Lost Cities in Urban History: Absent Past, Conflict of Memories and Urban Utopia

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

Our panel focuses on towns characterized by space-time ruptures, which may be linked to the concept of the 'evacuated present' (Ringel 2018). This means that the present is largely influenced by references to the past or vague imaginaries of the future, but does not exist per se. The panel speakers study various narrative practices to reveal the multiple subjectivities and agencies that contribute to the lostness of a city and the attempts to rediscover it through contesting memory practices, nostalgic and utopian narratives. The panel is part of the research project "Cities 'becoming lost': the ruptures of grand narratives of modernity" funded by the Gerda Henkel Foundation.

Sub Unit

• Geography, Urban Studies, Built Environments

Chair

• Natalia Kolyagina, Sorbonne U (France)

Papers

• Defining 'Lost Cities' - Ekaterina Lapina-Kratasiuk, Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography (Germany)

• How Two Towns Lost Themselves: The Story of the Inhabitants of Two Russian Towns Who Were Forced to Lose Their Identity - Aleksandr Veselov, Ruhr U Bochum (Germany)

• Lost Northern Urban Utopias: Between Melancholia and Nostalgia - Irina Shirobokova, CUNY Graduate Center

Discussant

• Elena Sergeevna Korchmina, U of Bologna (Italy)