Study Group for Minority History

SGMH

Podcast by SGMH

  1. 08.09.2022

    Episode 33. Ronald G. Suny: Armenia, Soviet Studies and the Future of Minority History

    In our final episode (for now), we talk to Ronald Grigor Suny, the William H. Sewell Junior. Distinguished University Professor of History and Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan and Emeritus Professor of Political Science and History at the University of Chicago. Besides a long-standing reputation for having been an early exponent and pioneer of Soviet and Nationalist Studies as areas of historical inquiry, Professor Suny has also garnered international recognition for his work on the South Caucasus before and after 1917, most notably Armenia. Surveying how these fields of study he originally championed have since developed following the end of the Cold War in 1991, Suny not only provides us with a comprehensive retrospective but also offers an eloquent rebuttal to critiques of having normalised Soviet domination while seeking to delegitimise national identities. Such perspectives represent these specialisms' failure to break from a Western-academic mooring and provide an effective counter-discourse to nationalist narratives. Nowhere is this better encapsulated than in the Republic of Armenia. Despite ongoing efforts at producing a more balanced picture, understanding of the Soviet past continues to be subsumed into wider notions of perpetual victimisation at the hands of external aggressors. Through this, Suny weaves together the key analytical throughlines explored in this podcast and illustrates the many challenges for those who study minority history. "Eastern Europe's Minorities in a Century of Change", a podcast series on the history of minorities and minority experiences in twentieth-century Central and Eastern Europe prepared by the BASEES Study Group for Minority History to mark the Institute for Historical Research’s centenary. The co-conveners of the Study Group are Olena Palko (Birkbeck) and Samuel Foster (University of East Anglia)

    Episode 33. Ronald G. Suny: Armenia, Soviet Studies and the Future of Minority History
  2. 01.09.2022

    Episode 32. Petre Matei: Localizing the history of the 'forgotten victims': The Roma in Romania

    In this week’s episode, Petre Matei (Elie Wiesel National Institute for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania) talks to Raul Cârstocea (Maynooth University) about the history of the Roma in Romania, from the late 19th century to the present. Petre Matei argues for a more nuanced history of the Roma, questioning dominant narratives of their persecution, deportation, and mass murder that tend to focus on the level of the state and/or of a monolithic Romanian nationalism by factoring in the local dimension, which in many cases was decisive in determining who was deported and who was not. He also emphasises the importance of seeing the Roma not exclusively as victims (of slavery, genocide, the Holocaust), but also as active agents partly shaping their own history – if not in circumstances of their own making. The discussion concludes by considering the educational potential of initiatives that examine both the local dimension of the Holocaust – and point out that it did not happen ‘elsewhere’ – and instances of Roma political mobilisation and resistance, in Romania and beyond. Elie Wiesel National Institute for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania: https://www.inshr-ew.ro/proiecte/ The Forgotten Genocide. The Fate of the Sinti and Roma: https://romasinti.eu/ "Eastern Europe's Minorities in a Century of Change", a podcast series on the history of minorities and minority experiences in twentieth-century Central and Eastern Europe prepared by the BASEES Study Group for Minority History to mark the Institute for Historical Research’s centenary. The co-conveners of the Study Group are Olena Palko (Birkbeck) and Samuel Foster (University of East Anglia)

    Episode 32. Petre Matei: Localizing the history of the 'forgotten victims': The Roma in Romania
  3. 05.08.2022

    Episode 28. Natalia Aleksiun: Poland's Jews in the 20th century

    In this episode, Natalia Aleksiun, Harry Rich Professor of Holocaust Studies at the University of Florida, discusses the social dynamics of interethnic relations in interwar Poland, particularly in relation to the Holocaust. One of the characteristics discussed is the double marginalisation of Jewish women, which made them more susceptible to discrimination regarding education, professional choices and family life. Focusing on her numerous studies of Jewish communal life in Eastern Galicia, Professor Aleksiun explores what she calls “intimate violence”, showing how those who survived the Holocaust came to perceive the question of local collaboration and assistance when attempting to make sense of their strained relations with people whom they had known before the war. The episode also considers the impact of immediate post-war developments, examining how Poland’s newly established Communist regime shape subsequent patterns of popular and state antisemitism through its encouraging of Jewish mass emigration. "Eastern Europe's Minorities in a Century of Change", a podcast series on the history of minorities and minority experiences in twentieth-century Central and Eastern Europe prepared by the BASEES Study Group for Minority History to mark the Institute for Historical Research’s centenary. The co-conveners of the Study Group are Olena Palko (Birkbeck) and Samuel Foster (University of East Anglia) Photo credit: Yad Vashem Archives

    Episode 28. Natalia Aleksiun: Poland's Jews in the 20th century
  4. 28.07.2022

    Episode 27. Catherine Wanner & Julia Buyskykh: Religious Minorities in Ukraine and Poland

    In this episode, Catherine Wanner, Professor of History, Anthropology and Religious Studies at the Pennsylvania State University, and Julia Buyskykh, Research Fellow at the Institute of History of Ukraine (National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine) and co-founder of the Centre for Applied Anthropology, discuss religious minorities in Ukraine and Poland. Drawing upon their long-term ethnographic fieldwork among Greek Catholic and Protestant communities Wanner and Buyskykh suggest the need to rethink how religious “minorities” should be framed within academic and public discourse. While Greek Catholics in both Ukraine and Poland, for instance, may represent a minority in purely numerical terms, this is historically outweighed by their public visibility and extensive influence across the civic, cultural, religious and political spheres. Moreover, alongside Lutherans, Baptists and other protestant groups, the Greek Catholics have started to reengage with their ancestral, denominational and territorial legacies, from which they had previously grown distant during the Communist era. Wanner and Buyskykh also discuss the role of religion and religious communities in view of Russia’s aggression on Ukraine. More information: www.wglivedreligion.org ; https://duh-i-litera.com/bookstore/antropologija-religi-porivnjalni-studi-vid-prikarpattja-do-kavkazu "Eastern Europe's Minorities in a Century of Change", a podcast series on the history of minorities and minority experiences in twentieth-century Central and Eastern Europe prepared by the BASEES Study Group for Minority History to mark the Institute for Historical Research’s centenary. The co-conveners of the Study Group are Olena Palko (Birkbeck) and Samuel Foster (University of East Anglia) Photo credit: Greek Catholic memorial pilgrimage to the mountain of Zjavlinnia (Apparition) near Fredropol, Subcarpathia province, Poland, August 2018. Photo by Julia Buyskykh

    Episode 27. Catherine Wanner & Julia Buyskykh: Religious Minorities in Ukraine and Poland

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Podcast by SGMH