Women’s Narratives and the Postmemory of Displacement in Central and Eastern Europe

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xvi

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2. Women’s Narratives and the Postmemory of Displacement in Central and Eastern Europe: Introduction

   • Simona Mitroiu

   Pages 1-35

3. Generations and Narratives of (Post)Memory

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 37-37

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   2. The Transmutative Turn: Legacies of Loss and Love at the Source

      • Hannah Kliger

      Pages 39-64

   3. ‘Narrative Achieves an Amplitude’: Research-Creation, Postmemory, and the Aesthetics of Transmission

      • Sasha Colby

      Pages 65-85

   4. Entangled Memories of Expulsion and Resettlement in Post-1945 Germany and Poland: Dialogue in Two Voices

      • Linda Warley, Eva C. Karpinski

      Pages 87-106

4. Sites of (Post)Memory

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 107-107

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   2. Eva Hoffman’s Exit into History: Shifting Subject Positions

      • Alina Sufaru

      Pages 109-126

   3. Inherited Displacement and Relational Remembering in Once My Mother by Sophia Turkiewicz

      • Katarzyna Kwapisz Williams

      Pages 127-151

   4. Non-human Displacements: Narrative Remediations of Autobiography and Postmemory in Herta Müller’s Writing

      • Mihaela Ursa

      Pages 153-171

   5. Dubravka Ugrešić: Boundaries of (Post)Memory, Self, and Nation

      • Vanja Polić

      Pages 173-196

5. History and (Post)Memory

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 197-197

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   2. Gender-Structured Transmission of Post-displacement Memory in Contemporary Poland

      • Małgorzata Głowacka-Grajper

      Pages 199-219

   3. Postmemory and Women’s Displacement in Socialist Albania: Historical Methodologies as Response

      • Davjola Ndoja, Shannon Woodcock

      Pages 221-243

   4. Inheriting and Re-imagining Rights: Assessing References to a Soviet Past amongst Young Women in Neoliberal and Neoconservative Russia

      • Vikki Turbine

      Pages 245-267

6. Back Matter

   Pages 269-272

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This volume explores the different mechanisms and forms of expression used by women to come to terms with the past, focusing on the variety and complexity of women’s narratives of displacement within the context of Central and Eastern Europe. The first part addresses the quest for personal (post)memory from the perspective of the second and third generations. The touching collaboration established in reconstructing individual and family (post)memories offers invaluable insights into the effects of displacement, coping mechanisms, and resilience. Adopting the idea that the text itself becomes a site of (post)memory, the second part of the volume brings into discussion different sites and develops further this topic in relation to the creative process and visual text. The last part questions the past in relation to trauma and identity displacement in the countries where abusive regimes destroyed social bonds and had a lasting impact on the people lives.

• Memory
• Intergenerational
• Testimony
• Witness
• Survivor
• Genocide
• Polish
• Lithuania
• Belarus
• Ukraine
• Israel
• Germany

“This collaborative project will encourage other researchers interested in the history of population displacement and its effects on the formation of identities in postsocialist and postcolonial societies.”  (Tomas Balkelis, Biography, Vol. 42 (4), 2019)

“The present volume proposes a large variety of approaches to the politics of memory in Central and Eastern Europe, contributing with valuable insights on roots and routes of the past. Personal stories are intertwined with academic writing in comprehensible and conscious research, not losing sight of the structures of remembering because identity defines the next generations and could be easily manipulated.” (Maria Fărâmă, Metacritic Journal for Comparative Studies and Theory, Vol. 5 (1), July, 2019)

• Department of Interdisciplinary Research, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University, Iasi, Romania

  Simona Mitroiu

Simona Mitroiu is Senior Researcher at Alexandru Ioan Cuza University, Romania. She is the editor of the volume Life Writing and Politics of Memory in Eastern Europe (Palgrave MacMillan, 2015). Her research focuses on European culture, identity narrative, remembrance process in the former communist states, memory and life writing.

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