Shattering the Iron Curtain: Recent Research on the ESC in Central and Eastern Europe. Bibliography

Andjelić, Neven. “National Promotion and Eurovision: From Besieged Sarajevo to the Floodlights of Europe.” Contemporary Southeastern Europe 2, no. 1 (2015): 94–109.
  Google Scholar

Arntsen, Hilde. “Staging the Nation? Nation, Myth and Cultural Stereotypes in the International Eurovision Song Contest Finals in Estonia, Latvia and Norway.” In The Baltic Media World, edited by Richard Barug. Riga: independent publishing, 2005.
  Google Scholar

Aston, Elaine Frances. “Competing Femininities: A ‘Girl’ for Eurovision.” In Fricker and Gluhovic, Performing the ‘New’ Europe.
  Google Scholar

Baker, Catherine. “Gender and Geopolitics in the Eurovision Song Contest: Introduction.” Contemporary Southeastern Europe 2, no. 1 (2015): 74–93.
  Google Scholar

Baker, Catherine. “The Molitva Factor: Eurovision and ‘Performing’ National Identity in World Politics.” In The Eurovision Song Contest as a Cultural Phenomenon: From Concert Halls to the Halls of Academia, edited by Adam Dubin, Dean Vuletic, and Antonio Obregón. London: Routledge, 2022. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003188933-9.
  Google Scholar

Baker, Catherine. “Wild Dances and Dying Wolves: Simulation, Essentialization, and National Identity at the Eurovision Song Contest.” Popular Communication 6, no. 3 (2008): 173–189. https://doi.org/10.1080/15405700802198113.
  Google Scholar

Biasioli, Marco. “Songwashing: Russian Popular Music, Distraction, and Putin’s Fourth Term.” The Russian Review 82, no. 4 (2023): 682–704. https://doi.org/10.1111/russ.12516.
  Google Scholar

Björnberg, Alf. “Return to Ethnicity: The Cultural Significance of Musical Change in the Eurovision Song Contest.” In Raykoff and Tobin, A Song for Europe.
  Google Scholar

Bohlman, Philip V. “The Politics of Power, Pleasure, and Prayer in the Eurovision Song Contest.” Muzikologija, no. 7 (2007): 39–67. https://doi.org/10.2298/MUZ0707039B.
  Google Scholar

Carniel, Jessica. “Skirting the Issue: Finding Queer and Geopolitical Belonging at the Eurovision Song Contest.” Contemporary Southeastern Europe 2, no. 1 (2015): 136–154.
  Google Scholar

Carniel, Jessica. “This One Loves That One: Queerbaiting at the Eurovision Song Contest.” In Queerbaiting and Fandom: Teasing Fans through Homoerotic Possibilities, edited by Joseph Brennan. Iowa City, ia: University of Iowa Press, 2019.
  Google Scholar

Cassiday, Julie A. “Post-Soviet Pop Goes Gay: Russia’s Trajectory to Eurovision Victory.”The Russian Review 73, no. 1 (2014): 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1111/russ.10717.
  Google Scholar

Fricker, Karen. “‘It’s Just Not Funny Any More’: Terry Wogan, Melancholy Britain, and the Eurovision Song Contest.” In Fricker and Gluhovic, Performing the ‘New’ Europe.
  Google Scholar

Fricker, Karen, and Milija Gluhovic. “Introduction: Eurovision and the ‘New’ Europe.” In Fricker and Gluhovic, Performing the ‘New’ Europe.
  Google Scholar

Fricker, Karen, and Milija Gluhovic, eds. Performing the ‘New’ Europe: Identities, Feelings, and Politics in the Eurovision Song Contest. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137367983.
  Google Scholar

Gadea, Charlotte. “Spotlighting Eurovision as a Political Stage: Exploring How Turkey and Ukraine Use the ESC to Further Their Political Agendas.” Australian and New Zealand Journal of European Studies 16, no. 3 (2025): 28–32. https://doi.org/10.30722/anzjes.vol16.iss3.20916.
  Google Scholar

