School of Critical Studies

The webinar is devoted to the research conducted in Ukraine by the Workshop for the Academic Study of Religions in 2021-2022 (Kyiv, Ukraine). An outline of the research, including its methodology and results, will be presented. The research focuses on the combination of various individual and collective identities (religious, sexual, and feminist), exploring the personal experience of modern Ukrainian believers (present or former), who happen to be feminists and/or LGBT. If they experience some kind of “identity crisis” on a personal level, do they turn to their respective religious communities for help, or do they prefer to withdraw from them, knowing that religious communities do not always tolerate feminists or LGBT people? What strategies do feminist and LGBT believers use to reconcile competing identities? Are the religious communities in Ukraine open to feminist and/or LGBT believers or do they prefer to ignore and exclude them? These and other issues will be discussed at the presentation including brief information about the religious and human rights situations in Ukraine.

Iryna Kaplan completed her M.A. in the study of religion. She is a member of the Kyiv-based NGO “Workshop for Academic Study of Religion” in Ukraine. She is a project manager in the project “Combining the Incompatible: Making the Problems of Feminist and LGBTQ+ Believers Visible in Ukraine (2021-2022)”. She is currently a guest researcher at the Center for Religious Studies (CERES), in the Ruhr-Universität Bochum (Germany).

The icon of Sergius and Bacchus was gifted in 1850 to the Archimandrite Porphyry (civil name K.A. Uspensky) upon his visit to the monastery of St. Catherine in Sinai. The monks presented him with four icons, which he ordered to be transferred after his death to the Church Archaeological Museum at the Kyiv Theological Academy. After the disbandment of the museum, the icon went to the Museum Town on the territory of the Kyiv Lavra, and in 1940 to the Eastern and Western Art Museum, which later came to be known as The Bohdan and Varvara Khanenko National Museum of Arts.

First published: 22 June 2022