"Bukovina: The Life and Death of an East European Borderland" (Princeton University Press, December 2025)

The making and remaking of Bukovina, a disputed Eastern European borderland, from the eighteenth century to the present day

Bukovina, when it has existed on official maps, has always fit uneasily among its neighbors. The region is now divided between Romania and Ukraine but has long been a testing ground for successive regimes, including the Habsburg Empire, independent and later Nazi-allied Romania, and the Soviet Union, as each sought to reshape the region in its own image. In this beautifully written and wide-ranging book, Cristina Florea traces the history of Bukovina, showing how this borderland, the onetime buffer between Christendom and Islam, found itself at the forefront of modern state-building and governance projects that eventually extended throughout the rest of Europe. Encounters that play out in borderlands have proved crucial to the development of modern state ambitions and governance practices.

Drawing on a wide range of archives and published sources in Russian, Ukrainian, German, Romanian, French, and Yiddish, Florea integrates stories of ethnic and linguistic groups—rural Ukrainians, Romanians, and Germans, and urban German-speaking Jews and Poles—who lived side by side in Bukovina, all of them navigating constant reconfiguration and reinvention. Challenging traditional chronologies in European history, she shows that different transformations in the region occurred at different tempos, creating a historical palimpsest and a sense among locals that they had lived many lives.

A two-hundred-year history of a region shaped by the conflicting pulls of imperial legacies and national ambitions, Bukovina reveals the paradoxes of modern history found in a microcosm of Eastern Europe.

About the speaker

Atina Grossmann is Distinguished Professor of History at the Cooper Union in New York City where she teaches courses on modern Europe, Fascism and National Socialism, the Holocaust, refugees and migration in global context as well as gender and sexuality studies. Relevant publications include: The Surviving Remnant: Documents on Jewish Displaced Persons in Postwar Germany 1945-1950 (with A.Kramen, A Patt, T. Lewinsky, 2024); chapter on “Aftermath” (with K. Bohus) in Cambridge Encyclopedia of the Holocaust (2015); Our Courage/Unser Mut: Jews in Europe after 1945 (with K. Bohus 2020), Shelter from the Holocaust: Rethinking Jewish Survival in the Soviet Union (with M.Edele and S. Fitzpatrick 2017), Wege in der Fremde: Deutsch-jüdische Begegnungsgeschichte zwischen New York, Berlin, und Teheran (2012), and Jews, Germans, and Allies: Close Encounters in Occupied Germany (Princeton 2007/09, German edition Wallstein 2012). as well as “Trauma, Privilege, and Adventure: Jewish Refugees in Iran and India” (in Jews and Colonialism, ed. Stefan Vogt, 2023). In 2022-23 she was the Ina Levine Invitational Senior Scholar in Residence at the Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, USHMM. Her current research focuses on” Jewish Refugees from National Socialism in Iran and India: Between ‘Orient’ and European Catastrophe” as well as the entanglements of family memoir and historical scholarship.

Join us to learn about opportunities for graduate students with the Einaudi Center for International Studies. This session will discuss how to discover or strengthen global interests, including research and travel grants, guest lectures, fellowships, and more!

Can't attend? Email programs@einaudi.cornell.edu for more information.

In light of the war with Iran, Arang Keshavarzian's book talk will now be a roundtable discussion on recent events. This conversation will examine the war with Iran beyond the headlines, situating this latest outbreak of violence within broader historical, social, and regional contexts and debates.

The event is hosted by the Southwest Asia and North Africa Program (SWANA), part of the Einaudi Center for International Studies, and cosponsored by the Department of Near Eastern Studies.

Panel

Arang Keshavarzian (Middle East Studies, New York University)Golnar Nikpour (History, Dartmouth College)Seema Golestaneh (SWANA director and Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University)Moderator: Mostafa Minawi (History, Cornell University).

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About Arang Keshavarzian

Arang Keshavarzian is Professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University. His research and teaching centers on questions of political economy of Iran and the wider Middle East. He has had a particular interest in the relationship between spatialization, capitalism, and political power. He is the author of Bazaar and State in Iran: The Politics of the Tehran Marketplace (Cambridge UP, 2007) and co-editor, with Ali Mirsepassi, of Global 1979: Geographies and Histories of the Iranian Revolution (Cambridge UP, 2021). His most recent book is Making Space for the Gulf: Histories of Regionalism and the Middle East (Stanford UP, 2024). It is the recipient of the 2025 Roger Owen Prize from MESA for best book in economic history, economics, and political economy, as well as an honorary mention for the 2025 biannual book award from the Association for Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Studies. His articles on various topics have appeared in several edited volumes as well as Politics & Society; International Journal of Middle East Studies, Geopolitics; Economy & Society; International Journal of Urban and Region Research, and Middle East Report.

Guðni Th. Jóhannesson, former President of Iceland and current professor of history at the University of Iceland, explores Greenland’s complex path from colony to emerging nation—and its future, as seen from its closest European neighbor.

Drawing on Iceland’s own experience of gaining independence from Denmark, he examines the historical ties, political tensions, and geopolitical stakes that shape Greenland’s future amid growing great-power interest in the Arctic. The lecture offers a unique perspective from nearby Iceland on Greenland and broader questions of sovereignty, self-determination, and small-state resilience in an era of global change.

About the Speaker

Guðni Th. Jóhannesson is a 2026 Messenger Lecturer at Cornell. He served as the sixth president of Iceland from 2016 to 2024. Running as an independent, he won the 2016 election with a plurality of the vote, becoming the youngest person ever to serve as Iceland's president. His approval rating reached an unprecedented 97% in his first term. During his years in office, he elevated Iceland's international profile and advocated for human rights, inclusive democracy, climate action, and renewable energy solutions. As a historian at the University of Iceland, his research focuses on modern Icelandic history. He has published works on the Cod Wars, the 2008–2011 Icelandic financial crisis, and the Icelandic presidency.

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About the Event

This lecture is hosted by the Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies, part of the Einaudi Center for International Studies. It is cosponsored by the Einaudi Center's Institute for European Studies and the Cornell Brooks School Tech Policy Institute.

Guðni Th. Jóhannesson's visit is sponsored by the Messenger Lecture series.

“Voices of Resilience” is a lecture-recital presentation developed in collaboration with the Ukrainian Classical Voice Project, a non-profit organization, and enabled by the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies and sponsored by the Institute for European Studies.

The program interweaves performance with spoken reflection to explore the role of music as a vehicle for peace-making, solidarity, and unity in the face of hardship.

Centering marginalized and underrepresented creative voices, the event highlights music as a powerful site of cultural memory, resilience, and collective expression.

Through music and dialogue, the presentation engages themes of culture, poetry, narrative, migration, and peace pedagogy, affirming the vital role of artistic collaboration in fostering global understanding, shared hope, and a collective pursuit of a more just and peaceful future.

The Laidlaw Scholars Leadership and Research Program promotes ethical leadership and international research around the world—starting with the passionate leaders and learners found on campuses like Cornell. Open to first- and second-year students, the two-year Laidlaw program provides generous support to carry out internationally focused research, develop leadership skills, engage with community projects overseas, and become part of a global network of like-minded scholars from twenty universities worldwide.

At this session, we'll share more information about the program, including independent international projects with the Einaudi Center’s trusted partners around the world for the summer 2026 leadership-in-action portion of the program, and tips for writing a successful application. Applications are due January 12, 2026.

Register here. Can’t attend? Contact programs@einaudi.cornell.edu.