Dissertation Archive, WMU Graduate College

Dissertation Defense

Candidate: Lucia Curta

Degree of: Doctor of Philosophy

Department: History

Title: "Imagined Communities" In Showcases: The Nationality Rooms Program at the University of Pittsburgh (1926-1945)

Date: Friday, May 14, 2004 2:00-4:00 p.m.
Waldo Library Clock Tower

Committee: Dr. John Norman, Chair
Dr. Kristin Szylvian
Dr. Barbara Brotherton
Dr. Maria Todorova

Abstract: From the inception of the program in 1926, the Nationality Rooms at the University of Pittsburgh were viewed as apolitical in their iconography. Their purpose was primarily didactic. Designed primarily as classrooms meant for lectures and seminars, they were however ad-hoc museums for the display of symbols of nationally identity. In many ways, they constitute an excellent illustration in terms of decorative arts of Benedict Anderson's concept of "imagined communities."

The identity referent of the symbolism attached to the decorative arrangements of these rooms was not that of the ethnic communities in Pittsburgh, for whom the rooms were supposedly designed to serve as repositories of national traditions. The examination of five of the six earliest classrooms considered in this dissertation (the Romanian, Hungarian, Yugoslav, Czechoslovak, and Polish Classrooms) reveals that governments overseas saw the Nationality Rooms program as an opportunity to showcase their version of national identity. However, through the sustained efforts of Ruth Crawford Mitchell (1890-1984), who initiated the program, the original designs proposed by architects and artists overseas were adapted to the context of the Cathedral of Learning, with further changes implemented in some cases by committees set up by ethnic communities. Soon after their inauguration, some rooms rapidly turned into national shrines, as the "imagined communities" they represented were confronted with crisis and threats brought by World War II. Others became loci of redefinition of the identities of ethnic communities in Pittsburgh and America, especially in cases where the countries represented in the classrooms were at war with the United States. Built within the design of the Nationality Classrooms is a political statement based on the idea of "imagined communities" as museum showcases.

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