2pm to 3pm (New York Time) on Zoom

Tania Arcimovich,
Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Erfurton

on

“The State of Limbo:” Knowledge, Gender, Migration. Displaced scholars from Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia

Dr. Tania Arcimovich is a researcher whose primary focus is cultural studies, feminist theory, and history. She earned her Master’s in Sociology (Cultural Studies) from the European Humanities University (Vilnius) and defended the dissertation at the International Centre for the Study of Culture (Justus Liebig University Giessen). Currently, she is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Erfurt and is involved in the project “Protecting Academia at Risk: Towards a New Policy Agenda for Thriving Culture of Higher Education in Europe”.

About the presentation: The aim of Dr. Tania Arcimovich’s research is to analyze the challenges faced by displaced female scholars from Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia who are compelled to leave their home countries and adapt to new cultural and academic environments. Her study examines the conditions and unique aspects of knowledge production among these displaced and migrant female scholars. The primary focus lies on the tension between two realms: the material world—which includes the circumstances of migration, adaptation, mimicry, and transition faced by these scholars, alongside their bodily and emotional experiences and the labor of care—and the epistemological process related to knowledge production. The goal is to reveal how these material and often traumatic experiences influence or shape the knowledge that is produced by these scholars.

The paper is part of a collaborative research project titled “Protecting Academia at Risk: Towards a New Policy Agenda for a Thriving Culture of Higher Education in Europe.” This project involves partnerships between the University of Erfurt, Central European University in Vienna, the National University of Political Studies and Public Administration in Bucharest, and the London School of Economics and Political Science, with support from the Gerda Henkel Foundation.

About the Workshop: We ask that registered participants read the paper in advance, shared upon registration. At the workshop, Dr. Arcimovich will have a brief presentation. Following Dr. Arcimovich’s presentation, we invite all participants to ask questions based on the paper and presentation.

Register for Zoom Here

2pm to 3pm (New York Time)

On Zoom

Anna Ratecka

on

At Home with Feminism: Sex Workers’ Politics of Belonging in the Feminist Movement in Poland

Dr. Anna Ratecka is a postdoctoral researcher at Södertörn University, Sweden, where she works on the SUSTAINACTION project on civil society resilience in Central and Eastern Europe. Her research focuses on sex workers’ mobilizations, governance, anti-trafficking, and feminist organizing. She earned her PhD at Jagiellonian University (2022) and has held positions or fellowships at the University of Oslo, Oxford, and Vienna.

About the presentation: The presentation will discuss the alternative feminist contemporalities and spatialities of feminist movement by providing insight into the feminist debates over sex work in Poland. It will focus on the strategies and emotional labour that sex workers rights collective Sex Work Polska enacted to achieve belonging in the feminist movement in Poland. To claim belonging and to embrace belonging sex workers right activist used affective strategies presenting their definition and vocabulary to discuss sex work, politicize their situation, create emotional community around their claims pointing which feminist standpoint on sex work is correct and aligning with feminist frames and claims. The aim is to identify the affective strategies sex workers activist used to find resonance among feminist publics. This locates the debates in reflection on the role of emotions in social movements but also presents the local trajectories of feminist stories that differ significantly from Western European and US.

About the Workshop: We ask that registered participants read the paper in advance, shared upon registration. At the workshop, Anna Ratecka will have a brief presentation. Following Dr. Ratecka’s presentation, we invite all participants to ask questions based on the paper and presentation.

Register for Zoom Here

2 pm to 3pm (New York time), on Zoom

Yana Kirey-Sitnikova

on

Choosing Sex: Soviet Theories of Gender Identity Development and Their Impact on Intersex/Trans patient Management

In conversation with:

Alexandra Novitskaya (Visiting Assistant Professor, University of Maryland, Baltimore County)

Yana Kirey-Sitnikova is an independent researcher working in the field of transgender studies in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Her research interests span transgender health, social movements, political science, sociolinguistics, history, and biochemistry. Currently, Yana is working on a book “Transgender Russia: the rise and fall of trans rights in an autocracy” (expected in 2027). She is also doing a PhD in Public Health at the Semashko National Research Institute of Public Health.

Dr. Novitskaya’s research interests are at the intersections of sexuality, national identity, geopolitics, migration studies, transnational feminist and queer theory, and feminist ethnography. Her articles and book chapters have been published in NORMA: International Journal for Masculinity Studies, Post-Soviet Affairs, The Russian Review, Journal or Europe-Asia Studies, Sexuality & Culture, The Routledge Handbook of Gender in Central-Eastern Europe and Eurasia, and others. Dr. Novitskaya is working on a book project about queer asylum-seekers from countries formerly in the Soviet Union.

