{"id":1182,"date":"2021-02-01T14:50:56","date_gmt":"2021-02-01T18:50:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/?p=1182"},"modified":"2021-02-01T14:51:46","modified_gmt":"2021-02-01T18:51:46","slug":"five-questions-with-emily-channel-justice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/2021\/02\/01\/five-questions-with-emily-channel-justice\/","title":{"rendered":"Five Questions With … Emily Channell-Justice"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Note:\u00a02020-21 marks the 20<\/em>th<\/em><\/sup> anniversary of the Havighurst Center.\u00a0 One of the ways we will mark this occasion is through a regular \u201cFive Questions With \u2026\u201d series, where we will check in with former colleagues, postdoctoral fellows, and students.\u00a0 In this latest installment, Hannah Chapman, Karen and Adeed Dawisha Assistant Professor of Political Science and Faculty Associate of the Center, asked Emily Channell-Justice questions. Dr. Channell-Justice was a teaching fellow at the Center from 2016-19 before becoming the Director of the new Temerty Contemporary Ukraine Program at the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  1. You recently edited a\nvolume entitled \u201cDecolonizing Queer Experience: LGBT+ Narratives from Eastern\nEurope and Eurasia.\u201d This book \u201cmoves beyond discourses of oppression and\nrepression to explore the resistance and resilience of LGBT+ communities who\nare remaking the post-socialist world.\u201d What inspired you to put together a\ncollection on this topic and what did you learn in the process of editing this\nbook?<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    This book came about because of a panel I organized for the American Anthropological Association annual meeting in 2018. I have been working with leftist activists in Ukraine since 2012, and in that time, several of them had come out as part of the LGBT+ community. Ukraine rightly has a reputation for not being friendly for the LGBT+ community, but the activists I worked with were welcoming and supported their friends who had come out. I wondered what the connection was between leftists and support for LGBT+ issues, especially considering that leftist politics are marginalized in Ukraine. I organized that panel so I could start to explore the connections between the left and LGBT+ communities in Ukraine, and the other participants in the panel directed my own research in very important ways. An editor from Lexington Books contacted me about the panel, and with her, I developed it into a book project. It went through several iterations but the end result includes a real depth and breadth of knowledge; the chapters represent not just Ukraine and Russia, but also the Baltics, Caucasus, and Central Asia. The authors were committed to showing that the story of being LGBT+ in the post-socialist world is much more than just homophobic and transphobic attitudes, although these shape the context in significant ways. The volume also helps establish the post-socialist world as an important site for the development of new ideas in queer theory, which will hopefully open up a space for new, diverse kinds of research. I am planning on continuing to develop my own research with LGBT+ communities in Ukraine, but I hope this becomes a robust field and that this book is one of the first of many on this theme in the coming years. [P.S. we\u2019ll be having an event with some of the contributors at HURI on March 3\u2014details coming soon!]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    2. Could you tell us about what other projects you are working on?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    I have a few projects going on at the moment, some of which\nare more active than others because of COVID-19 related restrictions on\ntraveling for research. First, I\u2019m finishing my monograph about my research\nwith leftist activists, which focuses largely on the time period of the\nEuromaidan protests. That book, tentatively titled Without the State:\nSelf-Organization and Political Activism in Ukraine<\/em>, is under contract with\nUniversity of Toronto Press. Right now, I\u2019m finalizing certain parts of the\nmanuscript with the input of activists I wrote about, and it has been a very\nfruitful process to hear their response to my analysis. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    In addition to this project, I\u2019ve been doing preliminary\nwork on a long-term research project about internally displaced populations in\nUkraine, which will be the main element of the TCUP research agenda. Following\nboth the Russian annexation of Crimea and the war in the Donbas started in\n2014, large numbers of people were displaced into the mainland of Ukraine.\nWhile there has been some excellent research already among displaced\npopulations, the integration of these large numbers of people with various\nkinds of needs will be a huge issue for Ukraine in the coming years, in\naddition to the geopolitical problems of ending the war, returning Crimea to\nUkraine, and reintegrating the currently occupied territories of the Donbas. My\nproject will look at how these major geopolitical crises intersect with\npeople\u2019s daily experiences of displacement. While I can\u2019t pursue any research\nwith people in Ukraine at the moment, I\u2019m focused on the background of the conflicts\nin both of these territories as well as collaborating with colleagues who have\nbeen researching displacement to learn as much as possible for when I can\nreturn to the field. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Finally, I\u2019ve become intensely interested in judicial reform in Ukraine\u2014there have been a number of court crises of late. It\u2019s a relatively new area of study because reforms were really attempted only after the Euromaidan protests ended and installed a supposedly reformist administration, but they have been absolutely impossible to put in place because of the way the court system is structured. People are now realizing that without judicial reform, no other reforms will be sustainable, so I want to understand more about why it\u2019s so difficult to reform the judiciary and what reform advocates are attempting to implement. This falls into the realm of \u201canthropology of policy,\u201d which is a new area for me but which has been accessible without traveling to Ukraine because so many official documents and statements are available to the public.