Hybrid session: In-person and on Zoom

Gendering the Saeima: The Politics of Women’s Substantive Representation in Latvia

Laura Dean (Millikin University)

Does higher representation mean more feminist policies?

The 2018 parliamentary elections were a watershed year for women in Latvian politics. In this election, women’s descriptive representation increased from 19% to 31%, the largest increase since the re-establishment of independence

in 1991 with no gender quotas or institutional mechanisms for gender equality. Paxton and Hughes (2017), categorize this 12% increase as a big jump in women’s representation. This presentation, part of a larger book project, questions if the sharp increase in women’s descriptive representation corresponds to better substantive representation for women in Latvia. Using data from in-depth political ethnographic research in the Saeima (Latvian parliament), including participant observation and 44 interviews with female members of parliament, I examine substantive representation in the Latvian case. I use interviews to explore if women MPs believe they take women’s interests
into account in their daily parliamentary work. Then I compare this to differences in parliamentary voting patterns, bill sponsorship, and speeches.

Workshop format: We ask that participants read the paper in advance. At the workshop, Prof. Dean will give a short summary, after which participants are invited to ask questions based on the paper and presentation.

Use this link to register for the Zoom and to receive the paper

Join us in-person! CUNY Graduate Center, 365 5th Avenue, room 5203, Ralph Bunche Institute. Light refreshments and conversation after the talk.

We are excited to offer several hybrid sessions this semester. Please join us in person at the CUNY Graduate Center or on Zoom.

Friday September 13

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

Vanja Petrović and Nađa Bobičić (University of Belgrade)

The Never-ending 90s in Serbia: What Came before the Phantasm of Gender

Register for Zoom link here

Friday October 18

2pm to 3pm (New York time) Hybrid in person and Zoom

Laura Dean (Millikin University)

Gendering the Saeima: The Politics of Women’s Substantive Representation in Latvia

Register for Zoom here

In-person address: CUNY Graduate Center, room 5203, Ralph Bunche Institute

Special zoom session and time: Tuesday November 19

11am to 12:15pm (New York Time)

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

Elżbieta Korolczuk (Södertörn University & University of Warsaw)

Anti-Gender Politics in Contemporary Poland and Beyond

Register for Zoom link here.

Friday December 6

2pm to 3pm (New York time) Hybrid In-person and on Zoom

Sandra Russell (Mt. Holyoke College)

Traveling Dreamwork: Black Feminist Epistemologies and Anticolonial Resistance in the Post-Soviet “Periphery”

Register for Zoom here

In-person address: CUNY Graduate Center, room 5203, Ralph Bunche Institute

Aniko Szucs

(Queen’s College, CUNY)

Friday April 12 2024

2pm to 3pm (New York Time)

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

and Zoom

REGISTER HERE FOR ZOOM LINK AND DRAFT PAPER

Workshop format: We ask that participants read the paper in advance. At the workshop, Dr. Szucs will give a brief presentation, after which we invite discussion with the in-person and online audience.

Aniko Szucs is a theater and performance studies scholar, dramaturg, and curator. She is an assistant professor in the Department of Drama, Theater, and Dance at Queens College. Dr. Szucs completed her Ph.D. in Performance Studies at New York University and earned an M.F.A. in Dramaturgy from the University of Theater and Film Arts in Budapest. She has worked as a resident and a production dramaturg in theaters across the US and Hungary. Dr. Szucs’s research interests include Central and East European political theater, feminist protest movements and performances, politics of memory, and the genealogy and critique of state surveillance.

Abstract:

 Seditious Bodies: The Subversive Aesthetics of Vulnerability in East European Feminist Performances 

In the recent transnational crisis of neoliberal austerity and rising neo-authoritarianism, there has been increased scholarly attention placed on forms of cultural resistance and social protest that—through performative gestures—foreground bodily vulnerability, mobilizing it as a site of connection and potentiality. Vulnerability, in this context, is a socio-political predicament that is perceived as a condition of resistance. This talk, however, considers vulnerability as an affective-aesthetic quality that distinctively characterizes contemporary East European feminist performances. Building on the genealogy of feminist body art and theory of the region, performance artists Maria Kulikovska (Ukraine) and Mikolt Tózsa (Hungary) yet again turn the female body and feminine corporeality into a vehicle of feminist resistance. The vulnerable body at the center of these performances is not merely a product of the precarious social and material conditions but a matrix of affective forces, symbolic gestures, and performative routines, one that liberates the artists from the ontological precarity of their existence. 

 

 

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”  

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”  

Zoom registration link

Professor Ivan Simic, Charles University

Please join us Friday, September 8, 2pm to 3pm (NY Time) when we welcome:

Bénédicte Santoire, University of Ottawa

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

Bénédicte Santoire is a PhD Candidate and Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Ottawa, Canada. She researches and teaches in the areas of feminist international relations theories and feminist security studies. Her doctoral thesis focuses on the implementation of the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda in the post-Soviet space, more specifically in Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, and Armenia.

This meeting will take place on Zoom. Register here

We ask that registered participants read the paper in advance. At the workshop, Santoire will provide a brief (20 min) presentation, after which attendees are invited to share questions and suggestions based on the presentation and paper. The paper will provided one week in advance.