Urban Space
Urban space is an essential subject within the field of urban studies, as it allows historians to explore the history of city development from an architectural viewpoint, and how urban design influences community development. Understanding the history of urban spaces provides insight on the evolution of human values and the relationship humans have had with their material or natural environment over the course of history. Our Educational Platform provides historical sources that exemplify how particular urban spaces such as squares, streets, architectural complexes (districts), parks, or avenues shaped contemporary metropolitan life. We also investigate modern practices of urban segregation and the fight for the city’s space, how non-places (such as shopping malls, markets, or airports) differ from heterotopias (such as cemeteries), and how the media can turn urban spaces into vehicles for global movements or how urban spaces can reflect the collective imagination and psyche of a society. The history of urban spaces may show the evolution of the current distinction between places and non-places, which is often derived from the opposition between urban space (i.e. a street) and the agency of place (i.e. a local identity).
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Primary Sources
Secret report on the moods among Kharkiv factory workers at the time of May Day holidays in 1929
The presented report illustrates types of information that are hard to find in other sources. Those are conversations during a celebratory demonstration. In the source text, we can see that people found pressing issues more important than party slogans. Workers were mostly interested in the availability of bread, work, and free sale of alcohol on festive days. Certainly, the quotes and statements of people presented in the report do not represent the entire range of topics discussed during the demonstrations. However, they allow us to at least take a look behind the settings of official manifestations. It is critical, for in 1929, Soviet celebration canon was still on the development stage. It is...
Attitudes towards “Leninopad” in interview responses of Euromaidan’ participants, 2013-2014
The quotes from the interview published here are part of the project "The Voices of Euromaidan in Global Protest and Solidarity Studies". The project focuses on the edited and thematically organized materials from the collection of oral history interviews called "Voices of Resistance and Hope," that were recorded in two stages, the first in December 2013 and the second in February 2014 (more then 100 interviews). They were gathered in the base "Intimate Chronologies of the Euromaidan", which is available on Urban Media Archive website. This collection includes 17 themetical categories. “Leninopad” is one of them. The answers given in this category indicate the attitudes towards Lenin's monuments, to specific forms of urban...
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...
The echo of the Russian revolutionary events of 1905 in Lviv in the interpretations of the local press
On Monday, January 31, 1905, the Polish Social Democratic Party of Galicia and Silesia (PPSD) initiated a meeting at the People's Theater on Shainokha Street in Lviv to discuss the revolutionary situation in Russia. Four Lviv newspapers (Gazeta Lwowska, Dilo, Kurjer Lwowski, Słowo Polskie) covered this event differently, depending on their ideological positions, political agenda, and target audiences. These publications reflect the ideological palette of the leading newspapers of the then Galicia about one historical event. This source allows us to analyze the algorithms of the design and functioning of information policies and the impact of the press.
An article in the monthly “Świat Płciowy” about prostitution in Lviv, 1905
The article published in the famous Polish-language monthly "Świat Płciowy" on prostitution in Lviv was based on statistical data for 1904. In the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the state attempted to control prostitution through the policing of prostitutes. Such monitoring and control systems distinguished between two forms of the sex trade: open prostitution (registered) and clandestine (unregistered). The persons suspected in the latter were subject to legal prosecution. Registered prostitutes had to undergo regular checks with a doctor at their own expense, and pay for their treatment themselves, if any such need was necessary. This circumstance was one of the most obvious reasons for avoiding entry into the register. According to a study by Nancy...
The Emil Bilo Rape Case, Lviv, 1894
The submitted text is part of a criminal case considered by the Criminal Division of the Lviv Regional Court in 1894 against four men accused of raping a woman named Maria Kopanska. The selected fragment is the testimony of the plaintiff, as well as of a witness Danyil Voloshyn. The event occurred on September 10, 1893, at about 11 p.m. in the Zhovkva neighborhood of the city, near the Brygidka prison. The presented document shows the peculiar nature of the information the judges requested from the injured party. This information was supposed to confirm not only the fact that the offense had been committed against the woman but also to justify her right...
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Olha Maria Zhydacek and her husband Hryhoriy Bandurka, Lviv, spring 1939
This photo is a testimony to a photographic practice popular in the 1930s. It was about making portraits of passers-by on the city streets. Such photos often recorded people in motion in the middle of a large street, and seemed to emphasize the belonging of those depicted characters to urban culture. In view of this, the genre of such photography can be called street portrait, the street and commercial photography. The photo shows the great-grandmother and great-grandfather of Bozhena Pelenska — Olha-Maria Zhydacek and her husband Hryhoriy Bandurka (b. 1899). Based on the Bozhena's memories, the story was recorded of the photograph and of the people in it. The photo was taken on...
For the Family Hearth, a 1970 film
The film is an adaptation of the novel of the same name by Ivan Franko, written in 1892. In his story, the problem of sexual slavery (or “white slavery” in the terms of those times) and women’s engagement as its victims and enablers. The author’s choice of topic must have been influenced by the lawsuits against human traffickers that were actively taking place in Galicia at this time. One of the most high-profile cases was the Lviv trial in 1892 against 27 traffickers (men and women) accused of organizing sexual traffic abroad. The investigation confirmed 29 cases of selling girls from Galicia to brothels in Constantinople, Egypt, and India. The “white slavery” usually...
