Participant Info

First Name
Melissa
Last Name
Feinberg
Country
United States
State
NY New York
Affiliation
Rutgers University, New Brunswick
Website URL
https://history.rutgers.edu/people/faculty/details/56-professors/315-feinberg-melissa
Keywords
Eastern Europe, gender history, Cold War, history of state socialism
Availability
Media Contact
Additional Contact Information
PhD
PhD

Personal Info

Photo
About Me

I am a modern European historian, with particular interests in gender history, Eastern Europe, the history of human rights, political culture, emotions in politics, and the history of feminism. In my 2017 book, Curtain of Lies: The Battle over Truth in Stalinist Eastern Europe, I examine how truth became a political weapon during the first years of the Cold War, concentrating on the activities of East European émigrés and exiles and their role in constructing Western knowledge about the Soviet bloc. I am currently working on a history of Eastern Europe from 1945 to 2007.

Recent Publications

Curtain of Lies: The Battle over Truth in Stalinist Eastern Europe (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017)

Elusive Equality: Gender, Citizenship and the Limits of Democracy in Czechoslovakia, 1918-1950 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2006)

“The Other Side of the Curtain,” Aeon December 11, 2017 https://aeon.co/essays/cold-war-propaganda-the-truth-belonged-to-no-one-country

“Democracy at Home: Debating Family and Marriage Law in the First Czechoslovak Republic,” in Sara Kimble and Marion Vera Rowekamp, eds., New Perspectives in European Women’s Legal History (New York: Routledge: 2016): 76–96.

“Soporific Bombs and American Flying Discs: War Fantasies in East-Central Europe, 1948–1956,” Zeitschrift für Ostmitteleuropa-Forschung 62, no. 3 (2013): 450–471.

“Fantastic Truths, Compelling Lies: Radio Free Europe and the Response to the Slánský Trial in Czechoslovakia,” Contemporary European History 22, no. 1 (2013): 107–125.

“Battling for Peace: The Transformation of the Women’s Movement in Cold War Czechoslovakia and Eastern Europe,” in Joanna Regulska and Bonnie G. Smith, eds., Women and Gender in Postwar Europe (London: Routledge, 2012): 16–33.

“The Survey Project: Researching the Everyday Experiences of Rural Czech Women and Imagining Modernity at the End of the Second World War,” Journal of Women’s History 23, no. 4 (2011): 82–107.

“Die Durchsetzung einer neuen Welt. Politische Prozesse in Osteuropa, 1948–1954,” in Bernd Greiner, Christian Th. Müller and Dierk Walter, eds. Angst im Kalten Krieg (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2009): 190–219.

Media Coverage
Country Focus
Czechoslovakia
Expertise by Geography
Eastern Europe
Expertise by Chronology
20th century
Expertise by Topic
Gender, Politics, Women