About Jill Massino

I'm a scholar of modern Europe with an interest in gender, everyday life, and transnational engagements. My current project explores Romania's (and more broadly the Eastern Bloc's) relationship with the Global South during the Cold War.

Jill Massino is a scholar of modern Europe with a focus on Romania, gender, everyday life, and the Global South.

NBN Episodes hosted by Jill:

Ned Richardson-Little, "The Human Rights Dictatorship: Socialism, Global Solidarity and Revolution in East Germany" (Cambridge UP, 2020)

February 26, 2024

The Human Rights Dictatorship

Ned Richardson-Little
Hosted by Jill Massino

In The Human Rights Dictatorship: Socialism, Global Solidarity and Revolution in East Germany (Cambridge UP, 2020), Ned Richardson-Little exposes the …

Rachel Applebaum, "Empire of Friends: Soviet Power and Socialist Internationalism in Cold War Czechoslovakia" (Cornell UP, 2019)

February 16, 2024

Empire of Friends

Rachel Applebaum
Hosted by Jill Massino

The familiar story of Soviet power in Cold War Eastern Europe focuses on political repression and military force. But in Empire of Friends: Soviet Pow…

Till Hilmar, "Deserved: Economic Memories After the Fall of the Iron Curtain" (Columbia UP, 2023)

January 10, 2024

Deserved

Till Hilmar
Hosted by Jill Massino

After the fall of the Iron Curtain, people across the former socialist world saw their lives transformed. In just a few years, labor markets were comp…

Malgorzata Fidelis, "Imagining the World from Behind the Iron Curtain: Youth and the Global Sixties in Poland" (Oxford UP, 2022)

September 22, 2023

Imagining the World from Behind the Iron Curtain

Malgorzata Fidelis
Hosted by Jill Massino
Listen:

The Global Sixties are well known as a period of non-conformist lifestyles, experimentation with consumer products and technology, counterculture, and…

Steven Press, "Blood and Diamonds: Germany's Imperial Ambitions in Africa" (Harvard UP, 2021)

August 8, 2023

Blood and Diamonds

Steven Press
Hosted by Jill Massino
Listen:

Since the late 1990s, activists have campaigned to remove "conflict diamonds" from jewelry shops and department stores. But if the problem of conflict…

Tara Zahra, "Against the World: Anti-Globalism and Mass Politics Between the World Wars" (Norton, 2023)

February 22, 2023

Against the World

Tara Zahra
Hosted by Jill Massino

Before the First World War, enthusiasm for a borderless world reached its height. International travel, migration, trade, and progressive projects…

Franziska Exeler, "Ghosts of War: Nazi Occupation and Its Aftermath in Soviet Belarus" (Cornell UP, 2022)

January 6, 2023

Ghosts of War

Franziska Exeler
Hosted by Jill Massino

How do states and societies confront the legacies of war and occupation, and what do truth, guilt, and justice mean in that process? In Ghosts o…

James Mark and Paul Betts, "Socialism Goes Global: The Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in the Age of Decolonisation" (Oxford UP, 2022)

December 9, 2022

Socialism Goes Global

James Mark and Paul Betts
Hosted by Jill Massino

Socialism Goes Global: The Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in the Age of Decolonisation (Oxford UP, 2022) is the first work to provide a broad history…

Miglena S. Todorova, "Unequal under Socialism: Race, Women, and Transnationalism in Bulgaria" (U Toronto Press, 2021)

October 24, 2022

Unequal under Socialism

Miglena S. Todorova
Hosted by Jill Massino

Unequal under Socialism: Race, Women, and Transnationalism in Bulgaria (U Toronto Press, 2021) examines the formation of racial, gender, and national …

Lea Ypi, "Free: A Child and a Country at the End of History" (Penguin, 2021)

May 5, 2022

Free

Lea Ypi
Hosted by Jill Massino

Lea Ypi grew up in one of the most isolated countries on earth, a place where communist ideals had officially replaced religion. Albania, the last Sta…

Caroline Mezger, "Forging Germans: Youth, Nation, and the National Socialist Mobilization of Ethnic Germans in Yugoslavia, 1918-1944" (Oxford UP, 2020)

March 28, 2022

Forging Germans

Caroline Mezger
Hosted by Jill Massino

Caroline Mezger's Forging Germans: Youth, Nation, and the National Socialist Mobilization of Ethnic Germans in Yugoslavia, 1918-1944 (Oxford UP, 2020)…

Eva Fodor, "The Gender Regime of Anti-Liberal Hungary" (Palgrave, 2022)

