Guides: Alumni Travel Reading: The Black Sea

The Black Sea

Entrance to Balaklava Bay, Sevastopol, Ukraine. Courtesy of commons.wikimedia.org.

Bibliographer

Selected and Annotated By:

Deborah Bishov
Research and Instructional Services Intern

For more information about this and other excursions, visit the Penn Alumni Travel Webpage.

Tips for Your Trip

City & country guides from National Geographic Traveler

City and country guides from National Geographic Traveler include overviews of history and geography, maps, travel tips, beautiful pictures, and links to related articles. Access requires the creation of a free account.

Bosphorus Bridge, Istanbul. Courtesy of commons.wikimedia.org.

Istanbul, Turkey
Turkey
Sochi, Russia: Best Trips 2014
Bulgaria
Romania

Documentary

Peeva, Adela. Whose is this song? Documentary Educational Resources (DER), 2003.

Award-winning documentary on the search for the origins of a melody that appears in the folk music of Turkey, Greece, Macedonia, Albania, Bosnia, Serbia, and Bulgaria. Includes interviews and performances recorded across the region. As the film’s producers describe it, “[t]he trip is filled with humor, suspense, tragedy and surprise as each country's citizens passionately claim the song to be their own and can even furnish elaborate histories for its origins. The tune emerges again and again in different forms: as a love song, a religious hymn, a revolutionary anthem, and even a military march. The powerful emotions and stubborn nationalism raised by one song seem at times comical and other times, eerily telling. In a region besieged by ethnic hatred and war, what begins as a light-hearted investigation ends as a sociological and historical exploration of the deep misunderstandings between the people of the Balkans.”

This film can be viewed through the Penn libraries system. It is also available for purchase from DER.

Check out a preview below.

Black Sea Histories

The Black Sea by Charles King
Call Number: DJK66 .K56 2004
ISBN: 0199241619
Publication Date: 2004-05-20
A political and cultural history of the Black Sea and the lands that border it, from 700 B.C. to 1990. As noted on the dust jacket, “King investigates the myriad connections that have made the Black Sea more of a bridge than a boundary, linking religious communities, linguistic groups, empires, and later, nations and states." Includes an extensive bibliography of works on related topics.

Purchase this book from Amazon or borrow it from your local library.
A Concise History of Bulgaria by R. J. Crampton
Call Number: DR67 .C72 1997
ISBN: 0521561833
Publication Date: 1997-01-28
From the leading English language expert on the history of Bulgaria, this compact volume covers Bulgarian history from prehistoric times through its admission to NATO and the EU. Includes maps and photographs.

Purchase this book from Amazon or find it at your local library.
Odessa Memories by Nicholas V. Iljine (Editor); Patricia Herlihy
Call Number: DK508.95.O33 O327 2003
ISBN: 0295983450
Publication Date: 2004-01-01
Covers the rich cultural history of Odessa from the mid-19th century through the Russian Revolution of 1917. Includes essays from historians Patricia Herlihy, Oleg Gubar, and Alexander Rozenboim and from Bel Kaufman, writer and granddaughter of Sholem Aleichem, whose childhood was spent in Odessa. Illustrated with a wealth of vintage postcards, photographs, posters, advertisements, and illustrations.

Purchase this book from Amazon or borrow it from your local library.

Batumi, Georgia. Courtesy of commons.wikimedia.org.

The Black Sea in Literature

Check out this website from the Cambridge University Ukrainian Studies department dedicated to Taras Shevchenko, national poet of Ukraine, whose bicentennial is being marked throughout Ukraine in 2014.

Istanbul by Orhan Pamuk; Maureen Freely (Translator)
Call Number: DR723 .P36 2005
ISBN: 1400040957
Publication Date: 2005-06-07
A memoir by the Nobel Prize winner about growing up in Istanbul in the 1950’s and ‘60’s, combining history, philosophy, geography, and family stories. Includes both of the city of Istanbul and the author and his family.

Purchase this book from Amazon or find it at your local library.
The Lady with the Little Dog and Other Stories, 1896-1904 by Anton Chekhov; Paul Debreczney (Introduction by); Ronald Wilks (Translator); Paul Debreczeny (Foreword by)
Call Number: PG3456.A13 W552 2002
ISBN: 0140447873
Publication Date: 2002-11-26
Short stories written while the famous playwright and short story writer lived in in the Crimea at the end of his life. “The Lady with the Little Dog” is set partially in Yalta.

Purchase this book from Amazon or borrow it from your local library.