On February 16, 2023, Professor of the Department of Literary Theory and Comparative Literature of the Faculty of Philology Olena Haleta delivered at the Davis Center of Harvard University with an public lecture entitled “Displaced Literature: The Voice of the “Second Sex” from the “Second World” in Sophia Yablonska’s Travelogues”. Based not only on the published texts of the Ukrainian traveler, who in the late 1920s went to study in Paris, lived in China for a long time and traveled around the world, but also on her own research of previously unknown materials from Yablonska’s personal archive, Olena Haleta analyzed the influence of the Ukrainian and French artistic milieu on the creation of literary narratives and life plots, demonstrated the complex process of choosing a genre as a special way to express one’s own unique experience and to convey it to the readership. The researcher emphasized the anti-colonial and feminist motives in Yablonska’s work, clearly visible already in her first publication about Morocco, and also revealed the individual emotional and affective manner of writing, which allowed Yablonska to record in texts the experience that at that time remained outside the framework of methodologically verified anthropological studies.

Remaining faithful to such principles as modernist sensitivity and sensuality, media optimism, the ability to see one’s own reflection in the mirror of other cultures, Yablonska gradually changed and improved her writing style as a result of the change and expansion of her own worldview. Thus, the speaker demonstrated how, in the next travelogue dedicated to a journey to remote regions of China, Sophia Yablonska had to fight against certain reader expectations formed by her first publications and defend the right to go beyond the limitations of an adventurous narrative. At the same time, Yablonska’s publications contributed to the awareness of the place of Ukrainian culture in the world context, its bridging role between Western and Eastern cultural traditions, its desire to preserve its own identity and express itself through various cultural practices capable of renewal and open to dialogue. Summarizing, Professor Haleta outlined the significance of Sophia Yablonska’s travelogues not only for Ukrainian literature, but also for current discussions about the very limits and nature of literature, its connection with life and writing practices, as well as with collective imagination and cultural diversity.