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Polish Studies
Eastern European Studies June 23, 2022

Jozef Pilsudski

Founding Father of Modern Poland

Joshua D. Zimmerman

Hosted by Piotr Kosicki
In the 1920s, Józef Piłsudski was a household name not just in Poland, but across Europe and across the Atlantic Ocean as well. Yet this complex and contradictory figure – …

Polish Studies

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Interviews with scholars of Poland about their new books

Arguing History June 21, 2022

Ukrainian Nationalism in Historical Context

A Discussion with John-Paul Himka, David R. Stone, and Alexander Watson

John-Paul Himka, David R. Stone, and Alexander Watson

Hosted by Charles Coutinho
In the midst of the ongoing war between the Russian Federation and Ukraine, it is vital that the lay-educated public understand the historical origins of the conflict. It is with …
General History June 3, 2022

Eastern Europe!

Everything You Need to Know about the History (and More) of a Region That Shaped Our World and Still Does

Tomek Jankowski

Hosted by Lia Paradis
Prime Minister Pierre Eliot Trudeau once gave a press conference while visiting Washington, during which he famously said: "Living next to [the United States] is in some ways like sleeping …
Jewish Studies May 26, 2022

Unsettled Heritage

Living Next to Poland's Material Jewish Traces After the Holocaust

Yechiel Weizman

Hosted by Amber Nickell
In Unsettled Heritage: Living Next to Poland's Material Jewish Traces After the Holocaust (Cornell UP, 2022), Yechiel Weizman explores what happened to the thousands of abandoned Jewish cemeteries and places …
Jewish Studies May 25, 2022

Polish Jews in the Soviet Union (1939-1959)

History and Memory of Deportation, Exile, and Survival

Katharina Friedla and Markus Nesselrodt

Hosted by Amber Nickell
The majority of Poland’s prewar Jewish population who fled to the interior of the Soviet Union managed to survive World War II and the Holocaust. Polish Jews in the Soviet …
Catholic Studies May 9, 2022

Catholics on the Barricades

Poland, France, and "Revolution," 1891-1956

Piotr H. Kosicki

Hosted by Brenna Moore
In Poland in the 1940s and '50s, a new kind of Catholic intended to remake European social and political life--not with guns, but French philosophy. Piotr H. Kosicki's book Catholics on …
Eastern European Studies May 4, 2022

Czesław Miłosz's Faith in the Flesh

Body, Belief, and Human Identity

Stanley Bill

Hosted by Piotr Kosicki
In Czesław Miłosz’s Faith in the Flesh: Body, Belief, and Human Identity (Oxford University Press, 2021), Cambridge professor Stanley Bill offers a profoundly original, fine-grained, and rich interpretation of the …
Eastern European Studies April 6, 2022

On the Edges of Whiteness

Polish Refugees in British Colonial Africa during and after the Second World War

Jochen Lingelbach

Hosted by Piotr Kosicki
As the horrors of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine unfold before our eyes, we have witnessed a massive wave of refugees absorbed by a range of Eastern European countries – …
Eastern European Studies April 5, 2022

Poland in a Colonial World Order

Adjustments and Aspirations, 1918-1939

Piotr Puchalski

Hosted by Steven Seegel
Poland in a Colonial World Order: Adjustments and Aspirations, 1918-1939 (Routledge, 2021) is a study of the interwar Polish state and empire building project in a changing world of empires, nation-states …
Eastern European Studies March 21, 2022

The Politics of Morality

The Church, the State, and Reproductive Rights in Postsocialist Poland

Joanna Mishtal

Hosted by Piotr Kosicki
In the fall of 2020, Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal decreed that the country’s near-total ban on abortion was too liberal; henceforth, pregnancies could be terminated only in cases of rape, incest …
Performing Arts March 8, 2022

La Nijinska

Choreographer of the Modern

Lynn Garafola

Hosted by Victoria Phillips
Lynn Garafola's La Nijinska: Choreographer of the Modern (Oxford UP, 2022) is both readable and rigorous, a rare combination. As a historian and eminent dance scholar, Garafola brings her skills …
Eastern European Studies March 4, 2022

Survivors

Warsaw under Nazi Occupation

Jadwiga Biskupska

Hosted by Piotr Kosicki
Survivors tells the harrowing story of life in Warsaw under Nazi occupation. As the epicenter of Polish resistance, Warsaw was subjected to violent persecution, the ghettoization of the city's Jewish …
Jewish Studies February 25, 2022

Jewish Childhood in Kraków

A Microhistory of the Holocaust

Joanna Sliwa

Hosted by Ari Barbalat
Jewish Childhood in Kraków: A Microhistory of the Holocaust (Rutgers UP, 2021) is the first book to tell the history of Kraków in the second World War through the lens …
Brill on the Wire February 23, 2022

Exploring Autonomy

A History of Jewish Self-Governance in Eastern Europe

François Guesnet

Hosted by Leigh Giangreco
The emergence of self-government in the Jewish community in Eastern Europe has been a slow process, often encouraged by invitations of existing regimes and sometimes to escape state persecution. Nonetheless …
Ukrainian Studies February 8, 2022

Courage and Fear

Ola Hnatiuk

Hosted by Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed
Lemberg, Lwów, Lvov, Lviv… The city, which is located in the western part of Ukraine, evokes a highly entangled past that contains references to a number of nations, ethnicities, empires …
Eastern European Studies February 1, 2022

Unlikely Allies

Nazi German and Ukrainian Nationalist Collaboration in the General Government During World War II

Paweł Markiewicz

Hosted by Steven Seegel
Unlikely Allies: Nazi German and Ukrainian Nationalist Collaboration in the General Government During World War II (Purdue UP, 2021) offers the first comprehensive and scholarly English-language analysis of German-Ukrainian collaboration …
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 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 …
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 …