
Exploring Placemaking in Eastern Europe and London Through Travel Writings

Course description
This course is designed for upper-level undergraduates (BA) as part of the course offering in cultural, historical, or literary studies. Students are expected to have already acquired critical reading and textual analysis skills as well as basic notions in European history and culture. Throughout the course, students are expected to consult various materials (primary and secondary sources) to enable an informed discussion in the classroom.
Travel writing is an established literary genre, and in recent years it has been increasingly used in disciplines outside literature. Moreover, the genre has shifted its traditional emphasis on the dichotomy between “truth” and “misrepresentation” towards an inquiry into the patterns underlying representation. As scholars in area studies are concerned with the cultural, political, and social dynamics in a given region, they have also been interested in understanding how the “Other” sees a particular region through a culturally and historically inflected lens. Travel writings thus constitute especially useful and commonly available texts for examining regional characteristics. In addition, they contribute to the processes that shape a place and create a sense of belonging for people, i.e., the processes of placemaking or of making a place “home.”
This course offers insights into the “placemaking of the mind,” i.e., the ways in which textual and visual representations of space and place create a sense of belonging and the ways in which historical monuments are used in contemporary placemaking practices. The course focuses on a number of selected travel texts emanating from of concerning East-Central Europe, Russia, and London. In the first part of the course, travel texts focus on Moscow, London, and places in Siberia. In the second part of the course, relevant contemporary placemaking practices derived from digitally available material are discussed and analyzed. Moreover, an understanding of the ways in which representation influences contemporary placemaking practices will be developed during class conversations.
The teaching schedule sets weekly readings and tasks. The first bloc focuses on writers describing their visits to Russia over a 500-year time frame, while the second bloc focuses on travel writings by people who visited London. The third bloc focuses on the use of cultural heritage in contemporary placemaking practices. The teaching methodology used will rely strongly on group discussions, and special attention will be paid to student presentations, which students will prepare according to the worksheets provided.
Course grade components
- scholarly essay (60%);
- two scholarly reflections (worth 20% each) on cities. These reflections will take into account the material studied in the course (primary sources) and include an examination of these primary sources as they reflect on spatial experience. One of the reflections will be a self-reflexive blogpost about experiencing space through travel writings, cinematic representations, and placemaking practices, while the other reflection paper will focus on using concepts pertaining to cultural heritage preservation in the context of tourism promotion. The best reflections will be made public via a dedicated website.
Intended learning outcomes
- Students will become familiar with history, the travel writing genre, and representational conventions;
- Students will become familiar with cultural heritage practices across Europe;
- Students will acquire independent reflection skills;
- Students will improve their writing skills and practice writing for an academic audience or for commercial purposes.
Weekly readings
Representing Eastern Europe: the invention of Eastern Europe in travel writings
The first three meetings of the seminar series focus on the conceptualization and representation of Eastern Europe throughout history. Each class will focus on one particular text taken from travel writing collections. Each class will be supported by scholarly reading material, which students will be required to read in detail as they prepare for class.
Week ONE
Introduction: the notion of space
This section of the class will focus on the notions of place and space, with an emphasis on how these notions were critiqued in the late twentieth century. Lectures will also introduce the concepts of borders, center, and periphery, showing how literature may contribute to the construction of images about these concepts.
Key readings
- Weigel, Sigrid. “On the ‘Topological Turn: Concepts of Space in Cultural Studies and Kulturwissenschaften. A Cartographic Feud.” European Review 2009, 17(1) 187-201.
Additional readings
- Conley, Verena Andermatt. Spatial Ecologies: Urban Sites, State and world-space in French cultural theory. Liverpool UP, 2012.
- Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space, Blackwell, 1991.
Week TWO
The topology of the East
This class will focus on the constructions of Eastern Europe. We will review how the definitions of “Eastern Europe,” “East-Central Europe,” and “Central Europe” have shifted over the last 150 years and how these conceptualizations have shaped our understanding of the region’s narratives.
Key readings
- Wolff, Larry. Inventing Easter Europe, esp. “Introduction,” Stanford, 1994.
Additional readings
- Groys, Boris, Die Erfindung Russlands . Hanser, 1995. Excerpts in English will be provided.
