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Schedule

SPRING 2024 SCHEDULE

Friday February 9 2pm to 3pm (New York time)

Unveiling the War and Constructing Identities: Exploring Memes in Ukrainian and Russian Social Media during the Russian Invasion of Ukraine

Alina Mozolevska, Petro Mohyla Black Sea National University (Mykolaiv, Ukraine)

On Zoom, 2pm to 3pm 

REGISTER FOR FEB 9 HERE

Friday February 23 2pm to 3pm (New York time)

Collective Mobilisation in Defence of Women’s Rights and Ukrainian Displaced Persons in Poland

and 

Ania Switzer (University of British Columbia)

Jewish Women in Post-World War II Eastern and Central Europe: Special Issue of Nashim

Eleonore Lappin-Engel (Vienna) and Andrea Pető (Central European University)

Seditious Bodies: The Subversive Aesthetics of Vulnerability in Hungarian Feminist Performances

Aniko Szucs (Queens College, CUNY)

Friday May 3 2pm to 3pm (In-person, CUNY Graduate Center and on-line)

A Feminist Response to the War in Ukraine: Vlada Nedak in conversation with Janet Elise Johnson

Vlada Nedak, CEO of Project Kesher Ukraine and the Women’s Opportunity Fund of Ukraine

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Special Presentation

Jewish Women in Post-World War II Eastern and Central Europe

Friday, March 8 2pm to 3pm (New York time, on Zoom)

For the workshop link and articles: Register Here

Please join us for a special workshop session with Prof. Lappin-Engel and Prof. Pető to discuss the Spring/Summer 2023 issue of Nashim. This special issue of Nashim analyzes Jewish women’s history in post-World War II Eastern and Central Europe, a topic long overlooked by scholarly investigation, owing to overlapping circles of forgetting.  Addressing this gap in the scholarly literature is all the more timely in the context of the political turmoil occurring in many countries. History can be inspirational: It can show how destroyed and disappearing communities, nationalized educational and cultural infrastructure, collaboration with secret services, betrayal, and loss can be told in different ways. All these horrors, loss, destruction, misery and trauma contributed to the formation in East Central and Central Europe of a reactive and negative Jewish identity. However, the 1980’s brought an important change in Jewish life not only in the former Communist states but also in Western oriented countries. A new generation of women worked towards Jewish renewal and a new appraisal of the Jewish women of the generations preceding them. By offering a pivotal gesture of creative elaboration of new histories of Jewish women in this vast region, we hope to participate in reclaiming the future and creating models of a proactive, positive Jewish identity. All four papers by Andrea Peto, Eleonore Lappin-Eppel, Elisa Klapchek, and Galina Zelenina deal with different forms of Jewish women’s agency within the Jewish and non-Jewish environment.

For the issue see: https://muse.jhu.edu/issue/50101

Workshop format: At the workshop, Prof. Lappin-Engel and Prof. Pető will have a short presentation, after which participants are invited to ask questions based on the presentation and the articles.

Andrea Pető is a historian and a Professor at the Department of Gender Studies at Central European University, Vienna, Austria, a Research Affiliate of the CEU Democracy Institute, Budapest, and a Doctor of Science of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Her works on gender, politics, Holocaust, and war have been translated into 23 languages. In 2018 she was awarded the 2018 All European Academies (ALLEA) Madame de Staël Prize for Cultural Values and the 2022 University of Oslo Human Rights Award. She is Doctor Honoris Causa of Södertörn University, Stockholm, Sweden. Recent publications include The Women of the Arrow Cross Party. Invisible Hungarian Perpetrators in the Second World War. Palgrave, Macmillan, 2020. And Forgotten Massacre: Budapest 1944. DeGruyter, 2021. Pető tweets about academic freedom and state of gender and Holocaust studies as @petoandrea

Eleonore Lappin-Eppel is an Austrian historian living in Vienna. After studying Comparative Literature and History of Ideas in the US and in Israel she worked at the Institute for Jewish History in Austria. In 2009 she became senior researcher at the Institute for Cultural Sciences and Theatre History of the Austrian Academy of Science and in 2010 staff member of the Centre for Jewish Studies at Karl-Franzens-University, Graz, where she habilitated in 2011. Areas of research are the Nazi persecution of Austrian and Hungarian Jews in Austria, transitional justice in Austria and memorial politics in Austria. Her major publications in these fields are: Ungarisch-jüdische Zwangsarbeiterinnenund Zwangsarbeiter in Österreich 1944/45. Arbeitseinsatz – Todesmärsche – Folgen, Vienna 2010; and Topographie der Shoah: Gedächtnisorte an das zerstörte jüdische Wien, zusammen mit Dieter Hecht und Michaela Raggam Blesch, Vienna 2015, 20172. She has also published on autobiographical writing of Jewish Austrians as well as edited a series of autobiographies of Jewish Austrians.

