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The author considers martyrdom as a voluntary human sacrifice. Pesthy argues that all the peoples in the environment in which Christianity came into being are characterized by an ambiguous and often hypocritical attitude toward human sacrifice. In modern Christianity, martyrs are real sacrifices, not symbolical ones.

Focusing upon a region in Southern Bulgaria, a region that has been the crossroads between Europe and Asia for many centuries, this book describes how former Ottoman Empire Muslims were transformed into citizens of Balkan nation-states.

The collection of well-researched essays assesses the uses and misuses of history 25 years after the collapse of Soviet hegemony in Eastern Europe.

Bessarabiamostly occupied by modern-day republic of Moldovawas the only territory representing an object of rivalry and symbolic competition between the Russian Empire and a fully crystallized nation-state: the Kingdom of Romania. This book is an intellectual prehistory of the Bessarabian problem, focusing on the antagonism of the national and imperial visions of this contested periphery. Through a critical reassessment and revision of the traditional historical narratives, the study argues that Bessarabia was claimed not just by two opposing projects of 'symbolic inclusion,' but also by two alternative and theoretically antagonistic models of political legitimacy. By transcending the national lens of Bessarabian / Moldovan history and viewing it in the broader Eurasian comparative context, the book responds to the growing tendency in recent historiography to focus on the peripheries in order to better understand the functioning of national and imperial states in the modern era.

The essays in this book provide interesting contributions to the ongoing debate concerning the representation of differing cultures, i.e., the "image of the Other" in the early modern period.

This book presents pieces of evidence, which - taken together - lead to an argument that goes against the grain of the established Cold War narrative.

This book is a tribute to the memory of Victor Zaslavsky (1937-2009), sociologist, emigre from the Soviet Union, Canadian citizen, public intellectual, and keen observer of Eastern Europe.

This book is an expanded, larger-format, and more highly illustrated version of a smaller book released by CEU Press in 2011. It presents and comments on an extensive set of religious and personal photographs and illustrations that depict people along with divine beings or absent loved ones.

The attack on the World Trade Center in 2001, followed by similarly dreadful acts of terror, prompted a new interest in the field of the apocalyptic. There is a steady output of literature on the subject (also referred to as "e;the End Times.) This book analyzes this continuously published literature and opens up a new perspective on these views of the apocalypse. The thirteen essays in this volume focus on the dimensions, consequences and transformations of Apocalypticism. The authors explore the everyday relevance of the apocalyptic in contemporary society, culture, and politics, side by side with the various histories of apocalyptic ideas and movements. In particular, they seek to better understand the ways in which perceptions of the apocalypse diverge in the American, European, and Arab worlds. Leading experts in the field re-evaluate some of the traditional views on the apocalypse in light of recent political and cultural events, and, go beyond empirical facts to reconsider the potential of the apocalyptic. This last point is the focal point of the book.

Malaria has existed in Greece since prehistoric times. Its prevalence fluctuated depending on climatic, socioeconomic and political changes. The book focuses on the factors that contributed to the spreading of the disease in the years between independent statehood in 1830 and the elimination of malaria in the 1970s. By the nineteenth century, Greece was the most malarious country in Europe and the one most heavily infected with its lethal form, falciparum malaria. Owing to pressures on the environment from economic development, agrarian colonization and heightened mobility, the situation became so serious that malaria became a routine part of everyday life for practically all Greek families, further exacerbated by wars. The country's highly fragmented geography and its variable rainfall distribution created an environment that was ideal for sustaining and spreading of diseases, which, in turn, affected the tolerance of the population to malaria. In their struggle with physical suffering and death, the Greeks developed a culture of avid quinine consumption and were likewise eager to embrace the DDT spraying campaign of the immediate post WW II years, which, overall, had a positive demographic effect.

This book addresses the social, functional and symbolic dimensions of urban space in today's world.

Exploring theater practices in communist and post-communist Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria, this book analyzes intertextuality or "inter-theatricality" as a political strategy, designed to criticize contemporary political conditions while at the same time trying to circumvent censorship.

This volume addresses the broad spectrum of challenges confronting the university of the 21st century. Elkana and Klopper place special emphasis on the questions regarding the very idea and purposes of universities, especially as viewed through curriculum-what is taught-and pedagogy-how it is taught. The ideas recommended here for reform concern especially undergraduate or Bachelor degree programs in all areas of study, from the humanities and social sciences to the natural sciences, the technical fields, law, medicine, and other professions. The core thesis of this book rests on the emergence of a 'New Enlightenment', which requires a revolution in curriculum and teaching in order to translate the academic philosophy of global contextualism into universal practice or application. The university is asked to revamp teaching in order to foster critical thinking that would serve students their entire lives. This book calls for universities to become truly integrated rather than remaining collections of autonomous agencies more committed to competition among themselves than cooperation in the larger interest of learning.

