History as Entertainment

Matthias Schwartz is head of the program area World Literature at the Leibniz Center for Literary and Cultural Research (ZfL) in Berlin, Germany. His research interests include the cultural history of Russian and Soviet space flight, adventure literature, science fiction and science popularization, Eastern European youth cultures, memory cultures, and contemporary literatures in a globalized world. Nina Weller is a postdoctoral researcher. From 2018 to 2022, she was the head of the BMBF project "The Past of the Present" at the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder), Germany. Her research focuses on contemporary literature, popular culture, memory studies, and representations of history in Eastern European cultures, including Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine.