Prof. Dr. Simon Lewis

Monographs

Belarus - Alternative Visions: Nation, Memory and Cosmopolitanism (New York–London: Routledge, 2019). Awarded “Best English-language Monograph in Belarusian Studies in the decade 2015–2024” (joint winner), International Congress of Belarusian Studies, 2025

Remembering Katyn, co-authored with Alexander Etkind, Rory Finnin, Uilleam Blacker, Julie Fedor, Maria M?lksoo and Matilda Mroz (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2012).

Edited Volumes

Multicultural Commonwealth: Poland-Lithuania and its Afterlives, co-edited with Stanley Bill (Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh University Press, 2023). 2024 Anna M. Cienciala Award for Best-Edited Multi-Authored Scholarly Volume (Honorable Mention)

Regions of Memory: Transnational Formations, co-edited with Jeffrey Olick, Joanna Wawrzyniak, Ma?gorzata Pakier (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022).

Journal Special Section

“Decentring Polish Memory: Parallax Perspectives on East-Central European Pasts”, co-edited with Kamilla Biskupska and Ma?gorzata ?ukianow, Zeitschrift für Slawistik, vol. 70, issue 3 (2025), 359–482 .

“Poland’s Wars of Symbols,”co-editedwith Magdalena Waligórska, East European Politics and Societies: and Cultures 33, no. 2 (2019).

Journal Articles

“Metadiscourse and Polyphony: Decolonial Trends in Belarusian Writing After 2020”, with Jenya Mironava. Article (9000 words) for special issue on Russophone Literary Diversity, ed. Natalya Rulyova, Isobel Palmer and Irina Kuznetsova, forthcoming at Slavic and East European Journal (submitted February 2025, accepted September 2025).

“Introduction: Parallax Perspectives on Polish Pasts”, co-authored with Ma?gorzata ?ukianow and Kamilla Biskupska, Zeitschrift für Slawistik, 70, issue 3 (2025), 359–69.

"East is East? Polish Orientalism in the Early Nineteenth Century," Central Europe 19, no. 2 (2022): 135-52. Open Access.

‘“Tear Down These Prison Walls!” Verses of Defiance in the Belarusian Revolution,” Slavic Review 80, no. 2 (2021): 15–26. Open Access.

"Border Trouble: Ethnopolitics and Cosmopolitan Memory in Recent Polish Cinema," East European Politics and Societies: and Cultures 33, no. 2 (2019): 522-49

"Introduction: Poland's Wars of Symbols," co-authored with Magdalena Waligorska, East European Politics and Societies: and Cultures 33, no. 2 (2019):423-34

“Overcoming Hegemonic Martyrdom: The Afterlife of Khatyn in Belarusian Memory,” Journal of Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society, 1, no. 2 (2015): 367–401.

“‘Official Nationality’ and the Dissidence of Memory in Belarus: A Comparative Analysis of Two Films,” Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema 5, no. 3 (2011): 371–87
*Awarded the Zora Kipel Article Prize in Belarusian Studies (2012); runner-up in Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema postgraduate article competition (2011).

Book Chapters

“Fault-lines of Memory: Cultural Remembrance in Belarus between Europe’s East and West”, in The Routledge Handbook on Memory in Central and Eastern Europe, ed. Violeta Davoliūt? and Dovil? Budryt?, New York: Routledge (forthcoming, 2026).

“Introduction: Diverse Histories and Contested Memories,” co-authored with Stanley Bill, in Multicultural Commonwealth: Poland-Lithuania and its Afterlives, ed. Stanley Bill and Simon Lewis (Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh University Press, 2023), 3–26.

"Polish-Belarusian Encounters and the Divided Legacy of the Commonwealth,” in Multicultural Commonwealth: Poland-Lithuania and its Afterlives, ed. Stanley Bill and Simon Lewis (Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh University Press, 2023), 220–40.

“Introduction: Regions of Memory in Theory,” co-authored with Joanna Wawrzyniak, in Regions of Memory: Transnational Formations, ed. Simon Lewis, Jeffrey K. Olick, Joanna Wawryzniak, and Ma?gorzata Pakier (Cham: Palgrave MacMillan, 2022), 1–16. Open Access.

"Eine üppige Ernte: Die polnischen Wurzeln des Belarusischen Ged?chtnisses,” trans. Agnieszka Wierzcholska, in Heu auf dem Asphalt. Topoi Belarussischer Selbstverortungen, ed. Yaraslava Ananka, Heinrich Kirschbaum, and Magdalena Marsza?ek (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2021), 41–60.

"Cosmopolitanism as Subculture in the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth,” in Identities In-Between in East-Central Europe, ed. Jan Fellerer, Robert Pyrah, and Marius Turda (New York and London: Routledge, 2019), 149-69.

“The Jagiellonians in Belarus: a Gradual Release of Memory,” in Remembering the Jagiellonians, ed.Natalia Nowakowska (New York—London: Routledge, 2018), 162–82.

“The Partisan Republic: Colonial Myths and Memory Wars in Belarus,” in War and Memory in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, ed. Julie Fedor, Markku Kangaspuro, Jussi Lassila, and Tatiana Zhurzhenko(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 371–96 (Open Access).
*Translated into Russian as “Partizanskaia respublika: kolonial'nye mify i voina za pamiat' v Belarusi,” with a new conclusion, in Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie 166, 6/2020.