Based on published primary and secondary materials and oral interviews with some eighty communal and organizational leaders, experts and scholars, this book provides a comparative account of the reconstruction of Jewish communal life in both Germany and in Austria (where 98% live in the capital, Vienna) after 1945. The author explains the process of reconstruction over the next six decades, and its results in each country. The monograph focuses on the variety of prevailing perceptions about topics such as: the state of Israel, one's relationship to the country of residence, the Jewish religion, the aftermath of the Holocaust, and the influx of post-soviet immigrants. Cohen-Weisz examines the changes in Jewish group identity and its impact on the development of communities. The study analyzes the similarities and differences in regard to the political, social, institutional and identity developments within the two countries, and their changing attitudes and relationships with surrounding societies; it seeks to show the evolution of these two country's Jewish communities in diverse national political circumstances and varying post-war governmental policies.

This study presents the changing situation of the Roma in the 2nd half of the 20th century. It examines the effects of the policies of the Hungarian state towards minorities by analyzing legal regulations, policy documents, archival sources and sociological surveys.

Where Currents Meet treats the Ukrainian and Russian components of cultural experience in Ukraine's East as elements of a complex continuum. This study of cultural memory in post-Soviet space shows how its inhabitants negotiate the historical legacy they have inherited. Tanya Zaharchenko approaches contemporary Ukrainian literature at the intersection of memory studies and border studies, and her analysis adds a new voice to an ongoing exploration of cultural and historical discourses in Ukraine. This scholarly journey through storylines explores the ways in which younger writers in Kharkiv (Kharkov in Russian), a diverse, dynamic, but understudied border city in east Ukraine today come to grips with a traumatized post-Soviet cultural landscape. Zaharchenko's book examines the works of Serhiy Zhadan, Andrei Krasniashchikh, Yuri Tsaplin, Oleh Kotsarev and others, introducing them as a "e;doubletake"e; generation who came of age during the Soviet Union's collapse and as adults revisited this experience in their novels. Filling the space between society and the state, local literary texts have turned into forms of historical memory and agents of political life.

This is a broad panorama about the representation of Roma in official and academic documents of the past few decades.

In this book the author contends-and this is not a very widely held view-that Byzantium deserves to be considered an influential part of the broader development of Europe, even though its borders also reached out to the vast territories of Anatolia and the Caucasus, and to the eastern Mediterranean.

"It is not easy for historians to apply their methods to a period that does not yet have a clear end" is the first sentence in this book, revealing the challenge that a new generation of scholars took at writing an intellectual history of post-communist East Central Europe.

This book presents and analyzes artistic interactions both within the Soviet bloc and between the Western bloc between 1945 and 1989.

Pioneering studies reveal interesting trends and patterns that point to the growing importance of the mostly intellectual property-based intangible capital in relation to the level of GDP.

The twenty-four essays accompany, illustrate and underpin the conceptual framework elaborated in Post-Communist Mafia State, published in conjunction with this volume. Leading specialists analyze the manifestations of the current political regime in Hungary from twenty-four angles.

According to most historians, the Holocaust in Hungary represented a unique chapter in the singular history of what the Nazis termed as the "Final Solution" of the "Jewish question" in Europe.

The volume is an up-to-date reassessment of how the interplay between memory, history, and justice generates insights that examine the present and future of democracy without becoming limited to a Europe-centric framework of understanding.

This volume is driven by the conviction that the key to the establishment of stable liberal democracy anywhere in the world and, in this case, in Kosovo lies in the completion of three interrelated tasks: first, the creation of effective political institutions, based on the principle of the separation of powers (including the independence of the judiciary); second, the promotion of the rule of law; and, third, the promotion of civic values, including tolerance or ethnic/religious/sexual minorities, trust, and respect for the harm principle. In fact, there are problems across all three measures, including with judicial independence, with the rule of law, and with civic values. On the last of these, research findings show that the citizens of Kosovo rank extremely low on trust of other citizens, low on engagement in social organizations, and tolerance of gays, lesbians, and atheists, but high on trust in the political institutions of their country and in pride of their newly independent state.

The volume is an up-to-date reassessment of how the interplay between memory, history, and justice generates insights that examine the present and future of democracy without becoming limited to a Europe-centric framework of understanding.

Hybrid Renaissance introduces the idea that the Renaissance in Italy, elsewhere in Europe, and in the world beyond Europe is an example of cultural hybridization.

The book demonstrates that in the late 19th to early 20th centuries Darwinism strongly influenced celebrated Greek literary writers and other influential intellectuals, which fueled debate in various areas such as 'man's place in nature', eugenics, the nature-nurture controversy, religion, as well as class, race and gender.

This volume is driven by the conviction that the key to the establishment of stable liberal democracy anywhere in the world and, in this case, in Kosovo lies in the completion of three interrelated tasks: first, the creation of effective political institutions, based on the principle of the separation of powers (including the independence of the judiciary); second, the promotion of the rule of law; and, third, the promotion of civic values, including tolerance or ethnic/religious/sexual minorities, trust, and respect for the harm principle. In fact, there are problems across all three measures, including with judicial independence, with the rule of law, and with civic values. On the last of these, research findings show that the citizens of Kosovo rank extremely low on trust of other citizens, low on engagement in social organizations, and tolerance of gays, lesbians, and atheists, but high on trust in the political institutions of their country and in pride of their newly independent state.