Interview with Alison Frank--September 25, 2009

Interview with Alison Frank, John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard University. Interview conducted in Ithaca, NY on September 25, 2009.

Professor Frank is the author of a number of articles and an excellent book on the oil industry in Habsburg Galicia entitled Oil Empire: Visions of Prosperity in Austrian Galicia. She is now working on a project on the Habsburg imperial port city of Trieste.

Interview Themes

How Frank chooses research topics (00:50)

Aspects of her training as a historian Frank found useful (07:00)

Books that have inspired and informed Frank's work (11:11)

On the role of area studies for scholarship on East-Central Europe (14:00)

"Internationalizing" the history of East-Central Europe (19:30)

Advice to young historians/scholars working on the region (22:11)

To access interview, click here: http://hdl.handle.net/1813/13739

Interview with István Deák--April 29, 2009

Interview with István Deák, Seth Low Professor Emeritus at Columbia University. Interview conducted in Ithaca, NY on April 29, 2009.

István Deák has written several books on topics ranging from Weimar Germany to the 1848 Revolution in Hungary to the Habsburg Army’s officer corps to Hitler’s Europe. It is difficult to exaggerate the contribution he has made to the field of East-Central European History. There are two notable indicators of that influence, one is the Deák Chair established at Columbia in his honor, and the other the many students of his who now populate the field.

Interview Themes

Intersections between Deák's life and work, experiences in Hungary (01:08)
WWII and the Holocaust in Hungary and how Deák experienced them (03:30)
Deák's views on Hungarians' current relationship to their past (9:30)
Is there such a thing as a Hungarian Sonderweg? (14:50)
Deák on the experience of being an émigré historian (22:25)
Deák on his proudest achievement as an historian and public intellectual (27:53)
Advice to young historians/scholars working on the region (31:17)

To access interview, click here: http://hdl.handle.net/1813/12881

Interview with Florian Bieber--March 13, 2009

Interview with Florian Bieber, lecturer in East European Politics at the University of Kent in Canterbury, England. Interview conducted in Ithaca, NY on March 13, 2009.

Dr. Bieber has worked in Belgrade (Serbia) and Sarajevo (Bosnia-Herzegovina) for the European Centre for Minority Issues and has taught at the Central European University, at the University of Sarajevo and at the University of Bologna. He is also the author of a book about Serbian nationalism, entitled Nationalism in Serbia from the Death of Tito to the Fall of Milošević (Münster: Lit Verlag, 2005, in German), and another book, Post-War Bosnia: Ethnic Structure, Inequality and Governance of the Public Sector (London: Palgrave, 2006). He’s at Cornell this spring semester of 2009 as the Luigi Einaudi Chair in European and International Studies.

Interview Themes

Bieber's current book project (01:30)
Bieber's reflections on the 20th anniversary of 1989 (02:00)
On Bieber's background in political science and history (03:19)
When interdisciplinarity works best (5:22)
On the "ghettoization" of the Balkans and its causes/possible solutions (06:30)
Unique contribution of our field to other fields (09:38)
Addressing the ongoing perception of a division of Europe into "East" and "West" (12:04)
On Bieber's interest in the study of nationalism (16:17)
Is there such a thing as "good nationalism"? (19:12)
On Bieber's "European" upbringing and early education (21:34)
Bieber on experiences/opportunities all Europeans should ideally have (24:56)
On the future of Southeastern Europe (26:17)

To access interview, click here: http://hdl.handle.net/1813/12110