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

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 [email protected]

Mara Lazda, Bronx Community College, City University of New York [email protected]

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.

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 [email protected].

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

The Amorous Migrant: Libidinal Cosmopolitanism of Gay Polish Migrants in Britain from Accession to Brexit

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

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.