Post-shtetl: Archives, Movement, And Urban Memory

The Nomadic Shtetl Archive researches the processes of architectural disappearance, urban remembrance, and functional change amid the dramatic social upheaval of former shtetls in Central and Eastern Europe. It approaches the post-shtetl not simply as a space of loss, but as a layered urban condition in which Jewish, post-Jewish, wartime, and contemporary forms of urban culture coexist. Drawing on the Archaeology of Mobility of Hans Barnard and Willeke Wendrich, Natalia Romik’s project asks how people, buildings, objects, memories, and archives move, disappear, and acquire new meanings. Following Michel Foucault's analysis of public function in Archaeology of Knowledge, where he proposes that the archive should not be understood as a room or an institution, but rather as a paradigm that constitutes a body of knowledge, Natalia Romik's project states that effective democratization can always be measured by this essential criterion: the participation in and the access to the archive, its constitution and its interpretation. A nomadic, liquid archive is thus a double protest — against forgetting, and for the democratization of memory.

During the seminar, we will discuss archives where we can learn more about the dramatic changes in Jewish urban culture in the 19th century and early 20th century. We will examine episodes from social and cultural history, the legal and ethical status of heritage, and urban space as an arena for competing memories. After all, the history of the post-shtetl is also the archaeology of movement: migration, displacement, deportation, return, resettlement, shifting borders, urbanization, and the circulation of material and archival remnants. Its landscape can be understood as a palimpsest created by these movements.

Making a bridge with the Nomadic Shtetl Archive and bringing it from Poland to Ukraine also raises questions about cultural sovereignty. How to represent a place, a community, or even an archival collection in shaping the identity that acknowledges its multinational history? This matter has acquired particular urgency in the context of war. The destruction and displacement of cultural heritage in Ukraine demonstrates that the preservation of archives and museum collections is inseparable from questions of physical safety, financial capacity, institutional longevity, and international solidarity. 

During this Urban seminar, we invite participants to join us in a conversation about the horizontal approach to archival work and the democratization of the processes of collection, arrangement, description and access. Sharing reflections on our own practices will help us collectively discuss methods for working with scattered and orphaned archives. How to find methods that would not only involve archivists and researchers but also be comfortable and ethical for the archives' owners, and invite representatives of various professional, social, national, and religious communities at the local level to collaborate?

PROGRAM 

11:00-12:30 — Methodological approaches

11:00-11:25 — FIELDNOTES ABOUT NOMADIC SHTETL ARCHIVE. Talk by Natalia Romik (Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin)

11:30-11:55 — ANOTHER 'POST-SHTETL': THE URBAN JEWISH EXPERIENCES IN EASTERN EUROPE. Talk by Francois Guesnet (University College London)

12:00-12:25 — TRANSNATIONAL CIVIC ECOSYSTEMS ON THE SIDELINES OF WAR IN UKRAINE. Talk by Roch Dunin-Wąsowicz (University College London)

12:30 - 13:30 — Break

13:30-15:30 — Discussion

The event will take place as part of the public program and exhibition "From Place to Place: Stories from Scattered Archives," which is part of the "REHERIT 2.0: Common Responsibility for Shared Heritage" project. The "REHERIT 2.0" project is implemented by the Center for Urban History and the Center for Regional Development of the PPV Economic Development Agency with financial support from the European Union.

This public program and exhibition were created with the financial support of the European Union. The content is the sole responsibility of the partners of the "REHERIT 2.0" project and does not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union.