Dr. Lea Horvat; Visiting Fellowship 2022/23
Short bio:
Lea Horvat (*1990, Zagreb) is a postdoctoral lecturer at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Department of Cultural History. She holds a PhD in History from the University of Hamburg and an MA in Art History and Comparative Literature from the University of Zagreb. Her dissertation project Baustelle, Wohnung, Siedlung, Bild: Eine Kulturgeschichte des Massenwohnbaus im sozialistischen Jugoslawien und danach (defense: January 2022; grade: summa cum laude) was supported by the German Academic Scholarship Foundation (Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes). She was a teaching fellow at the Humboldt University of Berlin, the Center for Women’s Studies in Zagreb, and the University of Leipzig and a visiting scholar at the Iowa State University (College of Design) and at the Leibniz Science Campus “Eastern Europe — Global Area” in Leipzig. She is editor and co-founder of the platform Women* Write the Balkans.
Her research interests lie at the intersection of the modern built environment, feminism, everyday life in Southeast Europe, Food Studies, and popular culture.
Motivation:
In my habilitation project, A Taste of Caffeinated Emancipation: Coffee, Cafés, and Gender in the Habsburg Empire (18th-early 20th century), I explore the issues of spatial justice, imperial dynamics within the Habsburg Empire as well as the colonial exploitation underlying the emergent mass coffee cultures. On the one hand, I am interested in the feminist history of the built environment — the access to and design of (pseudo-)public spaces in imperial contexts. On the other hand, I pay close attention to the cultural history of trade and extractivist practices detaching coffee’s country of origin and cultivation from the place of consumption. My case studies stem from a range of urban centers where various coffee and gendered regimes overlapped; Ljubljana is one of them.
I intend to use the time at the Institute of Contemporary History in Ljubljana in two crucial ways. First, I plan to gather essential archival sources on coffeehouses and related associations. Second, the fellowship offers an excellent framework for conveying future sustainable cooperations such as workshops or conferences, the formation of research networks, and bilateral programs such as Erasmus+ Blended Mobility and DAAD partnerships.
Publications:
- Harte Währung Beton: Eine Kulturgeschichte des Massenwohnbaus im sozialistischen Jugoslawien und seinen Nachfolgestaaten [Hard Currency Concrete: A Cultural History of Mass Housing in Socialist Yugoslavia and Its Successor States], Böhlau, Vienna/Weimar/Cologne (forthcoming).
- (with Aleksandar Ranković) “Galeb i golub: Heritage Scholars, Power, and Knowledge Production in (Post-)Yugoslav Studies”, Südost-Forschungen 81, 2022 (forthcoming).
- “Who Has Taught Us How To Dwell? Women’s Legacy and Housing in Yugoslavia”, in: Žensko nasljeđe: roba, spektakl ili muzej za sve?, Anita Dremel et al. (eds.), CŽS, Zagreb, 2022.
- “Kriza na papiru? O sociološkoj kritici kolektivnog stanovanja u kasnom socijalizmu” [Crisis on paper? On the sociological critique of mass housing in late socialism], Život umjetnosti 107, 2021, pp. 80—93.
- “Od doživotnog strogog zatvora do kućanskih poslova bez velikog napora: reformiranje jugoslavenskog domaćinstva u 1950-ima i 1960-ima” [From a life-long prison to the housework almost without effort: Yugoslav household reform in the 1960s], in: Socijalizam na klupi: Kontinuiteti i inovacije, Anita Buhin, Tina Filipović (eds.), Srednja Europa, Zagreb, 2021, pp. 29—52.
- “From Mass Housing to Celebrity Homes: Socialist Domesticities in Yugoslav Popular Magazines”, in: WohnSeiten: Visuelle Konstruktionen des Wohnens in Zeitschriften, Irene Nierhaus, Kathrin Heinz, Rosanna Umbach (eds.), Transcript Verlag, Bielefeld, 2021, pp. 358—377.
- Nepraktični savjeti za kuću i okućnicu: feministička čitanja ženske svakodnevice [Impractical advice for home and garden: feminist readings of everyday life], Fraktura, Zaprešić, 2020.
- “The Visuality of Socialist Mass Housing Estates After Socialism: Examples from Ex-Yugoslavia”, in: Urban Visuality, mobility, Information, and Technology of Images, Aleksandra Lukaszewicz Alcaraz, Flavia Stara (eds.), Academy of Art, Szczecin, 2020, pp. 265—280.
- “Housing Yugoslav Self-Management: Blok 5 in Titograd”, Histories of Postwar Architecture 3, 6, 2020, pp. 68—92. https://hpa.unibo.it/article/view/10608/11666
- “Man soll schöne Montagebauten schaffen“: Kunsthistorisch-architektonische Debatte zur Ästhetik der ersten Plattenbauten in Jugoslawien” [Debate on the aesthetics of the first Yugoslav prefabs in architecture and art history], in: Architektur denken – Neue Positionen zur Architektur der späten Moderne, Tino Mager, Bianka Trötschel-Daniels (eds.), Neofelis, Berlin, 2017, pp. 227—238.
- “Figura domaćice u šezdesetima: Knjiga za svaku ženu” [The housewife in the 1960s: The Book for Every Woman], Quorum 4-5-6, 19, 2014, pp. 322—344.
Visiting duration: March - April, 2023
