Interview with Joachim von Puttkamer--December 6, 2011

Interview with Joachim von Puttkamer, Professor of East European History at the Friedrich Schiller University and co-director of the Imre Kertész Kolleg in Jena, Germany. Interview conducted in Jena, Germany on December 6, 2011.

Professor von Puttkamer is the author of a number of books and articles, including a monograph on schooling in Hungary 1867-1914 (Schulalltag und nationale Integration in Ungarn: Slowaken, Rumänen und Siebenbürger Sachsen in der Auseinandersetzung mit der ungarischen Staatsidee, 1867-1914) published in 2003, and a synthetic overview of East-Central European history and historiography in the 19th and 20th centuries (Ostmitteleuropa im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert) in 2010.

Interview Themes

Puttkamer's path to the study of East-Central Europe and his first monograph on the regulation of factories in pre-revolutionary Russia (2:22)

How contemporary politics in Germany have influenced the study of East-Central Europe (11:10)

Strengths and weaknesses of Anglo-American, German, and East-Central European academic cultures and historiographies compared (16:42)

Relationship between those who study Western Europe and those who study East-Central Europe -- is there a "European" historiography? (25:00)

Why aren't East-Central Europeanists writing broader European histories? (32:45)

On the origins and activities of the Imre Kertész Kolleg (38:40)

How Puttkamer views his own role as a historian of this region (47:52)

The most exciting work in the field; opportunities and challenges (56:35)

To access interview, click here: http://hdl.handle.net/1813/28222

Interview with Taner Akçam--November 8, 2010

Interview with Taner Akçam, Associate Professor of History at Clark University's Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. Interview conducted in Ithaca, NY on November 8, 2010.

Professor Akçam is the author of A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility, published by Metropolitan Press in 2006.

Interview Themes

How Akçam came to be a scholar of genocide (00:47)
Why the study of genocide has been so prevalent and controversial in the past 20 years (10:12)

Akçam's arrest and the issues that brought him into politics in the 1970s (16:09)
How Akçam saw the Turkish state in the 1970s (20:48)
Early responses to the work of Akçam on the Armenian issue (26:12)
Retrospective view of the aspirations of the student movement of the 1960s and 1970s in Turkey (30:08)
The next generation of intellectuals in Turkey and elsewhere and their relationship to ideology (34:53)
The impact of the current preoccupation with memory on contemporary politics (42:20)
Dangers of the politics of grievance (48:08)
Akçam's interest in writing about Islam (54:13)
Aspects of Turkish national consciousness that historians should concern themselves with (1:01:28)
To access interview, click here: http://hdl.handle.net/1813/21954

Interview with Steven A. Barnes--October 19, 2010

Interview with Steven A. Barnes, Associate Professor of History at George Mason University. Interview conducted in Ithaca, NY on October 19, 2010.

Professor Barnes is the author of the book Death and Redemption: The Gulag and the Shaping of Soviet Society, which is forthcoming from Princeton University Press in 2011. Barnes is also the author of a website on the history of the gulag called Gulag: Many Days, Many Lives.

Interview Themes

How Barnes came to be interested in the gulag (00:57)
The evolution of Barnes's gulag project (04:12)
The argument of Barnes's forthcoming book and how it will likely be received (18:32)
Most interesting and exciting directions in Soviet historiography now (32:10)
To access interview, click here: http://hdl.handle.net/1813/21953

Interview with Nikolay Koposov--October 7, 2010

Interview with Nikolay Koposov, research director at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies in Finland and former dean of the Smolny college of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Saint-Petersburg State University (1998-2009). Interview conducted in Ithaca, NY on October 7, 2010.

Prof. Koposov has written on early modern France, approaches to history, and the politics of historical memory in Russia. His works have been published in French and Russian, including most recently a French translation of his 2001 book originally published in Russian, How Historians Think (De l'imagination historique).

Interview Themes

The contours of the historical profession in the USSR in the 1970s (01:49)
Koposov's path to the study of history (08:03)
Political implications of doing social history in the USSR in the 1970s (13:10)
Political shifts in the Soviet Union in the 1980s and the 1990s as reflected in the historical profession (16:45)
Koposov's cohort of like-minded historians (26:24)
Retrospective perspective on the period preceding the collapse of the Soviet Union (28:33)
On the collapse of communism from a historian's perspective (32:33)
Hopes and apsirations for St. Petersburg State in the 1990s (38:30)
The fate of St. Petersburg State from its founding until now (42:23)
Scholars who influenced Koposov (49:32)
To access interview, click here: http://hdl.handle.net/1813/21952

Interview with Elizabeth McGuire--September 30, 2010

Interview with Elizabeth McGuire, Ph.D. UC Berkeley (2010) and currently academy scholar at the Harvard Academy of International and Area Studies. Interview conducted in Ithaca, NY on September 30, 2010.

