The Other Sykhiv: Religious Alternatives to a Modernist Vision
Vlad Naumescu
Central European University, Budapest15.8.2017, 19:00
"Intercity" trade center, 62a Chervona Kalyna Avenue
This talk reflected on the postsocialist transformation of Sykhiv through a religious lens, inviting public reflection on its salience in collective memory and urban landscape. Based on field research done in 2003-2006 it observes Sykhiv’s metamorphosis from a typical Soviet mass housing district into a marketplace of religions. In the post-Soviet period religion reemerged into the public sphere becoming a major reordering principle of urban space and life. This rapid pluralization challenged the secular layout of the Soviet district and fragmented urban landscape but it also created unique opportunities for its dwellers to imagine alternative visions and inscribe them into the city.
Lecture hold in English with simultanous translation to Ukrainian. Entrance is free.
is associate Professor of Anthropology at the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary. He has conducted extensive fieldwork in Ukraine, Romania and South India on issues of memory, religion and cultural transmission. He is the author of Modes of Religiosity in Eastern Christianity: Religious Processes and Social Change in Ukraine (Lit 2007), co-editor of Churches In-between: Greek Catholic Churches in Postsocialist Europe (Lit 2008) and of several articles on related topics. In his research he combines ethnography with filmmaking. His research in Sykhiv in the early 2000s observed the urban transformation of a Soviet microraion through the lens of post socialist religious revival.
Vlad Naumescu
"Sykhiv By Night" is an open public program for broad audiences. It is related to other two projects of the Center for Urban History: the summer school "Sykhiv: Spaces, Memories, Practices" and a research project "Planned and Experienced: Planned Districts in Late Socialism and Beyond."
Credits
Gallery Image by Andriy Polikovskyy