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Presentations

Defending women’s and Ukrainians’ rights in Poland

Friday, February 23, 2pm to 3pm (New York Time)

on Zoom with

Olena Morozova (V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University/University of British Columbia)

Ania Switzer (University of British Columbia)

Please join us for our second session of Spring 2024, with Professors Morozova and Switzer on “Collective mobilisation in defence of women’s rights and Ukrainian displaced persons in Poland”

The presentation discusses the impact of sexual and reproductive health policies in Poland in the context of Russia’s war in Ukraine. While Ukraine’s sexual and reproductive health policies align with dominant European standards of care, Poland, with one of the most restrictive abortion laws in Europe, is an outlier. Women who fled the war in Ukraine to Poland entered the field of Poland’s contentious bio-politics. The paper examines two of their emergent positions: (1) as unexpected beneficiaries of social mobilisation set in motion during large-scale protests resulting from the 2020 tightening of Poland’s abortion laws, and (2) as agents of change, since their medical needs spurred re-formulation of strategies employed by women’s rights advocates and led both to the broadening of local third-sector coalitions and expanding of transnational ties of activism. The paper examines the intersectional effect of social mobilisation and the agency of women in this context.

Olena Morozova is linguist and a Full Professor at the V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University, Ukraine. She is currently serving as an Assistant Professor at the Department of Central, Eastern and Northern European Studies at the University of British Columbia. Broadly interested in cognitive linguistics, discourse studies, media linguistics, political linguistics, Morozova’s current research projects include analysis of the mechanisms of deception and manipulation in public spheres in the time of Russia’s war against Ukraine.

Ania Switzer is a sociologist and a historian, graduate of Jagiellonian University (Krakow, Poland) and University of London (UK). She is a past Chevening Scholar and a recipient of the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council Doctoral Award. Her areas of specialisation include nationalism, production of knowledge and memory, and political change in Central and Eastern Europe, as well as Holocaust studies. Currently, her research explores the intersections of women’s rights and social mobilisation in the context of war in Ukraine. Switzer has been teaching at the University of British Columbia since 2015.

Format: We ask that participants read the paper in advance. At the workshop, the speakers will give a brief introduction, after which participants are invited to ask questions and make suggestions based on the paper and presentation.

To receive the paper and Zoom link, Register here

This presentation is also part of the
Brooklyn College 
Women’s & Gender Studies Endowed Chair 
Miniseries on “Russia’s Continuing War against Ukraine”  

Categories
Presentations

Memes in Ukrainian and Russian Social Media

Friday, February 9, 2pm to 3pm (New York Time)

on Zoom with

Alina Mozolevska

Petro Mohyla Black Sea National University (Mykolaiv, Ukraine)

Please join us for our first session of Spring 2024, with Prof. Mozolevska on “Unveiling the War and Constructing Identities: Exploring Memes in Ukrainian and Russian Social Media during the Russian Invasion of Ukraine.”

The paper examines the generation and deployment of visual narratives in Ukrainian and Russian digital participatory cultures, with a specific focus on internet memes in the context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It analyzes the form, content, and functions of these memes and highlights their similarity in mobilizing and conveying political messages despite variations in their visual components. The study indicates that Ukrainian memes are used not only to promote political agendas but also serve as trauma coping and collective identity construction mechanisms in times of crisis, helping to promote new war narratives that are engaged in the construction of the self and the other.

Alina Mozolevska is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Philology, Petro Mohyla Black Sea National University (Mykolaiv, Ukraine). She holds a PhD in Linguistics with a major in Romance Languages from Taras Shevchenko National University in Kyiv, Ukraine (2015). Her research interests include media studies, discourse analysis, and border studies, and she has published on borders and identity in literary and political discourses.  Alina Mozolevska was a visiting professor at the UniGR-Center for Border Studies, Saarland University (Volkswagen Foundation project “Borders in Crisis”, Saarbrücken, Germany). Currently she is a ZOiS UNET Ukraine-based Fellow 2023-2024.