About the presentation: In the Soviet Union, the 1960s and 1970s saw debates on intersex patient management, including the “choice of sex”. Some authors insisted on discovering the “true sex” by means of increasingly sophisticated diagnostic procedures, whereas others highlighted the importance of social and psychological factors. These debates motivated researchers to propose their theories of gender identity development. Both biological and social explanations were put forward, but very soon, their dialectical relationship became emphasized under the influence of state-sponsored Marxism. Psychiatrist Aron Belkin studied “individuals who endured the change of sex” (mostly intersex but also transsexual patients) to propose his model of gender identity formation, which combined psychoanalytical terminology with demonstrative anti-Freudism. Psychiatrist Aleksandr Bukhanovskiĭ was looking for biological correlates of transsexualism, but his theoretically most interesting paper explored the case of three siblings who had been erroneously raised in a wrong gender. Despite the ideological constraints, Soviet researchers were free to propose their explanations and engage with foreign literature, primarily the works of John Money.

RSVP for Zoom Link Here

About the Workshop: We ask that registered participants read the paper in advance, shared upon registration. At the workshop, Kirey-Sitnikova will have a brief presentation. After Dr. Novitskaya’s comments, we invite all participants to ask questions based on the paper and presentation.

Friday September 19

2pm to 3pm (New York Time)

On Zoom

Yana Kirey-Sitnikova (Independent researcher, Moscow) 

Choosing Sex: Soviet Theories of Gender Identity Development and Their Impact on Intersex/Trans Patient Management

In conversation with Alexandra Novitskaya (Visiting Lecturer, University of Maryland, Baltimore County)

Register for Zoom Here

Friday October 3

2pm to 3pm (New York Time)

On Zoom

Anna Ratecka (Post-doc scholar, Södertörn University, Sweden)

At Home with Feminism: Sex Workers’ Politics of Belonging in the Feminist Movement in Poland

Register for Zoom Here

Friday November 7

2pm to 3pm (New York Time)

On Zoom

Tania Arcimovich (Post-doctoral fellow, University of Erfurt)

“The State of Limbo:”: Knowledge, Gender, Migration. Displaced scholars from Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia

Register for Zoom Here

Friday December 5

2pm to 3pm New York Time

In person and on Zoom

Tatiana Krivobokova 

(Horizon Europe Marie  Skłodowska-Curie Doctoral Network, University of Padova, Italy)

Feminist Transnational Opposition as Agents of Democratization in Authoritarian Homeland through Transnational Social Fields. Case of Russia

Register for Zoom Here

Meet us in person! 

European Union Studies Center, Rm 5203

CUNY Graduate Center

365 5th Ave

New York, New York

Gender and Transformation in Central-Eastern Europe
and Eurasia Workshop

European Union Studies Center/CUNY Graduate Center 

 Call for Papers 2025-2026

online and in-person in NYC/hybrid

Founded in 1993, amidst the conflicts in Yugoslavia, this workshop is driven by the exploration of questions related to gender in the postcommunist countries of East, South and Central Europe and the former Soviet Union, including the Baltic countries and Central Asia, what some scholars are now calling “the Eurasian borderlands.” The workshop has centered debates on communism’s impact on women and on how to converse and theorize across the East-West divide, with more recent discussions of decolonial and intersectional perspectives. This workshop strives to include voices from not just the New York City area, but also from the region and around the world. We continue to be an informal and friendly gathering for feminist scholars, activists, and journalists to discuss in-progress theoretical and/or critical work, empirical research, and critical and scholarly reflections on activism. 

Theme: We invite papers on any topic related to gender in these Eurasian borderlands, but this year, we are particularly  thinking about the impacts of Russia’s long war against Ukraine,  anti-gender populism,  authoritarianism,  and the role of local and transnational feminisms in their solidarities and resistance.  We welcome conversations that put this region in the context of global events and processes, including the Israel-Gaza war and the changing international role of the US.

Details:

• Meet monthly, usually on Fridays, at the CUNY Grad Center in New York City (with Zoom participation available) or via Zoom only, 2-3 PM New York time (8-9PM Poland time)
• Presenters share a 10-15 page paper in advance to those who have registered. We ask authors to limit their presentation to 20 minutes to allow maximum time for conversation.
• We will moderate the sessions so that we check in with what we are all thinking about, hear and see the key ideas of the paper, and have lots of time to discuss collaboratively.

To participate, please fill out this google form with your name, email, location/affiliation, current related interests.  We have also created a space there for you to share your thoughts and suggestions about the workshop.

If you’d like to present your work/project this next academic year, please also add the following: 

• tentative title for your talk
• abstract of less than 200 words describing your proposed talk
• up to 5 recent publications or brief information about your activism
• your schedule clarifying which Fridays you could present
• Preferred format: Zoom or in-person

We regret that, despite our best efforts, we do not have funds for an honorarium. All are welcome to participate.  We will start reviewing proposals on Aug. 1, 2025.

For more information on the workshop’s history, see our blog:

https://ceeegender.commons.gc.cuny.edu

Warmly,

Janet Elise Johnson, Brooklyn College and Grad Center, City University of New York [email protected]Mara Lazda, Bronx Community College, City University of New York [email protected]

Friday, May 16, 2025

2pm to 3pm (New York time)

In-person and on Zoom

Olivera Jokić

Associate Professor, English and Gender Studies, John Jay College,  CUNY

From Unlettered Women: Documenting Socialism’s Working Class Women Migrants

This workshop considers how we could account for the presence of working-class women in historical tableaux of Eastern Europe of the late twentieth century if those women have been difficult to heroize in dominant versions of feminist historiography and left behind scant documentation.

