Cristofer Scarboro

Research 

 

 

Publications

 

Books:

 

•Middle Class Communism and the Revenge of the More: Consumption, Boredom and Collapse in Late Socialist Bulgaria, under contract at Berghahn Press.

 

•The Late Socialist Good Life in Bulgaria: Meaning and Living in a Permanent Present Tense, Lexington Books, 2011.

 

Articles:

 

•“Sisyphus Revisited: Consumption Boredom and Collapse in Late Socialist Bulgaria,” in Antropologiia, September, 2014.

 

•“A Brief History of the Birth, Ironies and Future of Globalization,” in Contours of Globalization, P. K. Haldar, ed., Global Publishing: Guwahatti, India, 2012.

 

•“‘Today's Un-seen Enthusiasm’: Communist Nostalgia for Communism in the Socialist Humanist Brigadier Movement,” in Nostalgia for Communism, Maria Todorova and Zsuzsa Gille eds., Berghahn Press, 2010.

 

•“The Brother-City Project and Socialist Humanism:  Haskovo, Tashkent and Sblizhenie,” Slavonic and East European Review, vol. 86 no. 3, July, 2007.

 

•“Keith Hitchins şi occidentalismul balcanic,” Vatra, vol. 7, 2006.

 

•“Socialist Humanism on Tour:  Monuments, Public Spaces and Subjectivity in Haskovo, Bulgaria,” Ethnologia Balkanica special edition on Urban Life and Culture in Southeastern Europe, vol. 10, 2006.

 

•“From Turkish Bath to Parliament Building: The Ambivalence of Colonial Desire,” Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, Vol. 6, No. 1, Spring, 2005.

 

Editorial Work:

 

•Pleasures of Backwardness: Redefining Desire and Development in Eastern Europe, Zsuzsa Gille, Diana Mincyte, and Cristofer Scarboro eds., under review at Indiana University Press.

 

•Guest Editor for a Special Issue of Südosteuropa. Zeitschrift für Politik und Gesellschaft entitled: “Living after the Fall: Contingent Biographies in Post-Socialist Space,” fall 2016.

 

•Guest Editor for a Special Issue of Antropologiia entitled: “Living after the Fall: Past-Present in Southeastern Europe,” spring 2016.

 

Reviews:

 

•Review of Mary Neuburger, Balkan Smoke: Tobacco and the Making of Modern Bulgaria, Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 2011 in Slavic Review, vol. 73, no. 1, spring 2014.

 

•Review of Theodora Dragostinova, Between Two Motherlands: Nationality and Emigration among the Greeks of Bulgaria, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011 in Journal of Modern History, vol. 85 no. 1, March 2013.

 

•Review of Francine Hirsch, Empire of Nations: Ethnographic Knowledge and the Making of the Soviet Union. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005 in Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, Vol. 6, No. 3, Fall, 2005.

 

 

Fellowships and Grants

 

•American Research Center in Sofia, Postdoctoral Fellowship, Spring 2014

 

•American Council of Learned Societies Dissertation Fellowship in East European Studies, 2005-2006

 

•Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship, 2003-2004

 

•Foreign Language Area Studies, fellowship for the study of Bulgarian Language, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2000-2002

           

 

Presentations

 

 

•“Workers are the Truest and Best Poets! The Aesthetics of Work and the Work of Aesthetics,” presented at the Association for Slavic East European and Eurasian Studies, Washington, DC, November 2016.

 

•“Crossing Borders and Reading Landscapes: Reimagining Short-term Study Abroad’s Purpose and Pedagogy” with Bridget Costello at the American Association of Colleges and Universities, Global Learning and the College Curriculum Conference, Denver, Colorado, October 2016.

 

•The Late Socialist Good Life and its Discontents: Bit, Kultura, and the Social Life of Goods,” presented at the Association for Slavic East European and Eurasian Studies, Boston, November 2015.

 

•“Expanding Access to Global Learning through Short-Term Study Abroad: Trials, Transformations, and Triumphs” with Bridget Costello, Noreen O’Connor, and Daniel Clasby at the American Association of Colleges and Universities, Global Learning Conference, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, October 2015.

•“Bit, Kultura, and the Ambivalence of Consumer Desire in Late Socialist Bulgaria,” presented at the conference “The Pleasures of Backwardness” at the University of California, Berkeley, April,   2015.

 

•“Middle Class Communism and the Revenge of the More,” presented at the Association for Slavic East-European and Eurasian Studies, San Antonio, Texas, November, 2015.

 

•“The Good Life and Goods: Boredom and the Collapse of Communism,” presented at Chervenata kushta tsentur na kultura i debat, Sofia (The Red House: Center for Culture and Debate) June 2014.

 

•“Looking at Boredom under Late Socialism,” presented at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences Institute of Ethnographic and Folklore Studies, “Ethnography of Socialism Section,” April 2014.

 

•“Sisyphus Revisited: Late Socialism in Repose,” presented at the American University in Bulgaria, Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria, March 2014.

 

•“The Revenge of the More: Collapse and Late Socialism,” presented at the American Research Center in Sofia, Sofia, Bulgaria, March, 2014.

 

•“Consumption and Collapse in Late Socialist Bulgaria,” presented at Haspel, Sofia: “Novi levi perspektivi”, May 2014.

 

•“Collapse and Creative Anxiety:  Looking at the End of the Socialist Good Life,” presented at the Association for Slavic East European and Eurasian Studies, New Orleans, 2012.

 

•“Middle Class Sustainability and the 'Anxiety of Progress' in Bulgarian Socialist Humanism,” sponsored by the King’s College Green Initiative, April, 2009.

 

•“Searching for the Sublime in Bulgarian Socialist Realist Landscape Painting” presented at the American Association for the Advancement of Slavonic Studies, Philadelphia, November 2008.

 

•“‘Make Every Day an Excursion’: Creating Socialist Humanist Proximate Tourism,” at the Bulgarian Studies Association, Varna, Bulgaria, June 2008.

 

•“Socialist Realism and the Ironies of Public Spheres of Protest,” Invited Presenter at the Marie Curie Institute Summer Workshop: “Confronting Cold War Conformity: Peace and Protest Cultures in Europe, 1945-1989.”  Prague, Czech Republic, August, 2008.

 

•“Borat and the Problem of Eastern Europe,” presented to the King’s College Honor’s Colloquium March, 2008.

 

•“Today’s Unseen Enthusiasm: Communist Nostalgia for Communism in the Brigadier Movement,” presented at the Russian East European and Eurasian Center International Conference on Post Communist Nostalgia, Champaign-Urbana Illinois, April 7-8, 2006. 

 

•“Monuments, Public Spaces and Socialist Humanist—Touring Haskovo, Bulgaria,” presented at the American Association for the Advancement of Slavonic Studies, Salt Lake City, November, 3-6, 2005.

 

•“Mapping Socialist Subjectivity:  Reading Haskovo Bulgaria Through Proximate Tourism,” presented at  the International Association for Southeast European Anthropology, Conference on the theme: Urban Life and Culture in Southeast Europe, in Belgrade, Serbia and Montenegro, May 20-22, 2005.