Cristian Capotescu
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Research

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My current book project, Disasters and Solidarities: Private Humanitarianism in the Era of Crisis Socialism, tells the unwritten story of Europe’s “private humanitarians” and their subterranean aid work into the socialist bloc. At the heart of this book are the journeys and encounters of men and women from different social milieus who discovered Ceausescu’s Romania as a place of moral work, danger, pleasure, and self-realization in the 1970s and 1980s. Ravaged by multiple environmental disasters and man-made crises, Romania moved in the late socialist period from the periphery of the Cold War to the center of the social imaginaries and ethical aspirations of private humanitarians in East and West, many of whom were neither political activists nor professional aid workers. Disasters and Solidarities follows and connects these transnational aid campaigns across the divided continent and opens a window into the little-known history of a shadow movement that, for over two decades, mitigated human crises alongside, but often at the margins of states and international organizations.
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, environmental, and political crises became transformative moments of humanitarian action in Eastern Europe and beyond. Disasters and Solidarities offers a new social history of humanitarianism at the intersection of socialism, authoritarian rule, and Cold War politics.
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In 2020, I earned a Ph.D. in History from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. My research was supported by national and international grants from the American Historical Association, 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.

Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles

2022 | “Austerity without Neoliberals. Reappraising the Sinuous History of a Powerful State Technology” with Oscar Sanchez-Sibony and Melissa Teixeira, in Capitalism: A Journal of History and Economics 3:2  (Winter 2022), 379-420.

2022 |  “Long Covid and Medical Gaslighting: Dismissal, Delayed Diagnosis, and Deferred Treatment,” with Larry Au, Gil Eyal, Gabriele Finestone, in SSM - Qualitative Research in Health (online first September 7, 2022).
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2020 | "Migrants into Humanitarians: Ethnic Solidarity and Private Aid-Giving during Romania’s Historic Flood of 1970," in East European Politics and Societies 35:2 (May 2021), 293-312, (online first June 2020).

2018 | "Continuing Politics by Other Means: Giving in Cold War Europe," International Journal of History, Culture and Modernity 6:1 (2018), 105-133.

Book Chapters

2023 | "'Quiet Aid': Barbara Schöfnagel’s Private Humanitarianism in the Socialist Gray Area and What Else the Global East Can Teach Us," in Arzoo Osanloo and Cabeiri deBergh Robinson (eds.), Care in a Time of Humanitarianism: Stories of Refuge, Aid, and Repair in the Global South (forthcoming in New York: Berghahn Books, 2023)​.

Short Articles in Peer-Reviewed Journals

​2022 | “Community Health Workers can Play a Critical Role in Fostering Trust between the Medical System and Minority Communities” with Tashi Chodon, James Chu, Elizabeth Cohn, Gil Eyal et al. American Journal for Managed Care 28:10 (2022), 497-499.

Commentaries and Pieces in Public Media


2021 | "Moving Forward in 2021: A Guide to Depolarizing America," with Arash Javanbakht, in Psychology Today (January 4, 2021).

2020 | "Lethargic Global Response to COVID-19: How the Human Brain’s Failure to Assess Abstract Threats Cost Us Dearly," with Arash Javanbakht, The Conversation (April 27, 2020).

2019 | "Segélyszállítók össztűzben" (“Aid Workers under Fire”), interview for TV Romania documentary (December 17, 2019).

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

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).

2014 | "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.

Organizer Conferences and Panels

2020 | "Between Globalization and Deglobalization: Assessing the Relationship between the National and the Global in East-Central Europe," Panel Organizer, 134th Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association, New York, January 3-6, 2020. Co-Sponsored by the Central European History Society and the Society for Austrian and Habsburg History.
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2019 | "Austerity and Anti-Austerity Beyond Capitalism," Conference Co-Organizer, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, September 13-14, 2019.
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2017| "Contradictions of Late Socialism: Food, Housing, and Public Health in Romania and East Germany, 1970-1989," Panel Organizer, 49th Convention of the Association for Slavic, Eastern European and Eurasian Studies, Chicago, November 9-12, 2017.

Webinars

Mellon Sawyer Humanitarianisms Seminar 2020-21
​| Public Humanities

Bringing academic conversations to a larger public audience, I served in various roles as moderator, discussant, and presenter for the Humanitarianisms Webinar Series at the Simpson Center for the Humanities. Our Public Humanities initiative generated interdisciplinary conversations on refugees, migration, humanitarian aid, natural disasters, development, moral practices of care and hospitality, and religious humanitarianism. 
Watch series


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​2021 | Sinan Antoon, “Rescuing the Dead,” Co-Moderator, Virtual Workshop of the 2020-2021 Mellon Sawyer Seminar Humanitarianisms, Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities, University of Washington, April 2, 2021.