“Introduction: War and Memory in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus,” co-authored with Julie Fedor and Tatiana Zhurzhenko, in War and Memory in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, ed. Julie Fedor, Markku Kangaspuro, Jussi Lassila, and Tatiana Zhurzhenko(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 1–40. Open Access.
*Translated into Ukrainian (Ukraina Moderna, online 2 February 2018), Russian (Neprikosnovenny Zapas, 119 (2018): 114–41), and Belarusian (Bielaruski Histary?ny Ahliad, 25 (2018): 85-122).

“Towards Cosmopolitan Mourning: Belarusian Literature between History and Politics,” in Memory and Theory in Eastern Europe, ed. Uilleam Blacker, Alexander Etkind, and Julie Fedor  (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 195–216.

Book Reviews

Piotr Twardzisz, Defining ‘Eastern Europe’: A Semantic Inquiry into Political Terminology (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), Slavonic and Eastern European Review, 100, no. 3 (2022), 589 –91.

Zuzanna Bogumi? and Ma?gorzata G?owacka-Grajper, Milieux de mémoire in Late Modernity: Local Communities, Religion and Historical Politics (Berlin-Bern-Bruxelles-New York-Oxford-Warszawa-Wien: Peter Lang, 2019), Memory Studies 13, no. 6 (2020): 1352–55.

Arnold McMillin, Spring Shoots: Young Belarusian Poets in the Early Twenty-First Century (Cambridge: MHRA, 2015), Modern Language Review 112, no. 3 (2017): 787–88.

Per Anders Rudling, The Rise and Fall of Belarusian Nationalism, 1906-1931 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015), Slavonic and East European Journal 59, no. 4 (2015): 657–58.

Media

“Wo?yń: towards memory dialogue between Poland and Ukraine,” openDemocracy, 27 October 2016: https://www.opendemocracy.net/od-russia/simon-lewis/wolyn-towards-memory-dialogue-poland-ukraine

“Vozmozhna li belorusskaia pamiat' o Katyni?” (article, in Russian), Novaia Europa, 24 April 2013: http://n-europe.eu/article/2013/04/24/vozmozhna_li_belarusskaya_pamyat_o_katyni

“Culture War in Belarus,” openDemocracy, 5 April 2013: http://www.opendemocracy.net/od-russia/simon-lewis/culture-war-in-belarus

Translations

Anna Wylega?a, Displaced Memories: Remembering and Forgetting in Post-war Poland and Ukraine (Frankfurt-am-Main: Peter Lang, 2019); originally Przesiedlenia a pami??. Studium (nie)pami?ci spo?ecznej na przyk?adzie ukraińskiej Galicji i polskich "ziem odzyskanych" (Toruń: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu Miko?aja Kopernika, 2014).

Joanna Wawrzyniak, Veterans, Victims and Memory. The Politics of the Second World War in Communist Poland (Frankfurt-am-Main: Peter Lang, 2015); originally ZBoWiD i pami?? drugiej wojny ?wiatowej 1949-1969 (Warszawa: Trio, 2009).

Kornelia Kończal and Joanna Wawrzyniak, “Provincializing memory studies: Polish approaches in the past and present,” Memory Studies, published online 25 Jan 2017, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1750698016688238; originally: “Polskie badania pami?cioznawcze: tradycje, koncepcje, (nie)ci?g?o?ci,” Kultura i Spo?eczeństwo 55, no. 4 (2011): 11–63.

Mariusz Maszkiewicz (ed.), Belarus: Towards a United Europe (Wroc?aw: Jan Nowak-Jeziorański College of Eastern Europe, 2009).

Other

Invited contribution to scholarly “conversation” hosted by the Centre for Geopolitics at the University of Cambridge on “Cancelling VE Day: What are the potential obstacles and opportunities for states using historical memory as soft power in the Covid-19 era?”: https://centreforgeopolitics.org/cancelling-ve-day/ (May 2020).

“Mezhdunarodnaia konferentsiia ‘Teoriia i pamiat' v vostochnoi Evrope’” [conference review], Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie, 114 (2012), http://magazines.russ.ru/nlo/2012/114/s54.html

“Belarus Report: Presidential Election and Memory War,” Eastern European Memory Studies, 3 (2011), 19-20.

Research Interests

Cultures and Literatures of Central and Eastern Europe, esp. Belarusian, Polish and Russian

Memory Studies

Literary and cultural theory

Postcolonialism and postcoloniality

Multiculturalism and cosmopolitanism

Protest cultures in Central and Eastern Europe

Major Awards/Grants

Memory Studies (seminar, MA)
Einführung in die Kulturgeschichte Europas (lecture, BA)
Methoden und Medien in der Kulturwissenschaft (seminar, BA)
Europ?ische Erinnerung(en) auf der Leinwand: Kino und Ged?chtnis (seminar, BA)
Introduction to Cultural Studies: Definitions, Theories, Approaches (lecture, BA)
Europe and its Colonialisms: Theory and Practice, Memory and Forgetting (seminar, BA)
Contested Communities: Auseinandersetzungen um Kultur und Politik in Europa  (seminar, BA)
Central and Eastern Europe: Cultural Issues in Times of Crisis (Seminar, MA)
Culture and its Media: Words, Images, Actions (seminar, BA)
Belarus. Sprache, Kultur, Ged?chtnis (seminar, BA)
Einführung in die Techniken wissenschaftlichen Arbeitens (seminar, BA)
What is Post-Socialism? Culture, Identity and Society in Eastern and East-Central Europe after 1989/1991 (seminar, BA)
Pan-European Memory? The Second World War and its Cultural Aftermaths in Europe Study (seminar, BA)
Sites of Memory in Europe: Poland as Case Study (seminar, BA)

 n.V. per E-Mail