Urban Exile: Theories, Methods, Research Practices

Explores cities of exile from different perspectives and presents different methods and sources for exile and urban studies. The essays are written by internationally recognized scholars, and contain a wide range of themes including mapping, oral history, queerness, photography. This book will make a significant contribution to the theory and methodology of research on historical exile, cities and modernities, as well as present multidisciplinary exile research from an urban perspective.

With a blend of case studies, and theoretical approaches, it interweaves histories of modernism and exile in different urban environments and focuses on historical dislocations in the first half of the twentieth century, when artistic and urban movements constituted themselves in global exchange. Although this book takes a historical perspective, it is written with an awareness of current flight movements and will make a significant contribution to the theory and methodology of research on exile.

The knowledge of previous historical exile experiences is important for the understanding of contemporary flight movements: after all, these are not singular phenomena. For migration movements in the first half of the 20th century and for those of today, it is equally possible to speak of urban centres of attraction for refugees: Today, Berlin is a European metropolis of exile; in the 1930s and 1940s, Paris, Prague, London, New York, Istanbul and Shanghai were destinations for refugees.

With contributions from Maddalena Alvi, Ekaterina Aygün, Claudia Cendales Paredes, Julia Eichenberg, Margit Franz, Nils Grosch, Mareike Hetschold, Louis Kaplan, Laura Karp Lugo, Katya Knyazeva, Merve Köksal, Rachel Lee, Chris McConville, Anna Messner, Alexis Nuselovici, Robert Pascoe, Valentina Pino Reyes, Helene Roth, Valeria Sánchez Michel, Marine Schütz, Seza Sinanlar Uslu, Felicitas Söhner, Mareike Schwarz, Marina Sorokina, Xin Tong, Diana Wechsler, Jessica Williams Stark and Federico Vitelli.

Burcu Dogramaci is a professor of 20th Century and Contemporary Art History at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich (LMU). In 2016 she was been awarded an ERC Consolidator Grant and lead the research project “Relocating Modernism: Global Metropolises, Modern Art and Exile” (METROMOD).

Ekaterina Aygun graduated from Istanbul Bilgi University with a master’s degree in
History. She currently pursues her doctoral research project (LMU Munich) that deals with Russian-speaking émigré artists in Istanbul at the beginning of the 20th century.

Mareike Hetschold studied art history, literature and Italian in Munich and Venice. She is a doctoral researcher with the ERC project “Relocating Modernism: Global Metropolises, Modern Art and Exile” (METROMOD) at the LMU in Munich. 

Laura Karp Lugo holds a PhD from Panthéon-Sorbonne University (2014), that has been awarded the Prize of the Musée d’Orsay. She is currently a Researcher and Assistant Professor at University of Lorraine (Nancy) and a researcher at the Ludwig-Maximilians Universität (Munich) in the ERC project “Relocating Modernism: Global Metropolises, Modern Art and Exile” (METROMOD).

Rachel Lee is an Assistant Professor at the Chair of History of Architecture and Urban Planning, TU Delft and an Associated Researcher on the ERC project Relocating Modernism: Global Metropolises, Modern Art and Exile” (METROMOD).