Symposium on The Ghosts of Empire

A theory of Empire’s ghosts must necessarily remain vague. How else to account for those difficult to grasp, evanescent memories of past empires haunting our present? Why for some of us “ardent for desperate glory” (W. Owen) do they take us by the hand and lead us back into their dark land? What “rituals, pleasures, and politics of cooperation” (R. Sennett) might these ghostings of empires elicit? What are their immaterial reminiscences and material traces? Does their disappearance augur a new political age of sincerity? An age of Realpolitik devoid of spirits past?

In this conference, we seek to look at the traces of empires—Austro-Hungarian, Russian, Ottoman, US-American, etc.—in their various manifestations, as these move in and across various geographical and temporal zones.

Organizers:

Fatima Naqvi, the Elias W. Leavenworth Professor of German and Film and Media Studies, Yale University

Bradley Woodworth, Baltic Studies Program Manager, Yale University, and Professor of History, University of New Haven

Speakers

Paul Bauer, Professor of History, Charles University (Czech Republic)
Pieter Judson, Professor for 19th and 20th Century History, European University Institute (Italy)
Ulrike von Hirschhausen,  Fellow, Harvard University, and Professor of History, University of Rostock (Germany)
Fatima Naqvi, the Elias W. Leavenworth Professor of German and Film and Media Studies, Yale University
Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen, Assistant Dean and Professor of Architecture, Yale School of Architecture
Bradley Woodworth, Baltic Studies Program Manager, Yale University, and Professor of History, University of New Haven