Natalya Bekhta
About me
I am a senior research fellow currently working on a project “After Utopia: World Literature and the Future of Eastern Europe” (2024-2029). I also act as the Principal Investigator of the team project on “Utopia and Eastern European Literature after 1989” (2024-2028). The overarching ambition of these two projects is to deprovincialise the study of literatures of Eastern Europe by (a) mapping anew the existing geographies of comparison, (b) by developing a world-systems theory of literary semi-peripheries, and (c) by revising the current understanding of the novel as a globally-dominant genre. These three larger theoretical goals are framed by the thematic focus on the contemporary Utopian imagination in the region.
My current research interests and teaching areas include narratology, theories of comparative and world literature, utopia, and Ukrainian fiction. I am an elected member of the AILC/ICLA Research Committee on Literary Theory and a founding member of the Young Network TransEurope, amongst other professional engagements.
Project links
Funding
Latest publications
Democratic Futures, Utopia, and the Literary Imagination of Contemporary Ukraine
Bekhta, N., 2025, Utopia and Democracy : Theories, Practices, Fictions. Czigányik, Z. & Dimovska, I. (eds.). Palgrave Macmillan, p. 213-229 17 p. (Palgrave Studies in Utopianism; vol. Part F925).Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter › Scientific › peer-review
The Novel Goes Utopia: On Volodymyr Vynnychenko's "The Sun Machine"
Bekhta, N., 2025, In: Studia Universitatis Babeș-Bolyai Philologia. 70, 3, p. 41–58Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › Scientific › peer-review
A Re-Invention of Language: War, National Community and a Poetics of the First-Person Plural
Bekhta, N., 2024, The Aesthetics of Collective Agency: Corporations, Communities and Crowds in the Twenty-First Century. Knewitz , S. & Mueller, S. (eds.). [transcript], p. 193-211 ( Critical Futures; vol. 3).Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter › Scientific
Beyond the Novel: Satire in Eastern Europe and Volodymyr Rafeyenko’s Mondegreen (2019)
Bekhta, N., 2024, In: CRITIQUE: STUDIES IN CONTEMPORARY FICTION. 66, 1, p. 12-22Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › Scientific › peer-review
Kateryna Kalytkon runous sodan keskellä
Kangaskoski, M. & Bekhta, N., 2023, In: Idäntutkimus. 30, 1, p. 67-68 2 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Comment/debate › General public
Narrating the Future: A World-Literary Take on the Crisis of Imagination and the Novel
Bekhta, N., 2023, In: POETICS TODAY. 44, 3, p. 463–486Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › Scientific › peer-review
Sodan kieli ja ’me’: Serhi Žadanin runoudesta
Bekhta, N., 2023, In: Idäntutkimus. 30, 1, p. 24-32 9 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › Scientific › peer-review
Thomas the Baboon and Utopia: Constructing a Realistic Future
Bekhta, N., 2023, In: On_Culture: The Open Journal for the Study of Culture. 15Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › Scientific › peer-review