Format: We ask that participants read the paper in advance. At the workshop, Prof. Mozolevska will give a brief introduction, after which participants are invited to ask questions and make suggestions based on the paper and presentation.

To receive the paper and Zoom link REGISTER HERE

This presentation is also part of the
Brooklyn College 
Women’s & Gender Studies Endowed Chair 
Miniseries on “Russia’s Continuing War against Ukraine”  

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Special Presentation

Dec. 8: Boston on Gay Polish Migrants

Special time: 12:-30-2PM New York Time in person and online
Room 5203, the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies, CUNY Graduate Center, 365 5th Ave, New York, NY 10016

To receive paper and attend online, register here. To receive paper and attend online, RSVP to cunyreeeskruzhok@gmail.com.

Co-hosted by the CUNY Graduate Center History PhD Program and the CUNY REEES network. For more information, see below.

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Special Presentation

Recording of Ghodsee on Everyday Utopia

In case you missed the event at Brooklyn College on Oct. 10, we have a recording available here.

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Presentations

Simic on Gender Policies toward Muslim Men in Socialist Yugoslavia and Bulgaria

Friday November 10

2pm to 3pm

(New York standard time)

Zoom registration link

Professor Ivan Simic, Charles University

This talk explores how Muslim men were targeted by a series of interventions aimed to change gender relations within Muslim communities. Yugoslav and Bulgarian communists were led by stereotypes about Muslim men, Muslim families, and Muslim communities, driven by socialist modernity notions. Heavily influenced by Soviet models from Central Asia, Yugoslav and Bulgarian communists aimed to create a homogenous and mobile population that would participate in the socialist project. Some policies that affected Muslim communities were universal for all, whilst some targeted Muslims explicitly. Namely, a series of interventions into Muslim communities started by introducing mandatory elementary education for girls, a ban on underage marriage, and the replacement of the Sharia law with the universal family law. Interventions continued with ban on circumcision, fez, and forced migrations. Muslim men were targeted and blamed for years for any failure of the communist modernising process, although interests of Muslim men were often fragmented – some eagerly supported new gender policies, some just wanted to be left in peace to their lives, and some found ways to resist the changes.

We ask that participants read the paper in advance. At the workshop, Prof. Simic will make a short presentation, after which participants will be invited to ask questions based on the paper and presentation. Registered participants will receive a draft of the paper.

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Special Presentation

Oct. 30: Enloe’s Feminist Lessons of War and Ukraine

Book launch: Cynthia Enloe’s Twelve Feminist Lessons of War (Footnote Press, 2023)

Moderator: Janet Elise Johnson, Endowed Chair in Women’s and Gender Studies, Brooklyn College

Co-hosted by Institute on Gender Law, and Transformative Peace Imitative, CUNY Law School

Monday, Oct. 30, 2023 | 2:15-3:30PM
Women’s Center | 227 Ingersoll Hall Extension
Brooklyn College, Brooklyn, New York

To attend in person, please RSVP. To attend online, please register here.

Twelve Feminist Lessons of War draws on firsthand experiences of war from women in places as diverse as Ukraine, Myanmar, Somalia, Vietnam, Rwanda, Algeria, Syria, and Northern Ireland to show how women’s wars are not men’s wars. Professor Enloe demonstrates how patriarchy and militarism have embedded themselves in our institutions and our personal lives. As the book is dedicated to Ukrainian feminists and includes a chapter on the lessons Ukrainian feminist have to teach us, there will be a particular focus on Russia’ s war in Ukraine in the conversation.

Cynthia Enloe is Research Professor at Clark University and author of fifteen books, including Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics. In 2018, Enloe’s name was installed on the Gender Justice Legacy Wall at the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

Janet Elise Johnson is Professor in Political Science at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center. Her most recent book, The Routledge Handbook of Gender in Central-Eastern Europe and Eurasia (co-edited with Katalin Fábián and Mara Lazda, 2022), won the Heldt prize for the best book from the Association for Women in Slavic Studies. 

