The CEU Yugo-Region Research Group (YURG) and the Post-Yugoslav Studies Group at the University of Vienna would like to invite you to the book launch of:
Dr. Lea Horvat
Hard Currency Concrete: A Cultural History of Mass Housing Construction in Socialist Yugoslavia and its Successor States
Harte Währung Beton: Eine Kulturgeschichte des Massenwohnungsbaus im sozialistischen Jugoslawien und seinen Nachfolgestaaten. (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht Verlag, 2024).
The event will take place on March 15 at 17.40h at Central European University in classroom A-415 and online. There will be a reception after the event.
Speakers: Dr. Lea Horvat (Friedrich Schiller University of Jena), Aleksandar Ranković (University of Vienna), Ivana Mihaela Žimbrek (CEU)
About the book:
The book explores mass housing as a solution to the housing shortage in socialist Yugoslavia through the concept of the medial arena created within intra-Yugoslav commonalities and asymmetries. It takes readers on a journey through construction sites, individual apartments, mass housing neighborhoods, and the imagery associated with them. The study reveals a cultural history of Yugoslav mass housing, tracing it from the initial architectural designs in the 1950s. It also covers the proliferation of mass housing culture in the 1960s, the mounting criticism during the 1970s and 1980s, and the challenges of privatization and war destruction in the 1990s. Finally, the book delves into various fictional reinterpretations in the 2000s and highlights the lasting importance of mass housing stock in post-Yugoslav urban landscapes.
About the author:
Dr. Lea Horvat is a postdoctoral lecturer at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Department of Cultural History. Her habilitation project focuses on coffee, gender, and labor in the southern semi-periphery of the Habsburg Empire. Her monograph Harte Währung Beton: a cultural history of socialist mass housing in Yugoslavia, was published in 2024 by Brill Publishers. 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 research interests lie at the intersection of the modern built environment, Gender History, Food Studies, and popular culture in Southeast Europe.
Aleksandar Ranković is a PhD candidate at the University of Vienna. His current
research focus lies at the intersection of transformation, sexuality, and gender in
Yugoslavia and the post-Yugoslav space. His doctoral thesis covers debates on
conscientious objection, military service, and civil service in the Yugoslav People’s Army with a particular focus on gay–lesbian activism during the 1980s and early 1990s. He holds a BA in Political Science from Sciences Po Paris and a MRes in East European Studies from University College London. In addition, he holds a PhD fellowship with the German Academic Scholarship Foundation.
- for the Zoom link
- if you are not affiliated with CEU but would like to attend in person