Please join us for our next workshop on Friday November 5 from 2pm to 3pm (EDT) when our speaker will be:

Lídia Balogh, Research Fellow, Centre for Social Sciences (Budapest, Hungarian Academy of Sciences Centre of Excellence) on

Complainants, Citizens, Sisters – Ways of Empowering Marginalized Roma Women in Hungary: Strategic Litigation, Non-adversarial Actions and Community-Building

We ask that participants read the presenter’s paper in advance. Dr. Balogh will provide some introductory comments (10 minutes) at the workshop, after which attendees are invited to ask questions based on the paper and introductory comments.

The paper will be available one week in advance. Please email Mara Lazda ([email protected]) for the paper.

Zoom link for workshop:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83207366370?pwd=aGxBU1lqcVdsaFFXNW8wMVpIYnBYdz09

A Gendered Perspective on the Belarusian Revolution: Reframing Women’s Agency

Elena Gapova, Western Michigan University 

Elena Gapova is Professor of Sociology at Western Michigan University. She was also the Founding Director of Centre for Gender Studies at European Humanities University in Minsk (Belarus). She writes extensively on gender, nationhood, class, and intellectuals in the post-Soviet region and, specifically, in Belarus. Among other publications, she is the author of “The Classes of Nations: Feminist Critique of Nationbuilding” (Moscow: NLO, 2016).

Friday, Oct. 22, 2021

2-3 PM New York time

via Zoom https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83207366370?pwd=aGxBU1lqcVdsaFFXNW8wMVpIYnBYdz09

New Format! We ask speakers to submit a 10-20 page (double-spaced) paper one week in advance of the workshop. At the workshop, the speakers will present for 5 to 10 minutes. Participants are then expected to discuss the paper based on the written version and these introductory comments.

Please email Mara Lazda at [email protected] for the paper.

When the Invalids Came Home: Disability in Romania after World War I

Maria Bucur, Indiana University 

Co-sponsored with the Romanian Studies Organization at Indiana University-Bloomington

Maria Bucur is the John V. Hill professor of history and gender studies at Indiana University. She has written extensively on the history of Romania in the twentieth century, with a focus on eugenics, memory and war, and gender and citizenship. Her monographs include Eugenics and Modernization in Interwar Romania (2002), Victims and Heroes: War and Memory in Twentieth Century Romania (2009), Gendering Modernism (2017), The Century of Women (2018), and The Birth of Democratic Citizenship: Women and Power in Modern Romania (2018), co-authored with Mihaela Miroiu. She was among the founding editors of the gender history journal Aspasia. Her latest book is titled The Nation’s Gratitude: War and Citizenship in Interwar Romania and will be released by Routledge in the spring of 2022. She is now exploring the history of disabilities in Eastern Europe, with a focus on the relationship between the medical profession’s development and the cultural and policy discourses about disability.

Friday, September 24, 2021

2-3 PM New York time

via Zoom https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83207366370?pwd=aGxBU1lqcVdsaFFXNW8wMVpIYnBYdz09

New Format! We ask speakers to submit a 10-20 page (double-spaced) paper one week in advance of the workshop. At the workshop, the speakers will present for 5 to 10 minutes. Participants are then expected to discuss the paper based on the written version and these introductory comments.

Please email Mara Lazda at [email protected] for the paper.

Fridays, via Zoom, 2-3 PM New York time 

Join Zoom Meeting

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83207366370?pwd=aGxBU1lqcVdsaFFXNW8wMVpIYnBYdz09

Maria Bucur, Indiana University 

9/24    

Co-sponsored with the Romanian Studies Organization at Indiana University-Bloomington

When the Invalids Came Home: Disability in Romania after World War I

10/22    

Elena Gapova, Western Michigan University 

A Gendered Perspective on the Belarusian Revolution: Reframing Women’s Agency

11/5    

Lídia Balogh, Centre for Social Sciences, Budapest

Complainants, Citizens, Sisters – Ways of empowering marginalized Roma women in Hungary: Strategic Litigation, Non-adversarial Actions and Community-Building

12/10    

Elżbieta Korolczuk, University of Warsaw and Sodertorns University   

Anti-gender Politics in the Populist Moment

We regret that it’s been more than a year!  We miss you all, and we’d like to re-launch.  As with everything, it’s going to be different.

We must first mark our losses. Before the pandemic, we lost Ann Snitow, and New York University’s Center for European & Mediterranean Studies told us that they could no longer host us.  From COVID, we have lost long-term friends of the workshop, including Vesna Kesic, and the travel across borders that fostered so many of our relationships and our thinking–that Ann reexamined in her last book, Visitors: An American Feminist in East Central Europe–came to a virtual halt. 

While this community will not be the same, we would like to take this opportunity to co-create something new with all of you.  For this next year–while we search for our new location–we’d like to create a virtual, international space for us to meet, share ideas, and keep exploring the questions at the intersection of feminist activism and empiricism that have driven the workshop since 1993: 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, and their relationship to Europe and the European Union.  

