Comparative Literature - Peter Lang

Langues et littératures slaves · Slavistik · Slavonic Languages and Literatures
17
T
Marta Rabikowska (ed.)
he Everyday of Memory explores manifestations
of the communist past in
the everyday lives of Eastern Europeans today.
Representing a wide range of disciplines
including cultural studies, film studies, urban
studies, sociology, media, literature and
art, the contributors to this book question
the myth of a homogeneous Eastern European
identity (as opposed to its historical
Western counterpart). At the same time, they
insist that those who experienced communism
have a ‘right to remember’, and that
their memories offer an alternative to the
project of globalizing capitalism.
The volume presents a critique of the current
withdrawal of Eastern European politics
from discussion of the communist past, in
which the latter tends to be regarded as an obstacle
to the neoliberal transition to democracy.
As the book’s microstudies of the everyday
life of memory show, communism has
never been isolated from its capitalist nemesis:
the two systems have been intertwined in
the post-Enlightenment interplay of the humanist
ideals that underpin the modernist
project. Through a close observation of the
unconstrained ways in which memory works,
this book offers an insight into the paradoxes
of the two ideological powers which posited
the subservient homo sovieticus against the
civilized homo economicus. The book also invites
debate about the contemporary relevance
of the ideological polarization of communism
and capitalism.
Contents: Marta Rabikowska: The Memory
of the Communist Past – An Alternative
Order Information
The Everyday of Memory
Between Communism and Post-Communism
Oxford, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Frankfurt am Main, New York, Wien, 2013.
323 pp., 17 b/w ill.
pb. ISBN 978-3-0343-0847-2
CHF 68.– / € D 59.90 / € A 61.60 / € 56.– / £ 45.– / US-$ 72.95
eBook ISBN 978-3-0353-0458-9
CHF 71.65 / € D 66.64 / € A 67.20 / € 56.– / £ 45.– / US-$ 72.95
Present? • David Williams: ‘The loser bug
has made its way into our hearts’: Literature
and the Ruins of the Everyday • Kate Duncan:
In Peter’s Cellar • Ferenc Hammer: Teenage
Metamorphoses: Elements of Change in
First-Person Memories about the First Pair
of Jeans • Ben Gook: Something’s Always
Left Over: Putting the GDR on Film in Heise’s
Material • Joanna Zylinska: Will You Ever
Go Back? • David Mabb: Art into Everyday
Life • Blagovesta Momchedjikova: The Way
the City Makes Me Feel: An Investigation
into Urban Sensibilities in Post-Communist
Sofia • Andreea Lazea: Urban Landmarks
Between Memory and Uses: The People’s
House in Bucharest • Pavla Alchin: Requiem
for the Partisan: Towards the History
of the Odehnal’s Chata (not necessarily in
chronological order) • Mariana Markova:
Continuity or Change: Biographical Narratives
of the Last Soviet Generation • Marta
Rabikowska: The Everyday of Memory in the
Ruins of the Post-Communist Future: Performative
Nostalgia, Perception and Narrating
Identity • Oleksandra Shchur: Ukrainian
Women between Communism and Post-
Communism: Memory and the Everyday of
Ideology in Oksana Zabuzhko’s The Museum
of Abandoned Secrets • David Cunningham:
Afterword: Communism, Modernity and
Memories of the Everyday.
Marta Rabikowska is Principal Lecturer
in Creative Industries at the University of
Hertfordshire. She researches cultural identities,
lifestyles and representations, and she
is also a community activist and a filmmaker.
Walter Smyrniw
Ukrainian Science Fiction
Historical and Thematic Perspectives
Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Frankfurt am Main,
New York, Oxford, Wien, 2013. 388 pp.
pb. ISBN 978-3-0343-1323-0
CHF 92.– / € D 82.– / € A 84.30 / € 76.60 /
£ 61.– / US-$ 99.95
eBook ISBN 978-3-0351-0612-1
CHF 96.95 / € D 91.15 / € A 91.92 / € 76.60 /
£ 61.– / US-$ 99.95
A
s the first of its kind, the present study
of Ukrainian science fiction encompasses
both the historical and thematic features
of this genre. It contains a discussion
of the representative and the most imaginative
Ukrainian science fiction works published
by writers residing in Ukraine and
abroad.
The initial part of the study focuses on
the historical legacy of Ukrainian science fiction,
with a special emphasis on the authors
of the formative period and the émigré authors
who wrote after the Second World War,
but were totally ignored during the Soviet
political hegemony. It is followed by an analysis
of the impact of Soviet ideology on the
science fiction that prevailed in Ukraine from
the 1920s to the late 1950s.
With the relaxation of political controls
over literature, publications of Ukrainian science
fiction after the 1960s were so numerous
that it was not feasible to obtain and to
examine all these items. However, the novels
and stories that were utilized in this study
do provide a representative sample of the
themes that comprise the main thrust of
Ukrainian science fiction from the early 1960s
to the end of the 20th century.
Walter Smyrniw is Professor Emeritus
at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario,
Canada. He published numerous articles on
nineteenth and twentieth-century Russian
and Ukrainian literature in North American
and European Slavic journals. He is the author
of Ukrainian Prose Manual and Turgenev’s
Early Works and co-editor of Studies in
Honour of Louis Shein and Socialist Realism
Revisited.
Please use the order form in this catalogue
or order online at www.peterlang.com
Order online at www.peterlang.com