x

75% of people globally want unbiased news (Pew Research) but are concerned they're not getting that.

Get balanced coverage with Symby. See how stories are covered across diverse outlets and spot when one side covers a story the other skips.

PODCAST

New Books in Eastern European Studies

New Books Network

This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: ⁠newbooksnetwork.com⁠ Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox:

society & culture

All Episodes

71:29

Lucy Jeffery, "Replaying Communism: Trauma and...

New Books in Eastern European Studies ·

2026/08/24

Repercussions of communism are still felt throughout Central and Eastern Europe. In fact, specters of communism remain vivid enough to inspire a wide range of contemporary cultural production, from video games to museum exhibits. This volume demonstrates how the region remains in a state of transitioning away from communism, not having secured a fully post-communist identity. Replaying Communism: Trauma and Nostalgia in European Cultural Production(Central European University Press,

en

68:43

Denialism: Polish Style

New Books in Eastern European Studies ·

2026/08/22

Holocaust distortion in Poland involves reshaping or minimizing facts about the Holocaust, often emphasizing Polish victimhood while obscuring instances of local collaboration, participation, or indifference. It appears in political rhetoric, memory laws, public commemorations, and attacks on critical scholarship. YIVO’sPoland vs. Holocaust Historyseries examines these dynamics and situates the Polish case within a broader European context. Elżbieta Janicka focuses on the case of the former German

en

64:43

Roderick Beaton, "Europe: A New History" (Allen Lane,...

New Books in Eastern European Studies ·

2026/08/19

What do we talk about when we talk about Europe? Is it defined by geography? Or is it politics, or shared culture? In Europe: A New History(Allen Lane, 2026),award-winning historian Roderick Beaton tells the story of Europe as never before—as the history of an idea, and a collective identity. Since its dramatic birth in ancient Greece, 'Europe' has been defined, and redefined, by its people. Through this powerful lens, and with the narrative drive and scope of a novelist, Beaton deftly

en

56:22

Yulia Gradskova et al., "Good Mothers, Nations and...

New Books in Eastern European Studies ·

2026/08/13

In this episode, host Andrea Talabér (CEU Press, 2026) talks with Yulia Gradskova and Ieva Bisigirskaitė, two of the three authors behindGood Mothers, Nations and Nationalisms: Cases from Lithuania, Russia and Sweden. Together with Soheyla Yazdanpanah, they explore what nationalists mean by "good mothers," demographic anxiety, and maternal activism in Lithuania, Russia and Sweden.You can purchase a copyhere. The CEU Press Podcast delves into various aspects of the publishing process: from

en

59:30

In the Shadow of the Shtetl: Yiddish Memories of...

New Books in Eastern European Studies ·

2026/08/12

Drawing from some four hundred Yiddish-language interviews conducted by the Archives of Historical and Ethnographic Yiddish Memories project, Jeffrey Veidlinger will explore how elderly Yiddish speakers in Ukraine described their memories of Jewish life in the Soviet shtetl, their stories of survival during the Holocaust, and their experiences living as Jews under Communism.This exploration will help us understand how despite Stalinist repressions, the Holocaust, and official antisemitism, these

en

70:07

Christopher Campo-Bowen, "Visions of the Village:...

New Books in Eastern European Studies ·

2026/08/10

The Bartered Bride, a comic opera by Bedrich Smetana, premiered in Prague on March 30, 1866. Its pastoral love story and setting in a rural Czech village eventually became an enduring symbol of Czech nationalism. InVisions of the Village: Ruralness, Identity, and Czech Opera(Oxford University Press, 2025), Christopher Campo-Bowen examines how a particular image of the rural village in a set of Czech operas written between 1866 and 1904 became a powerful signifier for Czech ethnoracial and

