Hi 🤗 you said eastern europe and slavic history right? So what parts do you like? What people or events or times etc? Thanks and have a wonderful rest of the weekend 😋😎
I did my BA in slavistics, so more the philological direction, but now im doing my master’s in slavistics and a curriculum called interdisciplinary eastern european studies which combines slavistics with history and and sociology :) but the rona made me extremely slow in my uni progress so I’m not exactly well versed on the history aspect yet 😅
But yeah, my focus is the western slavs, mainly Czechia, and the periods there im most interested in are probably the soviet period and the old old middle ages with the legends :) i’m doing a third master’s in gender studies (because i am insane) and am particularly interested in gender dynamics in eastern europe and the lgbt issue.
what i find very interesting is the czech founding myth revolving around the magical woman libuše, mother of the people so to speak, who as the men demanded not to be ruled over by a woman anymore, gathered her amazons and fought women against men in what is called the maidens war. the men won for different reasons in different retellings, but it was always a dishonorable ambush. i mean, the power. actually considering to analyze several retellings of that story and find out its meaning for gender dynamics for my thesis in literary science but who knows when that will ever happen haha
a big thing for me is also the perception of eastern europe in the west. i was actually born in czechia even tho i grew up in austria and i mean i noticed how people treat and treated my mother and what reactions i get sometimes, despite having no accent and the most austrian last name imaginable. like, half the population of viennese people that have lived here for generations has czech heritage and names bc we were in the same monarchy for quite a fucking while lol, and czechia is, as slovakia, extremely close to vienna. but since the iron curtain that feeling of neighbourdom has really died. what i’m trying to say is despite this shared history the last century and capitalist narrative has merged all of eastern europe into this big ball of “lol theyre just poor backward people what is there to expect after decades of CoMmUnIsM” to hide the fact why theyre actually economically struggling is The West Exploiting Them With Capitalism (e.g. talking about how poor romania is while exploiting their most important resources —> the forests and corrupt politicians being like yeah sure friend!) while demonizing eastern european immigrants and then wondering why eastern europe doesnt really care about cooperating with the west anymore. not to get carried away but this is a huge huge thing i’m also very interested in.
I hope i gave a satisfying answer AT ALL haha,
a wonderful sunday to you!! 💕
