Julia Mead

I am an environmental historian of modern Eastern Europe, with a particular focus on energy, gender, and labor. My dissertation, “Socialist Rust Belt: Energy, Masculinity, and the End of Czechoslovak Socialism,” traces the rise and fall of the Czechoslovak coal economy from 1948 to 2004 and its relationship to changing norms of masculinity. I show how coal miners in socialist Czechoslovakia achieved an elite social status, and how they lost it almost overnight during the transition to capitalism. I also have research interests in the history of household appliances, socialist women’s organizations, and energy infrastructure in the former Eastern Bloc. Before becoming a historian, I worked as a fact checker for The Nation and New York Magazine.