The title of Dr. McGuire's book manuscript is "The Sino-Soviet Romance: How Chinese Communists Fell in Love with Russia, Russians, and the Russian Revolution."

Interview Themes

How McGuire came to her dissertation topic (00:43)

How the macro links to the micro in the history of the Sino-Soviet romance (03:14)

Practical challenges of writing transnational history across area studies boundaries (05:52)

McGuire's approach to narrative in her work (09:17)

The work of the historian in a post-area-studis world (11:33)

On training grad students to think transnationally (14:30)

Projects that can be undertaken with knowledge of Russian and Chinese (17:23)

Primary intellectual influences on McGuire (21:52)

To access interview, click here: http://hdl.handle.net/1813/21951

Interview with Claudia Verhoeven--May 13, 2010

Interview with Claudia Verhoeven, Assistant Professor of History at Cornell University. Interview conducted in Ithaca, NY on May 13, 2010.

Professor Verhoeven is the author of The Odd Man Karakazov: Imperial Russia, Modernity and the Birth of Modern Terrorism, published by Cornell University Press in 2009.

Interview Themes

What Verhoeven hoped to achieve with The Odd Man Karakazov (00:58)
Greatest challenge of writing the book (10:02)
How historians learn to recognize the new in history (16:29)
Primary influences on Verhoeven's research and writing thus far (24:44)
Implications of Verhoeven's work for the field of Russian history (31:38)
Recent works published that suggest what is interesting now (38:00)
Verhoeven's plans for future research (40:05)
To access interview, click here: http://hdl.handle.net/1813/17395

Interview with Igor Tchoukarine--April 22, 2010

Interview with Igor Tchoukarine, recent Ph.D. from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris. Interview conducted in Ithaca, NY on April 22, 2010.

Tchoukarine's dissertation is on tourism in socialist Yugoslavia from 1945 to the end of the 1960s.

Interview Themes

How Tchoukarine came to do research on tourism (00:45)
Comparison between French, Canadian and US academic approaches to the region (01:52)
Challenges of bringing together multiple national contexts into single doctoral thesis (04:35)
Area studies training and its benefits/drawbacks (06:55)
Tchoukarine's self-definition as historian (08:53)
Future research plans relating to the Adriatic Sea (09:52)
The important unanswered questions in the field (11:22)
Defining the Balkans as a region (14:01)
Tchoukarine's family origins as they relate to the field (16:27)
First encounters with the Adriatic Sea (24:01)
To access interview, click here: http://hdl.handle.net/1813/17394

Interview with Jeremy King--March 15, 2010

Interview with Jeremy King, Associate Professor of History at Mount Holyoke College. Interview conducted in Ithaca, NY on March 15, 2010.

Professor King is author of the book Budweisers into Czechs and Germans: A Local History of Bohemian Politics, 1848-1948, published by Princeton University Press in 2002.

Interview Themes

What brought King to the field and how his approach to it has changed over time (00:33)

On King's work as transition from national to post-national history (06:00)

Alternative loci of identity formation besides nationalism (11:17)
How we should teach the next generation about nationalism (18:12)

Territorialization of nationhood in the 20C (25:33)

How knowledge of langauges affects research and findings (37:20)

How to deal with the conceptual disappearance/invisibility of East-Central Europe (44:02)

What is yet to be done in this field (53:38)

To access interview, click here: http://hdl.handle.net/1813/17393

Interview with Bradley Abrams--March 3, 2010

Interview with Bradley Abrams, independent historian (Ph.D. Stanford). Interview conducted in Ithaca, NY on March 3, 2010.

Dr. Abrams is the author of Struggle for the Soul of the Nation: Czech Culture and the Rise of Communism, published in 2004. He is now working on a project on communist-era consumerism.

Interview Themes

How Abrams came to write his first book (00:50)

Reception of Abrams' work in Czech Republic/Slovakia (05:25)

Changes Abrams has observed across the 1989 threshold within the region and the field (10:45)

How the history of consumption fits into a pan-European narrative (22:15)

How we should train the next generation of graduate students (27:37)

To access interview, click here: http://hdl.handle.net/1813/17392

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