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    3. You are director of the Director of the Temerty Contemporary Ukraine Program at the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute. The goal of this program is designed to be \u201ca bridge between the scholarly and policy communities with the goal of promoting a deeper understanding of Ukraine in the world.\u201d Could you tell us more about the program\u2019s goals and why you think the study of contemporary Ukraine is important?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    As an\nanthropologist, I\u2019ve always felt like my field\u2019s analysis was ignored by policy\nmakers because we shy away from simplifying our conclusions. At the same time,\nanthropologists are often hesitant to make strong policy recommendations, so we\njust end up talking amongst ourselves. I\u2019m convinced that there\u2019s a way to find\na middle ground here, where scholars who don\u2019t want to simplify their research\ncan still help policy makers better understand the situation on the ground, and\nwhere policy makers can use academic work to see a different angle they may\nhave missed before. My two current research projects on displacement and\njudicial reforms are themselves trying to bring together the scholarly and\npolicy perspectives. Our first annual TCUP\nConference<\/a>\n(Feb. 1-5, 2021; register here<\/a>!) focuses on\ncreating the space for discussions between people who represent both of these\nareas. The conference is organized around the question \u201cWhy is Ukraine a\nDemocracy?\u201d and each panel is structured around a set of questions developed by\nthe moderator of the panel. Each panelist will respond to the questions (rather\nthan a typical academic conference presentation), and all the panels include\npeople who are scholars, policy writers, or both. In this way, I hope to\nencourage these groups to talk amongst one another, because we all want the\nsame thing, which is a free, independent, democratic Ukraine. Of course,\nthere\u2019s nothing simple about how to get there, so I hope this is the first of\nmany such discussions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    I am so excited and honored to develop a program that puts contemporary Ukraine front and center. I hope the program will make people see how important Ukraine is in the world, but also that it is an interesting place with so much to uncover. Ukrainian studies has long been dominated by people from the Ukrainian diaspora; this isn\u2019t by any means a bad thing, but as someone with no roots in Ukraine who loves doing research there, I hope TCUP can help others see the potential for future engagement. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    4. This year marks the 20th anniversary of the Havighurst Center and the 30th anniversary of the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Looking back at your time in the field of Eurasian studies, what are some of the most exciting developments you have seen? How do you hope the field will develop in the coming years? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    One of the major goals of my work has been to encourage scholars to treat Ukraine on its own terms, and not just as a comparative example for Russia. When I started my PhD research, there were very few scholars who were committed to this perspective, but the field has shifted in the past few years\u2014likely in response to Euromaidan, the annexation of Crimea, and the occupation of the Donbas. Sovereignty is a key question in Ukraine, but it isn\u2019t just about independence from Russia\u2014it\u2019s about Ukraine determining its own future. We can only understand that if we explore its complex past and significant role in the Soviet Union as well as its ethnic, linguistic, and cultural diversity, and if we consider it an important player in contemporary geopolitics. There is no one way to think about Ukraine, and I hope that people will become more interested in Ukraine because of this. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    5. You were a Havighurst Fellow from 2016-2019. How did your experience as a Havighurst Fellow shape your career and understanding of the region? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    My experience at Havighurst was a formative one. It was my\nfirst job after my PhD, and I was lucky that I got to work with such a\nsupportive faculty group. They set an incredible example as professors and as\ncolleagues, especially as I navigated a challenging job market. Plus,\ninteracting with scholars from different fields was a valuable exercise in\nthinking about what an interdisciplinary perspective brings. While many such\ncenters purport to be interdisciplinary, the Havighurst Center really values\nthose different disciplinary perspectives in a way that is unique in my\nexperience. And, while I clearly advocate for thinking about Ukraine on its own\nterms, working with so many wonderful scholars who focus on Russia also helped\nme better understand why Russia has dominated the field for so long and the\naspects of Russian studies I had not really considered important before. For\ninstance, I always knew that I should<\/em> read War and Peace, but\nSteve Norris made me want<\/em> to read it. And I enjoyed it! I\u2019m very\nthankful for the strong network that Havighurst develops and the supportive,\ncollaborative culture there. <\/p>\n\n\n\n



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    Note:\u00a02020-21 marks the 20th anniversary of the Havighurst Center.\u00a0 One of the ways we will mark this occasion is through a regular \u201cFive Questions With \u2026\u201d series, where we will check in with former colleagues, postdoctoral fellows, and students.\u00a0 In … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":781,"featured_media":1183,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-gallery","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interviews","post_format-post-format-gallery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/781"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1182"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1182\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}