In the 19th century, the gender pact dividing public and private spheres, as man-owned and women-inhabited, found its most solid reasoning. The separation of the private and the public was accelerated by the Industrial Revolution when it fixed a role of the key “bread-winner” for the man. The gender-divided lines of responsibility have certainly existed before the 19th century, but the role of women in family economy before the Industrial Revolution was much more visible. Since the Enlightenment era, the idea of the private and the public (as female and male, respectively) has been included into legal codes of most European states. This way, the new economic order was enshrined in the law...
The three stories presented in this text are dedicated to three different women united by one city. Sharing a common urban space, they experienced it in different ways, given their different social positions, status and starting opportunities. The time in which they had to live their lives was in one way or another reflected in microstories from the life of each of these women. The first story is dedicated to Maria Hrushkevych, a long-time employee of the Lviv post office, who was among the "first" women employed by the state. In the second, Maria Linchak will be talked about, who was a maid in the house of Teofil and Liudmyla Hrushkevych, a chorister...
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 research focuses on three women: 20-year-old Maria Shutek from Znesinnia [the area of Lychakivskyi District in Lviv, t\n], put on trial for the murder of her daughter Sofia in Lviv in May 1870; a 45-year-old midwife from Virmenska st. [Armenian street, t\n] named Klara Weisshaar, accused of complicity in the crime of abortion, which she helped to perform on a servant named Katarzyna Słodka in March 1905; and 35-year-old Elżbieta Wenne, convicted of pimping out her daughter in 1887. The stories told by these women are not the stories of victims. At least, it would be hard to call them that. These stories are about choices made, mistakes and their consequences, human...
On Sunday, September 10, 1893, at about 11 p.m., in the vicinity of ul. Rappaporta, Maria Kopańska, a maid, was attacked by four men — Stanisław Julian Starzewski, Michał Bendyk, Antoni Równy and Emil Bilo. The company was returning from a restaurant on ul. Szpitalna. As they later admitted, they "had been drinking vodka and beer" there. On ul. Rappaporta they saw Maria, who was walking home alone from a wedding. For the woman, the encounter ended in a gang rape. The court proceedings, which soon began on the victim's claim, although confirming the fact of violence, released three defendants from criminal liability. The fourth one, Emil Bilo, was never brought to trial,...
This course forms a part of Jewish History and Culture of East Central Europe in the 19th-20th Centuries summer school. The syllabus is availible only in Polish.
In our mini-course we will explore cultural interaction between Jews and non-Jews (Ukrainians, Poles, Russians) in the borderlands of the Habsburg and Romanov empires. This is interaction that may have been conscious or unconscious, and may have involved encounter, appropriation, negotiation, exchange and destruction.
The course intends to show the possibilities afforded by applying the gender (cultural sex) perspective in the study of Jewish culture. Proceeding from the analysis of the role of the woman and man in traditional Jewish society, we will present gender difference in the process of modernization among Jewish women and men. In looking at autobiographical materials, we will trace characteristic stages and stories, as well as life’s choices of Jewish maskilim (advocates of Haskalah, the Jewish Enlightenment). We will use the examples of the life and work of Pua Rakowska (known as "the Grandmother of Zionism") and Sara Szenirer (reformer of the traditional education system of Jewish girls) to analyze the problem...
When the well-known German author Alfred Döblin visited Lviv in 1924 he wrote: “Lviv is a lively, medium-sized, western, modern town; its streets are peaceful and bustling with life. But suddenly something strange confronts me. This city lies in the arms of two enemies, each of whom wants to dominate it. Subterranean enmity and violence are fermenting in the background”. Döblin, the son of assimilated German Jews from Stettin, also commented on the undercurrent of antiSemitism and voiced his fears, especially for the many poor Jews living in the city. (Alfred Döblin, ReisenachPolen).
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...
This short course looks at Jewish history in the context of two multinational empires: the Russian and the Habsburg. Both of these states must be understood as fundamentally pre-modern, non-national (even anti-national) political structures, a fact that is crucial for understanding Jewish history here. In the mid-19th century, the great majority of world Jewry made its home in this region and even at the end of the First World War, after the great wave of emigration to the Americas, western Europe, Erets Israel / Palestine, and South Africa, the Jewish presence here was considerable. In 1918 even antisemites could hardly imagine a Warsaw, Wilno, Lwów, Odesa (etc.) without Jews.
From Lviv to New York City, walking tours are a unique form of teaching and public history, transcending the everyday interactions of the classroom. On an urban walking tour, students go to the city but the city also comes to them, often in unexpected ways. This course will provide students with a focused analysis of the walking tour as a tool for higher education and for public history.
This intensive 5-lecture mini-course (12 academic hours) takes a close look at various urban centers (sometimes the shtetl-like and sometimes the city-like) that shaped Jewish-Polish-Ukrainian cultural encounters that inspired the rising literary figures to explore East European multi-cultural urban legacy and make this legacy central in their creative writing. Students will explore various forms of East European urban culture—a shtetl (Chortkiv and Berdychiv), a provincial center (Chernivtsi and Ternopil), a city (Kyiv), a metropolis with a strong East European diaspora presence (Montreal and New York). This course will provide students with methodological tools at the intersection of the literary and cultural studies, urban studies, and social history.
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.