- Bracewell, Wendy. “The Limits of Europe in East European Travel Writing,” in Under Eastern Eyes, ed. W. Bracewell & A. Drace-Francis. CEU Press, 2008.
Week THREE
The wild East
This section of the course will focus on Siberia and consider travel writings produced by the earliest known traveler to Siberia. Students must watch an early Soviet film about Siberia, which will serve as an inroad to understand how an unknown and previously unrepresented region was described and constructed through this narrative. Students will be especially attentive to the opportunities proposed by different media and across different historical periods.
Film
- Dovzhenko, Aerograd Film, 1935, 1935: Aerograd – Frontier (the movie can be found on youtube.com)
Readings
- Diment, Gayla and Yuri Slezkine, eds. Between Heaven and Hell: the myth of Siberia in Russian culture. Esp. Murav, “Siberia and the myth of exile,” Palgrave McMillan, 1993.
- Stolberg Eva Maria, The Siberian saga a history of Russia’s Wild East. Peter Lang, 2005. The Siberian saga : a history of Russia’s wild east : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive.
Week FOUR
Orientalism: Moscow in the past and in the semi-present
This week, the course will focus on ways in which Moscow has been represented over the last few centuries in order to understand the ramifications of narrative construction over time, as well as to develop a deeper understanding of how places are textually constructed.
Main readings
- Herberstein, Notes upon Russia 1526 chapters, esp. Moscow the capital. In Marshall Poe (ed.) Early exploration of Russia vol. 2. Routledge, 2003.
Additional readings
- Nagy, Lajos. Tízezer kilométer Szovjetoroszország földjén [Ten thousand kilometres in Soviet Russia ] (1934). Hu edition: Szépirodalmi, 1989. Translations from Hungarian into English will be provided.
- Benjamin, Walter. Moscow Diary. Harvard UP, 1986.
Week FIVE
Occidentalism
This week, the class will focus on how travelers from East-Central Europe have perceived Western Europe.
Main readings
- Osman Ağa of Temešvar, Prisoner of the Infidels (1724) Excerpts in English will be provided.
- Szepsi-Csombor, Márton, Europica varietas (1620); Excerpts in English will be provided.
Additional readings
- Bracewell, Wendy. ‘The Limits of Europe in East European Travel (explored again)
Week SIX
Representing London
The discussion will focus on how the representations of London have changed throughout history, as the city has been seen through the eyes of travelers from the East and the West.
Main readings
- Selection of travel texts taken from “A Vision of Britain through Time” and ” Your national on-line library for local history.” Students will also consult maps, statistical data, and travel writings.
- Selection of texts from Bracewell-Drace Franics, East Looks West: Orientations, CEU Press, 2008, (Wesselényi, Mednyánszky, Márai)
Week SEVEN
Placemaking and cultural heritage
This week, the seminar will introduce the basic concepts of placemaking and explore how historical monuments and textual heritage can be used in contemporary placemaking practices.
Main readings
- Madgin, Rebecca. Heritage, Culture, and Conservation: Managing Urban Renaissance. Esp. “Introduction.” VDM Verlag, 2009.
Additional readings
- Ermann, Ulrich and Klaus-Jürgen Hermanik. Branding the Nation, the Place, the Product. Routledge, 2017.
- Kenny, Nicholas and Rebecca Madgin (eds.) Cities Beyond Borders: Comparative and Transnational Approaches to Urban History. Routledge, 2016.
Week EIGHT
Placemaking experiments
Students will engage in groupwork to explore placemaking projects in Moscow through online material. Students will have the opportunity to reflect on these experiments, drawing on course readings and their own experiences of placemaking.
Readings
- Students will consult projects that exemplify Moscow’s urban movement on ArchDaily.
- Made by Locals: A New Age of Russian Placemaking (available online)
Zsuzsanna Varga teaches Hungarian Studies in the Department of Central and East European Studies at the University of Glasgow. Her publications include Reflections in the library: Antal Szerb’s selected literary essays 1926-1944 (Oxford: Legenda-MHRA, 2017, Popular Cinemas in East-Central Europe (London IB Tauris, 2017), and Worlds of Hungarian Writing Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson (University Press, 2016). She is currently the chair of the EU COST Action 18204 “Dynamics of placemaking and digitization in Europe’s cities.”
Published on June 17, 2024.