• Melissa Feinberg
  • Melissa Feinberg
  • Professor of History and Department Chair
  • Degree: Ph.D., University of Chicago
  • Rutgers : At Rutgers since 2008
  • Specialty: Modern Eastern Europe: Czechoslovakia; Women's and Gender History
  • Office: 113D and 108 Van Dyck Hall
  • Phone: 848-932-8343

 

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 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. My 2022 book, Communism in Eastern Europe, examines how Communist governments came to Eastern Europe, how they changed their societies, and the legacies that persisted after their fall. Written from the perspective of the 21st century, this book shows how Eastern Europe’s trajectory since 1989 fits into the longer history of its Communist past. Rather than focusing on high politics, Communism in Eastern Europe 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.

COURSES REGULARLY TAUGHT

Undergraduate

  • 510:327 20th Century Europe
  • 510:383 Communism and Post-Communism
  • 510:391 Human Rights
  • 506:402 History Seminar: The Cold War
  • 506:215/988:260 The Modern Girl

Graduate

  • 510:549/550 Seminar in Women's and Gender History
  • 510:560 PDR in Women's and Gender History
  • 510:599 PDR in Modern Europe
  • 510:601 Colloquium: History of Human Rights
  • 510:601 Colloquium: Eastern Europe

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

Books

Recent Articles and Essays

  • “The Source: Radio Free Europe Information Item #687/54 (29 January 1954)—The Decline of Family Life,” (translation from the Czech with critical introduction) Aspasia 10 (2016): 89–101.
  • “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 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.