Archival Programs
felchera@ceu.edu
Dr. Anastasia Felcher is a historian, cultural heritage specialist, and an archivist. She has expertise and research interest in the cultural history of borderlands in East-Central Europe, memory studies and minority histories.
Anastasia’s doctoral dissertation, defended at IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca in 2016, focused on politics of Jewish heritage preservation and memory of the Holocaust in the newly independent states after the Cold War ended. She also researched post-Soviet de-facto regimes, venerating Alexander Pushkin outside Russia, and heritage discourses in East-Central Europe. She has received a number of fellowships (at the Blinken OSA, DHI Moscow, GWZO, CAS Sofia, and VWI) and participated in projects with third-party funding (by Volkswagen Fondation, Swedish Research Foundation, and Horizon2020). During her most recent research fellowship in 2024 at the Imre Kertész Kolleg Jena, Anastasia researched Babyn Yar as a transnational site of memory. She also worked on her forthcoming book “Jewish Heritage in Transition. Memory, Preservation and Manifestation after 1989/91”.
Before joining the Blinken OSA, Anastasia worked as a country expert for data identification for the European Holocaust Research Infrastructure, EHRI (2018-19). Since 2020, she has served as the Archivist for the Slavic collection at the Archivum. There, Anastasia curates Slavic, Jewish and Samizdat archival collections. She arranged, described, and enhanced metadata for the archival catalog and external databases. She ensured the general and targeted promotion of the collection, took part in public programs and teaching activities at the Archivum, authored blog posts, and supervised assistant archivists and the Visegrad Scholarship holders. Since 2023, Anastasia has been teaching part-time at the Cultural Heritage Studies Program, CHSP at CEU in Vienna.
Starting from late 2023, Anastasia is on maternity leave
Central European University
Elective course for MA and PhD students aiming to provide an introduction to the latest historiography visual studies and visual culture and their intersection with other disciplines.
Central European University
Organized as a forum and a discussion between fellow students and the faculty, the workshop gathered comments and suggestions on the content and structure of the submitted outlines as well as on feasibility of the MA thesis projects.
Central European University
A course aimed at providing a platform to discuss and get faculty feedback about MA thesis requirements, genre, structure, and content expected to be submitted to the department at the end of the academic year.
Central European University
The course aimed at providing a critical heritage perspective for the students visiting sites of historic and architectural significance.
Invisible University for Ukraine (CEU)
Central European University
A course aiming at introducing the basic concepts of memory studies to the students interested in cultural heritage and its interpretation by looking at various case studies across the globe.
ARTICLES IN REFEREED JOURNALS:
2024: (in progress) “Language of Trauma in Soviet Jewish Samizdat.” S.I.M.O.N. – Shoah: Intervention. Methods. Documentation, 10, issue 2 (to be published in 2024).
2023: “Jewish Lives in the Cold War and Beyond: The Blinken OSA Archivum Jewish Studies Collection.” S.I.M.O.N. – Shoah: Intervention. Methods. Documentation, 10, issue 2, special issue “Precarious Archives, Precarious Voices. Expanding Jewish Narratives from the Margins”: 166-175.
2022: “The 1990–92 Armed Conflict at the Dniester River: Continuous Memory Confrontation.” Cultures of History Forum. Debating 20th-century History, Negotiating History and Memory in the Public Sphere. 19/09.
2022: “Alexander Pushkin as Foreign Heritage: Transformation and Cultural Disintegration in post-Soviet Societies.” CAS Sofia Working Paper Series, no. 12: 1-24.
2020: “Recent Public Discourses on Anti-Jewish Violence in Moldovan History, 1991–2019 // Holocaust and Genocide Studies 34, issue 1: 80-100.
2019: “Thinking Differently, Acting Separately? Heritage Discourse and Heritage Treatment in Chișinău.” Journal of Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society (JSPPS) special section Remembering Diversity in East Central European Cityscapes 5, issue 2: 141-185.
2019: “Alexander Pushkin in Bessarabia: Literature and Identity Politics in the Periphery.” National Identities 21, issue 4: 395-415.
2018: [in Russian] “Issledovaniya naslediya i politiki pamyati - v poiskakh obshchikh podkhodov” [Heritage Studies and the Politics of Memory - in Search for Common Approaches]. Politicheskaya Nauka (RU) issue 3: 28-44.
2015: “Small Exhibits, Major Steps: Four Post-Soviet Jewish Museums.” East European Jewish Affairs 45, issue 2: 312-320.
2012: “Public Festivities and the Making of a National Poet: a Case Study of Alexander Pushkin's Biography in 1899 and 1937.” European Review of History 19, issue 5: 767-788..
Re-published in: 2015: The Politics of Contested Narratives. Biographical Approaches to Modern European History. Edited by Ilse Josepha Lazaroms, Emily Gioielli. Routledge 2015, 115-136.
2011: [in Romanian] “Argumente pentru necesitatea abordării interdisciplinare în сomparativistica modernă” [Arguments towards the Need of Interdisciplinary Approach in Comparative Literature]. Ethnology and Culturology Journal 9-10: 256-259.
