The Russian full-scale invasion on Ukraine in 2022 brought back the question of war, its representation and reception in literature and culture in contemporary writing. In spite of the idea that war cancels culture[1], Ukrainian literature and culture reacted to that traumatic event with a new “resurrection” of writings and with an active declaration of Ukrainian cultural values in the European cultural space. Thus, in the last years, a number of writers in Ukraine became soldiers and soldiers became writers. Witnessing the war also forced individuals to document it and, in that way, to create new literature and cultural oeuvres. However, during the last decades, Europe suffered several wars and conflicts, such as Yugoslav wars, Russo-Georgian war, etc., where the war also has changed literature narrative and cultural values. Kate McLoughlin[2] claims that each war has its own poetry and representation, in opposition to a traumatic experience that would be common to all cultures. Similarly, Hanna Uliura[3] states that each war is unique and could not be comparable with other trauma. However, war always shapes literature and literary studies[4] also by changing the topics and cultural values of the nation in wartime.

This seminar aims to create a broader discussion of how wars and military conflicts in contemporary Europe influence literature and culture. What is the role of literature in war? How is the war changing homo- and heteroimages, stereotypes in literature, and what kind of impact it has on the transitions of cultural and national values? How do writers describe their personal transformations and the cultural changes in society during wartime? How trauma legacy of war is perceived in literature and what kind of heritage it leaves, as could be discussed on the example of Yugoslav wars? How literature could be perceived as a war document? This seminar also focuses on presentations devoted to the reception of the Russo-Ukrainian war in other European literatures, to the investigation of changes of cultural stereotypes and the creation of wartime literatures.