Please join the Harriman Institute for a book talk by Alexis Peri. Moderated by Elise Giuliano and discussed by Yana Skorobogatov.
In the tense years of WWII and the early Cold War, American and Soviet women took up a remarkable pen-pal correspondence that enabled them to see each other as friends rather than enemies. Previously unexamined, these letters movingly demonstrate the power of the personal, as the pen pals engaged in a “diplomacy of the heart” that led them to question why their countries were so divided. The correspondence also inspired them individually to reexamine their own societies and lives through a critical lens.
Alexis Peri is an Associate Professor of History at Boston University. She has published The War Within: Diaries from the Siege of Leningrad (Harvard University Press, 2017), named in the Wall Street Journal as one of the ten best books on the Soviet home front. Her new book is Dear Unknown Friend: The Remarkable Correspondence between American and Soviet Women (Harvard University Press, 2024). Peri is the recipient of the 2019 Gitner Family Family Prize for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching and the 2024 Metcalf Award for Teaching Excellence, both from Boston University.
