Cosmopolitan Spaces in Odesa: A Case Study of an Urban Context is the first book to explore Odesa’s cosmopolitan spaces in an urban context from the nineteenth to twenty-first centuries. Leading scholars shed new light on encounters between Jewish, Ukrainian, and Russian cultures. They debate different understandings of cosmopolitanism as they are reflected in Odesa’s rich multilingual culture, ranging from intellectual history and education to music, opera, and literature. The issues of language and interethnic tensions, imperialist repression, and language choice are still with us today. Moreover, the book affords a historical view of what lay behind the Odesa myth, as well as insights into the Jewish and Ukrainian cultural revivals of the early twentieth century.

This interdisciplinary study of cosmopolitan spaces in Odesa explores topical issues in cultural diversity, ethnicity, literature, and socio-economic history. The book brings together leading scholars in a ground-breaking discussion of relations between Russians, Jews, and Ukrainians in one of the most fascinating multiethnic cities in eastern Europe.

Jewish Odesa: Negotiating Identities and Traditions in Contemporary Ukraine explores the rich Jewish history in Ukraine's port city of Odesa. Long considered both a uniquely cosmopolitan and Jewish place, Odesa's Jewish character has shifted since the Soviet Union collapsed and Ukraine gained its independence. Drawing on extensive field research, Marina Sapritsky-Nahum, examines how the role of Russian language and culture, memories of the Soviet political project, and Odesan's place in a Ukrainian national project have all been questioned in recent years. Jewish Odesa reveals how a city once famous for its progressive Jewish traditions has become dominated by Orthodox Judaism and framed by the agendas of international Jewish organizations embedded in a religiosity that is foreign to the city. Russia's war in Ukraine has forced Jewish identities with ties to Odesa to change still further.

The first English-language study of contemporary Russian poetry and its embrace of freedom—formally, thematically, and spiritually Since 1989 and the fall of the Berlin Wall, Russian poetry has exuded a powerful awareness of freedom, both aesthetic and political. No longer confined to the cultural underground, poets reacted with immediacy to events in the world. In The Freest Speech in Russia, Stephanie Sandler offers the first English-language study of contemporary Russian poetry, showing how these poems both express and exemplify freedom. This period was a time of great poetic flourishing for Russian poets, whether they remained in Russia or lived elsewhere. Sandler examines the work of dozens of poets—including Gennady Aygi, Joseph Brodsky, Grigory Dashevsky, Arkady Dragomoshchenko, Mikhail Eremin, Elena Fanailova, Anna Glazova, Elizaveta Mnatsakanova, Olga Sedakova, Elena Shvarts, and Maria Stepanova—analyzing their engagement with politics, performance, music, photography, and religious thought, and with poetic forms small and large. Each chapter investigates one of these topics, with extensive quotation from the poetry, including translations of all texts into English. In an afterword, Sandler considers poets’ responses to Russia’s war on Ukraine and the clampdown on free expression. Many have left Russia, but their work persists, and they remain vocal opponents of domestic political oppression and international violence.

Inspired by Virgil’s exquisitely ambivalent phrase “sunt lacrimae rerum” (there are tears of/for/in things), Andriy Sodomora, the Ukrainian “voice” of classical antiquity, has produced a series of original vignettes and essays about things: the big things in our lives (like happiness, loneliness, and aging); the small things we do or see daily, rarely paying attention to them (like a tree’s shadow or the kernels on an ear of corn); and the things (i.e., objects) to which we form connections. The selected stories presented here are the first English translations of Sodomora’s profoundly intellectual and intertextual prose. Through his nostalgic memories and recollections, Sodomora takes readers on a journey through western Ukraine, as well as through world literature, from ancient Greece and Rome to the poetry of Paul Verlaine and Federico García Lorca. This book has been published with the support of the Translate Ukraine Translation Program.

Kaleidoscopic Odessa provides a detailed account of how local conceptions of imperial cosmopolitanism shaped the city's identity in a newly formed state.

Discover the existential threats facing 50 unique places across the globe and the possible solutions that may save them from vanishing forever. Learn more about endangered places across all seven continents, from natural wonders like the rainforests of Borneo and the Great Barrier Reef to cultural icons like the Giza pyramids and New York City. Begin by understanding the background of each place, including key characteristics, history, and ecological or cultural significance, before going on to explore the problems that threaten the site. From rising sea levels and droughts to unchecked tourism, war, and civil unrest – and in many cases a combination of factors – readers will understand the complex and nuanced challenges facing these places. Each profile also includes a section on possible solutions. In some cases, these measures and programs are already being implemented, while in others individuals and governments will need to act quickly before it's too late. Curated lists of further readings at the end of each entry point readers to additional resources and act as a gateway to more in-depth study.

Winner of a National Jewish Book Award "Fascinating.…A humane and tragic survey of a great and tragic subject." —Jan Morris, Literary Review From Alexander Pushkin and Isaac Babel to Zionist renegade Vladimir Jabotinsky and filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein, an astonishing cast of geniuses helped shape Odessa, a legendary haven of cosmopolitan freedom on the Black Sea. Drawing on a wealth of original sources and offering the first detailed account of the destruction of the city's Jewish community during the Second World War, Charles King's Odessa is both history and elegy—a vivid chronicle of a multicultural city and its remarkable resilience over the past two centuries.

The eastern edge of Europe has long been in flux. The nature of the Ukrainian-Russian relationship is both complex and ambiguous. Prompted by the countries’ historical and geographical entanglement, Volodymyr Kravchenko asks what the words Ukraine and Russia really mean. The Ukrainian-Russian Borderland abandons linear historical interpretation and addresses questions of identity and meaning through imperial and geographic contexts. Dominated by imperial powers, Eastern Europe and its boundaries were in a constant state of flux and re-identification during the Russian imperial period. Here, the Little Russian early modern identity discourse both connects and separates modern Russian and Ukrainian identities and gives rise to issues of historical terminology. Mirroring the historical ambiguity is the geographical fluidity of the borders between Ukraine and Russia; Kravchenko situates this issue in the city of Kharkiv and Kharkiv University as both real and imagined markers of the borderland. Putting the centuries-long Ukrainian-Russian relationship into imperial and regional contexts, Kravchenko adds a new perspective to the ongoing discourse about relations between the two nations.

This book is like a time capsule containing a selection of interviews that aired on Hromadske Radio’s Ukraine Calling show. They capture what people were thinking during a critical time in the country’s history, from the July 2016 NATO Summit through to Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s 2019 landslide election victories. Decision makers, opinion makers, and other interesting people commented on events of the day as well as larger issues. Topics range from politics to sports, religion, history, war, books, diplomacy, health, business, art, holidays, foreign policy, anniversaries, public opinion to freedom of speech. Interview guests include Canada’s then Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland, writer Andrey Kurkov, Crimean political prisoner Hennadii Afanasiev, who was tortured in 2014, Ukraine’s acting Health Minister Ulana Suprun, American analyst/journalist Brian Whitmore, UNHRC’s Pablo Mateu, ethnologist Ihor Poshyvailo, investment banker Olena Bilan, Tufts University’s Daniel Drezner, a cameo appearance by Boris Johnson, and many more. Together these interviews provide a unique, diverse, and kaleidoscopic perspective conveying the substance, atmosphere, and flavor of Ukraine while it was on the receiving end of a hybrid war from Russia.