A LECTURE OF MOACIR P.DE SA PAREIRA / WHAT'S SO PUNK ABOUT STEAMPUNK? EUROPEAN CITY-STATES, NATION-STATES AND WITHERED STATES

JUNE 3, FRIDAY

Doors 6:30pm, lecture starts at 6:45pm
Lecture length is ~ 50min

Sla307 is pleased to present Moacir P. de Sá Pereira's lecture What’s so Punk about Steampunk? European City-States, Nation-States and Withered States: 

Chosen as 2013’s Book of the Year, Vilko valanda (Hour of the Wolf) was the first Lithuanian novel written in the hybrid/time-mixing genre of steampunk. First-time novelist and TV personality Andrius Tapinas (b. 1977) presents an alternative view of 1905 Vilnius. Here, the capital is a booming beacon of Lithuanian ingenuity that enjoys independent, city-state status while surrounded by the darkness of the Russian Empire.

This lecture, given in English, will show what Tapinas’s setting reveals about the future of cities and nations in the neoliberal European Union. The novel echoes the free-market dreams of contemporary Vilnius, where the young population strives to establish itself within a hive of tech startups. At the same time, however, Tapinas silences aspects of early 20th century Lithuanian history in order to present the reader with a whitewashed city. Tapinas’s Vilnius then becomes precisely the kind of place that appeals, paradoxically, both to 21st century neo-Nazis and to foreign capital.

Moacir P. de Sá Pereira is Assistant Professor / Faculty Fellow in the English Department of New York University, where he studies the intersection of geography, the novel, and digital forms of knowledge production. He has also taught in Chicago, Paris, and Vilnius. 

For lecture's audio press here