Interpreting Emotions in Russia and Eastern Europe

Bringing together important new work by an international and interdisciplinary group of leading scholars, Interpreting Emotions in Russia and Eastern Europe approaches emotions as a phenomenon complexly intertwined with society, culture, politics, and history. The stories in this book involve sensitive aristocrats, committed revolutionaries, aggressive nationalists, political leaders, female victims of sexual violence, perpetrators and victims of Stalinist terror, citizens in the former Yugoslavia in the wake of war, workers in post-socialist Romania, Balkan Romani "Gypsy" musicians, and veterans of the Afghan and Chechen wars. These essays explore emotional perception and expression not only as private, inward feeling but also as a way of interpreting and judging a troubled world, acting in it, and perhaps changing it. Essential reading for those interested in new perspectives on the study of Russia and Eastern Europe, past and present, this volume will appeal to scholars across the social sciences and humanities who are seeking new and deeper approaches to understanding human experience, thought, and feeling.

Mark D. Steinberg is Professor of History at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and editor of the journal Slavic Review. His most recent books include Proletarian Imagination: Self, Modernity, and the Sacred in Russia, 1910–1925 and A History of Russia, with Nicholas Riasanovsky, 8th edition. Valeria Sobol is Associate Professor and Language Program Coordinator at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and author of Febris Erotica: Lovesickness in the Russian Literary Imagination.

This volume... presents a series of case studies on the construction, representation, and historical significance of emotion. Though focused on Russia and, to a lesser degree, southeastern Europe, the contributions range widely over time—from the late eighteenth century to the present, and among disciplines—from history, literature, and cultural studies, to sociology and anthropology.... Taken as a whole, this volume demonstrates the vitality of this small but growing field within Russian and east European studies.

Peter N. Stearns, Provost and Professor of History, George Mason University:

A significant collection that advances a key subject in an important regional history, it should also be of interest to comparativists.