Odesa’s Many Frontiers: Introduction
Journal: East/West Journal of Ukrainian Studies
Year: 2022

Why focus on Odesa? Because it is the largest, strategically located port on the Black Sea-the continental gateway to the Mediterranean? Or because it remains one of the world's leading exporters of grain-now closed by a broad Russian military blockade? Or is it because of the city's extremely rich tendency toward myth-making? Something as seemingly banal as Odesa's "Potemkin Steps" have been firmly immortalized into film canons from L.A. to Toronto to Paris by Sergei Eizenshtein (Sergey Eisenst