hps.cesee global book talk: Górny & Seegel: Mapping East Central Europe

The virtual platform HPS.CESEE (History of Science in Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe) is proud to present its forthcoming book talk on new publications on history of interwar cartography in&of East Central Europe. Agnes Laba (Wuppertal University) will join Maciej Górny (Institut of History, Polish Academy of Sciences) and Steven Seegel (University of Northern Colorado), to comment on their recent books: Map Men: Transnational Lives and Deaths of Geographers in the Making of East Central Europe (Chicago 2018) [1] and Kreślarze ojczyzn: Geografowie i granice międzywojennej Europy (Warsaw 2017) [2], in a discussion moderated by Jan Surman (Prague).

[1] Steven Seegel: Map Men: Transnational Lives and Deaths of Geographers in the Making of East Central Europe (Chicago, Ill: The University of Chicago Press 2018)

"More than just colorful clickbait or pragmatic city grids, maps are often deeply emotional tales: of political projects gone wrong, budding relationships that failed, and countries that vanished. In Map Men, Steven Seegel takes us through some of these historical dramas with a detailed look at the maps that made and unmade the world of East Central Europe through a long continuum of world war and revolution. As a collective biography of five prominent geographers between 1870 and 1950—Albrecht Penck, Eugeniusz Romer, Stepan Rudnyts’kyi, Isaiah Bowman, and Count Pál Teleki—Map Men reexamines the deep emotions, textures of friendship, and multigenerational sagas behind these influential maps."

[2] Maciej Górny: Kreślarze ojczyzn: Geografowie i granice międzywojennej Europy (Warsaw: IH PAN 2017)

"In his monograph, the author examines the communication and argumentation strategies of East Central European geographers from the beginning of the 20th century to the 1930s. The work combines the methods of collective biography, history of science and spatial history. Against the background of contemporary political events, the author analyses texts and maps of selected Polish, Czech, Serbian, Ukrainian, Hungarian, Romanian and German geographers, as well as debates and arguments concerning their work, personal acquaintances, friendships and animosities."

Maciej Górny has been an assistant professor at the Historical Institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences since 2006 (extraordinary professor since 2015). His publications include The Nation Should Come First: Marxism and Historiography in East Central Europe (2013, Polish edition 2007, German edition 2011) and Science embattled. Eastern European Intellectuals and the Great War (2019; Polish edition 2014).

Agnes Laba is post-doctoral researcher at the chair of newer and modern history, University of Wuppertal, working on history of Central European cartography and everyday life under German occupation. She is author of Die Grenze im Blick – Der Ostgrenzendiskurs der Weimarer Republik (Marburg 2018).

Steven Seegel is professor of history at the University of Northern Colorado. He is the author of Mapping Europe’s Borderlands: Russian Cartography in the Age of Empire, published by University of Chicago Press in 2018, and Ukraine under Western Eyes, Harvard University Press 2013.