This work is a critical intervention into the archive of female identity; it reflects on the ways in which the Central and Eastern European female ideal was constructed, represented, and embodied in communist societies and on its transformation resulting from the political, economic, and social changes specific to the post-communist social and political transitions.

Florentina C. Andreescu is a lecturer in International Studies at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington.

Michael J Shapiro is a professor of Political Science at the University of Hawai'i---Manoa.

Introduction. Florentina C. Andreescu and Michael J. Shapiro, 1. Women, Language, and Sacrifice/ Florentina C. Andreescu and Sean P. Quinn 2. Haunted Transitions: Memory, Theater, and Gender Discourse/ Oana Popescu-Sandu 3. Hungarian Masks/ Michael J. Shapiro 4. (An)Other Part of the Fall? Stories of Anonymous Women in (Post)communism/ Irina Velicu 5. Women as Anticommunist Dissidents and Secret Police Collaborators/ Lavinia Stan 6. Flirting with the West, Gender and Nation in Occident (2002) and California Dreamin' (2007)/ Oana Godeanu-Kenworthy 7. Governance of Life and Femininity in Bosnia and Herzegovina: Reflections on Affective Politics and Cultural Production/ Jasmina Husanovic 8. The Fantasy of Femininity among the Industrial Ruins of Communism: Teona Strugar Mitevska's I am from Titov Veles (2007)/ Barbara Mennel 9. Turbo-Sexuality or Turbo-Sexism: The Emerging Standards of Beauty in the Pop-Folk Music of the Balkans/ Elza Ibroscheva 10. The Gypsy Woman: Between Imaginary Figure and Reality/ Anca M. Pusca