Research

My dissertation titled "Giving in the Time of Socialism. Humanitarianism, Economic Life, and Mobility in Cold War Europe" uncovers the shadow existence of the Cold War's private humanitarians: advocates of national minorities, members of emigre communities, church representatives, feminist networks, private donors, and ordinary people who forged clandestine supply conduits to one of Europe’s most authoritarian regimes, Nicolae Ceausescu’s Romania. This transnational history of charitable workers and volunteers in Austria, West Germany, East Germany, Hungary, and the United States that has remained untold, until now, investigates how economic and environmental crises became transformative moments of private humanitarian action in socialist Romania.

My work exemplifies what I seek to convey to future students: that the mobility of people, ideas, and materials across cultural and geographic space is often indicative of broader world historical processes, some of which powerfully resonate in the present. In this spirit, my research contributes new insights to some of the most vexing debates in current global and area studies. It scrutinizes the impact of globalization on the socialist societies of Eastern Europe prior to the economic restructuring of the region through “shock therapy” in the 1990s. It explores how private humanitarians operated under socialism outside of, and indeed as a makeshift to, the dwindling socialist welfare state since the late 1970s. And it investigates the broader effects of neoliberalism on socialism by exploring the relationship between austerity economics, social unrest, and regime collapse in Romania in 1989.

I have received support for my research through national grants from the Association for Slavic, Eastern European, and Eurasian Studies, the Central European History Society, the Fulbright Commission, the German Historical Institute in Washington D.C., the Social Science Research Council, and various research centers at the University of Michigan.

Research Highlights

My new article “Continuing Politics By Other Means: Giving in Cold War Europe” has been recently published in the peer-reviewed special issue of the International Journal of History, Culture and Modernity 6:1 (2018), 105-133.

About the Special Issue:

This special issue explores the materiality of politics in Cold War Europe. Building on a revised political history that includes social movements and marginalized groups from below and examines the symbolism, language and performance of politics, we aim to connect with ongoing efforts to include material culture in the study of political history. The contributions to this issue focus on physical objects, spaces, and bodies. More specifically, they analyze the built environment, consumer goods, and social practices to reveal the intersection of materiality and politics. Conceptually, they demonstrate various ways in which objects became intrinsic to politics and served as a medium for political expression, representation and contestation. Placing particular emphasis on how material culture generated unexpected or unintended dynamics, the contributions also trace objects as source of resilience in the political process. Taken as a whole, this special issue argues that material culture is essential for understanding the political as a fluid and contingent category.

go to special issue

Publications

2012

2010

2009

“Helden, Täter, Opfer – Rumäniens diskursive Selbstfindungssuche in der Revolutionshistoriographie nach 1989,” Zeitschrift für Siebenbürgische Landeskunde 35:1 (2012), 51-61.

“Eine unendliche Geschichte – oder nur auf dem ersten Blick? Zur Neuinterpretation der Geschichtsschreibung der Rumänischen Revolution von 1989,” Halbjahresschrift der Deutsch-Rumänischen Gesellschaft Berlin 13:2 (2010), 14-17.

“Transformare și Memorie în Istoriografia de Revoluție: România Dupǎ 20 de Ani de la Inceputul Democrației,” Caietele Revoluției: Institutul Revoluției Române din 1989 24:5 (2009), 64-66.

Commentaries and Pieces in Public Media

2018

2018

2014

"Poor People Die Younger in the U.S. That Skews American Politics," (with Javier Rodríguez), in The Washington Post (May 31, 2018).

“Zu arm für die Wahl,” interview with Stefan Beutelsbacher from Die Welt (May 14, 2018), 11. This article also appeared online: "Verfrühter Tod armer Amerikaner als ein Grund für geringe US-Wahlbeteiligung," in Die Welt (May 14, 2018).

"Do U.S. Colleges Have Something to Learn from German Tuition Policy?," interview with Rachel Premack from The Michigan Daily 124:23 (November 05, 2014), 6B.

Talks and Conference Presentations

Professional conferences in the United States and Europe where I have presented my research and organized panels.

