Cities in Eastern Europe. - JMMZ181

• Title: Cities in Eastern Europe.
• Guaranteed by: Department of Russian and East European Studies (23-KRVS)
• Faculty: Faculty of Social Sciences
• Actual: from 2014 to 2018
• Semester: summer
• E-Credits: 6
• Examination process: summer s.:combined
• Hours per week, examination: summer s.:2/2, Ex [HT]
• Capacity: unknown / unknown (unknown)
• Min. number of students: unlimited
• 4EU+: no
• Virtual mobility / capacity: no
• State of the course: taught
• Language: English
• Teaching methods: full-time
• Teaching methods: full-time
• Explanation: The course is taught at UCL!!!
• Additional information: http://www.ssees.ucl.ac.uk/prospect/MACourseGuide.pdf
• Note: course can be enrolled in outside the study plan; enabled for web enrollment; priority enrollment if the course is part of the study plan
• Guarantor: prof. Dr. Ger Duijzings

Annotation

Last update: VYKOUKAL (02.04.2012)

After the end of Communism, many cities in Eastern Europe are undergoing rapid social and economic
change, which has had major effects on the physical outlook of these cities. It also has affected the ways in
which people, urbanites as well as non-urbanites, perceive these cities and urban life in general. This course
wants to investigate how, in the post-socialist context, city dwellers perceive, define and use this rapidly
transforming urban space, as well as how they try to shape and appropriate it (make their own "place" out of
urban "space"). The course will also look at the ideological uses of the city, i.e. the ways in which peasants
and other non-urbanites (but also urbanites themselves) perceive cities not only as "free" and anonymous
places, offering a wide range of new economic possibilities, but also as sources of widely felt insecurity,
danger and threat. In some parts of Eastern Europe, such fears have been reinforced by the lack of political
control over processes of urban growth and development. Many changes seem to evolve without planning,
which is in marked contrast with the socialist period. During the 1990s, existential fears under new political
and economic conditions have fuelled anti-urbanist discourses, and boosted forms of populism and
nationalism. This has been salient in the case of the former Yugoslavia: the urban-rural division has been
important in understanding the violence of the 1990s, some local intellectuals going as far as to characterise
the war as a form of "urbicide".

Aim of the course

Last update: VYKOUKAL (02.04.2012)

• ANALYSE transformations cities in Eastern Europe have undergone in the post-Socialist period

• DESCRIBE the ways in which urbanites and non-urbanites perceive these changes and how they use urban

space.

Literature

Last update: VYKOUKAL (02.04.2012)

• Low, Setha M. (ed.). 2002. Theorizing the City. The new urban anthropology reader. New Brunswick.

• Crowley, David and Susan Reid (eds.). 2002. Socialist spaces: Sites of everyday life in the eastern bloc. Oxford.

• F.E. Ian Hamilton, Kaliopa Dimitrovska Andrews, and Nataša Pichler-Milanović (eds.). Transformations of cities in

Central and Eastern Europe: Towards globalization. Tokyo.

• Cor Wagenaar (ed.), Happy cities and public happiness in post-war Europe. Rotterdam.

• Åman, A. 1992. Architecture and ideology in Eastern Europe during the Stalin era. Boston.

• French, R. Anthony. 1995. Plans, pragmatism and people. The legacy of Soviet planning for today’s cities. London.

• Tsenkova, Sasha and Zorica Nedović-Budić (eds.). 2006. The urban mosaic of post-socialist Europe. Space,

institutions and policy. Heidelberg.

Teaching methods

Last update: VYKOUKAL (02.04.2012)

Teaching & Learning Methods: Number of Hours:

Seminars 20

Self Study 180

A list of readings accompanies each session. Students are required to read all texts, and give short presentations,

normally every second week. Apart from the class reading and the oral presentations, students are expected to

read a monograph and present it in class. ALL students are expected to participate in the discussion. The class

teacher’s role is that of chair and not lecturer. There is no language requirement.

Requirements to the exam

Last update: VYKOUKAL (02.04.2012)

WRITTEN WORK
Students are required to create one page documents for each individual reading they present

in class, following the AQCI format (Argument, Question, Connections, and Implications).

They also submit one 800-word book review in week 6, and one 2.500-word essay in week

10, on a subject of their choice. The two essays are the main element in the coursework assessment.

ASSESSMENT
Assessment will be by 50% unseen examination and 50% coursework.

Syllabus

Last update: VYKOUKAL (02.04.2012)

The course would like to investigate the urban experience in the post-socialist

period, and contrast it with the socialist period, i.e. focus on the ways people have lived their urban lives, how

they have lived through the changes and how they perceive the differences between the socialist and postsocialist

period. Other topics the course will deal with is urban landscape, monuments, urban material culture,

urban design and architecture, property issues, social cleavages and ethnic divisions, consumerism, leisure

and life style, urbanisation and (transnational) migration.