New Books in Eastern European Studies Podcast
1) Lisa Silverman, "The Postwar Antisemite: Culture and Complicity After the Holocaust" (Oxford UP, 2025)
In his influential Anti-Semite and Jew, French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre observed "If the Jew did not exist, the anti-Semite would invent him." In doing so he articulated the figure of an Antisemit...Show More
2) Filip Kovacevic, "KGB Literati: Spy Fiction and State Security in the Soviet Union" (U Toronto Press, 2025)
KGB Literati: Spy Fiction and State Security in the Soviet Union (University of Toronto Press, 2025) offers a first-ever glimpse into the mysterious and long-ignored world and work of Soviet spies- an...Show More
3) Alexandra Ghiț, "Welfare Work Without Welfare: Women and Austerity in Interwar Bucharest" (De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2025)
Welfare Work Without Welfare: Women and Austerity in Interwar Bucharest (De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2025) argues that women activists, wage workers, and homemakers in the Romanian capital Bucharest beca...Show More
4) Lucy Jeffery and Anna Váradi, "Replaying Communism: Trauma and Nostalgia in European Cultural Production" (CEU Press, 2025)
In this episode, host Andrea Talabér (CEU Press) sat down with Lucy Jeffery and Anna Váradi to talk about their edited volume, Replaying Communism: Trauma and Nostalgia in European Cultural Production...Show More
5) Maja Davidović, "Governing the Past: 'Never Again' and the Transitional Justice Project" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
The way we govern the past to ensure peaceful futures keeps conflict anxieties alive. In pursuit of its own survival, permanence and legitimacy, the project of transitional justice, designed to put th...Show More
6) Jacob Daniels, "The Jews of Edirne: The End of Ottoman Europe and the Arrival of Borders" (Stanford UP, 2025)
At the turn of the twentieth century, the city of Edirne was a bustling center linking Istanbul to Ottoman Europe. It was also the capital of Edirne Province—among the most religiously diverse regions...Show More
7) Jochen Hellbeck, "World Enemy No. 1: Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, and the Fate of the Jews" (Penguin Group, 2025)
In the West, World War II is commonly understood as the Allies’ struggle against Nazism. Often elided, if not simply forgotten, is the Soviet Union’s crucial role in that fight. With this book, acclai...Show More
8) Marek Kohn, "The Stories Old Towns Tell: A Journey Through Cities at the Heart of Europe" (Yale UP, 2023)
Historic quarters in cities and towns across the middle of Europe were devastated during the Second World War—some, like those of Warsaw and Frankfurt, had to be rebuilt almost completely. They are no...Show More
9) Oana Godeanu-Kenworthy, "Videotape" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
Over the span of a single decade, VHS technology changed the relationship between privacy and entertainment, pried open the closed societies behind the Iron Curtain, and then sank back into oblivion. ...Show More
10) Carol Lilly, "Death and Burial in Socialist Yugoslavia: The Politicization of Cemeteries and Ethnic Conflict in the Balkans" (Bloomsbury, 2024).
Across the globe, memorial and grave sites are being increasingly weaponized in conflicts and politicized by parties to advance agendas. Here, Carol S. Lilly examines ideas of death, politics, memory,...Show More