Oleksiy Musiyezdov | Images of Kharkiv: Symbolic Struggle, Urban Identity, and City Branding

DATE: WEDNESDAY, 24 OCTOBER 2018 TIME: 7:00 PM VENUE: HERITAGE LOUNGE, 227 ATHABASCA HALL, UALBERTA

15 October 2018

Kharkiv and its inhabitants are associated with a variety of images. The origins of these images lie in history, for they are the result of successive attempts to mark the city and include it in one narrative or another. Today such images are used by a number of different groups as resources in the symbolic struggle for legitimization of their own specific vision of the city. None of these groups dominates with its point of view, although all of them consider themselves to be "true Kharkivites" and the spokespersons for the majority opinion.

Dr. Oleksiy Musiyezdov is a professor in the Department of Sociology at the V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University. He is the author of the monograph Mis'ka identychnist' u (post)suchasnomu suspil'stvi: ukrains'kyi dosvid [Urban identity in (post)modern society: The Ukrainian experience] and of numerous articles on the city of Kharkiv.