Giannini, Massimo, and Barbara Martini. “Regional disparities in the European Union: A Machine Learning Approach.” Papers in Regional Science 103, no. 4 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pirs.2024.100033.
  Google Scholar

Grmuša, Tanja. “The Role of Storytelling in Creating a Country’s Image on the Example of Eurovision Song Contest: How the ‘Rim Tim Tagi Dim’ Rhythm Contributed to the Global Promotion of Croatia.” In Digital and Cultural Influences on Media Narratives and Storytelling, edited by Nur Emine Koç et al. Hershey, PA: IGI Global Scientific Publishing, 2026. https://doi.org/10.4018/979-8-3373-2023-6.ch012.
  Google Scholar

Hansen, Arve, Andrei Rogatchevski, Yngvar Steinholt, and David-Emil Wickström. “‘Lasha Tumbai,’ or ‘Russia, Good-Bye’? The Eurovision Song Contest as a Post- Geopolitical Battleground.” In A War of Songs: Popular Music and Recent Russia-Ukraine Relations. Stuttgart: ibidem Press, 2019.
  Google Scholar

Heller, Dana. “‘Russian Body and Soul’: t.A.T.u. Performs at Eurovision 2003.” In Raykoff and Tobin, A Song for Europe.
  Google Scholar

Heller, Dana. “t.A.T.u. You! Russia, the Global Politics of Eurovision, and Lesbian Pop.” Popular Music 26, no. 2 (2007): 195–210. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261143007001237.
  Google Scholar

Heřmanová, Marie. “‘All the Sisters of the World’: Pan-Slavic Conspiracies and the Weaponization of Womanhood.” Journal of Information Technology & Politics (2025). https://doi.org/10.1080/19331681.2025.2473988.
  Google Scholar

Hintermayr, Michaela Maria. “Eurovision Cold War: Geopolitics and Queerness at the Eurovision Song Contest in 2007.” fernetzt, 2016. https://fernetzt.univie.ac.at/eurovision-cold-war-geopolitics-and-queerness-at-the-eurovision-songcontest-in-2007/.
  Google Scholar

Hutchings, Stephen. “A Little Girl Dreams of Kiev: Projection as Abjection, the Invalid Nation, and Russia’s 2017 Eurovision (Non)-Performance.” In Projecting Russia in a Mediatized World: Recursive Nationhood. London: Routledge, 2022.
  Google Scholar

Ibrus, Indrek, Ulrike Rohn, and Alessandro Nani. “Searching for Public Value in Innovation Coordination: How the Eurovision Song Contest Was Used to Innovate the Public Service Media Model in Estonia.” International Journal of Cultural Studies 22, no. 3 (2019): 367–382. https://doi.org/10.1177/1367877918757513.
  Google Scholar

Ingvoldstad, Björn. “Lithuanian Contests and European Dreams.” In Raykoff and Tobin, A Song for Europe.
  Google Scholar

Johnson, Emily D. “A New Song for a New Motherland: Eurovision and the Rhetoric of Post-Soviet National Identity.” The Russian Review 73, no. 1 (2014): 24–46. https://doi.org/10.1111/russ.10718.
  Google Scholar

Jones, Shannon, and Jelena Subotic. “Fantasies of Power: Performing Europeanization on the European Periphery.” European Journal of Cultural Studies 14, no. 5 (2011): 542–557.
  Google Scholar

Jordan, Paul. “Eurovision in Moscow: Re-Imagining Russia on the Global Stage.” eSharp, no. 14 (2009): 39–61.
  Google Scholar

Jordan, Paul. “The Eurovision Song Contest: Nation Building and Nation Branding in Estonia and Ukraine.” PhD diss., University of Glasgow, 2011.
  Google Scholar

Jordan, Paul. “From Ruslana to Gaitana: Performing ‘Ukrainianness’ in the Eurovision Song Contest.” Contemporary Southeastern Europe 2, no. 1 (2015): 110–135.
  Google Scholar