March 2, 2022

The Gender Regime of Anti-Liberal Hungary

Eva Fodor
Hosted by Jill Massino

The Gender Regime of Anti-Liberal Hungary (Palgrave, 2022) explains a new type of political order that emerged in Hungary in 2010: a form of authorita…

Teresa Kulawik and Zhanna Kravchenko, "Borderlands in European Gender Studies: Beyond the East-West Frontier" (Routledge, 2020)

February 22, 2022

Borderlands in European Gender Studies

Teresa Kulawik and Zhanna Kravchenko
Hosted by Jill Massino

Challenging persistent geopolitical asymmetries in feminist knowledge production, this collection depicts collisions between concepts and lived experi…

Melissa Feinberg, "Communism in Eastern Europe" (Routledge, 2021)

February 14, 2022

Communism in Eastern Europe

Melissa Feinberg
Hosted by Jill Massino

Communism in Eastern Europe (Routledge, 2021) is a groundbreaking new survey of the history of Eastern Europe since 1945. It examines how Communist go…

Bojana Videkanic, "Nonaligned Modernism: Socialist Postcolonial Aesthetics in Yugoslavia, 1945-1985" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2019)

January 27, 2022

Nonaligned Modernism

Bojana Videkanic
Hosted by Jill Massino

In less than half a century, the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia successfully defeated Fascist occupation, fended off dominating pressures fr…

Terri Givens, "Radical Empathy: Finding a Path to Bridging Racial Divides" (Policy Press, 2021)

January 19, 2022

Radical Empathy

Givens, Terri
Hosted by Jill Massino

Structural racism has impacted the lives of African Americans in the United States since before the country’s founding. Although the country has made …

Machteld Venken, "Peripheries at the Centre: Borderland Schooling in Interwar Europe" (Berghahn Books, 2021)

October 27, 2021

Peripheries at the Centre

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 w…

Brigitte Le Normand, "Citizens Without Borders: Yugoslavia and Its Migrant Workers in Western Europe" (U Toronto Press, 2021)

September 10, 2021

Citizens Without Borders

Brigitte Le Normand
Hosted by Jill Massino

Among Eastern Europe’s postwar socialist states, Yugoslavia was unique in allowing its citizens to seek work abroad in Western Europe’s liberal democr…

Gerd Horten, "Don't Need No Thought Control: Western Culture in East Germany and the Fall of the Berlin Wall" (Berghahn Books, 2020)

September 2, 2021

Don't Need No Thought Control

Gerd Horten
Hosted by Jill Massino

The fall of the Berlin Wall is typically understood as the culmination of political-economic trends that fatally weakened the East German state. Meanw…

James Mark et al., "1989: A Global History of Eastern Europe" (Cambridge UP, 2019)

August 16, 2021

1989

James Mark, Bogdan C. Iacob, Tobias Rupprecht, Ljubica Spaskovska
Hosted by Jill Massino

The collapse of the Berlin Wall has come to represent the entry of an isolated region onto the global stage. On the contrary, this study argues that c…

Chiara Bonfiglioli, "Women and Industry in the Balkans: The Rise and Fall of the Yugoslav Textile Sector" (I. B. Tauris, 2019)

August 3, 2021

Women and Industry in the Balkans

Chiara Bonfiglioli
Hosted by Jill Massino

Women's emancipation through productive labour was a key tenet of socialist politics in post-World War II Yugoslavia. Mass industrialisation under Tit…

Veronika Pehe, "Velvet Retro: Postsocialist Nostalgia and the Politics of Heroism in Czech Popular Culture" (Berghahn Books, 2020)

June 21, 2021

Velvet Retro

Veronika Pehe
Hosted by Jill Massino

Scholars of state socialism have frequently invoked “nostalgia” to identify an uncritical longing for the utopian ambitions and lived experience of t…

Stephen M. Norris, "Museums of Communism: New Memory Sites in Central and Eastern Europe" (Indiana UP, 2020)

June 18, 2021

Museums of Communism

Stephen M. Norris
Hosted by Jill Massino

How did communities come to terms with the collapse of communism? In order to guide the wider narrative, many former communist countries constructed m…

Jelena Đureinović, "The Politics of Memory of the Second World War in Contemporary Serbia" (Routledge, 2020)

June 7, 2021

The Politics of Memory of the Second World War in Contemporary Serbia

Jelena Đureinović
Hosted by Jill Massino

Exploring the concepts of collaboration, resistance, and postwar retribution and focusing on the Chetnik movement, Jelena Đureinović's book The Politi…