“Allegory in Early Greek Philosophy” – written by Jennifer Lobo Meeks – examines the role that allegory plays in Greek thought, particularly in the transition from the mythic tradition of the archaic poets to the philosophical traditions of the Presocratics and Plato.

Featured Review:

”At a time when philosophical writing is dominated by literal-mindedness, on the one hand, and 'unmasking,' on the other hand, Jennifer Lobo Meeks takes us back to the poetic origins of philosophy, when allegory preserved the mysterious character of poetic wisdom for the ancient Greek philosophers. Only this preservation of mystery could allow the philosopher to perform the speculative task of articulating the Whole. Beginning with the Presocratics and tracing out the senses of a Presocratic 'poetics,' she takes up the 'ancient quarrel' between philosophy and poetry in Plato, illuminating the use of philosophical myth in the dialogues. This book is not only a reminder of the philosopher’s original task, it helps us to understand the poverty of the present condition of philosophy." – Ann Hartle, Professor Emeritus, Emory University

About the book:

“Allegory in Early Greek Philosophy” explores how a mode of speech that "says one thing, but means another" is integral to philosophy, which otherwise seeks to achieve clarity and precision in its discourse. By providing the early Greek thinkers with a way of defending and appropriating the poetic wisdom of their predecessors, allegory enables philosophy to locate and recover its own origins in the mythic tradition. Allegory allows philosophy simultaneously to move beyond mythos and express the whole in terms of logos, a rational account in which reality is represented in a more abstract and universal way than myth allows.

About the author:

Jennifer Lobo Meeks, PhD, is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Perimeter College of Georgia State University. She specializes in ancient Greek philosophy and in the history of modern European philosophy.

Library access:

Ask your university library to get library access: For institutional customers, ibidem’s catalogue is available via direct online access for their users and / or employees.

Please contact our library service at library@ibidem.eu for further information and for ordering an online subscription.

ibidem author and Honorary President of Ukrainian PEN Dr. Mykola Riabchuk reflects his personal experiences as a Ukrainian intellectual in the context of the cultural and political "Europeanization" of his country since his youth in the Soviet era in his new book "At the Fence of Metternich's Garden".

On April 21st, he will discuss his experience with Ukraine experts in another online seminar of the new programme of webinars introducing the “Ukrainian Voices” book series.

The book launch of "At the Fence of Metternich's Garden" will be followed by a panel discussion. In addition to author Dr. Mykola Riabchuk, the panellists are James Sheer, an associate fellow of Chatham House, who wrote the foreword for Mykola’s book and Andreas Umland, series editor of “Ukrainian Voices” and “Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society”.

Date and Time

Wed, 21 April 2021

18:00 – 19:30 CEST

For more information and registration click here.

„Die verlorene Insel“ ist eine Sammlung faszinierender Reportagen von der besetzten Krim, die die namhafte ukrainische Journalistin Nataliya Gumenyuk im Zeitraum von 2014 bis 2019 bereist hat. Das Buch erzählt die wahren Geschichten und Tragödien der Menschen und ihrer Lebensumstände, die sich seit 2014 grundlegend verändert haben. Dieses Buch gibt ihnen eine Stimme.

Stimmen zum Buch:

„Die Annexion der Krim durch Russland hat die geopolitische Lage und die politische Weltkarte verändert. Und obwohl die Halbinsel eine so wichtige Rolle in der jüngsten Weltpolitik gespielt hat, ist der reale Alltag dort nur schwer greifbar. Nataliya Gumenyuk ist eine der wenigen Journalistinnen, die regelmäßig auf die Halbinsel reisen, intime Kenntnisse über die Krim haben und diese mit Haltung und einem Auge fürs Detail vermitteln. Das macht die Lektüre ihres Buches zu einem Genuss. Sie erweckt die Krim zum Leben und gewährt dem Leser exklusive Einblicke in den Alltag der Menschen im Auge des politischen Sturms.“ – Peter Pomerantsev, Journalist und Schriftsteller

„Dieses Buch handelt von der Krim, die wir verloren haben, von einer Halbinsel, die zu einer Insel gemacht wurde, und von den Menschen, die auf ihr geblieben sind. Vor allem aber geht es in diesem Buch darum, warum die Ukraine nicht Russland ist. Ein Must-read.“ – Serhii Plokhy, Professor für Ukrainische Geschichte, Harvard-Universität