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Special Presentation

Oct. 10: Ghodsee on utopian ideas about care and love

Book launch of Everyday Utopia: What 2,000 Years of Wild Experiments Can Teach Us About the Good Life (2023 Simon & Schuster) by Kristen Ghodsee and conversation with Liza Featherstone

Tuesday, October 10, 2023 | 2:15-3:30PM
Brooklyn College Library | Woody Tanger Auditorium
Brooklyn College, Brooklyn, NY

also streaming via Zoom: registration link

Everyday Utopia whisks you away on a tour through history and around the world to explore those places that have boldly dared to reimagine how we might live our daily lives: from the Danish cohousing communities that share chores and deepen neighborly bonds to matriarchal Colombian ecovillages where residents grow all their own food; and from Connecticut, where new laws make it easier for extra “alloparents” to help raise children not their own, to China, where planned microdistricts ensure everything a busy household might need is nearby. It offers a radically hopeful vision for how to build more contented and connected societies. In this conversation, we will focus on feminist utopian visions of love and care, including on the radical imagining of St. Petersburg-born (and half Ukrainian) Alexandra Kollantai. 

Kristen R. Ghodsee is a Professor of Russian and East European Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and the critically acclaimed author of Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism: And Other Arguments for Economic Independence, which has been translated into fourteen languages. Her writing has been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Republic, Le Monde Diplomatique, and Jacobin, among other outlets, and she’s appeared on PBS NewsHour and France 24 as well as on dozens of podcasts, including NPR’s Throughline and New York magazine’s The Cut. She lives outside of Philadelphia.

Liza Featherstone is a columnist at Jacobin and The New Republic, as well as a contributing writer at The Nation. Featherstone’s work has also been published in Lux, TV Guide, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Ms., The American Prospect, Columbia Journalism Review, Glamour, Teen Vogue, Dissent, The Guardian, In These Times, Newsday and many other publications. Featherstone is the author of Divining Desire: Focus Groups and the Culture of Consultation, published by O/R Books in 2018, and Selling Women Short: The Landmark Battle for Workers’ Rights at Wal-Mart (Basic Books, 2004), among other books. She teaches journalism and opinion writing at NYU and Columbia, respectively. From 2013 to 2015, she was the Belle Zeller Visiting Professor at Brooklyn College. Featherstone is a member of New York City Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).

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Schedule

Fall Schedule 2023

We continue to meet on Fridays from 2pm to 3pm (New York time), with some Zoom and some hybrid sessions.

 We are excited to add several special sessions, co-hosted with the Endowed Chairship in Women’s and Gender Studies, Brooklyn College, CUNY.

Sept. 8, 2023, 2-3PM: Zoom

Bénédicte Santoire (University of Ottawa)

Women, Peace and Security Agenda in Long-term Protracted Conflicts: Exploring the Cases of Moldova and Georgi

Santoire Zoom registration link 

Tuesday , Oct. 10, 2:15-3:30PM:  Hybrid: Brooklyn College and Zoom.

 Kristen Ghodsee (University of Pennsylvania) in conversation with 

 journalist  Liza Featherstone

on Everyday Utopia, ​​“You and Me and Baby Makes Misery: Expanding Our Networks of Love and Care,” and Alexandra Kollontai

Woody Tanger Auditorium, Brooklyn College Library 

Ghodsee and Featherstone Zoom registration link

Co-hosted with the Endowed Chair in Women’s and Gender Studies, Brooklyn College,  Janet Elise Johnson 

Monday, Oct. 30, 2:15-4:45PM : In-person at Women’s Center, Brooklyn College, CUNY

Cynthia Enloe (Clark University), 

Book Launch:

 Twelve Feminist Lessons of War

in coordination the new Institute on Gender, Law, and Transformative Peace at CUNY Law

Brooklyn College Women’s Center

Enloe Zoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0sc-qrpjgrGNEsuaOm7n3aSStb5fTtakJy

Friday, Nov. 10th 2pm to 3pm: Zoom

Ivan Simic, Charles University, Prague

Gender Policies Towards Muslim Men in Socialist Yugoslavia and Bulgaria

Simic Zoom registration link

Friday, Dec. 8 12:30-2: In person and via zoom

(special CUNY REEES Workshop)

Nicholas Boston (Lehman College, CUNY) presents new research on “The Amorous Migrant: Polish Gay Men in the United Kingdom, 2004-2020“.

CUNY Graduate Center (room 5203, Ralph Bunche Institute), with reception to follow. Registration link for Zoom