Environmental Cultures in Soviet East Europe

Anna Barcz holds a PhD in literary studies from the Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Science in Warsaw where she currently works as an Assistant Professor; she was the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow at the Trinity Long Room Hub (Trinity College Dublin) in 2018-2019, and Rachel Carson Centre Fellow (LMU, Munich) in 2019-2020. She is the author of books: Ecorealism: From Ecocriticism to Zoocriticism in Polish Literature (in Polish, 2016), and Animal Narratives and Culture: Vulnerable Realism (2017).

• IntroductionPart I Unknownland: Retelling the Environmental History of Soviet Eastern Europe through Literature and Cultural MemoryChapter 1 Narrating History across BordersChapter 2 History and LiteratureChapter 3 Environmental History Chapter 4 Cultural and Environmental MemoryPart II The Tired Village Chapter 1 Historical BackgroundChapter 2 Fatigue: Platonov’s Pit and the StalinoceneChapter 3 The Rural World is Gone: Peasants’ Voices Chapter 4 Satantango: Interconnecting the Human and Ecological Worlds Part III The Earth’s MemoryChapter 1 Mining Narratives and Their Historical Background Chapter 2 Unearthing the Story of Coal: DrachChapter 3 The Uranium Narrative: History of a Disappearance Part IV The Persistence of Chernobyl in Cultural MemoryChapter 1 Eastern European Risk Narrative: Chernobyl MemorialChapter 2 Contaminated Language: Wolf’s AccidentChapter 3 The Bees Knew: Alexievich’s ChroniclePart V Disturbed LandscapesChapter 1 Non-sites of Memory and the Violation of NatureChapter 2 Greening Sites of MemoryChapter 3 Bialowieza Forest across Eastern Europe’s Borders BibliographyIndex

[A] fascinating and productive read, tacking back and forth among the fields of Ecocriticism, Soviet Environmental History, and the History of Memory ... Environmental Cultures will reward a wide variety of readers with interests in environmental history, literary criticism, and environmental policy.