Yuliya Ilchuk

Yuliya Ilchuk serves as Associate Professor and Director of Slavic Languages and Literatures, specializing in Eastern Slavic cultural history with emphasis on Ukrainian identity. A Ukrainian citizen, she actively condemns Russia's war of aggression and advocates for Slavic studies as soft power to educate global leaders about Ukraine's distinct cultural trajectory within the Slavic world.

Her academic credentials include:

• Ph.D. in Slavic Languages and Literature, University of Southern California, 2009
• Fellow Candidate of Sciences in Literary Theory, National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, 2000
• M.A. in Culture (Literary Theory, History and Comparative Studies), National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, 1998

Her research integrates Digital Humanities with critical theory to examine hybrid identities, linguistic resistance, and cultural memory under imperial domination. Key thematic strands include:

• Decolonizing Russian literary canon through postcolonial frameworks
• Trauma and memorialization in post-Euromaidan Ukraine
• Language politics in borderland societies
• Chernobyl's cultural aftermath in Slavic contexts

Recent publications analyze Ukraine's wartime cultural resistance, with Silence Dressed in Cyrillic Letters (2025) exploring linguistic identity under occupation and A Crash Course in Molotov Cocktails (2023) documenting protest aesthetics. Her foundational 2021 monograph reinterprets Gogol through Ukrainian-Russian hybridity, establishing her signature approach to cultural ambivalence.

She leads the Slavic Digital Humanities collaborative project, developing computational methods for analyzing Slavic cultural production amid geopolitical conflict. Her pedagogy emphasizes real-time engagement with Ukraine's transformation through courses like Ukraine at a Crossroads and Chernobyl: From Late Socialist Utopia to Post-Soviet Apocalypse, which examine cultural responses to war, disaster, and ideological struggle.