Melissa Feinberg is Professor of History at Rutgers University. She is a specialist in 20^th century East-Central Europe and in gender history. Her most recent book, Communism in Eastern Europe (Routledge, 2022) is a survey of European Communist regimes from the Balkans to the borders of the USSR. Her other publications include Curtain of Lies: The Battle Over Truth in Stalinist Eastern Europe (Oxford University Press, 2017), which was awarded the George Blacyza prize in East European Studies from the British Association of Slavic and East European Studies, and Elusive Equality: Gender, Citizenship and the Limits of Democracy in Czechoslovakia, 1918-1950 (Pittsburgh University Press, 2006). From 2009–2019 she was one of the editors of Aspasia: International Yearbook of Central, Eastern and Southeastern European Women’s and Gender History (published by Berghahn).

While in Vienna, she will be working on two projects. The first, “Selfish Men and Frivolous Women,” examines how anxieties over falling birthrates in East Central Europe during the 1960s and 1970s have informed contemporary campaigns against “gender ideology.” She will also be starting work on a history of Europe since 1945.

Research Interests

• History of socialism and post-socialism in East-Central Europe

• Gender history in the 19^th and 20^th centuries

• History of feminism and antifeminism

• Emotions and politics

Recent Publications

The Routledge History of Communism, co-edited with Lisa A. Kirschenbaum, (Routledge, forthcoming, August 2026)

(co-authored with Paul Hanebrink), “Communism, Populism, and Ethnonationalism: The Road from Communism to Illiberalism in Eastern Europe,” in The Routledge History of Communism, (Routledge, forthcoming)

“From Godless Amazons to the Gender Lobby: Anti-gender Activism in Interwar Czechoslovakia and today's Czech Republic” in Martin Schulze Wessel, ed., Political Crisis in Central Europe in the Interwar Period and Today (Berghahn Books, forthcoming in 2026)

Comment on Mitra Sharafi, “Abortion in South Asia, 1860–1947: A Medico-Legal History,” Modern Asian Studies 59, no.2 (2025): 290–294.

“Judt’s Postwar Behind a Conceptual Iron Curtain,” in “Tony Judt’s Postwar at 20," Contemporanea, Rivista di storia dell'800 e del '900 3 (2025): 469–475.

“83 Square Meters of Luxury: The Constraints of Creed on Socialist Greed,” in

Forum on György Péteri’s The Everyday and Private Life of a Communist Ruling Class:Greed and Creed, Hungarian Studies Review 52, no.2 (2025): 270–274.

Introduction/Biography for Milada Horákova, “Women in Politics,” in Texts and Contexts from the History of Feminism and Women’s Rights. East Central Europe, Second Half of the Twentieth Century, ed.Zsófia Lóránd, Adela Hîncu, Jovana Mihajlović Trbovc, and Katarzyna Stańczak-Wiślicz (Budapest: Central European University Press 2024): 200–207

“The Promise of Gender Equality in Interwar Central-Eastern Europe,” in Katalin Fabian, Janet Elise Johnson and Mara Lazda, eds., The Routledge International Handbook of Gender in Central-Eastern Europe and Eurasia (New York: Routledge, 2021): 303–310.