2019

2019

2018

2018

2017

2017

2017

2016

2016

2016

2016

2015

2014

2014

2014

2009

“When Europe’s Middle Class(es) Discovered How to Do Good in the East,” paper presented at the annual Western Social Science Association Conference, San Diego, April 24-27, 2019.

“Love, Luxury, and Liberating Compassion: About the Refashioning of 1980s Budapest into a Humanitarian Hub,” paper presented at the 2019 Romanian Studies and Hungarian Studies Junior Scholar Conference, Indiana University, Bloomington, March 22-23, 2019.

“Neither Spies, Smugglers, nor Shopping Tourists: The Story of Private Humanitarians in Cold War Europe,” paper presented at the 50th Annual Convention of the Association for Slavic, Eastern European and Eurasian Studies, Boston, December 6-9, 2018.

“Disastrous Seventies: Floods and Earthquakes in Socialist Romania at the Dawn of a New European Culture of Private Disaster Relief,” paper presented at the Romanian Studies Conference, Bucharest, June 26-30, 2018.

“Contradictions of Late Socialism: Food, Housing, and Public Health in Romania and East Germany, 1970-1989,” panel organized at the 49th Annual Convention of the Association for Slavic, Eastern European and Eurasian Studies, Chicago, November 9-12, 2017.

“From Austerity to the Unraveling of Socialism in Ceausescu's Romania,” paper presented at the 49th Annual Convention of the Association for Slavic, Eastern European and Eurasian Studies, Chicago, November 9-12, 2017.

"Frontiers of Confusion: Eastern European Border Regimes in Socialism," paper presented at the conference “Bureaucracy in Central Europe,” New York University, Prague, February 23-24, 2017.

“Impediments to Global Humanitarianism. The Case of Cold War Romania,” paper presented at the 48th Annual Convention of the Association for Slavic, Eastern European and Eurasian Studies, Washington, D.C., November 17-20, 2016.

“Reconstructing the Liminal, Reassembling the Scattered: Archives of Everyday Life at OSA,” paper presented at the Visegrad Scholarship Lecture Series, Open Society Archive, Budapest, June 27, 2016.

“Humanitarianism in Socialism - Socialism in Humanitarianism. On the Practice of Giving in Late Cold War Europe,” paper presented at the conference Everyday Humanitarianism: Ethics, Affects and Practices, London School of Economics, London, April 14-15, 2016.

"Pakethilfen nach drüben’: West German Humanitarian Aid to Communist Romania, 1970s-1980s," paper presented at the conference “Reconsidering the Political in Contemporary History: Social Practices and Material Cultures in Cold War Western Europe,” Humboldt University, Berlin, March 4-5, 2016.

“Mitigating the Effects and Legacies of Abortion Bans and Economic Austerity: Humanitarian Aid for Romania in the 1980s and 1990s,” paper presented at the Annual Community of Scholars Symposium, Institute for Research on Women and Gender, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, October 30, 2015.

“Ordinary Solidarity: Humanitarian Aid for Communist and Post-Communist Romania,” paper presented at the European History Workshop, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, December 3, 2014.

“Leben und Biopolitik: Menschenrechte und Humanitarismus im kommunistischen und post-kommunistischen Rumänien,” invited talk at the Eastern European History Colloquium, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, July 24, 2014.

“Challenging Power through the Power of Morals: The Role of Human Rights and Humanitarianism from Communism to Post-Communism in Romania,” paper presented at the Havighurst Center’s Annual Young Researchers Conference in Cooperation with SOYUZ, Miami University, Oxford, February 17-March 1, 2014.

“Transformare și Memorie în Istoriografia de Revoluție: România Dupǎ 20 de Ani de la Inceputul Democrației,” paper presented at the International Symposium of the Romanian Revolution of 1989, West University Timișoara, Romania, October 17-19, 2009.

Email

ccapotes@umich.edu

Phone

(734) 764 6305 (Dept)

Address

University of Michigan
Department of History
1029 Tisch Hall
435 South State Street
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1003

​Research