Long Reads

In this incisive Long Read, Ferenc Laczó critically engages with Globalizing Europe, edited by David Motadel (CUP, 2025). Laczó highlights the volume’s intellectual ambition and scholarly range, while probing its limitations— particularly a lack of a sustained effort to engage with the rich and growing global historical scholarship that meaningfully incorporates areas outside of the northwestern “core.”

Nikolaos Paraschis provides an in-depth review of World Literature in the Soviet Union edited by Galin Tihanov, Anne Lounsbery and Rossen Djagalov (Academic Studies Press, 2023). Paraschis writes that this indispensable volume provides an excellent opportunity for an entirely new framework for historically and theoretically discussing “World Literature.”

Cristian Cercel provides an in-depth reflection on Marius Turda’s new book În căutarea românului perfect. Specific național, degenerare rasială și selecție socială în România modernă, published by Polirom in 2024. Cercel writes that the book seeks to stir a debate on the relevance of eugenics and racism for implicit and explicit understandings of “true Romanianness”.

Veronika Pfeilschifter provides an in-depth reflection on Ilya Budraitskis’ Dissidents Among Dissidents (Verso Books, 2022), elaborating on how Budraitskis’ study can be positioned in larger debates regarding dissidents and the philosophical underpinnings of political violence.

Eun-joo Lee reports on the Global Easts conference, organized by the Critical Global Studies Institute (CGSI) and the Global Easts Consortium, which took place at Sogang University in Seoul, South Korea from 17 to 19 January.

What is the connection between oil, war, and the climate crisis? In this Long Read, Alexander Etkind explores the tendency of authoritarian petrostates, such as Russia and Iran, to launch wars and to downplay climate change.

James Morris explores Anca Parvulescu’s and Manuela Boatcă’s book Creolizing the Modern: Creolizing the Modern: Transylvania across Empires (Cornell University Press, 2022), arguing that if to “creolize” is in part to complicate and challenge national mythologies, then it is important to confront nationalism’s racist language.

Hans Kundnani’s book Eurowhiteness (Hurst, 2023) elicited two critical reviews on the pages of the CEU Review of Books. Here Kundnani responds to Ferenc Laczó’s and Raluca Bejan’s Long Read pieces. 

Hans Kundnani’s book Eurowhiteness (Hurst, 2023) propositions that white ethnic nationalism is at the basis of European identity. In her Long Read, however, Raluca Bejan unwraps several issues that she argues make Kundnani’s argumentation flawed.

Gábor Egry reflects on the blurred boundaries between historical and subjective writing and on the historical in the autobiographical through Ignác Romsics’s “egohistory”, Hetven év – Egotörténelem 1951-2021 [Seventy years – Egohistory, 1951-2021, Vol. 1] (Helikon Kiadó, 2022).