Johanna Hügel; Visiting Fellowship 2022/23
Short Bio
Currently I am completing the manuscript of my dissertation with the working title »Art, ethnography and the secret life of things, Petersburg 1890-1920«, focusing on a corpus of ethnographic objects that were photographed and declared to be 'Primitive Art' in Petersburg in the early 1910s by the russian-latvian artist and art historian Voldemārs Matvejs (by pen name Vladimir Markov). Methodologically, my project is inspired by Latour's actor-network theory and the history of knowledge. In accordance with Latour's dictum "follow the actors!", I trace the various paths of the objects until their appearance within Markov's publications. In doing so, I highlight different stages of the objects' journey from their contexts of origin into European collections and art. One of my main hypotheses is that the category of 'time' plays a central role in the different sets of knowledge that are co-produced with the objects in the different realms of imperial ethnography, ethnographic collections, and avant-garde art. The search for historical national and imperial 'origins' is present in turn-of-the-century Petersburg and can be observed in Markov's writings. I am not only interested in the entanglements between ethnography, archaeology, and art, but also in their appropriation in colonial/imperial metropolises as part of a genuinely modern project of self-positioning. Other research interests include postcolonial and environmental history, epistemological and ontological approaches to history as well as thinking about the boundaries between science and activism. In the last four years I have been working at the universities of Tübingen and Freiburg including stays at the Ilia university Tbilissi, RGGU Moscow and Institute of European History Mainz.
Aims for visiting fellowship (Jan 9 – March 3, 2023)
The clusters being currently researched at the Institute of Contemporary History in Ljubljana – especially the considering of critical and environmental perspectives such as the questioning of ethnocentric, anthropocentric, national or imperial optics and their consequences for knowledge production – make it an attractive place for me both for sharing my current research and developing my post-doctoral project. As a historian of eastern Europe, academically socialized mostly in Germany, my perspective on ‘Eastern Europe’ was for a long time centered on Russia. During the last four years I came to see more and more the diversity of what is called ‘Eastern Europe’ as well as global, imperial and postcolonial entanglements. The International Colloquium on the History of Science in Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe, of which I have become a co-organizer since this year, has been a reason and (becoming a co-organizer) an outcome of this process. I would be very happy to share my networks to intensify both short and longterm cooperations like colloquia and workshops, maybe establishing a transuniversity reading group or digital colloquium or research network, which may lead also to establishing cooperation on an institutional level or applying together for binational funding programmes.
Publications
- Conference Report: Antirassistisches Kuratieren: wie geht das?, In: H-Soz-Kult, 22.08.2022.
- Vladimir Markov, die Faktura und die künstlerische Auseinandersetzung mit der Ethnographie, Petersburg 1914, in: Bakshi, Natalia et al (Hg.): Im Labyrinth der Kulturen. Denkstrukturen, Transferprozesse, Verstehenshorizonte, Paderborn 2022, S. 295-310.
- Markov liest Frobenius. Eine Begegnung zwischen Ethnographie und Kunst, in: Lileev, Juirj; Pörzgen, Yvonne; Zanucchi, Mario (Hg.): Europäische Avantgarden um 1900. Kontakt – Transfer – Transformation, Paderborn 2021, S. 263-278.
- "Kotzebue, der Kosmopolitismus und die Weimarer Klassik – eine Polemik," in: Kotzebue International, 04/05/2021, https://kotzebue.hypotheses.org/518.
- Conference Report, Heisig, Johanna: Kulturelle Spuren Georgiens in Deutschland, 04.10.2018 – 05.10.2018 Tiflis, in: H-Soz-Kult, 22.11.2018 (abrufbar unter: www.hsozkult.de/conferencereport/id/tagungsberichte-7956).
- Conference Report, Heisig, Johanna: European Elites and Revolutionary Change: 1789-1848- 1917. The Aftermath, 02.11.2017-03.11.2017 London, in: H-Soz-Kult, 08.12.2017, (abrufbar unter: www.hsozkult.de/conferencereport/id/tagunsgberichte-7433)
- Musikalische Unterhaltung bei Charles Mayer (1799–1862), in: Ananieva, Anna (Hg.): Zirkulation von Nachrichten und Waren, Stadtleben, Medien und Konsum im 19. Jahrhundert, Tübingen 2016, S. 183 – 190.
