Elinor Despalatovic, Connecticut College

emdes@conncoll.edu

Education
B.A., Barnard College; M.A., Ph.D., Columbia University

"History is about people; people who thought and felt and worked and made decisions. If we forget about people as the subjects of history, we are left with kings and wars and dry facts."
Elinor M. Despalatovic
Brigida Pacchiani Ardenghi Professor Emerita of History
With Connecticut College: 1965-2001

Specialization:
  • Modern history of Eastern Europe, Russia and the Soviet Union

Professor Despalatovic retired from Connecticut College in 2001.

She is working on a monograph about peasant life in Croatia-Slavonia before World War I. Much of her material comes from a rich and relatively unknown collection of village studies made at that time for the Ethnographic Department of the Yugoslav Academy. The village studies were based upon a long questionnaire drawn up by Ante Radic which examines material culture, customs and beliefs. She is also working on the history of the Croatian Peasant Party, the most important political party in Croatia in the interwar period. She is particularly interested in the economic and literary organizations affiliated with the Croatian Peasant Party (Gospodarska sloga, Seljacka sloga), and the lives of its founders and leaders: Ante and Stjepan Radic, and Vlatko Macek.

Professor Despalatovic has published articles on Peasant Party topics.

Before her retirement, she taught Russian History, Soviet History, Eastern Europe Between the Great Powers, 1815-1990, History of the Balkans since 1453, and various seminars on Peasant, Soviet and Balkan history.

View the history department Web site.

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