Teaching

The Urban History Seminar

During March-May 2008, in cooperation with the Ukrainian Catholic University, the Center was holding its first seminar in Urban History. The main purpose of this course, taught by Tarik Cyril Amar, was to acquaint students with a small but significant selection of major approaches to this discipline, while also paying attention to the underlying processes of social, economic, political and cultural transformations, which had made and shaped cities. Students were encouraged to engage intellectually with various ways of interpreting these facts, including readings largely situated within the paradigms of modernization (and its discontents), discourse approaches, or psychology, and to probe the limits of the field of urban history, be they geographical or cultural.

Urban Sociology and Social Science Courses at the Center for Urban History

Beginning 17 September 2008, in cooperation with the History Department of Lviv’s Ivan Franko University, the Center is hosting Dr Viktoria Sereda’s Courses for advanced students on Urban Sociology and on Visual Methods in the Social Sciences. 

Dr Sereda’s Urban Sociology course is not restricted to theory but analyzes specific examples to foster not only abilities but a habit of practical applications and work among its students. The following topics are addressed during the course:

• The city as a Research Object. Processes of Urbanization
• Historical Aspects of Urbanization. Architecture and Society
• Urban Planning
• Basic Sociological Concepts of the City
• The Sociology of Space. The Structure of the City
• Urban Inequality and Segregation (Social, Gender, Religious, Age, and National)
• The City as a Social Text. Marking of Social Space.
• Constructing the City’s Image. The Tourist’s Gaze. Cities in Movies
• Globalization and the City. The Global City

Similarly, Dr Sereda’s other course, Visual Methods in the Social Sciences, also focuses not only on methodological approaches in the research of visual sources but contains a series of case studies of such topics as:

• Representing Gender
• Gender Analysis of Advertisement
• Visualizing the Past (National Heritage and Museums)
• The City and Memory
• The Visual Marking of Social Space

The course makes wide use of visual sources such as:  

• Photographs
• Films (Feature and Documentary)
• Advertisements
• Museum Collections 
  

Course "Lviv – Aspects of the History of Religion, Sociology, and Art History"

Within the framework of the Center’s continuing cooperation with the Catholic University of Lviv, (UCU) the Center is now hosting and co-teaching a new course "Lviv – Aspects of the History of Religion, Sociology, and Art History".Bohdan Shumylovych, permanent staff member at the Center and internationally trained in Cultural Studies and Art History, has developed this course for the UCU program Urbi et Orbi, which prepares highly qualified guides to Lviv’s sacral monuments and architecture by combining rigorous theoretical knowledge and practical training.

The course covers the following topics:

• The City as a Research Object: History
• Historic Styles and the City: General Overview
• The City, Art and Representation
• Urbanization Processes. Historical Aspects of the Urbanization of Lviv
• The Structure of the City: The Sociology of Space
• The City as a Sacral Text: Defining Sacral Space
• Sacral Diversity and the City
• Planning the Modern City: New Sacral Architecture
• Post-Soviet Lviv
• Constructing a City Image: The Tourist’s Gaze