Bulgaria
Former CWIHP Fellow Publishes New Book on the Sino-Soviet Split
May 24, 2012
Former CWIHP Fellow Jordan Baev publishes new book on the Eastern European perspective of the Sino-Soviet split. more
East European Studies Junior Scholars' Training Seminar
Apr 04, 2012
The European Studies program is now accepting applications for its Junior Scholars' Training Seminar - a scholarship opportunity for graduate students (MA and above) working towards a degree in the social sciences and humanities with a regional focus on Central and Eastern Europe, including the Baltic states. The application deadline has been extended until May 18, 2012. more
Former CWIHP Fellow Publishes New Book on the Sino-Soviet Split
May 24, 2012Former CWIHP Fellow Jordan Baev publishes new book on the Eastern European perspective of the Sino-Soviet split.
East European Studies Junior Scholars' Training Seminar
Apr 04, 2012The European Studies program is now accepting applications for its Junior Scholars' Training Seminar - a scholarship opportunity for graduate students (MA and above) working towards a degree in the social sciences and humanities with a regional focus on Central and Eastern Europe, including the Baltic states. The application deadline has been extended until May 18, 2012.
Kristen Ghodsee Wins Two Book Prizes for Muslim Lives in Eastern Europe
Sep 19, 2011Kristen Ghodsee has won two prizes for Muslim Lives in Eastern Europe: Gender, Ethnicity and the Transformation of Islam in Postsocialist Bulgaria, a book she worked on as a fellow at The Wilson Center from 2005 to 2006.
Embracing Democracy in the Western Balkans
December 07, 2011 // 1:00pm — 2:00pm
"Embracing Democracy in the Western Balkans" explores the complex and challenging facets of state-building and nation-building in weak states with little democratic experience and daunting socio-economic problems.
Lost in Transition: Ethnographies of Everyday Life After Communism
October 20, 2011 // 12:00pm — 1:00pm
Lost in Transition tells of ordinary lives upended by the collapse of communism. Through ethnographic essays and short stories based on her experiences with Eastern Europe between 1989 and 2009, Kristen Ghodsee explains why it is that so many Eastern Europeans are nostalgic for the communist past. Ghodsee uses Bulgaria, the Eastern European nation where she has spent the most time, as a lens for exploring the broader transition from communism to democracy. She locates the growing nostalgia for the communist era in the disastrous, disorienting way that the transition was handled. The privatization process was contested and chaotic. A few well-connected foreigners and a new local class of oligarchs and criminals used the uncertainty of the transition process to take formerly state-owned assets for themselves. Ordinary people inevitably felt that they had been robbed. Many people lost their jobs just as the state social-support system disappeared. Lost in Transition portrays one of the most dramatic upheavals in modern history by describing the ways that it interrupted the rhythms of everyday lives, leaving confusion, frustration, and insecurity in its wake.
Islam at the EU Border: Muslim Minorities in Greece and Bulgaria
February 23, 2010 // 1:00pm — 2:30pm
Over the last 20 years, Bulgaria and Greece have pursued variable and divergent policies toward their Muslim minorities. During a brief period near the end of the Communist regime, Bulgaria forced Turks to assimilate. This policy was abandoned by the democratic government that took power in the 1990s. At the same time, Greece recognized its Muslim minority and facilitated the "Turkification" of its Muslim citizens throughout the 1980s, but then abandoned that policy by blocking minority rights in the 1990s. Harris Mylonas suggested that these policy shifts are commonly explained by assumptions or models that link minority treatment, regime type, ideology and leadership personalities. Rejecting these hypotheses, Mylonas argued that the structure of the international system was the most salient indicator influencing the treatment of Muslim minorities in both countries.
Women in East European Politics
This conference aimed at exploring the experiences and the political goals of women elected to parliament in the postcommunist countries of East Central Europe and Russia. Since 1989, the political scene in Eastern Europe and Russia has changed swiftly. In many countries, women participated in the drive to transform the communist system through demonstrations, civil activism and roundtables.Yet, in the immediate transition period, civic participation of the population in general has declined and the social and political participation of women seems to have declined more than that of men. This difference is attributed in part to the fact that women have been more burdened by the complex adjustments to the social and economic transformations of their societies. In the last few years, however, women with good qualifications and professional experience are slowly gaining political power and influence in several countries.
144. Bulgaria After The Elections: Reform Process Underway
October 1997 - Over the course of 1996, economic collapse and prolonged political malfeasance seriously shook the integrity of the Bulgarian body politic. As a result, the government of the "new democratic majority," elected in April 1997, has taken a number of extraordinary measures to recapture the confidence of the population and the international community. Top priorities for the new cabinet of Ivan Kostov have been to attempt to liquidate organized crime, to rebuild the macro-economic and the state institutional frameworks, and to aid the population, which has been battered by economic decay. Public perceptions have made these tasks all the more difficult. The government has had to push for reforms before a population that for years has been exposed to the schemes of many previous "reformers."
133. Bulgaria's Best and Worst of Times
March 1997 - Two March meetings at the Wilson Center outlined the economic catastrophe and unprecedented political promise which have crowded into this small country. The political promise, only in part the consequence of catastrophe, must fulfill the long-delayed privatization of major enterprises and banks and construction of an iron-clad framework for legal business and transform the Bulgarian economy. Its partial criminalization over the past few years makes the legal framework, as John Lampe's recent trip reminded him, a crucial priority. Only full-scale reform will allow the economy to service its present foreign debt, attract private investment, and mobilize its domestic resources, human as well as financial.
Kristen R. Ghodsee
Assistant Professor, Gender and Women's Studies, Bowdoin College
As a graduate student in the late 1990s, I spent 14 months living in Bulgaria doing research on women's labor in the tourism industry in Bulgaria. I was fascinated by the multiple strategies that Bulgarian women were employing to survive the chaos of economic transition, and the apparent success...
Nida Gelazis
EducationM.A., Comparative European and International Law (LLM), European University Institute, Florence, Italy; B.A., Political Science, University of Chicago SubjectsBalkan Region,Constitutionalism,Democratization,East Europe,European Union,Human Rights,International Law ExperienceManagi...
