History/Area Studies

This award-winning film documents the tragic consequences of the forgotten holocaust in Ukraine. While Stalin was selling millions of tons of wheat to Western markets, people in Ukraine were dying of brutal starvation at a rate of 25,000 a day. Up to 10 million innocent victims perished in the famine brought by ruthless decree. this film probes the tragic consequences of Ukraine's national struggle for greater cultural and political autonomy in the 1920s and 1930s. through rare archival footage, the results of Stalin's lethal countermeasures unfold in harrowing detail and include moving eyewitness accounts of surviviors as well as commentary by noted journalists and public officials.

On May 5-8, 2005, the Jackson School of International Studies' Asia Centers held an open conference and symposium entitles Islam, Asia, Modernity at the University of Washington, Seattle campus. This exciting event brought together preeminent scholars and public intellectuals from Asia, Europe, and the United States to share their expertise about the changing practices and politics of Asian Islam. The conference consisted of a public lecture by the cultural theorist Ziauddin Sardar, two days of panel discusiions, and a pedagogy workshop for invited advanced graduate students preparing to teach about Islam in Asia. This DVDs record the lecutres and discussions. While the topic areas were global in scope, several speakers focus on Islam in Central Asia and the Former Soviet Union.

Chicago was once the second-largest Bohemian city outside the Czech lands. The Czechs first settled, serendipitously, behind the notorious O'Leary barn. Spared the Great Fire of 1871, they were displaced several blocks south by the ensuing land crush. There they built more permanent quarters in the community that became known as Pilsen, a neighborhood whose name and architecture survive to recall its Bohemian origins. The thriving Czechs soon began a century-long move westward from Lawndale to Cicero to Berwyn, and today they flourish across the western suburbs. From the desolation of the 1915 Eastland disaster, in which hundreds of victims were of Czech descent, to the triumphant Depression-era election of Czech-born mayor Antonín Čermák, Czechs of Chicagoland depicts how the Czech community and its great leaders, benevolent societies, and charitable and social organizations have shaped and continue to shape the course of Chicago's history.

The first Bosnians settled in Chicagoland in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, joining other immigrants seeking better opportunities and better lives. As the former Yugoslavia continued to find its identity as a nation over the last century, the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina sought stability and new beginnings in the city of Chicago — many intending to return to their homeland. Today as many as 70,000 Bosnians and their descendants live in the Chicago area, representing different faiths, backgrounds, and motivations for making America their new home. Bosnian Americans of Chicagoland examines the journey of this group, its legacy, and its traditions and customs that have lasted since the first immigrants arrived a century ago.

Greeks arrived in America with the expectation that freedom would permit their families to thrive and be successful. With hard work, belief in the Orthodox faith, and commitment to education, Greeks ascended in Chicago, and America, to positions of responsibility and success. Today Greek Americans are among the wealthiest and most successful of immigrant groups. Greeks recognized a historical imperative that they meet the challenges and aspirations of a classical Hellenic heritage. Greeks in Chicago celebrates the rich history of the Greek community through copious pictorial documentation.

Edited by Victor A. Friedman. Translated by Christina E. Kramer, Grace E. Fielder, and Catherine Rudin.

A comic classic of world literature, Aleko Konstantinov’s 1895 novel Bai Ganyo follows the misadventures of rose-oil salesman Ganyo Balkanski (“Bai” is a Bulgarian title of intimate respect) as he travels in Europe. Unkempt but endearing, Bai Ganyo blusters his way through refined society in Vienna, Dresden, and St. Petersburg with an eye peeled for pickpockets and a free lunch. Konstantinov’s satire turns darker when Bai Ganyo returns home—bullying, bribing, and rigging elections in Bulgaria, a new country that had recently emerged piecemeal from the Ottoman Empire with the help of Czarist Russia.

Bai Ganyo has been translated into most European languages, but now Victor Friedman and his fellow translators have finally brought this Balkan masterpiece to English-speaking readers, accompanied by a helpful introduction, glossary, and notes.

Excerpts from over 100 travel writings of Europe, from 16th c. pilgrimage diaries thru early specimens of modern tourism accounts to 20th c. impressions from the other side of the Iron Curtain By focusing on east European travel writings, this work enlarges both the documentary base and the terms of the debate over a rich source for discussions of identities and mentalities; knowledge and power; gender; and cultural change.

The texts – chosen for their relevance, but literary criteria have also been taken into account – illustrate the variety of ways in which east Europeans have written about the West. Most of the material is presented in English for the first time or, in a few cases, rescued from dusty oblivion in long out-of-print volumes. Each text is introduced with a short passage placing it in context.

This is the first volume of the three-part set East Looks West. Vol. 2. Under Eastern Eyes. A Comparative Introduction to East European Travel Writing on Europe, 1550–2000; Vol. 3. A Bibliography of East European Travel Writing on Europe.

According to the publisher, Pance Velkov, this publication is aimed primarily at tourists arriving in Macedonia and at those who have an interest in religion, religious structures and Byzantine art. The book is richly illustrated and it includes photographs and descriptions of the most significant monuments of culture from the Skopje region, viz., St. Panteleimon, Nerezi; St. Niketas, Banjani; St. Andrea?, Matka; Marko's Monastery, the Mustafa-Pasha Mosque, Kurumli An, and St. Spas. A version in the Macedonian language is also available.

In this visually stunning companion volume to a New York Public Library exhibition, art historian S. A. Mansbach offers an overview of the progressive eastern European graphic artists and writers who, in the first four decades of the 20th century, redefined and reshaped culture and its social meanings as they sought to comprehend and interpret the dynamics of a modern, postwar age. Illustrated in color with more than 50 examples of modernist publications, it includes works on paper by such artists as El Lissitzky, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Karel Teige, Niklavs Strunke, Victor Brauner, and others, all drawn from the Library's extensive holdings of eastern and southeastern European materials. The volume also includes an essay on the growth and development of the Library's collections in this field, as well as a checklist of the exhibition.

The Mentor-Unesco Art Series brings you Masterpieces of Early Russian Art in full color, finest quality, full-page and double-page reproductions. This handsome volume of Russian icons from the twelfth to the fifteenth century features an informative introduction by authority Victor Lasareff, who discusses the history of the Russian schools of painting, describes the themes of the icons, and studies the artists style, composition, and use of color.