Jordan, Paul. The Modern Fairy Tale: Nation Branding, National Identity and the Eurovision Song Contest in Estonia. Tartu: University of Tartu Press, 2014.
  Google Scholar

Kalman, Julie A., and Ben Wellings. “Entangled Histories: Identity, Eurovision and European Integration.” In Kalman, Wellings, and Jacotine, Eurovisions: Identity and the International Politics.
  Google Scholar

Kalman, Julie, Ben Wellings, and Keshia Jacotine, eds. Eurovisions: Identity and the International Politics of the Eurovision Song Contest since 1956. Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.
  Google Scholar

Kazakov, Vitaly, and Stephen Hutchings. “Challenging the ‘Information War’ Paradigm: Russophones and Russophobes in Online Eurovision Communities.” In Freedom of Expression in Russia’s New Mediasphere, edited by Mariëlle Wijermars and Katja Lehtisaari. London: Routledge, 2019. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429437205-8.
  Google Scholar

Kosciejew, Marc Richard Hugh. “Songwashing and Cultural Boycotting the Eurovision Song Contest: A Soft Power/Disempowerment Analysis of Israel’s Entry to Eurovision 2024 during the Israel-Hamas War.” Popular Music and Society 48, no. 3 (2025): 318–345. https://doi.org/10.1080/03007766.2025.2485784.
  Google Scholar

Kunakhovich, Kyrill. “A Different Vision: The Intervision Song Contest from the Cold War to the War on Ukraine.” GlobalEurope, no. 4 (2026). https://globaleuropejournal.org/2026/04/a-different-vision-the-intervision-song-contest-from-thecold-war-to-the-war-on-ukraine/.
  Google Scholar

Markovic Khaze, Nina. “Negotiating Post-war Nationhood: Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Eurovision Song Contest.” In Kalman, Wellings, and Jacotine, Eurovisions: Identity and the International Politics. Meerzon, Yana, and Dmitri Priven. “Back to the Future: Imagining a New Russia at the Eurovision Song Contest.” In Fricker and Gluhovic, Performing the ‘New’ Europe.
  Google Scholar

Miazhevich, Galina. “Paradoxes of New Media: Digital Discourses on Eurovision 2014, Media Flows and Post-Soviet Nation-Building.” New Media & Society 19, no. 2 (2017): 199–216. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444815591968.
  Google Scholar

Miazhevich, Galina. “Sexual Excess in Russia’s Eurovision Performances as a Nation Branding Tool.” Russian Journal of Communication 3, no. 3/4 (2010): 248–264. https://doi.org/10.1080/19409419.2010.10756776.
  Google Scholar

Miazhevich, Galina. “Ukrainian Nation Branding Off-line and Online: Verka Serduchka at the Eurovision Song Contest.” Europe-Asia Studies 64, no. 8 (2012): 1505–1523. https://doi.org/10.1080/09668136.2012.712274.
  Google Scholar

Mitrović, Marijana. “‘New Face of Serbia’ at the Eurovision Song Contest: International Media Spectacle and National Identity.” European Review of History 17, no. 2 (2010): 171–185.
  Google Scholar

Neves, Mauro. “Croatia in the Eurovision Song Contest: From an Anti-War Message to the Recognition of a Cultural Tradition.” IRASM 48, no. 1 (2017): 133–147.
  Google Scholar

Noy, Inbar, Meital Viner-Serdtse, and Galia Press-Barnathan. “Militarization and Popular Culture in the Shadow of War: The 2022 Eurovision Song Contest.” International Affairs 100, no. 4 (2024): 1675–1692. https://doi.org/10.1093/ia/iiae133.
  Google Scholar

Ojamaa, Triinu, and Kanni Labi. “Eurovision Song Contest in Estonia Media: Discussion on Ethnic and Sexual Minorities.” In Balkan and Baltic States in United Europe: Histories, Religions, and Cultures, edited by Ekaterina Anastova and Mare Koiva. Sofia: Paradigma, 2009.
  Google Scholar

