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Literary Studies June 19, 2016

Do the Balkans Begin in Vienna?

The Geopolitical and Imaginary Borders Between the Balkans and Europe

Ana Foteva

Hosted by Amanda Swain
Starting with Metternich's declaration that the Balkans begin at Rennweg (a street in the Third District of Vienna), Ana Foteva draws on novels, plays, librettos and travelogues from the 19th through the 21st century to explore the various forms the Balkan region has taken in Europe's political and cultural imagination. Her analysis of these literary works reveals concepts of belonging, multi-belonging and unbelonging among Serbians, Bosnians, Croatians, Slovenes and even …
Popular Culture March 9, 2018

Between Truth and Time

A History of Soviet Central Television

Christine E. Evans

Hosted by Amanda Jeanne Swain
In Between Truth and Time: A History of Soviet Central Television (Yale University Press, 2016), Christine E. Evans reveals that Soviet television in the Brezhnev era was anything but boring …
Russian and Eurasian Studies August 18, 2016

States of Obligation

Taxes and Citizenship in the Russian Empire and Early Soviet Republic

Yanni Kotsonis

Hosted by Amanda Jeanne Swain
I have to admit that I was quite intimidated by a book on taxation in imperial Russia. But States of Obligation: Taxes and Citizenship in the Russian Empire and Early …
Literary Studies March 7, 2016

Written Here, Published There

How Underground Literature Crossed the Iron Curtain

Friederike Kind-Kovacs

Hosted by Amanda Jeanne Swain
Written Here, Published There: How Underground Literature Crossed the Iron Curtain (Central European University Press, 2014) is a richly detailed description of the social practices, debates and discourses that were …
Eastern European Studies March 25, 2016

The People's Game

Football, State and Society in East Germany

Alan McDougall

Hosted by Amanda Jeanne Swain
In The People's Game: Football, State and Society (Cambridge University Press, 2014), Alan McDougall looks at football from the top-down and bottom-up: as a tool of the state, as forming …
Eastern European Studies May 23, 2016

The Rise and Fall of Belarusian Nationalism, 1906-1931

Per Anders Rudling

Hosted by Amanda Jeanne Swain
I don't often have a chance to read books that focus solely on Belarus, which is exactly why I was intrigued by The Rise and Fall of Belarusian Nationalism, 1906-193 …
Eastern European Studies September 12, 2016

After the Revolution

Youth, Democracy, and the Politics of Disappointment in Serbia

Jessica Greenberg

Hosted by Amanda Jeanne Swaine
Jessica Greenberg's After the Revolution: Youth, Democracy, and the Politics of Disappointment in Serbia (Stanford University Press, 2014) explores a dual tension at work in Serbia in the early 2000s …
Music December 18, 2015

The Power of Song

Nonviolent National Culture in the Baltic Singing Revolution

Guntis Smidchens

Hosted by Amanda Jeanne Swain
In the late 1980s, the Baltic Soviet Social Republics seemed to explode into song as Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian national movements challenged Soviet rule. The leaders of each of these …
Eastern European Studies November 4, 2014

Balkan Smoke

Tobacco and the Making of Modern Bulgaria

Mary Neuberger

Hosted by Amanda Jeanne Swain
By the late 1960s, Bulgaria was the world's number one exporter of tobacco, perhaps the pinnacle of the place of tobacco in the economic, social and political development of modern …
Eastern European Studies February 20, 2015

The Greengrocer and His TV

The Culture of Communism after the 1968 Prague Spring

Paulina Bren

Hosted by Amanda Jeanne Swain
Major Zeman's life is filled with action packed adventures. A young man finds his calling turning a collective farm into a shining example of agricultural efficiency. Anna embraces her role …
Eastern European Studies March 15, 2015

Unfinished Utopia

Nowa Huta, Stalinism and Polish Society, 1949-1956

Katherine Lebow

Hosted by Amanda Jeanne Swain
In the late 1940s, tens of thousands of people - mostly young male peasants - streamed to southeastern Poland to help build Nowa Huta, the largest and most ambitious of …
Art June 2, 2015

The Post-Traumatic Theatre of Grotowski and Kantor

History and Holocaust in Akropolis and Dead Class

Magda Romanska

Hosted by Amanda Jeanne Swain
Jerzy Grotowsky and Tadeusz Kantor were influential in avant-garde theater in the West in the 1960s and 1970s, receiving high critical regard despite the fact that audiences could not understand …
American Studies August 13, 2017

American Girls in Red Russia

Chasing the American Dream

Julia Mickenberg

Hosted by Amanda Jeanne Swain
In American Girls in Red Russia: Chasing the American Dream (University of Chicago Press, 2017), Julia Mickenberg tells the story of women both famous and unknown, committed radicals and adventure …
Russian and Eurasian Studies May 23, 2016

Sex, Politics &amp

Political Legitimacy in Russia

Valerie Sperling

Hosted by Amanda Jeanne Swain
The prevalence of media that reinforces a traditional masculine image of Vladimir Putin, Russia's leader, is at the core of Valerie Sperling's analysis of gender norms and sexualization as a …
Russian and Eurasian Studies September 30, 2016

The Red Rockets' Glare

Spaceflight and the Soviet Imagination, 1857-1957

Asif A. Siddiqi

Hosted by Amanda Jeanne Swain
In The Red Rockets' Glare: Spaceflight and the Soviet Imagination, 1857-1957 (Cambridge University Press, 2013), Asif Siddiqi approaches the history of the Soviet space program as a combination of engineering …
Russian and Eurasian Studies March 25, 2017

The Socialist Way of Life in Siberia

Transformation in Buryatia

Melissa Chakars

Hosted by Amanda Jeanne Swain
In The Socialist Way of Life in Siberia: Transformation in Buryatia (Central European University Press, 2014), Melissa Chakars reveals not only how Soviet policies disrupted traditional Buryat ways of life …
Architecture July 8, 2017

Designing Tito's Capital

Urban Planning, Modernism, and Socialism

Brigitte Le Normand

Hosted by Amanda Jeanne Swain
NB: An earlier version of this podcast has been replaced with a new file in which the the technical problems of the first were corrected. -NBn, 7/11/17 At the end …
Architecture July 24, 2015

Prague, Capital of the Twentieth Century

A Surrealist History

Derek Sayer

Hosted by Amanda Jeanne Swain
Prague, according to Derek Sayer, is the place "in which modernist dreams have time and again unraveled." In this sweeping history of surrealism centered on Prague as both a physical …
Eastern European Studies August 19, 2017

The People's Own Landscape

Nature, Tourism and Dictatorship in East Germany

Scott Moranda

Hosted by Amanda Jeanne Swain
The new German Democratic Republic, known as East Germany, faced many challenges when it was founded in 1949. Not least of which was convincing its citizens that they should be …
Eastern European Studies December 25, 2014

Priest, Politician, Collaborator

Jozef Tiso and the Making of Fascist Slovakia

James Mace Ward

Hosted by Amanda Jeanne Swain
In his biography of Jozef Tiso, Catholic priest and president of independent Slovakia (1939-1944), James Ward provides a deeper understanding of a man who has been both honored and vilified …