Guest:

Ellen Rutten is a professor of literature and chair of the Slavonic Department at the University of Amsterdam, where she researches post-Soviet and global contemporary culture, literature and art, design, social media and memory. She’s the author of Sincerity after Communism: A Cultural History published by Yale University Press.

Music:

The Smiths, “Unhappy Birthday,” Strangeways, Here We Come, 1987.