Crossroads of Empire: Culture and Statehood at the Eastern Frontiers of Europe - Cristina Florea

Bukovina, a former borderland of the Habsburg empire now divided between Ukraine and Romania, was a place of mutual observation, competition, and conflict between the different states and governments that laid claim to the territory. Over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the province experienced repeated regime changes – many of which occurred seemingly overnight. This talk explores how the shared challenges of governing Bukovina facilitated mutual influences between regimes that otherwise viewed each other as ideological opposites. About the Speaker: Cristina Florea is an Assistant Professor in Modern European history at Cornell University, researching and teaching the histories of Eastern and Central Europe and the Soviet Union in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with a focus on borderlands, imperial entanglements and competition, and the interplay of nationalisms and empires in the region.