University of Toronto Press Bridging East and West: Ol'ha Kobylians'ka, Ukraine's Pioneering Modernist

Bridging East and West explores the literary evolution of Ol’ha Kobylians'ka, one of Ukraine’s foremost modernist writers. Investigating themes of feminism, populism, Nietzscheanism, nationalism, and fascism in her works, this study presents an alternative intellectual genealogy in turn-of-the-century European arts and letters whose implications reach far beyond the field of Ukrainian studies. For feminist scholars, Bridging East and West makes accessible a thorough account of a central, yet overlooked, woman writer who served as a model and a contributor within a major cultural tradition. For those working in Victorian studies or comparative fascism and for those interested in Nietzsche and his influence on European intellectuals, Kobylians’ka emerges in this study as an unlikely, but no less active, trailblazer in the social and aesthetic theories that would define European debates about culture, science, and politics in the first half of the twentieth century. For those interested in questions of transnationalism and intersectionality, this study’s discussion of Kobylians’ka’s hybrid cultural identity and philosophical program exemplifies cultural interchange and irreducible complexities of cultural identity. Review "Providing an overview of the intellectual evolution of Ukraine's leading woman prose writer, Bridging East and West is clearly a labor of love, evidenced by the thoughtful and detailed reading of several key texts." - Vitaly Chernetsky, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of Kansas. "Yuliya Ladygina's book is a well-conceived, well-researched, and well-written monograph that will become the standard work of literary criticism on Ukrainian prose writer Olha Kobylians'ka in English. The author makes use of extensive library as well as private archives to allow for a reassessment of the large but still underappreciated contribution of Kobylians'ka to Ukrainian Early Modernism as well as her place in Ukrainian cultural discourse." - Michael M. Naydan, Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages, The Pennsylvania State University About the Author Yuliya V. Ladygina is an assistant professor in the Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures, The Pennsylvania State University.