War photography has been an influential phenomenon in Western culture since its beginning in the mid-19th century.

Cultural historian Dr. Anna Topolska will give the lecture “The Ethics and Aesthetics of War Photography: From the 19th-Century Wars to the War in Ukraine” at 12:30 p.m. Tuesday, November 15 at University Galleries at Illinois State University.  

Following the lecture will be a conversation with Maryna Teplova, a Ph.D. student in English at Illinois State. The event is free and open to the public. 

The event is sponsored by Illinois State’s Department of English, the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program (WGSS), the Department of History, the College of Arts and Sciences, and University Galleries. The event is organized by Ela Przybyło, assistant professor in English and core faculty member in WGSS. 

Dr. Anna Topolska  
Topolska is a cultural historian of modern Eastern Europe, specializing in visual studies and memory studies and a Polish-English translator of texts in the humanities. She was educated both in Poland at Adam Mickiewicz University and in the United States at the University of Michigan. Her research interests focus on war photography, memorials and museums, trauma, and visual rhetoric. She has published on the visual dimensions of the Balkan conflict, the war in Vietnam, the second world war, and the 1956 Poznań protests.  

Maryna Teplova 
Teplova is a doctoral student and graduate teaching assistant in the Department of English at Illinois State University. Prior to being admitted to the Ph.D. program, Teplova worked as senior instructor in the English Department of O. Honchar Dnipropetrovsk National University in Dnipro, Ukraine. She is an alumna of the U.S. Department of State exchange programs, such as the U.S. Study Institute in American Civilization with New York University and Partners in Education with Chico State University. She has conducted teacher development workshops for English language teachers in Ukraine.