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THE SOVIET-AFGHAN WAR’S UNWOMANLY FACE: THE REPRESENTATION OF WOMEN IN SVETLANA ALEXIEVICH’S ZINKY BOYS|
October 20, 2016 @ 5:30 pm - 7:30 pm
Presenting is Jeffery Wade Jones, Associate Professor, Department of History, University of North Carolina in Greensboro
(In cooperation with the UNC Chapel Hill Center for Slavic, Eurasian and East European Studies)
In keeping with her journalistic style of conveying the views of others, the voice of 2015 Nobel Prize winning author Svetlana Alexievich is limited in the oral history she published in 1990 under the Belorussian title Цинковые Мајіьчики or Zinky Boys. The title refers to the “boys” who came home from the war in zinc coffins, but for the book she interviewed soldiers, women who served as nurses, civilian employees, and, most poignantly, the mothers and wives of slain soldiers. The lecture explores a key underlying tension of her narrative: whereas many saw themselves fighting in the shadow of the heroic memory of World War II for the sake of the “Motherland” (Rodina), most of the mothers themselves whose words are sprinkled throughout the text and who symbolically, collectively represent the Motherland do not understand nor accept the cause for which their sons fought and died.
Donald Raleigh (UNC Chapel Hill, Department of History and Center for Slavic, Eurasian and East European Studies) will be the moderator.
This event is part of the Carolina Gender, War and Culture Series.
Acknowledgement of Support: This event has been produced with the assistance of the European Union. The contents of this event are the sole responsibility of The UNC Center for European Studies and can in no way be taken to reflect the views of the European Union.