Steven E. Harris, Associate Professor of History, recently traveled to St. Petersburg, where he attended the conference “Living Cities of the Second World,” Feb. 27 to March 1, 2015.
The conference was the third that Harris and Daria Bocharnikova (Harvard University) have organized in the past year for the Second World Urbanity project. The conference featured two days of panel discussions on the history of urban planning, architecture, and the lived experience of socialist cities, not only in the former USSR and Eastern Europe but also Latin America (Managua) and East Africa (Dar es Salaam).
In addition to co-organizing the conference, Harris presented his paper, “Soviet Airports of the 1960s: Futuristic Gateways to Socialist Urbanity,” based on his current research project about the entangled histories of Aeroflot and Pan Am. While in St. Petersburg, he had the opportunity to conduct some research at the National Library and was also invited to speak to high school students at School No. 157, where he previously taught English for a year.
