[1] Erasure and Resilience in Eastern European Architectures
From: Aleksander Musial
Date: 2 June 25

The architecture of Eastern Europe—the region largely populated by Slavic peoples spanning between the German-speaking lands and the continent’s customary borders on the Ural and the Caucasus—is today facing the most severe crisis since World War II. On the one hand, the military aggression in Ukraine has endangered inhabitants and jeopardized built environments—from vernacular architecture to socialist housing estates. On the other, the exacerbation of ideological polarization in response to the war has fueled historical revisionism
across the region. It is reflected in attempts at whitewashing urban spaces through historicist
restorations and erasing those resisting homogenization into nationalist narratives.

In response to this current crisis, the panel invites reflections on the global relevance of Eastern
European architecture by prioritizing its transnational legacies. By testifying to cross-pollinating
cultures and religions, including Christian, Muslim, and Jewish communities, Eastern European
architecture offers invaluable insights not only into the mechanisms of erasure carried out by
imperialist and revisionist forces but also of extraordinary resilience in the face of such dramatic
challenges. The resilience is evident in the international collaborations within the region and in the contributions of Eastern European diasporas across Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and South-East Asia. Building upon the methodologies developed by Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann (2004), Małgorzata Omilanowska (2011), Timothy Snyder (2005), and Łukasz Stanek (2020), the panel will serve as a platform for the contested and silenced dimensions of Eastern European architectural production that nation-based narratives both fail to address and actively seek to obliterate.

We welcome papers that expand, complicate, and contradict traditional narratives of Eastern
European architecture in both early modern and modern periods. These might address, but are not limited to, questions of urban planning, provincial vs. colonial discourses, restoration and
reconstruction, diaspora studies, unrealized projects, and the region’s impact beyond its borders.

Submission Guidelines:
1. Confirmed 2026 Session Chairs are not eligible to submit to the Call for Papers
2. Abstracts must be under 300 words.
3. The title cannot exceed 65 characters, including spaces and punctuation.
4. Abstracts and titles must follow the Chicago Manual of Style.
5. Only one abstract per conference by an author or co-author may be submitted.
6. A maximum of three (3) authors per abstract will be accepted.
7. Please attach a two-page CV in PDF format.

Abstracts are to be submitted online, all the information is here:
https://www.sah.org/2026/call-for-papers-mexico-city

For further inquiries, please contact the session chairs via email: amusialprinceton.edu & dzadorined.ac.uk