Elements for the Future: Materials and Practices of Post-WWII Reconstructions

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

This panel explores the connective practices and material networks that supported postwar rebuilding in socialist Poland and the Soviet Union. The papers examine diverse cases of postwar reconstruction: efforts in Kyiv to compare, classify, and map Ukrainian cities in preparation for rebuilding; the transformation of Warsaw’s ruins into a material base of reconstruction through practices of salvaging, reusing and recycling rubble; and the material networks forged in the wake of war to link Soviet cities like Moscow to extractive spaces in newly “liberated” landscapes in the western USSR. Together, the papers represent a call to think more socially and relationally about the cities, landscapes, and materials we study.

Sub Unit

• Geography, Urban Studies, Built Environments

Chair

• Eve Blau, Harvard U

Papers

• Classifying, Comparing, Connecting: The Postwar Urban Matrix of Soviet Ukraine - Sofia Dyak, Center for Urban History of East Central Europe (Ukraine)

• Second Materiality of Warsaw: Ruins, Rubble, and the Postwar Socialist Reconstruction - Adam Przywara, U of Fribourg (Switzerland)

• Networks of Extraction: The Reciprocal Landscapes of Soviet Reconstruction - Katherine Zubovich, SUNY Buffalo

Discussant

• Christina Elizabeth Crawford, Emory U