Presented By: Center for Armenian Studies
“For Us the Deserts are Buzzling Cities:” Early Soviet Yerevan between Armenian Futurism and Post-Persian Retrotopia
David Leupold, Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient Berlin
Abstract: Few architects of the 20th century have left as indelible a mark as the neoclassical architect Alexander Tamanyan did in Yerevan. From the late Soviet Cascade to the post-Soviet megaproject Northern Avenue, his legacy has continued to serve as a point of reference.
Roaming through scattered experimental buildings, blueprints hidden in private archives, and surrealist fiction suppressed by Soviet censors, the talk seeks to reconstruct from the debris of history an alternative pathway to imagining the Soviet city. Contesting Tamanyan's Eurocentric vision of the city, the talk recounts the story of those who were torn between anticipation for a communist future and a longing for the city's Persian heritage – which was being razed before their eyes.
Bio: Dr. David Leupold is a research fellow at Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient Berlin and principal investigator of the research project “Relicts of the Future? Life and Afterlife of the Socialist City in Central Asia and the Southern Caucasus” funded by the German Research Association (DFG). Leupold was a 2018-2019 Manoogian Postdoctoral Fellow in the University of Michigan Department of Sociology and holds a doctoral degree from the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.
His research interests comprise contested geographies and the collective imaginations of past, present and future in the post-Ottoman and post-Soviet space. His first monograph Embattled Dreamlands: At the Nexus of Armenian, Kurdish and Turkish Memory Politics (New York: Routledge, 2020) was awarded the 2021 annual book prize of the Central Eurasian Studies Society (CESS).
Suggested Pre-Read:
‘Building the Internationalist City from Below’: The Role of the Czechoslovak Industrial Cooperative “Interhelpo” in Forging Urbanity in early-Soviet Bishkek published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 November 2020. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-labor-and-working-class-history/article/abs/building-the-internationalist-city-from-below-the-role-of-the-czechoslovak-industrial-cooperative-interhelpo-in-forging-urbanity-in-earlysoviet-bishkek/95F8127EF91216614230D5B5B47E9FB5
Cosponsors:
Multidisciplinary Workshop for Armenian Studies, U-M
UCLA PromiseArmenian Institute
UC Berkeley Armenian Studies Program
Register here: https://umich.zoom.us/j/91032993178
Roaming through scattered experimental buildings, blueprints hidden in private archives, and surrealist fiction suppressed by Soviet censors, the talk seeks to reconstruct from the debris of history an alternative pathway to imagining the Soviet city. Contesting Tamanyan's Eurocentric vision of the city, the talk recounts the story of those who were torn between anticipation for a communist future and a longing for the city's Persian heritage – which was being razed before their eyes.
Bio: Dr. David Leupold is a research fellow at Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient Berlin and principal investigator of the research project “Relicts of the Future? Life and Afterlife of the Socialist City in Central Asia and the Southern Caucasus” funded by the German Research Association (DFG). Leupold was a 2018-2019 Manoogian Postdoctoral Fellow in the University of Michigan Department of Sociology and holds a doctoral degree from the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.
His research interests comprise contested geographies and the collective imaginations of past, present and future in the post-Ottoman and post-Soviet space. His first monograph Embattled Dreamlands: At the Nexus of Armenian, Kurdish and Turkish Memory Politics (New York: Routledge, 2020) was awarded the 2021 annual book prize of the Central Eurasian Studies Society (CESS).
Suggested Pre-Read:
‘Building the Internationalist City from Below’: The Role of the Czechoslovak Industrial Cooperative “Interhelpo” in Forging Urbanity in early-Soviet Bishkek published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 November 2020. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-labor-and-working-class-history/article/abs/building-the-internationalist-city-from-below-the-role-of-the-czechoslovak-industrial-cooperative-interhelpo-in-forging-urbanity-in-earlysoviet-bishkek/95F8127EF91216614230D5B5B47E9FB5
Cosponsors:
Multidisciplinary Workshop for Armenian Studies, U-M
UCLA PromiseArmenian Institute
UC Berkeley Armenian Studies Program
Register here: https://umich.zoom.us/j/91032993178
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