„Dieses Buch ist eine Chronik der Okkupation. Nicht in dem Sinne, dass es die wichtigsten Ereignisse und die Verbrechen des Aggressors dokumentiert, um sie der internationalen Weltöffentlichkeit vorzulegen. Sondern in dem Sinne, dass es das tägliche Leben der Halbinsel und seiner Bewohner, ihre Gedanken und Ansichten vor Augen führt – seit Beginn der Annexion und für die darauffolgenden fünf Jahre. 2014 habe ich miterlebt, wie sich das Bewusstsein vieler Bewohner der Krim unter dem Einfluss der Ereignisse in ihrem direkten Umfeld und durch die aggressive Propaganda zu verändern begann. Doch in diesem Buch wird man völlig surrealen Veränderungen sozialer Rollen begegnen. Das ist ein anschauliches und bewegendes Buch. Ich rate jedem, dem die Krim nicht gleichgültig ist, zu diesem Buch.“ – Oleksandr Kolchenko, ukrainischer Aktivist von der Krim und politischer Häftling in Russland 2014-2019

Über das Buch:

„Die verlorene Insel“ ist eine Sammlung faszinierender Reportagen von der besetzten Krim, die die namhafte ukrainische Journalistin Nataliya Gumenyuk im Zeitraum von 2014 bis 2019 bereist hat. Das Buch erzählt die wahren Geschichten und Tragödien der Menschen und ihrer Lebensumstände, die sich seit 2014 grundlegend verändert haben. Seitdem leben die einen Bewohner der Krim unter Besatzung, die anderen schlicht in einem anderen Land. Doch wie sieht ihre Lebenswirklichkeit aus? Unternehmer und Rentner, Krimtataren, Studenten und Aktivisten, Menschenrechtler und Militärangehörige, Menschen mit unterschiedlichen politischen und ideologischen Ansichten – sie alle erzählen offen ihre Geschichten: Einige versuchen, ihrem stillen, dumpfen Schmerz Worte zu verleihen, andere haben genug vom Schweigen und der Angst. Dieses Buch ist die Stimme der annektierten Krim – in einer beeindruckenden Vielstimmigkeit von Einzelschicksalen, die zu einer einzigen großen und gemeinsamen Erzählung verschmelzen, die noch nicht abgeschlossen ist.

Über die Autorin:

Nataliya Gumenyuk ist Autorin, Dokumentarfilmerin und Journalistin mit dem Schwerpunkt Konfliktberichterstattung. Seit dem Euromaidan und Beginn des Krieges in der Ukraine 2014 berichtet sie über die Ereignisse im Donezbecken und reist als eine von wenigen Reportern regelmäßig auf die besetzte Krim. Gumenyuk war 2013 Mitgründerin und bis 2020 Sonderberichterstatterin des ukrainischen Internet-Fernsehsenders Hromadske TV. Sie hat in über 60 Ländern gearbeitet und ist die Autorin des 2015 in der Ukraine erschienenen Buches „Der Tahrir-Platz. Auf der Suche nach einer verlorenen Revolution über den Arabischen Frühling“. Gegenwärtig leitet sie das Public Interest Journalism Lab, welches auf die Popularisierung eines Journalismus im Dienste der Öffentlichkeit sowie die Überwindung gesellschaftlicher Polarisierung hinarbeitet.

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Montag ist Weltfrauentag und wir möchten daher auf unseren Titel „Unerhörte Ostfrauen“ aufmerksam machen.

Wie haben Frauen in Ostdeutschland ihr Leben erlebt? Was unterscheidet ihre Erfahrungen von denen der westdeutschen Frauen? Waren Frauen in Ostdeutschland emanzipierter und haben sie dieses auch so wahrgenommen?

Die Antworten bekommen Sie von den beiden Autorinnen Ellen Händler und Uta Mitsching-Viertel auf unserer Facebook-Seite.

Stimmen zum Buch:

"Eine beachtenswerte Sammlung, ein Buch, dem ich viele Leser wünsche."— Prof. Dr. Rita Süssmuth, Bundestagspräsidentin a.D.

„‚In der DDR gab es keine Frauenbewegung. Daran haben wir nicht gedacht, das war ein Westthema. Wir waren auch so gleichberechtigt.' Mit diesen Worten beendet Johanna ihre Geschichte. Mit ihren 100 Jahren ist sie die älteste von 37 ‚Ostfrauen‘, deren Stimmen in dem Buch ‚Unerhörte Ostfrauen. Lebensspuren in zwei Systemen‘ versammelt sind. […] Dabei unterscheidet sich ihre Erzählweise nicht weniger als ihr Lebensweg. Gerade durch die ungefilterte Art des narrativen Interviews gelingt es, ein vielseitiges und auch sehr intimes Bild der ‚Ostfrauen‘ zu zeichnen.“— neues-deutschland 09/03/2019, Ulrike Wagener

