Elidor Mëhilli
Dictatorship, City, Archive: A Guide
Historian and author Elidor Mëhilli presents a lecture exploring Albania's recent history through sites of memory and oblivion. Drawing on over fifteen years of extensive archival research, the lecture unfolds as a visual guide, illustrated with personal photographs taken over the years, and recently exhibited at the Harriman Institute in New York. The narrative makes five stops: the prison-like building of the State Archives in Tirana as a problem of memory; the desecrated tombs of holy men during the anti-religious fervor of 1967; the Palace of Culture as a repository of banned books in 1975; the Dictator's Villa Nr. 31, a site of historical fictionalization and the elaboration of a patriarchal cult in 1980; and, finally, an anonymous photograph of an empty pedestal in 1993. Against the tendency to exoticize Albania’s history for a Western audience, the lecture is an open invitation to discuss our approaches to the past in the aftermath of violence.
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Programme
In Conversation
Project Lead
Participants
Mrika Limani-Myrtaj
Themes
"...But along the way, as we pass through different areas of Tirana where history has been written, rewritten, and reworked, I’ll try to argue around that big question, “Why do we need history?” and also explore how we might define the archive as something beyond the walls of a building, beyond the walls of power, beyond where power has wanted it to be..."
Elidor Mëhilli's public lecture was held at the National Library of Kosovo and was followed by a open discussion moderated by historian Mrika Limani-Myrtaj.
Elidor Mëhilli is an award-winning author, Associate Professor of History, Public Policy, and Human Rights at Hunter College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and a visiting professor at Columbia University. He received a PhD from Princeton University and has held fellowships and visiting positions at Columbia University, the University of Pennsylvania, the Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung in Potsdam, Germany, at Birkbeck College in London, United Kingdom, and at the Hoover Institution at Stanford. Elidor’s work is on dictatorships, authoritarian regimes, and the diplomatic, economic, political, and cultural dimensions of the Cold War. His book From Stalin to Mao received three prizes.
Mrika Limani Myrtaj is a Research Assistant Professor at the Institute of History ‘Ali Hadri’ – Prishtinë. She is the author of two monographs: Perspectives on Ideology and Violence during the Second World War in Kosova (2021) and Përkohësia e lëvizjeve kundërshtuese në Kosovë 1941-1999 [The Temporality of Opposing Movements in Kosova 1941-1999] (2024).
This event was co-organized with Open Society Foundations - Western Balkans and “Ali Hadri” Institute of History - Pristina.