REEI Staff

Professor Padraic Kenney

Director of REEI and Professor of History
E-mail: pjkenney@indiana.edu

My work as a writer and a teacher has been shaped by a desire to understand the dynamics of communist societies, in particular those of Eastern Europe. I have written on the experience of workers in early Communist Poland, on the gendered nature of anti-communist opposition, on social movements in the fall of communism in Central Europe, and on Eastern Europe's road from communism. Currently, I am researching a book on political prisoners in the twentieth-century world. In this project, I reach as far back as Poland under Tsarist Russian rule, and as far afield as South Africa and Ireland, to investigate whether there are common experiences in the political prisoner's cell that might help us to understand this loneliest of political protests. Courses I teach include several that center on the experience of communism or on political protest, as well as courses in Eastern European and Polish History. I have also taught and written on problems of transnational history, and on the role of historical memory in contemporary politics. A background in sociology, and in Soviet History, informs my work.

Selected Awards

• Fulbright-Hays, International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX), and American Council of Learned Societies research fellowships, 2005-06.
• Fulbright Lectureship, Instytut Politologii, University of Wrocław, Poland, 2002-2003.
• August Zaleski Lecturer, Department of History, Harvard University, March 2001.
• German Marshall Fund research fellowship, 1999-2000.
• Barbara Heldt Prize of the Association of Women in Slavic Studies, for best article in Slavic women’s studies, 1999.
• AAASS/Orbis Book Prize, for “outstanding English-language book on any aspect of Polish affairs,” 1998.
• National Council for Soviet and East European Research and Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars research fellowships, 1997.

Research Interests

• Modern Eastern European History
• Communism
• Political/social History

Courses Recently Taught

• History of Poland
• Eastern European History
• The World in 1989
• Political Prisoners in the Modern World

Publication Highlights

Books

• Wrocławskie zadymy. Wrocław: ATUT, 2007.
• The Burdens of Freedom: Eastern Europe Since 1989. London: Zed Books, 2006.
• Transnational Moments of Change: Europe 1945, 1968, 1989. Co-edited with Gerd-Rainer Horn. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004.
• A Carnival of Revolution: Central Europe, 1989. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002.
• Rebuilding Poland: Workers and Communists, 1945-1950. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997.

Articles

• "Martyrs and Neighbors: Sources of Reconciliation in Central Europe." Common Knowledge 13:1 (Winter 2007), 149-69.
• "The Gender of Resistance in Communist Poland," The American Historical Review 104:2 (April 1999), 399-425.

Mark Trotter

Associate Director/Outreach Coordinator
E-mail: martrott@indiana.edu

Mark Trotter received his B.A. from McGill University and M.A. at the University of Michigan. He taught Russian language, literature, and culture, as well as general linguistics at Grinnell College from 1987 to 1993. From 1993 to 2004, Mark taught English language and linguistics at the Dániel Berzsenyi Teacher Training College in Szombathely, Hungary, returning to the United States in the summers to teach Russian, first at the University of Michigan and subsequently at Indiana University in the Summer Workshop in Slavic, East European, and Central Asian Languages (SWSEEL), where he has taught conversation and listening comprehension since 1998. From 2004 to 2007 Mark served as the Resident Director/Academic Coordinator of the newly initiated Flagship Program in Russian Language, based at Saint Petersburg State University. His publications include articles in the fields of Russian language teaching methodology and English linguistics, as well as translations from Hungarian and Russian.

Emily Liverman

Academic Advisor/Assistant Director for Student Services
E-mail: eliverma@indiana.edu

Emily Liverman received her Bachelor’s degree from Rhodes College in Russian Studies. She then received her Master’s degree from the University of Texas at Austin, where her thesis was about issues with translating poetry. She was lucky enough to have participated in SWSEEL in 2007. Her interests focus mainly on literature, but she also enjoys history. She has also participated in conferences held by South Central Modern Languages Association, as audience, panelist, secretary and chair.

Mary Belding

Administrative Secretary
E-mail: mebeldin@indiana.edu

Mary has worked for four professional associations, most recently the American Oil Chemists' Society (AOCS) in Urbana, Illinois. As a meeting planner, she organized events throughout the U.S. and abroad. Mary and her husband are both graduates of IU, and they enjoy traveling, reading, and ballroom dancing.

Graduate Assistants, 2011-2012

Leonard H. Leid
Webmaster
E-mail: reei@indiana.edu
Subject: ATTN: Leonard Leid

Antonina B. Semivolos
Outreach Assistant
E-mail: reei@indiana.edu
Subject: ATTN: Antonina Semivolos

Charles Bonds
Library Assistant
E-mail: reei@indiana.edu
Subject: ATTN: Charles Bonds

Austin Kellogg
Newsletter Editor
E-mail: reei@indiana.edu
Subject: ATTN: Austin Kellogg

Kathleen Hiatt
Graduate Assistant
E-mail: reei@indiana.edu
Subject: ATTN: Kathleen Hiatt

Contact Information

• REEI Contact Information