2021 | Basit Kareem Iqbal, “Ambivalence and Askesis in Zaatari Refugee Camp” & China Scherz “Seeking the Wounds of the Gift:  Recipient Agency in Catholic Charity and Kiganda Patronage.” Webinar Co-Organizer and Co-Moderator, 2020-2021 Mellon Sawyer Seminar Humanitarianisms, Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities, University of Washington, February 18, 2021.

2021 | Amira Mittermaier, “God, Humans, and an Islamic Ethics of Care” & Sienna R. Craig, “From Earthquakes and Empowerments to Pandemics: Tibetan Medical Humanitarianisms.” Webinar Co-Organizer and Co-Moderator, 2020-2021 Mellon Sawyer Seminar Humanitarianisms, Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities, University of Washington, February 4, 2021.

2021 | “Shifting the Gaze: Southern-led Humanitarian Responses to Displacement” by Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh. Webinar Co-Organizer, 2020-2021 Mellon Sawyer Seminar Humanitarianisms, Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities, University of Washington, January 21, 2021.

2020 |"The Opposite of Humanity’: Anti-colonial Challenges to International Humanitarian Law” by Jessica Whyte & “Managing Migrants, Resettling Refugees” by Emma Meyer. Webinar Co-Organizer and Co-Moderator for 2020-2021 Mellon Sawyer Seminar Humanitarianisms, Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities, University of Washington, December 3, 2020.

2020 | “Provincializing the 1951 Geneva Convention on Refugees” by Pamela Ballinger &  “Humanitarian Rights and Palestinian Presence” by Ilana Feldman. Webinar Co-Organizer and Co-Moderator for 2020-2021 Mellon Sawyer Seminar Humanitarianisms, Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities, University of Washington, November 12, 2020.

2020 | “Sovereignty, Welcome, and Epistemic Hospitality” by Anne McNevin. Webinar Co-Organizer and Co-Moderator for 2020-2021 Mellon Sawyer Seminar Humanitarianisms, Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities, University of Washington, October 8, 2020.

Invited Talks

2021 | "Echoes of the ‘New Soviet Man’: Humanity and the Ethics of Giving in Late Socialism," Webinar, 2020-2021 Mellon Sawyer Seminar Humanitarianisms, Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities, University of Washington, April 22, 2021.
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2019 | "Red Austerity: Authoritarianism and Shock Therapy in 1980s Romania," Weiser Center for Emerging Democracies Colloquium on Authoritarianism, University of Michigan, September 23, 2019.

2019 | "The Politics of Investigative Historical Research: How Historians Retrace Forgotten Narratives of Suffering and Inequality," Inequality and Policy Research Center, Institute for Democratic Renewal, Claremont Graduate University, May 3rd, 2019.

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

2014 | "Leben und Biopolitik: Menschenrechte und Humanitarismus im kommunistischen und post-kommunistischen Rumänien," Colloquium in Eastern European History, Department of History, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, July 24, 2014.

Professional Presentations

2021 | “Between the Legal and Illegal: Reflections on Border Mobilities under Socialism,” IICCMER Virtual Conference, Escaping Communism. Illegal East-West Border Crossings during the Cold War, December 15-16, 2021, Bucharest, Romania.

2021 | “Re-Colonizing the Socialist Bloc. The Emergence of Ceausescu’s Romania as a Humanitarian Crisis Zone in the 1980s,” Virtual International Workshop, Humanitarianism at the Crossroads? International Aid in the 1980s, University of Milan, October 13, 2021.
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2021 | “More than Speechless Emissaries: Civic Response and Socialist Refugeedom in Hungary, 1987-1989,” Virtual Conference, Humanitarian Mobilization in Central and Eastern Europe During the Twentieth Century, Unlikely Refuge? Refugees and Citizens in East-Central Europe in the 20th century (UnRef), Prague, June 23-25, 2021.

2020 | "When Europe’s East became its South: Exploring the Politics of Development and Humanitarianism in Post-socialist Romania," Virtual 44th Annual Conference of the German Studies Association, October 1-4, 2020.
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2020 | "Doing Good in Globalizing Times: Private Humanitarianism in East-Central Europe," 134th Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association, New York, January 3-6, 2020.​ 
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2019 | "Austerity Socialism: Debt and Fiscal Discipline in Ceausescu’s Romania," Austerity and Austerity Beyond Capitalism Conference, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, September 13-14, 2019.

