Eastern Europe Unmapped

Eastern Europe Unmapped
Author: Irene Kacandes
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 300
Release: 2017-10-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 178533686X

Arguably more than any other region, the area known as Eastern Europe has been defined by its location on the map. Yet its inhabitants, from statesmen to literati and from cultural-economic elites to the poorest emigrants, have consistently forged or fathomed links to distant lands, populations, and intellectual traditions. Through a series of inventive cultural and historical explorations, Eastern Europe Unmapped dispenses with scholars’ long-time preoccupation with national and regional borders, instead raising provocative questions about the area’s non-contiguous—and frequently global or extraterritorial—entanglements.

The World beyond the West

The World beyond the West
Author: Mariusz Kałczewiak
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 259
Release: 2022-03-11
Genre: History
ISBN: 1800733534

No matter how one defines its extent and borders, Eastern Europe has long been understood as a liminal space, one whose undeniable cultural and historical continuities with Western Europe have been belied by its status as an “Other” in the Western imagination. Across illuminating and provocative case studies, The World beyond the West focuses on the region’s ambiguous relationship to historical processes of colonialism and Orientalism. In exploring encounters with distant lands through politics, travel, migration, and exchange, it places Eastern Europe at the heart of its analysis while decentering the most familiar narratives and recasting the history of the region.

Socialist Escapes

Socialist Escapes
Author: Cathleen M. Giustino
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 294
Release: 2013-03-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0857456709

During much of the Cold War, physical escape from countries in the Eastern Bloc was a nearly impossible act. There remained, however, possibilities for other socialist escapes, particularly time spent free from party ideology and the mundane routines of everyday life. The essays in this volume examine sites of socialist escapes, such as beaches, campgrounds, nightclubs, concerts, castles, cars, and soccer matches. The chapters explore the effectiveness of state efforts to engineer society through leisure, entertainment, and related forms of cultural programming and consumption. They lead to a deeper understanding of state–society relations in the Soviet sphere, where the state did not simply “dictate from above” and inhabitants had some opportunities to shape solidarities, identities, and meaning.

Between Utopia and Disillusionment

Between Utopia and Disillusionment
Author: Henri Vogt
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2005
Genre: Czech Republic
ISBN: 9781571818959

Scholarly interpretations of the collapse of communism and developments thereafter have tended to be primarily concerned with people's need to rid themselves of the communist system, of their past. The expectations, dreams, and hopes that ordinary Eastern Europeans had when they took to the streets in 1989, and have had ever since, have therefore been overlooked - and our understanding of the changes in post-communist Europe has remained incomplete. Focusing primarily on five key areas, such as the heritage of 1989 revolutions, ambivalence, disillusionment, individualism, and collective identities, this book explores the expectations and goals that ordinary Eastern Europeans had during the 1989 revolutions and the decade thereafter, and also the problems and disappointments they encountered in the course of the transformation. The analysis is based on extensive interviews with university students and young intellectuals in the Czech Republic, Eastern Germany and Estonia in the 1990s, which in themselves have considerable value as historical documents.

Imaging and Mapping Eastern Europe

Imaging and Mapping Eastern Europe
Author: Katarzyna Murawska-Muthesius
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 275
Release: 2021-05-10
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1351034405

Imaging and Mapping Eastern Europe puts images centre stage and argues for the agency of the visual in the construction of Europe’s east as a socio-political and cultural entity. This book probes into the discontinuous processes of mapping the eastern European space and imaging the eastern European body. Beginning from the Renaissance maps of Sarmatia Europea, it moves onto the images of women in ethnic dress on the pages of travellers’ reports from the Balkans, to cartoons of children bullied by dictators in the satirical press, to Cold War cartography, and it ends with photos of protesting crowds on contemporary dust jackets. Studying the eastern European ‘iconosphere’ leads to the engagement with issues central for image studies and visual culture: word and image relationship, overlaps between the codes of othering and self-fashioning, as well as interaction between the diverse modes of production specific to cartography, travel illustrations, caricature, and book cover design. This book will be of interest to scholars in art history, visual culture, and central Asian, Russian and Eastern European studies.