Pajala, Mari, and Dean Vuletic. “Stagecraft in the Service of Statecraft? Russia in the Eurovision Song Contest.” In Russia’s Cultural Statecraft, edited by Tuomas Forsberg and Sirke Mäkinen. New York: Routledge, 2022.
  Google Scholar

Pałuba, Damian. “Gust muzyczny polskich muzyków na podstawie wyników Konkursu Piosenki Eurowizji.” Dziennikarstwo i Media 22 (2024): 62–72.
  Google Scholar

Panea, José Luis, and José Patricio Pérez Rufi. “From We Are Slavic to My Sister’s Crown: Gender, Ethnicity, and Media Events.” Visual Review 16, no. 1 (2024): 107–123. https://doi.org/10.62161/revvisual.v16.5176.
  Google Scholar

Pavlyshyn, Marko. “Envisioning Europe: Ruslana’s Rhetoric of Identity.” Slavic and East European Journal 50, no. 3 (2006): 469–485.
  Google Scholar

Pavlyshyn, Marko. “Ruslana, Serduchka, Jamala: National Self-Imaging in Ukraine’s Eurovision Entries.” In Kalman, Wellings, and Jacotine, Eurovisions: Identity and the International Politics.
  Google Scholar

Piotrowska, Anna G. “About Twin Song Festivals in Eastern and Western Europe: Intervision and Eurovision.” International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music 47, no. 1 (2016): 123–135. https://www.jstor.org/stable/43869457.
  Google Scholar

Piotrowska, Anna G. “The Eurovision Song Contest—A Continent (Still) Divided?.” Journal of Historical Sociology 33, no. 3 (2020): 371–388. https://doi.org/10.1111/johs.12285.
  Google Scholar

Raykoff, Ivan, and Robert Deam Tobin, eds. A Song for Europe: Popular Music and Politics in the Eurovision Song Contest. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007.
  Google Scholar

Rehberg, Peter, and Mikko Tuhkanen. “Danzing Time: Dissociative Camp and European Synchrony.” SQS: Journal of Queer Studies in Finland 2, no. 2 (2007): 43–59.
  Google Scholar

Reyes, Manuel, and Kristin McGee. “Patches of Survival in the Anthropocene: Melancholy and Ecstasy within Go_A’s 2021 Eurovision Song Contest Performance of ‘SHUM’ (ШУМ).” Popular Music and Society 46, no. 2 (2023): 191–212. https://doi.org/10.1080/03007766.2023.2188363.
  Google Scholar

Scott, Derek B. “Imagining the Balkans, Imagining Europe: Balkan Entries in the Eurovision Song Contest.” In Ottoman Intimacies, Balkan Musical Realities, edited by Risto Pennanen et al. Helsinki: Finnish Institute at Athens, 2013.
  Google Scholar

Sieg, Katrin. “Conundrums of Post-Socialist Belonging at the Eurovision Song Contest.” In Fricker and Gluhovic, Performing the ‘New’ Europe.
  Google Scholar

Sieg, Katrin. “Cosmopolitan Empire: Central and Eastern Europeans at the Eurovision Song Contest.” European Journal of Cultural Studies 16, no. 2 (2013): 244–263. https://doi.org/10.1177/1367549412450639.
  Google Scholar

Sonevytsky, Maria. “Wild Dances: Ethnic Intimacy, Auto-Exoticism, and Infrastructural Activism.” In Wild Music: Sound and Sovereignty in Ukraine. Middletown, ct: Wesleyan University Press, 2019.
  Google Scholar

Szeman, Ioana. “‘Playing with Fire’ and Playing It Safe: With(out) Roma at the Eurovision Song Contest.” In Fricker and Gluhovic, Performing the ‘New’ Europe.
  Google Scholar

Tobin, Robert Deam. “Eurovision at 50: Post-Wall and Post-Stonewall.” In Raykoff and Tobin, A Song for Europe.
  Google Scholar

