Artwork, ephemera, journals, and underground publications (samizdat) related to protest movements in Ukraine, particularly the 2013-2014 Euromaidan protests and the 2010-2013 Feministychna Ofenzyva marches on International Women's Day.
The publications file includes a variety of samizdat publications, including a 2013 script called the "October Project," a book of poems by Vasyl Lozynsky coupled with a samizdat poetry chapbook cut from a National Geographic cover, cover art for the zine Freaker Unltd., and 13 issues of Lystok, an underground poetry publication produced in Kyiv. The journals file includes two issues of Spilne and "Circling the Square: Maidan and Cultural Insurgency in Ukraine," a literary journal special issue about Maidan.
The art exhibitions series includes exhibition guides and catalogues from nearly 30 years of art exhibitions in Ukraine. The exhibitions feature a range of Ukrainian artists and cover subjects like feminism, censorship, and the history of Ukraine's artistic movements.
The conference proceedings are from a 2017 conference held in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine to address the movement to preserve Soviet-era modernist architecture in the face of decommunization laws.
The ephemera folders include stickers, artwork, and pamphlets created by Ukrainian artists. The majority of these are from the 2011 Feminist Offensive on International Women's Day.
The artwork series includes a protest poster meant to accompany the exhibit guide in Box 2, Folder 1, signed and printed posters collected by the Izolyatsia Cultural Center, and a calendar featuring contrasting photos of Kyiv past and present.
Finally, the inventory series contains the detailed item-level inventory Zychowicz sent with the materials, as well as an inventory created by the processing archivist to show where the numbered items in Zychowicz's inventory have been placed in the collection.
Jessica Zychowicz is the Director of the US Fulbright Program in Ukraine, as well as the Head of the Institute of International Education's office in Kyiv. After completing her doctorate in Slavic studies at the University of Michigan in 2015, she became a 2017-2018 U.S. Fulbright Scholar in Area Studies at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy in Ukraine. In 2020, she published her monograph Superfluous Women: Art, Feminism, and Revolution in Twenty-First Century Ukraine with the University of Toronto Press.
Throughout her research and travels, she has amassed a collection of materials, particularly artistic and literary works, related to late 20th and early 21st century protest movements in Ukraine. Many of these materials are samizdat–writings and artwork published independently to avoid official censorship. The term samizdat, literally Russian for "self-published," was coined to describe underground publications circulated throughout the USSR under Soviet rule. Samizdat have been created in 21st-century Ukraine in response to censorship from both the Ukrainian and Russian governments, especially in the wake of the 2013-2014 Euromaidan protests. The Euromaidan protests began in 2013 in response to the Ukrainian government suspending an agreement with the EU. In 2014, after months of violent clashes between protesters and the state, the Ukrainian parliament impeached former president Viktor Yanukovych, who had already fled the country, and Ukraine democratically elected a new president.