„Der besondere Blickwinkel dieses Buches ist: Die interviewten Frauen haben jeweils zwanzig Jahre in der DDR und nach dem Umbruch auch zwanzig Jahre in der BRD gearbeitet – so wie die Autorinnen auch. Damit sammelten sie Erfahrungen in zwei verschiedenen, ja entgegengesetzten gesellschaftlichen Systemen. Sie sind dadurch mehr als prädestiniert dafür, die Frage zu beantworten, ob und inwieweit Frauen in der DDR gleichberechtigt waren.“— Bulletin – Info 59 (10/2019)

"The Treblinka Death Camp: History, Biographies, Remembrance" is not the first book about the Treblinka death camp - but it is a stand-out. Webb and Chocholaty's work presents the definitive account of one of history's most notorious death factories, where some 800,000 people lost their lives. The Nazis who ran the camp, the Ukrainian guards and maids, the Jewish survivors, and the Poles who lived in the camp's shadow - every aspect is covered in this stunningly comprehensive work.

For this second, revised edition, the authors have incorporated new information and provided sources for the Jewish Memorial Roll.

Review:

"A mightily important book, one sure to contribute to both scholarly and popular understandings of this human inferno – highly relevant for those wanting to better understand the Nazis' unprecedented, industrialized mass-murder that formed such a horrifically integral part of the Holocaust." – Dr. Matthew Feldmann, Teesside University

About the book:

“The Treblinka Death Camp: History, Biographies, Remembrance” attempts to provide a Roll of Remembrance with biographies of the Jews who perished in the death camp as well as of those who escaped from Treblinka in individual efforts or as part of the mass prisoner uprising on August 2nd, 1943. It also includes unique and previously unpublished sketches of the camp's ramp area and gas chamber, drawn by the survivors. For this second, revised edition, the authors incorporated new information and provided sources for the Jewish Roll of Remembrance. A significant number of new entries have been added. The Roll of Remembrance has also been greatly expanded to include the names of Jews deported from Germany to Treblinka. In addition, more names have been added to the Perpetrators’ biographies, and other entries have also been enhanced with additional information.

About the author:

Chris Webb has been studying the Holocaust for over forty years. He is the co-founder of the Holocaust Education and Archive Research Team (H.E.A.R.T), one of the most visited websites on the Holocaust in the world.

Michal Chocholatý is a historian who focuses on Treblinka and Sobibor.

Library access:

Ask your university library to get library access: For institutional customers, ibidem’s catalogue is available via direct online access for their users and / or employees.

Please contact our library service at library@ibidem.eu for further information and for ordering an online subscription.

Our author Mychailo Wynnyckyj, Canadian-Ukrainian Professor and a first-hand observer of Maidan, held a book presentation live online in February and shared his insights about the Ukrainian Revolution of Dignity in conversation with Ukraine experts Professor Andreas Umland and Dr Olesya Khromeychuk. You can find a video of this fascinating discussion here. 

About the book

In his recent book Ukraine's Maidan, Russia's War, published as the first volume of the Ukrainian Voices book series, Professor Wynnyckyj provides a chronicle of Ukraine’s Maidan and Russia’s on-going war and puts forth an analysis of the Revolution of Dignity from the perspective of a participant observer.

About the series

The Ukrainian Voices book series includes English- and German-language monographs, edited volumes, document collections, and anthologies of articles authored and composed by Ukrainian politicians, intellectuals, activists, officials, researchers, entrepreneurs, artists, and diplomats. The series aims to introduce Western and broader audiences to Ukrainian explorations and interpretations of historic and current domestic as well as international affairs. The purpose of these books is to familiarize non-Ukrainian readers with how some prominent Ukrainians approach, research, and assess their country’s development and position in the world. The series was founded in 2019 and is edited by Andreas Umland.

In "History and Race in Caryl Phillips's The Nature of Blood," Maria Festa examines the 1997 novel "Caryl Phillips's The Nature of Blood," which deals with exclusion and discrimination throughout history, with a particular focus on the Jewish and African Diasporas. In her work Festa also provides a historical excursus on the concept of race.