2011: “Literary Conquest of Imperial Frontiers: Bessarabia and the Caucasus “Discovered” by A. Pushkin.” Ethnology and Culturology Journal 9-10: 259-264.
2010: [in Russian] [“Memoirs about A. Pushkin in Bessarabia: a Typology”] Ethnology and Culturology Journal 6: 108-110.
BOOK CHAPTERS:
2024 (accepted) “Multilateral Survival: Strategies of Consolidation by the De Facto Regime in Transnistria”. In the final volume of the “Consolidation of De facto Regimes: a Comparison of Post-Soviet Cases”. Bonn: BCC.
2022: “Thirty Years of Discontent: Memory Confrontation Regarding the Transnistrian Conflict on the Banks of the Dniester River”. In Constructing Memory: Central and Eastern Europe in the New Geopolitical Reality, edited by Hanna Bazhenova, 207-230. Lublin: Institute for Eastern Europe.
2022: “New Sites of Worship: Sovietization and Literary Museums in Western Borderlands, 1940-79.” In Transforming Author Museums, edited by Johan Schimanski, Ulrike Spring and Thea Aarbakke, 199-228. Oxford, New York: Berghahn Books.
2019: (in Russian) [“Memorial Museums in Chișinău as Institutions of Memory Politics — Inflexibility and Competition in a Divided Society”]. In Politika pamyati v sovremennoy Rossii i stranakh Vostochnoy Yevropy. Aktory, instituty, narrativy, edited by Alexei Miller and Dmitry Efremenko, 542-570. St. Petersburg: European University Press.
2019: (in Russian) co-authored with Alexandr Voronovici [“Searching for the past: memorial landscape of the unrecognized PMR”]. In Politika pamyati v sovremennoy Rossii i stranakh Vostochnoy Yevropy. Aktory, instituty, narrativy, edited by Alexei Miller and Dmitry Efremenko, 579-590. St. Petersburg: European University Press.
2018: “Of Their Own Design: Curatorial Solutions to Commemorate the Shoah in Museums across Eastern Europe.” Controluce, Counterlight, Gegenlicht. Arte e museologia della Shoah, nuovi contributi, edited by Paolo Coen, series Il tempo, la storia e la memoria (5/2018), 147-172. Macerata: Edizioni Università di Macerata.
2018: (in Russian) [“Complicated” Heritage: Spaces of Mass Violence in Western and Eastern Europe], In Metodologicheskiye voprosy izucheniya politiki pamyati, edited by Alexey Miller, 93-110. St. Petersburg: Nestor-Istoriya.
WRITING IN PROGRESS:
2025: [book] Jewish Heritage in Transition. Memory, Preservation and Representation after 1989/91 (to be finalized by December 2024; publishing contract pending).
2026: [book] Pushkin outside Russia. Literature and Politics in Contested Borderlands (to be finalized by December 2025; publishing contract pending).
MEDIA OUTREACH:
2017, 10/12: (in Russian) [“Jewish Chișinău That We Had Lost”]. Online platform PLATZFORMA (PZF).
2017, 16/10: (in Russian) co-authored with Alyona Babkina [“A Hot Summer in Bendery”: Topography of Memory and the Conflict in Transnistria]. Online platform GEFTER.
2016, 30/01: “Between Muse and Politics: Pushkin Museum-house in Chișinău and the (Un)making of Heritage.” Online platform PLATZFORMA (PZF).
2016: (in Russian) [A “Furnace Pot, a Santa-Jew and a Hidden Torah. How Chisinau, Odessa and Lviv Exhibit their Jewish Past”]. Lehaim. Monthly Literary-Journalistic Magazine no. 285: 20-25.
ARTICLES IN NON-REFEREED JOURNALS:
2008: (in Russian) [“Pushkin as a Trickster, or Some Mythological Correspondences”]. Anthropological Studies in Moldova 2005-2006 no. 2, annex to Stratum Plus journal for Archaeology and Anthropology: 82-86.
2008: (in Russian) [“Pushkin Myth and Versions of its Evolution (Historiography Overview)”]. Anthropological Studies in Moldova 2005-2006 no. 2, annex to Stratum Plus journal for Archaeology and Anthropology: 133-142.
2005: (in Russian) [Tolkien’s Images: Mythological Origin of Magic Objects”]. Anthropological Studies in Moldova 2005-2006 no. 1, annex to Stratum Plus journal for Archaeology and Anthropology: 79-84.
REVIEWS:
2017: “Review of “Greetings, Pushkin! Stalinist Cultural Politics and the Russian National Bard” by Jonathan Brooks Platt.” AB IMPERIO, issue 2: 323-327.
2014: “Regional Seminar for Excellence in Teaching “Social Mobility and Modernization in Eastern Europe in the 20th Century.” PLURAL. History. Culture. Society, issue 1-2: 224-227.
2013: Review of “Культурное наследие в глобальном мире [Cultural Heritage in the Global World]” by Rasa Čepaitienė. PLURAL. History. Culture. Society, 1, issue 1-2: 241-243.
