Transatlantic Central Europe : contesting geography and redefining culture beyond the nation / Jessie Labov.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Labov, Jessie.

Contributor:

Class of 1891 Department of Arts Fund.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Political culture.

History.

Social networks.

Transnationalism.

Social aspects.

Mass media--Social aspects.

Periodicals.

Relations.

Communist countries--Relations.

Communist countries.

Europe, Central--Relations.

Europe, Central.

Central Europe.

Cross currents.

Periodicals--Social aspects--Communist countries--History.

Periodicals--Social aspects--Europe, Central--History--20th century.

Mass media--Social aspects--Communist countries--History.

Mass media.

Mass media--Social aspects--Europe, Central--History--20th century.

Transnationalism--Social aspects--Europe, Central--History--20th century.

Social networks--Europe, Central--History--20th century.

Political culture--Europe, Central--History--20th century.

International relations.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

xv, 213 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Budapest, Hungary ; New York, NY : Central European University Press, 2019.

Summary:

"The proposed book takes one phenomenon, the reinvention of the idea of Central Europe in the mid-1980s, and demonstrates how its proponents developed a transnational set of practices connecting political-cultural journals with other media, disseminating this idea simultaneously in East and West. I use a range of new approaches and methodologies, including visualization of text corpora and mapping techniques, in order to reposition the political-cultural journal as one central node of a much larger cultural system. There is more at stake here than simply documenting the intellectual history of dissidents from this region in the late 1970s and 1980s, or the cultural politics that developed in their wake. By unearthing the legacy of Cold War-era border-crossing networks in the post-89 period, I show how the use of transnational, web-based media alongside of radio and print media follows the logic and practice of an earlier, 'dissident' generation of writers. Anyone who has followed the chain of electoral and economic challenges that the former satellite countries have faced over the last twenty years might ask what has happened to the liberal humanist philosophy that the term 'Central Europe' once evoked? This book follows its trajectories forward into the present day, reading both its material and intellectual traces in the post-socialist landscape"--Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Introduction: Movements of texts across borders

Part One. Cross Currents and its transatlantic Central European imaginary

The political-cultural journal : the case of Cross Currents

The debate over Central Europe from Jews to Yugoslavia

Part Two. Further essays in contesting geography and redefining culture

Borders, editors, and readers in motion

Transmedial work-arounds after 1989

Conclusion: Redefining transatlantic Central Europe today.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Class of 1891 Department of Arts Fund.

ISBN:

9786155053290

6155053294

9786155053146

6155053146

OCLC:

915774119