Samizdat, Tamizdat, and Beyond

Samizdat, Tamizdat, and Beyond
Author: Friederike Kind-Kovács
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 380
Release: 2013-03-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0857455869

In many ways what is identified today as “cultural globalization” in Eastern Europe has its roots in the Cold War phenomena of samizdat (“do-it-yourself” underground publishing) and tamizdat (publishing abroad). This volume offers a new understanding of how information flowed between East and West during the Cold War, as well as the much broader circulation of cultural products instigated and sustained by these practices. By expanding the definitions of samizdat and tamizdat from explicitly political print publications to include other forms and genres, this volume investigates the wider cultural sphere of alternative and semi-official texts, broadcast media, reproductions of visual art and music, and, in the post-1989 period, new media. The underground circulation of uncensored texts in the Cold War era serves as a useful foundation for comparison when looking at current examples of censorship, independent media, and the use of new media in countries like China, Iran, and the former Yugoslavia.

Rethinking Subalternity in Central and Eastern Europe

Rethinking Subalternity in Central and Eastern Europe
Author: Francesco Trupia
Publisher: Transnational Press London
Total Pages: 180
Release: 2020-08-03
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1912997452

At a time when the region of Central and Eastern Europe is considered a dominant example of democratic backsliding with authoritarian tendencies, this monograph aims to provide a critical approach to minority issues. By carving out the philosophical implications of the notion of subalternity, Trupia draws particularly on Antonio Gramsci’s philosophy of praxis and his scholarly legacy in order to debunk societal models of liberal multiculturalism and their hegemonic discourse. This monograph is not only an attempt to unravel power-centred fabrication of subordination resulting from hierarchic methods of doing politics and imposing cultural ascriptions upon certain segments of society. It also deals with subalternity as a “perspective of opportunity” through the lens of complex identity positions of minority groups and their changes through time. Contents PREFACE INTRODUCTION: Philosophy and Minority Studies. What is at Stake? Part I: GENESIS, MATERIALISATION, BOUNDARIES, AND MEANINGS OF “MINORITY” AS SUBALTERN OTHERNESS CHAPTER ONE. Setting the Scene CHAPTER TWO. Minority Identities in Central and Eastern Europe: A Critical Overview CHAPTER THREE. Post-Communism and Post-Colonialism: Do They Mirror Each Other? Part II: THE MAKING AND THE RE-MAKING OF SUBALTERNS: A GRAMSCIAN PERSPECTIVE CHAPTER FOUR. Antonio Gramsci and Subaltern Cultures: Fundamental Remarks CHAPTER FIVE. 1989 “Organic Crisis” and Post-Communist Positionality of Minority Groups CHAPTER SIX. “(Re-)thinking Subalternity and the Necessity of Hegemony CHAPTER SEVEN. Gramsci’s Way Out: Subaltern Mobilisation and the Role of Intellectuals CHAPTER EIGHT. The Paradox of Hegemonic (In-)Tolerance CHAPTER NINE. Gramscianism: Marxism Otherwise? OPEN CONCLUSIONS CHAPTER TEN. In Search of a New Praxis

Inventing Eastern Europe

Inventing Eastern Europe
Author: Larry Wolff
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 444
Release: 1994
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780804727020

Wolff explores how Western thinkers contributed to defining and characterizing Eastern Europe as half-civilized and barbaric.

The Salt of the Earth

The Salt of the Earth
Author: Jozef Wittlin
Publisher: Pushkin Press
Total Pages: 353
Release: 2021-01-12
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1782274723

The classic pacifist novel by a major Polish writer, who was nominated for the Nobel Prize At the beginning of the twentieth century the villagers of the Carpathian mountains lead a simple life, much as they have always done. Among them is Piotr, a bandy-legged peasant, who wants nothing more from life than an official railway cap, a cottage, and a bride with a dowry. But then the First World War reaches the mountains and Piotr is drafted into the army. All the weight of imperial authority is used to mould him into an unthinking fighting machine, forced to fight a war he does not understand, for interests other than his own. The Salt of the Earth is a classic war novel and a powerfully pacifist tale about the consequences of war for ordinary men.