Review:

"In her reading of Caryl Phillips’s The Nature of Blood, Maria Festa studies the unique ways in which the narrative of racism, Nazi camps, traumatic memory, and black consciosness meet the issues of historical imagination. Literature and traumatic fiction are here once again the source of a tenacious counter-memory." – Roberto Beneduce, Professor of Medical and Psychological Anthropology, University of Turin, and co-author of Frantz Fanon: Psychiatry and Politics

About the book:

This monograph examines Caryl Phillips’s The Nature of Blood (1997), a novel exploring recurring expressions of exclusion and discrimination throughout history with particular focus on Jewish and African Diasporas and the storytelling of its migrant characters. Particular attention is given to the analysis of characters revealing different facets of the Jewish question. Maria Festa also provides a historical excursus on the notion of race and considers another character alluding to Shakespeare’s Othello to expose the paradoxes of the relationship between subjugator and subjugated. The study makes the case that among the novel’s most remarkable achievements is Phillips’s effort to redress the absence of the Other from our history, that by depicting experiences of displacement, and by confronting readers with seemingly disconnected narrative fragments, The Nature of Blood is a reminder of the missing stories, the voices – marginalised and often racialized – that Western history has consistently failed to include in its accounts of the past and arguably its present.

About the author:

Maria Festa has an MA in Anglophone Postcolonial Literature from the Department of Foreign Languages, Literatures and Modern Cultures, University of Turin, Italy. She is contributor to and co-editor with Carmen Concilio of Word and Image in Literature and the Visual Arts (Mimesis International 2016). She has published articles on Anglophone cultures and literatures for the journals RiCognizioni, From the European South, Lectures du monde anglophone, CoSMo.

Library access:

Ask your university library to get library access: For institutional customers, ibidem’s catalogue is available via direct online access for their users and / or employees.

Please contact our library service at library@ibidem.eu for further information and for ordering an online subscription.

"The Child of the Sun", edited by Silvia Irina Zimmermann, focuses on the two Romanian Queen Consorts, Elizabeth (Carmen Sylva) and Marie of Romania. Both of whom became famous - even internationally - as writers during their lifetimes. This lovingly collected, critically edited volume contains the most valuable stories and essays of the Queen Consorts, either in English translation (Carmen Sylva) or in the original English version (Marie of Romania).

Review:

”Silvia Zimmermann’s merit is a significant one, namely that of rediscovering Carmen Sylva who has not only been a creator, but also an important mediator between the Romanian and the German culture. […] Zimmermann’s substantial work is inspiring for everyone involved in the scientific research of German-Romanian cultural studies.”—Prof. Dr. Maria Sass, University of Sibiu (Romania)

About the book:

“Carmen Sylva, when she discovered that I was writing, instead of laughing at me and being ironical about my modest attempts at literature, encouraged me from the very first in every way. She was getting old, her imagination was running dry, and she declared that mine had come just in time to replace hers, which was a generous thing to say. She declared that it was a happy and blessed discovery that I could hold a pen, and no end of kind and enthusiastic things. She spurred me on to write, and each time I had finished a story she immediately wanted to have it so as to translate it into German.” Queen Marie of Romania about Carmen Sylva (Queen Elisabeth of Romania). The history of the monarchy in Romania and of its four kings would be incomplete without the story of the queen consorts, who seem to have been even more fascinating personalities than the kings were. Especially the first two queen consorts, Elisabeth (Carmen Sylva) and Marie of Romania, became famous as writers during their lifetime. They both wrote in their mother tongues, Elisabeth in German and Marie in English, and published many of their books, not only in Romania, but also abroad, thus reaching a widespread readership, worldwide publicity, and literary recognition.

About the author:

Dr. Silvia Irina Zimmermann is coordinator of the Research Center Carmen Sylva of the Princely Archive of Wied. She has published several books, new editions, and studies about the life and writings of Carmen Sylva (born Princess Elisabeth of Wied, the first Queen of Romania).

Library access:

Ask your university library to get library access: For institutional customers, ibidem’s catalogue is available via direct online access for their users and / or employees.

Please contact our library service at library@ibidem.eu for further information and for ordering an online subscription.

Mychailo Wynnyckyj on "UKRAINE'S MAIDAN, RUSSIA'S WAR": Online seminar, February 17th

ibidem author and first-hand observer of Maidan, Mychailo Wynnyckyj, will discuss its global dimensions with Ukraine experts in an online seminar presented by the British-Ukrainian Aid.

The webinar is dedicated to the 7th Anniversary of the Revolution of Dignity in Ukraine. A book launch of the first volume of our “Ukrainian Voices” series – "Ukraine's Maidan, Russia's War" – will be followed by a panel discussion. In addition to Mychailo Wynnyckyj, the panelists are Dr Olesya Khromeychuk, guest editor of ibidem’s Journal of Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society, vol. 6.1 on Gender, Nationalism, and Citizenship in Anti-Authoritarian Protests in Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine, and Andreas Umland, series editor of “Ukrainian Voices” and “Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society”.

Date and Time

Wed, 17 February 2021

18:00 – 19:30 CET

More information and registration - to click here 

Once tickets are booked, participants will be sent the Joining Details with a Zoom link on 16th February. There is a limited number of FREE tickets, they'll be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis.