The Power of Microhistory: Swamp, Sugar, Communism, Environment (4/5/23)

Please join us for a conversation between Tirana-based historians Artan R. Hoxha and Edon Qesari, moderated Elidor Mëhilli (CUNY). Can one write the history of the 20th century by focusing on a single place? With Sugarland: The Transformation of the Countryside in Communist Albania, the historian Artan R. Hoxha embraces this challenge. His case study is Maliq: former swampland in southeastern Albania, which the communist regime transformed into the country’s center of sugar production. By zooming in and zooming out, Hoxha explores the economic, environmental, social, and cultural transformations that took place there, linking them to broader European and global historical trends that transcend both the East-West divide and the pre-and communist eras. Hoxha's other goal is to de-exoticize Albania’s history—especially the communist era—generally identified exclusively with paranoia, extreme ideological dogmatism, and xenophobia. To mark this publication, Hoxha and the Tirana-based historian Edon Qesari will explore how microhistory can serve as a good scholarly tool to question and destabilize many broadly accepted categories historians take for granted. This is especially true when microhistorical studies integrate into their analyses multidisciplinary approaches that include the environment and the economy as important factors for understanding social and cultural transformation.