Interrupted Spaces, Engineered Traditions
Co-organized by the History Department and the Centre for Heritage Conservation Studies and Technologies, the conference explores spatial interruption as a practice for creating/erasing political or cultural identity.
Since the first pioneering studies on cultural memory and the invention of traditions, scholars of this field have consistently turned to spatial references to frame their research questions. As the study of cultural memory is expanding conceptually to include processes of “social forgetting” (Guy Beiner), urban space continues to be a promising field of study for understanding how the contours of memory cultures are drawn (Jan Assmann) or, in our case, engineered.
The international conference “Interrupted Spaces, Engineered Traditions” examines case studies, where spatial interruption was used as an opportunity or was deployed as a tool for creating/erasing political or cultural identity. Interruptions of the cityscape were non-linear processes leading to a variety of outcomes. In each case, however, the moment of interruption itself became a cardinal point in emerging, often conflicting narratives. It is the relationship between the interpretation of moments of spatial interruptions and political culture that our conference seeks to examine.
Program
The conference will take place online as a Zoom Meeting.
WEND. 30 JUNE 2021
9:45 CEST / 3:45 am EDT Welcome address and introduction by Carmen M. Enss and Heléna Tóth
10:00 – 12:00 CEST / 4:00 – 6:00 am EDT Panel I: Urban Space – Archive of Interruptions
Maria Grazia D’Amelio (University of Rome Tor Vergata, Italy); Lorenzo Grieco (University of Rome Tor Vergata, Italy; University of Kent, Canterbury, UK): Interrupted Interruptions: Urban Politics and Unexecuted Projects in Rome during Fascism
Daniel Hadwiger (Leibniz Institute for Research on Society and Space, Germany): Transforming a City’s Image by Destruction. The Demolition and Reconstruction of the Old Port of Marseille, 1943–1958
Carmen M. Enss (University of Bamberg): Scraping the Palimpsest: City Planning and Map Making in Early Post-War Europe
Katrina Gulliver (University of Bristol, UK): Commercial Identity and Community Identification: Interrogating Urban Memory in the US
12:30 – 14:00 CEST / 4:30 – 8:00 am EDT Panel II: Spatial Politics in Engineering the Socialist New Man
Olga Marassanova (Perm State University, Russian Federation): Electric Frontier of Soviet Urban Space: The Cultural History of the Energy System, 1920-1930 in Ural City Perm
Heléna Tóth (University of Bamberg, Germany): Engineering Grief: The Politics of Cemetery Architecture between Technocracy and Ideology in Neubrandenburg, 1964-1976
Nicoleta Şerban (Institute for the Investigation of the Crimes of Communism and the Memory of the Romanian Exile, Romania): The Project of Rural Systematization in Communist Romania, 1988-1989
14:20 CEST / 8:20 am EDT Welcome address by Prof. Mona Hess (University of Bamberg, Germany)
14:30 – 16:00 CEST / 8:30 – 10:00 am EDT Panel III: Interrupted Spaces, (Post-)Colonial Heritage Making
Paridhi David Massey (Ashoka University, India): Shri Govind Dev and the Claims to the Past: Life of a Temple in the Pilgrimage-city of Vrindavan, 1880-1950’s
Lisandra Franco de Mendonça (Lab2PT, University of Minho; TU Berlin): Topographies of Loss and Liberation: Colonial Disentanglement and the Quest for Mozambicaness — Maputo’s Socio-Urban Space in the Aftermath of Independence
Ritika Sahu (Cotton University, India): Park(s), Public space(s) and the Past(s): A Study of Urban Parks of Sivasagar, Assam
17.30 CEST / 11:30 am EDT: Keynote Lecture
Francesca Russello Ammon (University of Pennsylvania’s Weitzman School of Design, USA): Bulldozer: Demolition and Clearance of the Postwar Landscape
20:00 CEST / 2:00 pm EDT: Keynote Lecture
Tijana Vujosevic (University of British Columbia, Canada): Space-Making as Ideological Practice: Modernism and Soviet Identities in the 1920s and the 1930s
Modern and Contemporary History, Bavarian Regional History
University of Bamberg
E-mail: helena.toth(at)uni-bamberg.de
Tel: +49 (0) 951 863-2369
Centre for Heritage Conservation and Technologies
University of Bamberg
E-mail: carmen.enss(at)uni-bamberg.de
Tel: +49 (0) 951 863-2055