Heritage
History and heritage are closely connected, since heritage often provides hints about the past and an understanding of how society has evolved. Our tangible, intangible, and natural heritage, and all the associated myths, tales, memories, and rituals, provide people with a common understanding and awareness that enables them to communicate on a deep level with each other and express themselves in a unique way to the outside world. Heritage is precarious and often contested, thus needing constant protection and development. But it delivers so much in terms of essential human experience with human-made or natural surroundings. This is the past, emplotted into discourses and narratives, which deepens peoples’ lives, and allows them to better define themselves. The Educational Platform focuses on, but is not limited to, issues of inclusive heritage, historical instances of conservation, practices and heritage communities, how important choices were made, and how the politics of heritage shaped cities in East-Central Europe.
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Primary Sources
Sejm Discussion about the Role of Ukrainians in the General Regional Exhibition in Galicia in 1894
The document presents a discussion between Ukrainian and Polish deputies in the Galician Sejm taking place in Lviv on May, 15, 1893. One of the issues during that day session was about the report of the budget commission requested by the executive committee of the 1894 Regional Exhibition on allocating a subvention the exhibition’s implementation. Despite the financial component of the matter, the discussion went beyond to a broader political dimension and showed Polish-Ukrainian relations in Galicia in the end of the 19th century. The first rapporteur among the Ukrainian deputies was Yaroslav Kulachkovskyi, director of the Dnister insurance company. He spoke about the goal of the future exhibition presented by the executive...
At the time of autonomy, the General Regional Exhibition was the third attempt by Galician elites to show their achievements in the industrial, economic, and cultural development of the region. The first such attempt took place in Lviv in 1877, the second in Krakow in 1887. In turn, the next one was to open its gates to visitors in 10 years in Lviv. The official countdown to the beginning of its opening began in June 1892, when the Main Exhibition Committee was formed. The monetary fund of the exhibition was filled with donations from county communities, government subventions and the Provincial Office, the City Council of Lviv, individuals, and organizations. Most of the...
This seminar explores ideas and practices of heritage in Eastern and Central Europe between 1945 and now. The course is designed as a set of five meetings, which will include short lecture introductions, seminar discussions, and at the end – practical workshop. Our meetings will be about discussing the texts, addressing cases you will read about or already know. Thіs the seminar will be our common effort in reading, asking questions and searching for answers. Therefore it is crucial that you will read assigned parts of selected texts and also consult texts from the recommended reading list. While reading assigned texts, please keep a short track of your ideas and formulate several questions...
The course offers a short introduction to some of the key concepts and literary and cultural practices that shaped the represenations of modern Jewish spaces in Eastern Europe as well as their contemporary reconstructions and exhibitions. While focusing on (Jewish) Poland and Yiddish culture, this course introduces critical tools for understanding and interpreting modern (Jewish) contructions and experiences of space and place.
In 1939, on the eve of the Holocaust, east European Jewry constituted the most important and culturally influential Jewish community in the world. As a result of half a century of mass migration, up to 90% of world Jewry either lived in Eastern Europe or were children of immigrants from there. Jews were particularly prominent in East European cities. In Galicia, for example, Jews constituted a plurality or majority of nearly every major city. (L’viv was an exception, where they made up “only” a quarter of the population.) This course will survey the modern history of this once vital community – social, economic, political, religious and cultural – from the Polish partitions until...
The field of social history has achieved the edge of its popularity in 1950-1980s. It was strongly connected with other disciplines, such as economics, demography, sociology, and allowed historians to reach a much wider range of research themes. Since the 1960s, the social history of the Jewish people became important and influential part of the studies. Historians were exploring the possibilities to study Jewish community with new tools and integrating different representatives of Jewish community – workers, women, immigrants, criminals - in a research. Since 1990s historians of Jewish past shifted their interest to cultural studies. However, in the last years, we can see an economic turn, which signifies the search for a...
The course explores the ways in which Jewish history and culture are narrated and visualized in the new museum and exhibitions projects in post-communist East Central Europe, and how those museums as public institutions, and curatorial interventions contribute to establishing, (re)shaping, countering or petrifying respective national narratives, the understanding of cultural difference and prejudice.