The Transformative Power of Women's Life Writing in Post-Communist Europe
East-West Perceptions and Memory
1st Edition
Will be published approx. on 30. October 2026
Book
Hardback
294 pages
978-1-032-98828-3 (ISBN)
Description
This edited volume explores how women's life writing from post-Communist Europe turns the continent's most persistent fault line-the East-West divide-into a space of confrontation, vulnerability, and radical reimagining.
Examining personal narratives from seven European countries (Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Ukraine, Germany, France, and the Netherlands), the volume demonstrates how women "write back" to Western gazes, decolonize memory, and unsettle entrenched hierarchies that continue to position Eastern Europe as the 'other Europe' even after the fall of communism and EU integration. By combining transnational, transdisciplinary, and embodied approaches from the fields of life writing, literature and memory studies, this volume proposes alternative modes of scholarly engagement that privilege personal experiences, relationality, vulnerability, and genuine exchange over abstraction, offering new perspectives on how European identities, histories, and futures might be thought together.
Facilitating a distinctive collaboration among scholars from Eastern and Western Europe, The Transformative Power of Women's Life Writing in Post-Communist Europe will appeal to scholars and researchers with interests in women's life writing, European memory, memory studies, contested memory, post-communist Europe, and East-West perceptions.
Examining personal narratives from seven European countries (Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Ukraine, Germany, France, and the Netherlands), the volume demonstrates how women "write back" to Western gazes, decolonize memory, and unsettle entrenched hierarchies that continue to position Eastern Europe as the 'other Europe' even after the fall of communism and EU integration. By combining transnational, transdisciplinary, and embodied approaches from the fields of life writing, literature and memory studies, this volume proposes alternative modes of scholarly engagement that privilege personal experiences, relationality, vulnerability, and genuine exchange over abstraction, offering new perspectives on how European identities, histories, and futures might be thought together.
Facilitating a distinctive collaboration among scholars from Eastern and Western Europe, The Transformative Power of Women's Life Writing in Post-Communist Europe will appeal to scholars and researchers with interests in women's life writing, European memory, memory studies, contested memory, post-communist Europe, and East-West perceptions.
Reviews / Votes
'The Transformative Power of Women's Life Writing in Post-Communist Europe is a rich and engaging collection that examines women's life narratives shaped by post/communist experiences, migration, and East-West imaginaries. Through studies of memoir, autobiography, graphic narrative, autofiction, and embodied forms of self-representation, it introduces readers to compelling voices, recent experiences, and cultural contexts often overlooked in European literary and memory studies. Emerging from sustained East-West scholarly encounters, the volume is distinguished by its collaborative and dialogic ethos as well as the breadth and originality of its corpus. Thoughtfully curated and wide-ranging in scope, it will be of interest to scholars working at the intersection of life-writing, memory, and European studies.'Ioana Luca, Professor of English, National Taiwan Normal University, Taiwan.
'This carefully edited interdisciplinary volume is a fruit of the collective labour of gathering cultural testimony and witnessing to the vicissitudes of memory in the period of post-communist transformations in Central and Eastern Europe. Focusing on such places as Ukraine, the former GDR, Romania, Slovakia, and others, the essays gathered here speak to the challenges of post-Cold War dialogue among the continent's disparate regions and identities. Attuned to the intersectionalities of gender, sexuality, geography, and race, the collection offers a much-needed intervention into Europe's grand imaginary, exposing its geographical fractures, historical amnesia, and orientalizing tendencies along the West-East fault lines. This contribution widens an auto/biography studies' perspective by introducing a cluster of experimental and embodied life writing practices that use their liminal positionality as a site of memory activism.'
Eva C. Karpinski, Professor of Gender and Women's Studies, York University, Toronto, Canada.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Academic and Postgraduate
Illustrations
9 s/w Abbildungen, 9 s/w Photographien bzw. Rasterbilder, 1 s/w Tabelle
1 Tables, black and white; 9 Halftones, black and white; 9 Illustrations, black and white
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
ISBN-13
978-1-032-98828-3 (9781032988283)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Simona Mitroiu is a Senior Researcher at "Alexandru Ioan Cuza" University of Ia?i, Romania.
Marleen Rensen is an Associate Professor in the Department of European Studies at the University of Amsterdam.
Anna Seidl, a former principal dancer of the HNB (Het National Ballet, Amsterdam), is Senior Researcher at the University of Amsterdam.
Ivana Taranenkova is a Senior Research Fellow and Director of the Institute of Slovak Literature at the Slovak Academy of Sciences in Bratislava.
Catherine Teissier is a Senior Lecturer for German Studies at Aix-Marseille University, France.
Marleen Rensen is an Associate Professor in the Department of European Studies at the University of Amsterdam.
Anna Seidl, a former principal dancer of the HNB (Het National Ballet, Amsterdam), is Senior Researcher at the University of Amsterdam.
Ivana Taranenkova is a Senior Research Fellow and Director of the Institute of Slovak Literature at the Slovak Academy of Sciences in Bratislava.
Catherine Teissier is a Senior Lecturer for German Studies at Aix-Marseille University, France.
Content
Introduction: East-West Perceptions: Power Dynamics, Memory, and Agency. Part I. Witnessing, Recognition, and Justice. 1.Witnessing, Recognition, and Justice. 2."My Kind of Visit Home": Autobiographical Graphic Novels about the Fall of Communism. 3.Eastern European Experience in Romanian Women's Life Writing. Part II. Resilient and Persistent Subjects in Post-Communist and Post-Translational Life Writing. 4.Resilient and Persistent Subjects in Post-Communist and Post-Translational Life Writing. 5.Resilience as Decolonial Practice: (Re)shaping Ukrainian Cultural Identity through "Collective Life Writing". 6.Facing Disruptive Forces: Resilient Identities in Slovak Life Narratives. Part III. Dialogue in Literature: Connecting Worlds and Perspectives. 7.Dialogue in Literature: Connecting Worlds and Perspectives. 8.Transcending Boundaries: Intergenerational and Cultural Dialogues in Contemporary Polish Writing. 9.Dialogue in Autofiction: Representing "Ossis of Color" in 1000 Coils of Fear. Part IV. Cultural Mediation and Community. 10.Cultural Mediation and Community. 11.Migration and Cultural Mediation between Europe's East and West: Sana Valiulina and Mira Feticu. 12.Negotiating between the East and the West: Polish Autobiographical Writing and Cultural Mediation. Part V. Embodied Life Writing: Enactment and Connectedness. 13.Embodied Life Writing: Enactment and Connectedness. 14.Embodied Life Writing: Navigating Decolonial and Post-Communist Patterns of Perception. 15.Enactment and Connectedness Through Walking: The Walks by Rimini Protokoll. Part VI. Dialogic Positionalities: Toward a Reflexive Practice. 16.Authors' Reflections. Intimate Scholarship: Beyond the Gaze? 17.Participatory Roma Research or Camouflaged Objectification? On Epistemic Asymmetries and Exploitation in Academia under the Guise of Good Intentions.