New Books in Eastern European Studies

Jan 01 2025 1012 ep. 60 mins 2.2k
New Books in Eastern European Studies Podcast artwork

Interviews with Scholars of Eastern Europe about their New Books

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Joanna Mizielińska, "Queer Kinship on the Edge?: Families of Choice in Poland" (Routledge, 2024)

Jan 01 2025 50 mins  
Queer Kinship on the Edge? Families of Choice in Poland (Routledge, 2024) explores ways in which queer families from Central and Eastern Europe complicate the mainstream picture of queer kinship and families researched in the Anglo-American contexts. The book presents findings from under-represented localities as a starting point to query some of the expectations about queer kinshi

Ágnes Györke and Tamás Juhász, "Urban Culture and the Modern City: Hungarian Case Studies" (Leuven UP, 2024)

Dec 30 2024 58 mins  
When consulting key works on urban studies, the absence of Central and Eastern European towns is striking. Cities such as Vienna, Budapest, Prague, and Trieste, where such notable figures as Freud, Ferenczi, Kafka, and Joyce lived and worked, are rarely studied in a translocal framework, as if Central and Eastern Europe were still a blind spot of European modernity. Urban Culture

Daniel B. Hinshaw, "Journey to Simplicity: The Life and Wisdom of Archimandrite Roman Braga" (St Vladimirs Seminary Press, 2023)

Dec 27 2024 97 mins  
Today I talked to Daniel B. Hinshaw about his book Journey to Simplicity: The Life and Wisdom of Archimandrite Roman Braga (St Vladimirs Seminary Press, 2023). The events of Fr Roman Braga’s life unfolded on three continents in complex and tumultuous times. In Romania, he lived through turbulent historical events, and he suffered for Christ under communist persecution. Later he c

Diana Dumitru, "The State, Antisemitism, and Collaboration in the Holocaust: The Borderlands of Romania and the Soviet Union" (Cambridge UP, 2016)

Dec 26 2024 113 mins  
Based on original sources, The State, Antisemitism, and Collaboration in the Holocaust: The Borderlands of Romania and the Soviet Union (Cambridge UP, 2016) explores regional variations in civilians' attitudes and behavior toward the Jewish population in Romania and the occupied Soviet Union. Gentiles' willingness to assist Jews was greater in lands that had been under Soviet admin

Ariel Evan Mayse, "Laws of the Spirit: Ritual, Mysticism, and the Commandments in Early Hasidism" (Stanford UP, 2024)

Dec 19 2024 76 mins  
The compelling vision of religious life and practice found in Hasidic sources has made it the most enduring and successful Jewish movement of spiritual renewal of all time. In Laws of the Spirit: Ritual, Mysticism, and the Commandments in Early Hasidism (Stanford UP, 2024), Ariel Evan Mayse grapples with one of Hasidism's most vexing questions: how did a religious movement known fo

Nergis Ertürk, "Writing in Red: Literature and Revolution Across Turkey and the Soviet Union" (Columbia UP, 2024)

Dec 18 2024 72 mins  
Writing in Red: Literature and Revolution Across Turkey and the Soviet Union (Columbia UP, 2024) examines political relations and literary translations between Turkey and the Soviet Union from the mid-1920s through to the 1960s. By drawing on a wide range of texts – from erotic comedy, historical fiction and film, to socialist realist novels and theatre – Ertürk argues that th

Alissa Klots, "Domestic Service in the Soviet Union; Women's Emancipation and the Gendered Hierarchy of Labor" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

Dec 15 2024 66 mins  
Domestic Service in the Soviet Union: Women's Emancipation and the Gendered Hierarchy of Labor (Cambridge University Press, 2024) by Dr. Alissa Klots is the first to explore the evolution of domestic service in the Soviet Union, set against the background of changing discourses on women, labour, and socialist living. Even though domestic service conflicted with the Bolsheviks' egal

Mie Nakachi, "Replacing the Dead: The Politics of Reproduction in the Postwar Soviet Union" (Oxford UP, 2021)

Dec 10 2024 71 mins  
Today I talked to Mie Nakachi about Replacing the Dead: The Politics of Reproduction in the Postwar Soviet Union (Oxford UP, 2021) In 1920, the Soviet Union became the first country in the world to legalize abortion on demand. But in 1936, the Soviet leadership criminalized abortion: the collectivization of the early 1930s was followed by famine that took the lives of millions of p

Jacob Flaws, "Spaces of Treblinka: Retracing a Death Camp" (U Nebraska Press, 2024)

Dec 09 2024 60 mins  
Spaces of Treblinka: Retracing a Death Camp (U Nebraska Press, 2024) utilizes testimonies, oral histories, and recollections from Jewish, German, and Polish witnesses to create a holistic representation of the Treblinka death camp during its operation. This narrative rejects the historical misconception that Treblinka was an isolated Nazi extermination camp with few witnesses and f

Cristina Vatulescu, "Reading the Archival Revolution: Declassified Stories and Their Challenges" (Stanford UP, 2024)

Dec 08 2024 47 mins  
The opening of classified documents from the Soviet era has been dubbed the "archival revolution" due to its unprecedented scale, drama, and impact. With a storyteller's sensibility, in Reading the Archival Revolution: Declassified Stories and Their Challenges (Stanford University Press, 2024), Cristina Vatulescu identifies and takes on the main challenges of reading in these archi