The William L White International Peace Forum

What: Dr. Alexis Peri talk

When: Sept. 15, 2025 — 5:00PM reception and 6:30PM talk

Where: Campus of Illinois State University –> Bone Student Center –> Old Main Room

Note: A dinner for members and Professor Peri is planned for Sunday, September  14th at the Bloomington Country Club. Watch for your invitation to the dinner which will be arriving soon.
“Alexis Peri is an Associate Professor of History at Boston University. She has published Dear Unknown Friend: The Remarkable Correspondence between American and Soviet Women (Harvard University Press, 2024), and The War Within: Diaries from the Siege of Leningrad (Harvard University Press, 2017), winner of the Pushkin House Book Prize and named by the Wall Street Journal as one of the ten best books on the Soviet home front. She is also a recipient of the 2024 Metcalf Award for Teaching Excellence from Boston University. In the tense years of WWII and the Cold War, American and Soviet women struck up a remarkable pen-pal correspondence that enabled them to see each other as friends rather than enemies. Their letters – initially tolerated by censors on both sides — revealed the humanity of the enemy and inspired the women to reexamine their own societies more critically.
In this talk, which draws from the research for her most recent book Dear Unknown Friend, Professor Alexis Peri tells their rare and poignant tale. Writing against the political current, she will demonstrate, the pen-pals approached each other with curiosity and empathy.”