en

0:00

Russia’s Jews in World War I

New Books in Eastern European Studies ·

2026/08/08

When World War I began, the Russian Empire was home to more than 5.7 million Jews, the most densely settled Jewish population in the world. Thirty years later, by 1945, only remnants of this civilization remained. The years of World War I, from 1914 to 1918, launched nearly all the forces that led to this epic destruction.InA Nation of Refugees: Russia's Jews in World War I, Polly Zavadivker tells how Jewish civilians experienced that war and its epicenter of violence on the Eastern Front. World

en

0:00

Jewish Folk Medicine in Eastern Europe

New Books in Eastern European Studies ·

2026/07/25

Jews have been active participants in shaping the healing practices of the communities of Eastern Europe. Their approach largely combined the ideas of traditional Ashkenazi culture with the heritage of medieval and early modern medicine. Holy rabbis and faith healers, as well as Jewish barbers, innkeepers, and peddlers, all dispensed cures, purveyed folk remedies for different ailments, and gave hope to the sick and their families based on kabbalah, numerology, prayer, and magical Hebrew formulas

en

48:51

Suzy Hansen, "From Life Itself: Turkey, Istanbul, and...

New Books in Eastern European Studies ·

2026/07/21

From Suzy Hansen, whose previous book,Notes on a Foreign Country, was a finalist for thePulitzer Prize, From Life Itself:Turkey, Istanbul, and a Neighborhood in the Age of Erdoğan(Farrar, Straus & Giroux,2026) is a story for a world out of joint. An absorbing account of one neighborhood in Istanbul that has seen profound change, it offers lessons for all of us who feel the pressure of the disorienting global forces remaking our lives.Karagümrük, a neighborhood once dominated by Ottoman-era

en

46:35

Anja Foerschner, "Female Art and Agency in...

New Books in Eastern European Studies ·

2026/07/19

InFemale Art and Agency in Yugoslavia, 1971–2001(Bloomsbury, 2024), Anja Foerschner offers a compelling exploration of the women artists, curators, scholars, and activists who shaped the cultural landscape of Yugoslavia and its successor states. Drawing on both original research and existing scholarship, she traces the emergence of the New Art Practice of the late 1960s and 1970s, highlighting the pivotal role of Belgrade’s Student Cultural Centre, where women were instrumental in forging a

en

41:12

Elana Resnick, "Refusing Sustainability: Race and...

New Books in Eastern European Studies ·

2026/07/19

Sustainability has become a touchstone for development worldwide, promising an antidote to environmental degradation and capitalism's excess: waste. Refusing Sustainability: Race and Environmentalism in a Changing Europe (Stanford University Press, 2025) presents a fundamentally different account of sustainability and waste itself by uncovering the intersections of international environmental reforms and racialized labor. In Bulgaria, Roma comprise the bulk of the country's waste workers,

en

68:32

Jay Szpilka, "BDSM Practices in Contemporary Poland:...

New Books in Eastern European Studies ·

2026/07/07

In BDSM Practices in Poland: Barbed Wire Floggings, Rope Orgasms, and the Problem with Desire (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025), cultural anthropologist and cultural studies scholar Jay Szpilka analyzes the way that BDSM is practiced in contemporary Poland. Based on extensive field research, she asks what social, cultural, and political conditions are necessary for BDSM to be possible to practice in the first place. Through a nuanced analysis of the way that practitioners navigate conflicting

en

59:05

Molly Crabapple, "Here Where We Live Is Our Country:...

New Books in Eastern European Studies ·

2026/07/05

Molly Crabapple joins Michael Stauch to discuss the history of the Jewish Labor Bund, the subject of her new book, Here Where We Live Is Our Country: The Story of the Jewish Bund (Random House, 2026). Once the most influential Jewish political force in Eastern Europe, the Bund was secular, socialist, and uncompromisingly anti-Zionist. The Bundists fought for dignity and equality, not in an imagined homeland in Palestine but “here where we live.” In the first popular history of the Bund,

en

46:47

Christopher de Bellaigue, "The Golden Throne: The...

