Second World Urbanity:
Between Capitalist and Communist Utopias
Conference 3: The Living Cities of the Second World
European University in Saint Petersburg
Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences (SPbGU)
February 27 -March 1, 2015
Friday, February 27, 2015
All Friday sessions except keynote lecture will be held at the European University at Golden Hall. Keynote lecture will take place at Conference Hall
9.30-10.30 Preliminary greetings and conference registration (Golden Hall)
10.30-11.15 – Introduction by Steven E. Harris and Daria Bocharnikova
11.15-11.30 – Coffee break
11.30-13.30 PANEL 1: Artists and Writers Fabricating Second World Urbanity
Carmen Popescu (Paris I-Sorbonne), “Existential Topographies: The Artist in the City (Socialist Romania 1970s-1980s)”
Ivana Bago (Duke University), “’The City as a Site of Plastic Happening’: From Grand Proposals to Exceptional Gestures in the Art of the 1970s in Zagreb”
Emily Callaci (University of Wisconsin-Madison), “Alternative Archives of the Socialist City: Dar es Salaam’s Pulp Fiction Publishing Industry, 1967-1985”
Discussant: Stanislav Savitski (Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences, SPbGU)
13.30-15.30 – Lunch break
15.30-17.30 PANEL 2: Socialist Paths to a Living Utopia
Christina Crawford (Harvard University), “The Battle to Envision the Socialist City in Man with a Movie Camera”
Ekaterina Emeliantseva Koller (University of St. Gallen), “Building Socialist Utopia in a Closed City: The Visible and Invisible Severodvinsk”
Jim Freeman (Concordia University), “Utopia on a Shoestring: The Making and Unmaking of Revolutionary Managua”
Discussant: Sofia Dyak (Center for Urban History of East Central Europe in Lviv)
17.30-18.00 – Coffee break
18.00 – 19.30 Keynote address by Bart Goldhoorn “Recycling Second World Urbanity” (Conference hall)
20.00 Dinner
Saturday, February 28, 2015
All Saturday sessions will take place at the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences (SPbGU), room 321
10.00 – 12.00 PANEL 3: At the Centers and Peripheries of the Socialist City
Katherine Zubovich-Eady (University of California, Berkeley), “Consuming Moscow’s Skyscrapers: Popular Responses to Postwar Stalinist Luxe”
Kenny Cupers (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), “No More Passive Consumers! The Architecture of Cultural Policy in Postwar Europe”
Steven Harris (University of Mary Washington), “Soviet Airports of the 1960s: Futuristic Gateways to Socialist Urbanity”
Discussant: Anatoly Pinsky (European University at Saint Petersburg)
12.00 – 14.00 Lunch break
14.00 – 16.00 PANEL 4: Modernism and Science in the Making of Socialist Urbanity
Diana West (European University in Saint Petersburg), “Constructed Science: Nauchnost’ and Experiment in Khrushchev-era Housing”
Hugo Palmarola (National Autonomous University of Mexico) & Pedro Alonso (Catholic University of Chile), “Cold War Debates through the Culture of Sky Observation in Chile”
Ekaterina Kalemeneva (National Research University Higher School of Economics), “Making the Arctic Comfortable: Leningrad Architects in Search of Northern Urban Planning”
Discussant: Andres Kurg (Estonian Academy of Arts, Institute of Art History)
16.00 – 16.30 Coffee break
16.30 – 18.30 PANEL 5: Architects, Citizens, and Industrial Enterprises Negotiating and Contesting Socialist Urbanity
Aleksandra Kasatkina (Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (St Petersburg)/ SHAGI RANEPA (Moscow)), “Garden City” and “Science City”: Building the Urban Community of Obninsk in the 1950–1970s”
Daria Bocharnikova (Harvard University), “NER: Designing for Post-industrial Urbanity”
Nelly Bekus (University of Exeter), “On the Conflicting Temporalities of Nemiga as a Symbol of Socialist Battle with History in Minsk, Belarus”
Discussant: Olga Sezneva (European University at Saint Petersburg)
19.30 – Dinner
Sunday, March 1, 2015
11.00-14.00 City tour
