Co-sponsored by the Center for European Studies, Center for Russia, East Europe, and Central Asia (CREECA), and the Alice D. Mortenson-Michael B. Petrovich Chair in Russian History.
One can read urban landscapes like textures. Looking at European cities as textbooks of human civilization they tell us a story of rise and fall of urban cultures, of life and death, take-off and devastation. Europe’s history includes, especially in the 20th century, more than one urbicide. In our days Kharkiv, the second capital of Ukraine, has again become the target of disastrous violence, this time by Russian missiles. The talk will attempt to tell the history of a big European city along the traces and on the sites where “history takes place.”
Karl Schlögel is Professor Emeritus in East European History at the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder). He studied philosophy, sociology, and history at the Free University of Berlin and at the Lomonosov Moscow State University. Professor Schlögel has had fellowships in Oxford, Uppsala, Budapest, and Los Angeles. Among his books are Moscow 1937 (Polity Press), In Space We Read Time: On the History of Civilization and Geopolitics (Bard Graduate Center), The Scent of Empires: Chanel No.5 and Red Moscow (Polity Press), and Ukraine: A Nation on the Borderland (Reaktion Books). He lives in Berlin.
This event is part of the CREECA lecture series, which is held on Thursdays at 4:00 pm. Coffee, tea, and cookies served starting at 3:45pm.