Simona Mitroiu Books

Focusing on the complexities of memory in Eastern European ex-communist states, this volume explores how various methods, including oral history and cultural institutions, shape the remembrance of the past. It employs diverse political and cultural theories to analyze the multiplicity of voices and narratives that emerge from these recollections. Featuring well-documented case studies, the book highlights an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the intricate relationship between memory and narrative in a post-communist context.

This book analyzes the impact of abusive regimes of power on women's lives and on their self-expression through close readings of life writing by women in communist Romania. In particular, it examines the forms of agency and privacy available to women under totalitarianism and the modes of relationships in which their lives were embedded. The self-expression and self-reflexive processes that are to be found in the body of Romanian women's autobiographical writings this study presents create complex private narratives that underpin the creative development of inclusive memories of the past through shared responsibility and shared agency. At the same time, however, the way these private, personal narratives intertwined with collective and official historical narratives exemplifies the multidimensional nature of privacy as well as the radical redefinition of agency in this period. This book argues for a broader understanding of the narratives of the communist past, one that reflects the complexity of individual and social interactions and allows a deep exploration of the interconnected relations between memory, trauma, nostalgia, agency, and privacy.