New book and podcast episode

Lucy Jeffery and Anna Váradi talk about their edited volume, Replaying Communism: Trauma and Nostalgia in European Cultural Production. The book is part of our Memory, Heritage and Public History in Central and Eastern Europe series.

You can purchase a copy here.

Replaying Communism explores how the 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.

The volume adopts an interdisciplinary approach to extend debates on the lasting impact of the communist era across Central and Eastern Europe with chapters thematically threaded through concepts including curation, immersion, interaction, humor and authenticity. A ‘trauma/nostalgia paradigm’ emerges as the tissue connecting the plurality of post-communist efforts employed to address the region’s contested pasts. Twelve original essays by contributors from both ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ the region detail how twenty-first-century cultural productions reengage the communist past. The impact of this past is seen as fundamental to understanding and shaping Central and Eastern European identities.

In the podcast we talked about what it means to “replay” communism, about the trauma/nostalgia paradigm in relation to cultural production, and about inter-generational experiences of media depicting the communist period. You can listen to the episode here. The podcast is also available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and on all other major podcasting platforms.