2019 | "When Europe’s Middle Class(es) Discovered How to Do Good in the East," 61st Western Social Science Association Conference, San Diego, April 24-27, 2019.
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2019 | "Hungary’s Forgotten Refugee Crisis: About the Refashioning of 1980s Budapest into a Humanitarian Hub," Romanian Studies and Hungarian Studies Junior Scholar Conference, Indiana University, Bloomington, March 22-23, 2019.

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

​2018 | "Disastrous Seventies: Floods and Earthquakes in Socialist Romania at the Dawn of a New European Culture of Private Disaster Relief," 10th Romanian Studies Conference, Bucharest, June 26-30, 2018.

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

2017 | "Frontiers of Confusion: Eastern European Border Regimes in Socialism," From Josef K to Lustration: Bureaucracy in Central Europe Conference, New York University, Prague, February 23-24, 2017.

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

2016 | "Humanitarianism in Socialism - Socialism in Humanitarianism. On the Practice of Giving in Late Cold War Europe," Everyday Humanitarianism: Ethics, Affects and Practices Conference, London School of Economics, London, April 14-15, 2016.

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

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

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

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


Workshops


2021 | “Bärbel Schöfnagel’s Life Spent Giving: Private Aid Journeys into the Socialist Bloc,” Virtual             Publication Workshop the 2020-2021 Mellon Sawyer Seminar Humanitarianisms, Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities, University of Washington, December 13, 2021.

2021 | Panel Discussant, Virtual Publication Workshop the 2020-2021 Mellon Sawyer Seminar             Humanitarianisms, Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities, University of Washington, December 10, 2021.
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2021 | "Private Assistance and Socialist Refugeedom in Late 1980s Budapest,” Virtual Workshop of the 2020-2021 Mellon Sawyer Seminar Humanitarianisms, Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities, University of Washington, April 23, 2021.

2021 | Sinan Antoon, “Rescuing the Dead,” Moderator, Virtual Workshop of the 2020-2021 Mellon Sawyer Seminar Humanitarianisms, Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities, University of Washington, April 2, 2021.

2021 | Basit Kareem Iqbal, “Economy of Tribulation: Translating Humanitarianism for an Islamic Counterpublic” & China Scherz “Let us make God our Banker: Ethics, Temporality, and Agency in a Ugandan Charity Home.” Co-Moderator, Virtual Workshop of the 2020-2021 Mellon Sawyer Seminar Humanitarianisms, Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities, University of Washington, February 19, 2021.
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2021 | Amira Mittermaier, “Bread, Freedom, Social Justice: The Egyptian Uprising and a Sufi Khidma” & Sienna R. Craig, “Sowa Rigpa Humanitarianism: Local Logics of Care within a Global Politics of Compassion.” Moderator, Virtual Workshop of the 2020-2021 Mellon Sawyer Seminar Humanitarianisms, Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities, University of Washington, February 5, 2021.
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2021 | “Recentering the South in Studies of Migration” by Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, Co-Moderator, Virtual Workshop of the 2020-2021 Mellon Sawyer Seminar Humanitarianisms, Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities, University of Washington, January 15, 2021.

2020 | “The Evacuation of Burma and the Contours of Colonial Relief” by Emma Meyer and “The Dangerous Concept of the 'Just War’: Decolonization, Wars of National Liberation, and the Additional Protocols to the Geneva Conventions” by Jessica Whyte, Co-Moderator, Virtual Workshop of the 2020-2021 Mellon Sawyer Seminar Humanitarianisms, Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities, University of Washington, December 4, 2020.

2020 |  “The World Refugees Made” by Pamela Ballinger and “Life Lived in Relief” by Ilana Feldman, Co-Moderator, Virtual Workshop of the 2020-2021 Mellon Sawyer Seminar Humanitarianisms, Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities, University of Washington, November 13, 2020.
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2020 | “Hospitality as a Horizon of Aspiration (or, What the International Refugee Regime Can Learn from Acehnese Fishermen)” by Anne McNevin, Moderator, Virtual Workshop of the 2020-2021 Mellon Sawyer Seminar Humanitarianisms, Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities, University of Washington October 9, 2020.

2019 | “Socialism Under Water: Ethical Consumption, Natural Disasters, and Humanitarianism in Ceausescu’s Romania,” Presenter, European History Workshop, University of Michigan, November 3, 2019.

2015 | “The International 'Girl Trade' and Imperial Germany, 1880s-1914” by Stephanie Skier, Discussant, European History Workshop (EHW), University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, February 12, 2015.

2014 | “Ordinary Solidarity: Humanitarian Aid for Communist and Post-Communist Romania,” Presenter, European History Workshop (EHW), University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, December 3, 2014. 

Contact
INCITE @ Columbia University
Humanitarianisms.org
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© 2022 Cristian Capotescu
​Photo Credits Dimitris Michalakis
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