Different America: Great Expectations and Disappointments with the United States
19.9.2025, 18.30
Lviv Culture Hub, 6 Kniazia Romana Str.
Over the last years, the image of the United States of America – often called simply America — has undergone dramatic changes, both internationally and domestically. Given the role this country has achieved in global politics after World War I and has been playing for over a century, the expectations are enormous, as are disappointments with which one has to cope.
In conversation with Adam Hochschild, a prolific writer and journalist, and Arlie Russell Hochschild, a well-known sociologist and writer, we will discuss both contemporary developments in the United States but also their historical contexts and underpinnings. This will be a chance to revisit several important historical moments in the history of the USA and discuss how they shaped the state and society. This conversation — especially Q&A — will help to understand America better, as it is a crucial partner for Europe and especially for Ukraine now. We will reflect on what we miss in our understanding of the US, how this impacts the ways we are shaping our communication with its officials, but also with regular citizens.
The event will be held in English with simultaneous translation into Ukrainian.
The event is organized by the online journal re/visions, the Center for Urban History, a, in partnership with Lviv Media Forum and Lviv Culture Hub.
Adam Hochschild
Adam is a journalist and lecturer at the Graduate School of Journalism, UC Berkeley. Author of numerous award-winning historical books: is also the author of many books; Lessons from a Dark Time and Other Essays (2018), Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire’s Slaves (2005), King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa (1998/2006), To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918 (2011), American Midnight: The Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy’s Forgotten Crisis (2022). As a journalist, he has contributed to The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, The Atlantic, The Times Literary Supplement, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Magazine, and The Nation. He was actively involved in the civil rights movement and protests against the Vietnam War. Most of his publications deal with topics of human rights and social justice.
Arlie Russell Hochschild
Professor Emerita of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley and the author of ten books, including The Second Shift (1989), The Managed Heart (1983), and The Time Bind (1997), The Outsourced Self: Intimate Life in Market Times (2012), So How’s the Family and Other Essays (2013) as well as Strangers in Their Own Land (2016), which became a bestseller and was a finalist for a National Book Award, and Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame, and the Rise of the Right (2024).
Daria Badior
Editor-in-chief of re/visionsCritic, editor, and film curator based in Kyiv. For several years, she was the head of the Culture section at the Ukrainian online outlet LB.ua. Since 2021, Daria has edited a series of publications on the commemoration of 1941, the reconstruction of Ukraine during and after the current war, and has published articles in Der Tagesspiegel, The Independent, Hyperallergic, Osteuropa, Dwutygodnik, and others. She is a member of the Preparatory Committee of the European Press Prize. She co-curates the Kyiv Critics’ Week film festival. Daria co-edited the 2024 book We Who Have Changed.
Natalie Nougayrède
Editor of re/visionsJournalist, former editor-in-chief of Le Monde and member of The Guardian‘s editorial board from 2015 to 2020. She covered post-1989 transitions in Central Europe, including in Ukraine where she lived in the mid-1990s. She was Le Monde‘s bureau chief in Moscow (2001-2005) and its diplomatic correspondent (2006-2012). Natalie was awarded the Albert Londres journalism prize for her coverage of the Chechnya war. She has held fellowships at the Robert Bosch Academy (Berlin), the INDEX Institute for Documentation and Exchange, and the Center for Urban History (Lviv). She supports media and civil society initiatives in the “Eastern Partnership” region.
Credits
Cover Image: Members of the 369th [African American] Infantry (Harlem Hellfighters) after returning to New York from World War I / National Archives Catalog