New Books in Eastern European Studies ·

2026/06/29

What does a 16th century ruler reveal about the nature of power, past and present? Istanbul, 1538. The greatest of the Ottoman Sultans is at the pinnacle of world power, while his family and future are at the mercy of their own dynastic law: whichever of his five sons succeeds him must eventually kill all the others. So why not get a head start?For the next fifteen years, as Suleyman the Magnificent and his terrifying pirate captain Barbarossa face down imperial enemies across two hemispheres, the

en

56:49

Peter Paul Dobek, "The Public House in Central...

New Books in Eastern European Studies ·

2026/06/20

In his new book The Public House in Central Europe: Inns, Tavern, and Alehouses in Cracow during the Jagiellonian Dynasty (Lexington Books, 2024), Peter Dobek takes us into the daily life of the medieval tavern in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Cracow. This is the ‘Golden Age’ of Poland Lithuania and the crepuscule between the Medieval and Early Modern Periods. The taverns were the public space where different categories of people mixed: travelers, merchants, diplomats, clerics, prostitutes,

en

48:46

Anna Calori, "Engineering Global Socialism:...

New Books in Eastern European Studies ·

2026/06/19

Engineering Global Socialism: Ownership, Non-Alignment, and Corporate Culture in a Bosnian Company (Indiana UP, 2026) chronicles the journey of the Bosnian global corporation Energoinvest and its workers from its Yugoslav socialist ideals through decades of dissolution, reconstruction, and post-socialist transformation.Author Anna Calori provides a company-centric window into the business history of socialist globalization during periods of national development, destruction, and rebuilding

en

0:00

European Jews in the 21st Century

New Books in Eastern European Studies ·

2026/06/18

What is the status of Jews in Europe in the 21st century? How do they maintain vital communities? Do they desire to remain in Europe? To remain Jewish? Where are the trendlines headed? A mere 0.1% of Europe's population is Jewish. Proportionally, this figure is at its lowest since the turn of the first millennium. European Jews' numbers have continued to decline even after the Holocaust. Once a major center of world Jewry, Europe often goes largely unmentioned in conversations about the global

en

0:00

Jewish Identity in Lithuania Today

New Books in Eastern European Studies ·

2026/06/16

Join YIVO for a conversation about the resurgence of interest in Jewish identity and history in Lithuania today. Jonathan Brent will moderate a conversation among Miglė Anušauskaitė, a Lithuanian cartoonist and archivist working on the Edward Blank YIVO Vilna Online Collections Project, Anna Avidan, Managing Director of LitvakWorld, Kęstas Pikūnas, publisher of Passport, and former Lithuanian Minister of Culture, Mindaugas Kvietkauskas. Together they will explore topics such as the historical and

en

93:37

Cristina Florea, "Bukovina: The Life and Death of an...

New Books in Eastern European Studies ·

2026/06/16

Bukovina, when it has existed on official maps, has always fit uneasily among its neighbors. The region is now divided between Romania and Ukraine but has long been a testing ground for successive regimes, including the Habsburg Empire, independent and later Nazi-allied Romania, and the Soviet Union, as each sought to reshape the region in its own image. In this beautifully written and wide-ranging book Bukovina: The Life and Death of an East European Borderland (Princeton UP, 2025), Cristina

en

56:19

Tania Sengupta and Stuart King eds., "Reclaiming...

New Books in Eastern European Studies ·

2026/06/09

Reclaiming Colonial Architecture (Routledge, 2024) explores the built inheritance of colonialism and considers how architects, heritage practitioners, students, communities, and activists might narrate, care for, transform, or challenge them today. Awarded the SAHGB’s Colvin Medal in 2025, the book draws on a variety of authors to combine historical context with thematically organised case studies across urban and architectural scales. This interview was conducted by Matthew Wells, Senior Lecturer

en

1,121 results

Similar Podcasts

وجوه من الـظل

Medi1 Podcast

Avec philosophie

France Culture

The Viall Files

Nick Viall

New Books in Eastern European Studies

New Books Network

Dead on Earth

Kerrith McDowell and Sarah Lipscomb