covers the period of the Russo-Ukrainian war of 2014-2024, with special attention to the period of full-scale Russian aggression from February 24, 2022 to the present.
2010 – present Ukrainian Association for Research in Women’s History, co-founder and president
2022 – present Association of Women in Slavic Studies (AWSS), board member
2018 – 2025 National Research Foundation of Ukraine, member of the Academic Council, member, (2023-2024) head of the Section of Social Sciences and Humanities
2014 – 2020 academic web-site Ukraina Moderna, Editor in Chief
2009 – present ASPASIA, The International Yearbook of Central, Eastern and South Eastern European Women’s and Gender History (Berghahn Books), editor
2006 – 2023 Ukrainian Oral History Association, co-founder and vice-president
Oksana Kis’, La resistenza quotidiana delle prigioniere ucraine, translated and edited by Simone A. Bellezza and Iryna Kashchey in collaboration with Memorial Italia (Roma: Viella, 2023).
Oksana Kis, Survival as Victory: Ukrainian Women in the GULAG, translated by Lidia Wolanskyj, Harvard Series in Ukrainian Studies (Cambridge: Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 2021).
Oksana Kis, Ukrainky v GULAGu: vuzhyty znachyt' peremohty, 2nd revised ed. (Drohobych: Kolo, 2020).
Oksana Kis, Ukrainky v GULAGu: vuzhyty znachyt' peremohty (Lviv: Institute of Ethnology, 2017).
Oksana Kis, Zhinka v tradytsiinii Ukrainskii kulturi druhoi polovyny XIX – pochatku XX stolittia, 2nd ed. (Lviv: Institute of Ethnology, 2012).
Oksana Kis, ed., Zhinochi instorii liderstva v Ukraini [Women’s Stories of Leadership in Ukraine] (Kyiv: Summit Books, 2025).
Oksana Kis, ed., Zhinochi vymiry mynuloho: uiavlennia, dosvidy, reprezentatsii [Women’s Dimensions of the Past: Ideas, Experiences, Representations] (Lviv: Center for Urban History, 2023).
Oksana Kis, ed., Ukrainski zhinky v hornyli modernizatsii [Ukrainian Women in the Crucible of Modernization] (Kharkiv: KSD, 2017).
Oksana Kis, Gelinada Grinchenko and Kateryna Kobchenko, eds, Zhinky Tsentralno-Skhidnoi Evropy v Druhii Svitovii viini: genderni aspekty dosvidu v chasy ekstremalnoho nasylstva [Women of Central and Eastern Europe in the WWII: gendered experiences in times of extreme violence, in Ukrainian] (Kyiv: Art-Knyha, 2015).
Oksana Kis, ed., special issue on women's and gender studies, East West Journal of Ukrainian Studies 2, no. 2 (2015).
Oksana Kis, Gelinada Grinchenko and Tetiana Pastushenko, eds, Suspilni zlamy i povorotni momenty; makropodii kriz' pryzmu avtobiohrafichnoi rozpovidi [Turning Points in History: great events through a lens of an autobiographical narrative] (Lviv: Institute of Ethnology NASU, 2014).
Oksana Kis and Liliana Hentosh, eds, Istoria, kultura, suspilstvo: gendernyi pidhkhid [Gender Approach to History, Culture and Society: A Reader] (Lviv: Klassyka, 2003).
Oksana Kis, ed., special issue on Oral History, Ukraina Moderna 11 (2007).
Oksana Kis, ed., special issues Gender Studies,17 (2000) and Femininity and Masculinity 27 (2003), Independent Cultural Magazine "Ї"
Oksana Kis, 'Iak dekolonizuvaty studii Gulagu? Panivni rosiiski naratyvy ta perspektyvy vidnovlennia epistemolohichnoi spravedlyvosti', Ukrainskyi istorychnyi zhurnal 5, no. 578 (2024): 205–216.
Oksana Kis, 'Faith as a Shield: Ukrainian Women's Religious Practices in the Gulag', Journal of the European Society of Women in Theological Research 29 (2021): 9–29.
Oksana Kis, 'Women's Experience of the Holodomor: Challenges and Ambiguities of Motherhood', Journal of Genocide Research 23, no. 4 (2021): 527–546.
Oksana Kis, 'National Femininity Used and Contested: Women's Participation in the Nationalist Underground in Western Ukraine during the 1940s-50s', East/West: Journal of Ukrainian Studies 2, no. 2 (2015): 53–83.
Oksana Kis, '(Re)Construting the Ukrainian Women's History: Actors, Agents, Narratives', in Gender, Politics and Society in Ukraine, edited by Olena Hankivsky and Anastasiya Salnykova (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012), 152–179.
Oksana Kis, 'Biography as a Political Geography: Patriotism in the Ukrainian Women's Life Stories in Ukraine', in Mapping Difference: The Many Faces of Women in Ukraine, edited by Marian J. Rubchak (London: Berghahn Books, 2011), 89–108.
Oksana Kis, 'Telling the Untold: Representations of Ethnic and Regional Identities in Ukrainian Women's Autobiographies', in Orality and Literacy: Reflections across Disciplines, edited by Keith Carlson, Natalia Khanenko-Friesen and Kristina Fagan (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011), 280–314.
Oksana Kis, 'Choosing without Choice: Predominant Models of Femininity in Contemporary Ukraine', in Gender Transitions in Russia and Eastern Europe, edited by Madeleine Hurd, Helen Carlback and Sara Rastback (Stockholm: Gondolin Publishers, 2005), 105–136.