Hereditary Hunger and the Future of the Ukrainian Body: How the Holodomor Continues to Shape Generations of Ukrainians

This proposed PhD project consists of a portfolio of creative work in the form of a sequence of lyric poems, entitled Hereditary Hunger, preceded by a critical and contextual thesis: 'Hereditary Hunger and the Future of the Ukrainian Body: How the Holodomor Continues to Shape Generations of Ukrainians'. The primary research question of this project is 'How does the Holodomor continue to shape generations of Ukrainians relationship to food and survival? The thesis will address questions of the Holodomor's legacy in contemporary Ukraine, particularly in relation to its culture of food and insistence on survival, and will interrogate the lyric mode's ability to adequately portray narratives of poverty and hunger. The thesis will utilise Memory Studies as a methodological framework, examining the generations who survived the Holodomor through a post-memory lens, making the argument that the famine was a critical point in Ukrainian history which continues to affect its people today. It will also engage with lyric theory to explore the problematised nature of the lyric mode in relation to narratives of starvation and collective memory. The arguments the thesis poses will be reflected in Hereditary Hunger, both formally and through its content, which will work towards highlighting both individual and collective memories of the Holodomor and its legacy, with the aim of this becoming published in order to bring a wider understanding of the famine and its contemporary implications to a Western audience.
The project will aim to answer the research questions through an engagement with archival materials made available (both online and physically) through institutions such as the Ukrainian Institute London and the Holodomor Research and Education Consortium in Alberta, Canada. Creatively, this might entail the use of docupoetry to piece together narratives of victims' lives.