The workshop starts from material for biographical sketches of three women born to peasant families in the 1910s, across regions that were to become socialist Yugoslavia. These women were adults in the aftermath of World War II, when socialist Yugoslavia introduced its radical social policies that promised equal rights to women, from the vote to open access to education and property ownership. As a result of these policies, they spent much of their adult lives in the same small town in present-day Serbia. Far removed from the central theaters of social change and modernization, and too old to become “new women,” they made use of the new possibilities available to women in ways that existing historiographies of gender in the region and in so-called “communist Eastern Europe” have hardly mentioned.

Newly entitled to dispose of their property and to use their children’s education for social and geographic mobility, these women contributed to the network of intense migration in the mid-twentieth century Yugoslavia that shapes the politics of gender and urbanization in the region to this day, down to the neo-traditionalist demands for a “return to normal” and repolarization of gender categories that benefits a free-market society. The workshop will consider how historical change can register in the life narratives of these women, and how we can trace the changing conceptions of gender from the scarce materials at hand. Learning how to read the materials at hand, we learn how to do without the abstractions of feminist politics, state-mandated modernization, and apparent disappearance of a whole world committed to “socialism” or “emancipation.”

Olivera Jokić is a scholar of writing about gender and imagination, contacts between writers of fiction and documentation, constitution of archival collections and genres of experience. Most recently, she translated Past: An Introduction to the Problem (kuda.org + Iskra Books 2024), a collaborative book project about the work of filmmaker Želimir Žilnik as a body of knowledge about the real existing fantasy space that was socialist Yugoslavia.

2pm to 3pm 

Register here for Zoom

Or join us in person at the CUNY Graduate Center

365 5th Ave, New York, NY 10016

5th floor, Room 5203

Aliesia Soloviova

Visiting scholar at the Columbia University/PhD candidate at the European University Institute(Florence)

Soviet emancipation in Ukraine: the right to work a “double shift”

This presentation, drawn from a chapter of my doctoral dissertation, delves into the dual expectations of motherhood and labor imposed by Soviet policy in Ukraine, particularly from the 1950s until the collapse of the Soviet Union. I will explore the lived experiences of women who bore five or more children while working in difficult and hazardous jobs, as well as the challenges faced by single mothers during this era. Additionally, I will discuss the long-term effects of these dual responsibilities on post-Soviet Ukrainian society. By focusing on Soviet Ukraine, this research aims to contribute to the gradual development of the perception of the republics of the USSR as separate states with their own history and national identity, who once had been in an “arranged marriage”, but then lived “separately ever after”.

Aliesia Soloviova is a PhD student in history at the European University Institute, specializing in the study of marriage dynamics in Soviet Ukraine through archival research and qualitative analysis. Her work examines how state policies, social expectations, and individual experiences shaped marriage across different regions, drawing on personal testimonies, legal documents, and demographic records. Using data science methodologies, she integrates historical sources with computational tools to reveal patterns in Soviet marriage practices. In addition to her historical research, she holds a PhD in International Relations and a Master’s Degree in Data Science. 

Friday, Mar 28, 2-3PM via Zoom 

Register Here and receive the paper

Janet Elise Johnson’s talk from Feb. 25, 2025, Three Years of Full-Scale War: How Studying Ukraine can Change Gender Studies, is now available online at: https://youtu.be/xhTmopT18aM?si=PyeuBx9pECBseC0e

Most workshops meet on Fridays from 2pm to 3pm (New York time) with one special meeting in February

TUESDAY FEBRUARY 25 Special event

 Brooklyn College Endowed Chair in Women’s and Gender Studies talk

Janet Elise Johnson

Professor, Political Science, Brooklyn College and CUNY Graduate Center; Endowed Chair, Women’s and Gender Studies, Brooklyn College

Three Years of Full-Scale War:

How Studying Ukraine can Change Gender Studies

11am to 12:15pm

Woody Tanger Auditorium, Brooklyn College Library 

And on Zoom

Register Here

FRIDAY MARCH 28

Aliesia Soloviova

Ph.D. Candidate, European University Institute

Soviet Emancipation in Ukraine: The Right to Work a “Double Shift”

2pm to 3pm on Zoom

Register Here

FRIDAY APRIL 25

Iuliia Anosova

Postdoctoral Fellow, Human Rights Centre, Ghent University; legal expert, NGO La Strada-Ukraine

(In)visible Crime: Exploring the Changing Landscape of Policy and Justice Approaches to Conflict-Related Sexual Violence in Ukraine

2pm to 3pm

In Person at CUNY Graduate Center and on Zoom

Register Here

FRIDAY MAY 16

Olivera Jokić

Associate Professor, English and Gender Studies, John Jay College,  CUNY

From Unlettered Women: Documenting Socialism’s Working Class Women Migrants

2pm to 3pm 

In Person at CUNY Graduate Center and on Zoom

Register here for Zoom