Lea Ypi on Free: A Child and a Country at the End of History

March 4, 2022

Lea Ypi discussed her book, Free: A Child and a country at the End of History. For precocious 11-year-old Lea Ypi, Albania’s Soviet-style socialism held the promise of a preordained future, a guarantee of security among enthusiastic comrades. That is, until she found herself clinging to a stone statue of Joseph Stalin, newly beheaded by student protests. The book is a reflection on "freedom" in a the form of a dramatic, beautifully written memoir of the end of Communism in the Balkans.

She was joined in conversation by Atossa Abrahamian (Kevorkian Center, NYU), Udi Greenberg (Dartmouth College), Ivan Krastev (Institute for Human Sciences), and Sophie Pinkham (New York Review of Books). Stefanos Geroulanos (Remarque Institute, NYU) moderated the discussion.

Registration was required in order to receive the Zoom log-in details for the webinar. This program was co-sponsored by the NYU Remarque Institute and the NYU Brademas Center. Please note this program may have been recorded.

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Atossa Araxia Abrahamian

Stefanos Geroulanos

Udi Greenberg

Ivan Krastev

Sophie Pinkham

Lea Ypi

Atossa Araxia Abrahamian, Journalist

Atossa Araxia Abrahamian is a journalist based in Brooklyn and the author of The Cosmopolites: The Coming of the Global Citizen. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, New York Magazine, the London Review of Books, and other publications. She has worked as an opinion editor at Al Jazeera America and a general news and business reporter for Reuters.

Stefanos Geroulanos, Executive Director, NYU Remarque Institute

Stefanos Geroulanos is Professor of European History at New York University and Executive Director of the Remarque Institute. He is working on a book on the history of conceptions of human origins since 1770 (under contract with Liveright), and a short book on Napoleon and the institution of the Civil Code in France. He is the author or co-author of 4 books: Transparency in Postwar France: A Critical History of the Present (2017), The Human Body in the Age of Catastrophe (with Todd Meyers, 2018), Experimente im Individuum (with Todd Meyers, 2014), and An Atheism that is not Humanist Emerges in French Thought (2010).

Udi Greenberg, Professor, Dartmouth College

Udi Greenberg studies and teaches modern European history at Dartmouth College. His scholarship and teaching focuses especially on the history of ideas, politics, and gender and sexuality. His work has been supported, among others, by the ACLS, Mellon Foundation, the Volkswagen Foundation, and the DAAD.

Ivan Krastev, Fellow, Institute for Human Sciences, IWM Vienna

Ivan Krastev chairs the Centre for Liberal Strategies in Sofia and is a permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences, IWM Vienna. He is a founding board member of ECFR, a member of Open Society Foundations’ global advisory board, a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times, and the author of After Europe.

Sophie Pinkham, Author

Sophie Pinkham is the author of Black Square: Adventures in Post-Soviet Ukraine. She is working on a cultural history of the Russian forest. (March 2022. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times, n+1, the London Review of Books and Foreign Affairs, among other publications.

Lea Ypi, Author; Professor, London School of Economics; Adjunct Associate Professor, Australian National University

Lea Ypi is professor of political theory at London School of Economics, and adjunct associate professor of philosophy at the Australian National University, with expertise in Marxism and critical theory. She lives and works in London.