RESEARCH INTERESTS
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 Curtain of Lies: The Battle over Truth in Stalinist Eastern Europe (2017) 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. Communism in Eastern Europe (2022) considers how Communist governments came to Eastern Europe, how they changed their societies, and the legacies that persisted after their fall. It concentrates on the politics of daily life, using the voices and experiences of ordinary people to provide a window into the multifaceted ways Communism transformed Eastern Europe. The Routledge History of Communism (2026), co-edited with Lisa A. Kirschenbaum takes a similar approach to the global history of Communism. Its chapters focus on the ways politics interacted with individual experience throughout the lifespan of different Communist regimes, from the Bolshevik Revolution to the present day.
COURSES REGULARLY TAUGHT
Undergraduate
- 510:327 20th Century Europe
- 510:383 Communism and Post-Communism
- 510:391 Human Rights
- 506:215/988:260 The Modern Girl
Graduate
- 510:541 Colloquium: Global Socialism
- 510:599 PDR in Modern Europe
- 510:601 Colloquium: History of Human Rights
- 510:601 Colloquium: Eastern Europe
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
The Routledge History of Communism
Routledge, 2026
Communism in Eastern Europe
Routledge, 2022
Curtain of Lies: The Battle over Truth in Stalinist Eastern Europe
Oxford University Press, 2017
Elusive Equality: Gender, Citizenship, and the Limits of Democracy in Czechoslovakia, 1918–1950
University of Pittsburgh Press, 2006
Books
- The Routledge History of Communism (co-edited with Lisa A. Kirschenbaum) (Routledge, 2026)
- Communism in Eastern Europe (Routledge, 2022)
- Curtain of Lies: The Battle over Truth in Stalinist Eastern Europe (Oxford University Press, 2017)
- Elusive Equality: Gender, Citizenship and the Limits of Democracy in Czechoslovakia, 1918-1950 (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2006)
Recent Articles and Essays
- Melissa Feinberg and Paul Hanebrink, “Communism, Populism and Ethnonationalism: The Road from Communism to Illiberalism in East-Central Europe,” in Melissa Feinberg and Lisa A. Kirschenbaum, eds., The Routledge History of Communism, (Routledge, 2026): 470–484.
- “From Godless Amazons to the Gender Lobby: Anti-gender Activism in Interwar Czechoslovakia and today's Czech Republic” in Martin Schulze Wessel, ed., Political Crisis in Central Europe in the Interwar Period and Today (Berghahn Books, 2026): 85–101
- “Judt’s Postwar Behind a Conceptual Iron Curtain,” in “Tony Judt’s Postwar at 20," Contemporanea, Rivista di storia dell'800 e del '900 3 (2025): 469–475
- Comment on Mitra Sharafi, “Abortion in South Asia, 1860–1947: A Medico-Legal History,” Modern Asian Studies 59, no.2 (2025): 290–294
- “The Promise of Gender Equality in Interwar Central-Eastern Europe,” in Katalin Fabian, Janet Elise Johnson and Mara Lazda, eds., The Routledge International Handbook of Gender in Central-Eastern Europe and Eurasia (New York: Routledge, 2021): 303–310
- “The Other Side of the Curtain,” Aeon December 11, 2017 https://aeon.co/essays/cold-war-propaganda-the-truth-belonged-to-no-one-country
Works in Progress
- More Babies for the Bloc: Debating Population Decline in Socialist East-Central Europe
- Europe Transformed: From the Postwar to the Present (under contract with Cambridge University Press)