Tochka, Nicholas. Audible States: Socialist Politics and Popular Music in Albania. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190467814.001.0001.
  Google Scholar

Uehling, Greta Lynn. “Making Crimean Tatar Lives More Grievable: Mourning and Recognition through the 2016 Eurovision Contest.” In Decolonizing Ukraine: How the Indigenous People of Crimea Remade Themselves after Russian Occupation. Lanham, md: Rowman & Littlefield, 2025.
  Google Scholar

Ulbricht, Alexej, Indraneel Sircar, and Koen Slootmaeckers. “Queer to Be Kind: Exploring Western Media Discourses about the ‘Eastern Bloc’ during the 2007 and 2014 Eurovision Song Contests.” Contemporary Southeastern Europe 2, no. 1 (2015): 155–172.
  Google Scholar

Verschik, Anna, and Jim Hlavac. “Eto Leto Svet: Estonia’s Eurovision Song as a Source of Folk-Linguistic Controversy.” Monash University Linguistics Papers 6, no. 2 (2009): 47–64.
  Google Scholar

Vuletic, Dean. “The Balkans in the Eurovision Song Contest.” In The Routledge Handbook of Popular Music and Politics of the Balkans, edited by Catherine Baker. Abingdon: Routledge, 2024. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003328162-7.
  Google Scholar

Vuletic, Dean. “The Intervision Song Contest: A Commercial and Pan-European Alternative to the Eurovision Song Contest.” In Eastern European Popular Music in a Transnational Context: Beyond the Borders, edited by Ewa Mazierska and Zsolt Győri. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17034-9_9.
  Google Scholar

Vuletic, Dean. Postwar Europe and the Eurovision Song Contest. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781474276290.
  Google Scholar

Vuletic, Dean. “Recognising Kosovo in the World of Televised International Song Contests.” In Kalman, Wellings, and Jacotine, Eurovisions: Identity and the International Politics.
  Google Scholar

Vuletic, Dean. “The Socialist Star: Yugoslavia, Cold War Politics and the Eurovision Song Contest.” In Raykoff and Tobin, A Song for Europe.
  Google Scholar

Vuletic, Dean. “Where Is Central Europe in the Eurovision Song Contest?” In Voices of Identities: Vocal Music and De/con/struction of Communities in the Former Habsburg Areas, edited by Daniel Ender and Christoph Flamm. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2018.
  Google Scholar

Welslau, Lea M., and Torsten J. Selck. “Geopolitics in the ESC: Comparing Russia’s and Ukraine’s Use of Cultural Diplomacy in the Eurovision Song Contest.” New Perspectives 32, no. 1 (2024): 5–29. https://doi.org/10.1177/2336825X231222000.
  Google Scholar

Wiedlack, Katharina, and Iain Zabolotny. “Race, Whiteness, Russianness and the Discourses on the ‘Black Lives Matter’ Movement and Manizha.” In The Routledge International Handbook of New Critical Race and Whiteness Studies, edited by Rikke Andreassen et al. London: Routledge, 2023. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003120612.
  Google Scholar

Wilken, Lisanne. “The Eurovision Song Contest as Cultural Diplomacy during the Cold War: Transmitting Western Attractiveness.” In Machineries of Persuasion: European Soft Power and Public Diplomacy during the Cold War, edited by Óscar J. Martín García and Rósa Magnúsdóttir. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110560510-009.
  Google Scholar

Yekelchyk, Serhy. “What Is Ukrainian about Ukraine’s Pop Culture?: The Strange Case of Verka Serduchka.” Canadian-American Slavic Studies 44, no. 1/2 (2010): 217–232. https://doi.org/10.1163/221023910X512877.
  Google Scholar

Yusupova, Guzel. “The Digital Contestation of Racialized Nationhood in Russia: Manizha’s Eurovision Performance.” Communist and Post-Communist Studies 57, no. 2 (2024): 135–155. https://doi.org/10.1525/cpcs.2023.2005360.
  Google Scholar