Environment as an Imaginative Force: Nature and Culture in Southeast Europe and the Middle East

Join a vibrant discussion of the environment as an imaginative force in Southeast Europe and the Middle East. From January 19-21, speakers will explore both regions through donkey trails, locust ecology, pictorial traditions, soil science and mapmaking, deadly environments, climate-related disaster risk policies, material landscapes of Israel and Palestine, the island of Goli Otok’s political prisons, and the intersection of nature and culture in the Carpathian Mountains.

THURSDAY JANUARY 19, 2023

9:00 - 9:15 a.m. | INTRODUCTION

9:15 - 11:15 a.m. | SESSION 1

The Nature of Artifice, the Artifice of Nature: A Natural-Cultural History of Stone Quarries and Cement Production in 20th-Century Palestine/Israel
PRESENTER: Nimrod Ben Zeev, Van Leer Jerusalem Institute & Hebrew University

“The Island That Swallows Men:” Goli Otok, Political Prison, and the Making of Yugoslavia
PRESENTER: Milica Prokić, University of Glasgow

COMMENTATOR: Ana Sekulić

12:30 - 1:30 p.m. | SESSION 2

Sublime Summits and Petroleum Ponds: The Representational Ambivalence of Environment in the Imperial Caucasus
PRESENTER: Dominik Gutmeyr-Schnur, ULCA

Knowing Soils and Imagining Nations in the Early 20th Century: Science, Nature and Politics in East Central Europe
PRESENTER: Noémi Ujházy, University of Nottingham

COMMENTATOR: Sahar Hosseini

FRIDAY, JANUARY 20, 2023

10:00 - 11:30 a.m. | KEYNOTE

The Nature-Nation Nexus in the Carpathian Mountains
PRESENTER: Patrice Dabrowski, Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute
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12:00 - 1:30 p.m. | FILM SCREENING + Q&A
4130 Posvar Hall

“Taming the Garden” by Salomé Jashi
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SATURDAY, JANUARY 21, 2023

10:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. | SESSION 3

Locusts of Power
PRESENTER: Sam Dolbee, Vanderbilt University

On Donkey Trails into the Modern Age: A Social and Environmental History of Southeast Europe (19th-20th century)
PRESENTER: Ruža Fotiadis, Humboldt University

COMMENTATOR: Ruth Mostern

1:00 - 3:00 p.m. | SESSION 4

Tears of Trees: On Ecosemiotics of Deadly Environments in Postwar Bosnia and Herzegovina
PRESENTER: David Henig, Utrecht University

Speaking of Disaster
Larisa Jašarević, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science)

COMMENTATOR: Emanuela Grama

University of Pittsburgh