New Books Network
Polish Studies
Eastern European Studies December 15, 2021

Civility in Uncivil Times

Kazimierz Moczarski's Quiet Battle for Truth, from the Polish Underground to Stalinist Prison

Anna Machcewicz

Hosted by Piotr Kosicki
In Civility in Uncivil Times: Kazimierz Moczarski’s Quiet Battle for Truth, from the Polish Underground to Stalinist Prison (Peter Lang, 2020), Anna Machcewicz offers a powerful case study in the …

Polish Studies

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Interviews with scholars of Poland about their new books

Eastern European Studies January 12, 2022

The Expulsion of Jews from Communist Poland

Memory Wars and Homeland Anxieties

Anat Plocker

Hosted by Piotr Kosicki
In The Expulsion of Jews from Communist Poland: Memory Wars and Homeland Anxieties (Indiana University Press, 2022), Anat Plocker examines the campaign of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism that swept through Poland …
Eastern European Studies December 17, 2021

Bauman

A Biography

Izabela Wagner

Hosted by Vladislav Lilic
Global thinker, public intellectual, and world-famous theorist of ‘liquid modernity’, Zygmunt Bauman (1925-2017) was a scholar who, despite forced migration, built a very successful academic career and, after retirement, became …
Eastern European Studies December 14, 2021

Three Cities After Hitler

Redemptive Reconstruction Across Cold War Borders

Andrew Demshuk

Hosted by Amber Nickell
Three Cities After Hitler: Redemptive Reconstruction Across Cold War Borders (U Pittsburgh Press, 2021) compares how three prewar German cities shared decades of postwar development under three competing post-Nazi regimes …
Irish Studies November 26, 2021

Estranging the Novel

Poland, Ireland, and Theories of World Literature

Katarzyna Bartoszyńska

Hosted by Aidan Beatty
Katarzyna (Kasia) Bartoszyńska is an assistant professor of English and Women’s and Gender Studies at Ithaca College. Her research and teaching focuses on the novel form and the theories connected …
European Studies October 27, 2021

Peripheries at the Centre

Borderland Schooling in Interwar Europe

Machteld Venken

Hosted by Jill Massino
Following the Treaty of Versailles, European nation-states were faced with the challenge of instilling national loyalty in their new borderlands, in which fellow citizens often differed dramatically from one another …
Eastern European Studies October 20, 2021

Foresters, Borders, and Bark Beetles

The Future of Europe's Last Primeval Forest

Eunice Blavascunas

Hosted by Piotr Kosicki
In Foresters, Borders, and Bark Beetles: The Future of Europe’s Last Primeval Forest (Indiana University Press, 2020), Eunice Blavascunas provides an intimate ethnographic account of Białowieża, Europe's last primeval forest …
Jewish Studies October 14, 2021

Survival on the Margins

Polish Jewish Refugees in the Wartime Soviet Union

Eliyana R. Adler

Hosted by Zalman Newfield
Between 1940 and 1946, thousands of Jewish refugees from Poland lived and toiled in the harsh Soviet interior. They endured hard labor, bitter cold, and extreme deprivation. But out of …
Eastern European Studies October 1, 2021

The Carpathians

Discovering the Highlands of Poland and Ukraine

Patrice M. Dabrowski

Hosted by Steven Seegel
Patrice M. Dabrowski's book The Carpathians: Discovering the Highlands of Poland and Ukraine (Northern Illinois UP, 2021) tells story of how the Tatras, Eastern Carpathians, and Bieszczady Mountains went from being terra …
European Studies September 3, 2021

Illiberal Constitutionalism in Poland and Hungary

The Deterioration of Democracy, Misuse of Human Rights and Abuse of the Rule of Law

Tímea Drinóczi and Agnieszka Bień-Kacała

Hosted by Tim Jones
Over the past decade, Poland and Hungary have become laboratories for a new kind of government: proto-authoritarian regimes that still have regular elections, vibrant oppositions and are externally constrained by …
Eastern European Studies July 6, 2021

Imaging and Mapping Eastern Europe

Sarmatia Europea to Post-Communist Bloc

Katarzyna Murawska-Muthesius

Hosted by Steven Seegel
Imaging and Mapping Eastern Europe: Sarmatia Europea to Post-Communist Bloc (Routledge, 2021) puts images centre stage and argues for the agency of the visual in the construction of Europe's east …
Jewish Studies June 25, 2021

Polacos in Argentina

Polish Jews, Interwar Migration, and the Emergence of Transatlantic Jewish Culture

Mariusz Kalczewiak

Hosted by Max Kaiser
In Polacos in Argentina: Polish Jews, Interwar Migration, and the Emergence of Transatlantic Jewish Culture (University of Alabama Press, 2020), Dr. Mariusz Kałczewiak, senior research associate and lecturer in the …
Eastern European Studies May 31, 2021

Conscious History

Polish Jewish Historians before the Holocaust

Natalia Aleksiun

Hosted by Steven Seegel
Thoroughly researched, Conscious History: Polish Jewish Historians before the Holocaust (The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2021) highlights the historical scholarship that is one of the lasting legacies of interwar …
Genocide Studies May 28, 2021

Warsaw Ghetto Police

The Jewish Order Service During the Nazi Occupation

Katarzyna Person

Hosted by Steven Seegel
In Warsaw Ghetto Police: The Jewish Order Service during the Nazi Occupation (Cornell University Press/US Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2021) , Katarzyna Person shines a spotlight on the lawyers, engineers, young yeshiva graduates …
Genocide Studies April 30, 2021

Dance on the Razor's Edge

Crime and Punishment in the Nazi Ghettos

Svenja Bethke

Hosted by Steven Seegel
The ghettos established by the Nazis in German-occupied Eastern Europe during the Second World War have mainly been seen as lawless spaces marked by brutality, tyranny, and the systematic murder …
Political Science April 15, 2021

Rosa Luxemburg

Dana Mills

Hosted by Lilly Goren
Political Theorist and activist Dana Mill’s latest new book, Rosa Luxemburg (Reaktion Books, 2020), is part of an extensive series of books published by Reaktion Books, Ltd, which focuses both on …
Eastern European Studies March 31, 2021

Gender, Pleasure, and Violence

The Construction of Expert Knowledge of Sexuality in Poland

Agnieszka Kościańska

Hosted by Jill Massino
Behind the Iron Curtain, the politics of sexuality and gender were, in many ways, more progressive than the West. While Polish citizens undoubtedly suffered under the oppressive totalitarianism of socialism …
Jewish Studies February 19, 2021

Sarah Schenirer and the Bais Yaakov Movement

A Revolution in the Name of Tradition

Naomi Seidman

Hosted by Zalman Newfield
Sarah Schenirer is one of the unsung heroes of twentieth-century Orthodox Judaism. In Sarah Schenirer and the Bais Yaakov Movement: A Revolution in the Name of Tradition (Littman Library of …
Literature February 16, 2021

The Lost Shtetl

A Novel

Max Gross

Hosted by G. P. Gottlieb
Today I spoke with Max Gross about his book The Lost Shtetl (HarperCollins, 2020). Imagine a Jewish village hidden in the forests of Poland that somehow escapes the Holocaust. Eighty years …
Architecture February 11, 2021

Architecture in Global Socialism

Eastern Europe, West Africa, and the Middle East in the Cold War

Łukasz Stanek

Hosted by Sharika Crawford
In the course of the Cold War, architects, planners, and construction companies from socialist Eastern Europe engaged in a vibrant collaboration with those in West Africa and the Middle East …