Founded in 1993, amidst the conflicts in Yugoslavia, this workshop is driven by the exploration of questions related to gender in postcommunist countries of East, South and Central Europe and the former Soviet Union, including the Baltic countries and Central Asia. Centered on debates on communism’s impact on women and gender and on how to converse and theorize across the East-West divide, 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 recent theoretical and/or critical work, empirical research, and critical and scholarly reflections on activism. 

Theme: We invite papers on any topic related to the themes of communism and postcommunism and gender, but this year, we are particularly p thinking about the impact of Russia’s long war against Ukraine and of the threat of anti-gender populism and authoritarianism. We remain especially interested in proposals that consider the impact of Russia’s aggression on gender in the region, state gendered violence inside and outside the state borders, and the role of state propaganda in fostering ultranationalism and war. We are also especially interested in reflecting on our work as scholars of gender and this region, including  the continued influence of Russia-centrism and West-based scholarship.  We welcome conversations that put this region in the context of global events and processes, including the Israel-Gaza war.

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 as well as to indicate interest in participating in a NYC-based networking session to foster collaboration and mentoring.

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 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, 2024.

Warmly,

Janet Elise Johnson, Brooklyn College and Grad Center, City University of New York johnson@brookyn.cuny.edu

Mara Lazda, Bronx Community College, City University of New York mara.lazda@bcc.cuny.edu

Friday May 3 2pm to 3pm

Vlada Nedak

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

In person at CUNY Graduate Center 
(room 5203, Ralph Bunche Institute)

and Zoom

Register here for the Zoom link

Vlada Nedak is the CEO of Project Kesher Ukraine and the Women’s Opportunity Fund of Ukraine, which she founded in 2022. During her 20 years of leadership, she has been active in building Jewish life in Ukraine, developing a network of women community leaders, and building partnerships with women’s NGOs and other national and religious organizations. Some of her accomplishments include: designing and implementing the first women’s health programming on Hromadske (Ukrainian public) radio; commissioning and overseeing the creation of a year of Jewish holiday celebrations in Ukrainian, including the first Ukrainian-language haggadah; and administering over a million dollars of humanitarian aid for women and children in the past year. Vlada is a graduate of Kryvyi Rih State Pedagogical University, and earned her MBA from Lviv Business School of Ukraine Catholic University where her work was recognized with a 2023 Alumni of the Year award.

in conversation with Janet Elise Johnson, Endowed Chair in Women’s and Gender Studies, Brooklyn College, City University New York, and Professor, Political Science & Women’s/Gender Studies, Brooklyn College and CUNY Graduate Center

Discussion format: For this session, there is no paper to read in advance. We ask that participants come with questions, including about what we as feminists can do to support feminist work in Ukraine. At the workshop, Dr. Johnson will pose a series of questions to Ms. Nedak, after which we invite discussion with the in-person and online audience.

with Prof. Eleonore Lappin-Eppel and Prof. Andrea Pető

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.