The Female Body as a Space of Trauma and Unbelonging in Contemporary Ukrainian Women’s Drama on Refugee Experience

Abstract

This article examines the representation of female corporeality in contemporary Ukrainian drama addressing the refugee experience caused by the Russo-Ukrainian War. Drawing on a corpus of dramatic texts, it analyses the body as a site of trauma, memory, loss of home, maternal anxiety, survivor guilt, and adaptation to a new reality. The study identifies the principal models of representing corporeality: the body as a repository of trauma, memory, unbelonging, and the search for a new identity. It argues that, in contemporary Ukrainian drama, the female body functions as a key means of articulating both the individual and the collective experience of war and forced displacement.