Legacies of Diversity in a Post-Multi-Ethnic Space I: Between Memory and Practice

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

The role of multi-ethnicity in cities has been explored on examples of, mostly Western European, cities that have, since the twentieth century, become more ethnically diverse (see e.g. Vertovec 2007; Kymlicka 1996; Valentine 2008; Sartori 2002; Antonsich and Matejskova 2015). The term post-multiculturalism has been used but only to mean a new phase in the development of already highly multicultural cities (Vertovec 2010). In this panel, we bring together contributions from scholars who research the role of bygone or diminished ethnic diversity in cities that used to be very cosmopolitan and multiethnic but, for different reasons, lost their diversity, such as Lodz, Warsaw, Poznan, Thessaloniki, Vukovar, or many of the cities of Central and Eastern Europe. We are interested in the legacies of past cosmopolitanism and in the ways today’s activists, public intellectuals and normal citizens try to remember (or forget) their cities’ multiethnic histories. We are also interested in long-lasting frequencies of (ethnic) change and in the meanings of old diversities for new migrants.

Sub Unit

• Anthropology, Cultural Studies

Chair

• Piotr Goldstein, ZOiS Berlin (Germany)

Papers

• Teaching Between Lines: Nationalism, History, and the Hidden Curriculum in Vukovar’s Schools - Dragana Prvulovic, U of Ottawa (Canada)

• Reclaiming Forgotten Pasts, Envisioning Ecological Futures: Jewish Memory Alliances for a Polish Urban Wasteland - Olga Łojewska, Adam Mickiewicz U (Poland)

• Singing Songs of the Jewish Underworld from Pre-World War Two Poland: Bringing Back the Memory of an Unwanted Community - Izabella Goldstein, Independent Artist

• Remembering and Practising Diversity in a Post-Multi-Ethnic City: Case Study of Lodz and Thessaloniki - Piotr Goldstein, ZOiS Berlin (Germany)

Discussant

• Milos Jovanovic, UCLA