Theme: This year we are wide open as to the theme.  The world seems upside down, and many of us have been busy with care and compassion work for ourselves and others. We look forward to finding out what you’re observing and thinking about.

Details:

• Meet monthly on Fridays, via Zoom, 2-3 PM New York time (8-9PM Poland time)
• Presenters share a 10-15 page paper in advance to those who have registered. The workshop presentation will be limited 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, using all the Zoom tools available

The purpose is to continue as 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.

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 ideas this 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

We regret that, as of this year, we have no funds for an honorarium. All are welcome to participate.  We will start reviewing proposals on July 20, 2021.

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

https://gendertransformationeurope.wordpress.com/

Warmly,

Janet Elise Johnson, Brooklyn College, City University of New York [email protected]

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

Forthcoming in July 2021: https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-Handbook-of-Gender-in-Central-Eastern-Europe-and-Eurasia/Fabian-Johnson-Lazda/p/book/9781138347755

Gender and Transformation: Women in Europe Workshop
NYU Center for European & Mediterranean Studies
Friday, February 28, 2020

Dr. Irina Gewinner,
Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Luxembourg,
Institute of Education and Society;
affiliated scholar with Institute of Sociology,
Leibniz University, Hannover, Germany

“Gender norms, sexuality and post-socialist identity after migration:
Cultural resocialization of Russian-speaking women in Germany”

53 Washington Square South,
3rd Floor East,
4:30–6 p.m.

Dr. Irina Gewinner’s current projects address the interface of cultural transformation/diversification and social inequalities. She studies a variety of behavioral patterns and integration policies that affect social change. Theoretically and empirically, Dr. Gewinner investigates both the pluralization of societies through migration and the persistence/modification of cultural values. In her recent works, Dr Gewinner analyzes the influence of cultural values on the work-life balance of highly skilled migrants in Germany. Currently, she addresses how cultural stereotypes and gender ideologies shape gendered career choices of young people.

All are welcome, but you must RSVP Nanette Funk or Sonia Jaffe Robbins
NYU Center for European and Mediterranean Studies
53 Washington Square South, 3rd floor East
4:30–6 p.m.

For details on the talk and and on the workshop series, see our blog:
https://gendertransformationeurope.wordpress.com

 

Welcome to the first Gender and Transformation: Women in Europe Workshop of Spring 2020.

NYU Center for European & Mediterranean Studies
Friday, January 31

Justyna Wierzchowska, PhD
Fulbright Senior Scholar, Associate Professor, NYU, 2019–2020;
Institute of English Studies, University of Warsaw

“Addressing History Through Lived Experience: Healing Transgenerational Trauma in Joanna Rajkowska’s Born in Berlin and A Letter to Rosa”

53 Washington Square South,
3rd Floor East,
4:30–6 p.m.

Justyna Wierzchowska holds MA degrees in American Studies and Philosophy, and a PhD in American Studies. She combines psychoanalysis, affect theory, and motherhood studies to explore the relational and affective dimensions of subjectivity that are manifested in contemporary European and American visual art and popular culture. She is the author of The Absolute and the Cold War: Discourses of Abstract Expressionism (2011), as well as co-editor of In Other Words: Dialogizing Postcoloniality, Race, and Ethnicity (2012) and of the special issue On Uses of Black Camp (2017). She is now researching the manifestations of the mothering function in contemporary visual art and the significance of the primary bond on the formation of the self. She teaches courses in philosophy, American art history, art theory, feminist art, and cultural studies. She translates into Polish American modern fiction and art-related books.

All are welcome, but you must RSVP Nanette Funk or Sonia Jaffe Robbins
NYU Center for European and Mediterranean Studies
53 Washington Square South, 3rd floor East
4:30–6 p.m.
For details on the talk and and on the workshop series, see our blog:
https://gendertransformationeurope.wordpress.com

We have an exciting program planned for this spring. Come join us beginning January 31, 2020.

Gender and Transformation:
Women in Europe Workshop
NYU Center for European &
Mediterranean Studies

Fridays, 4:30 to 6 p.m.

January 31
“Addressing History Through Lived Experience: Healing Transgenerational Trauma in Joanna Rajkowska’s Born in Berlin and A Letter to Rosa”
Justyna Wierzchowska
Fulbright Senior Scholar, NYU, 2019–2020
University of Warsaw, Institute of English Studies

February 28
“Gender Norms, Sexuality and Postsocialist Identity After Migration: Cultural Resocialization of Russian-speaking Women in Germany”
Irina Gewinner
PhD, Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Luxembourg, Institute of Education and Society; affiliated scholar with Institute of Sociology, Leibniz University, Hannover, Germany

March 13
“Women`s Organizations: Linking Formal Politics and Civil Society in Times of Undemocratic Uncertainty—Experiences from Contemporary Turkey”
Anna Ehrhart
PhD candidate in political science, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at Mid Sweden University/Sweden; Research Fellow at the Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul (SRII)

April 17
Honoring Ann Snitow: On the Publication of Ann Snitow’s Visitors and on the Network of East-West Women
Panel: Irina Grudzinska Gross, Professor Emerita, Princeton University; Gosia Tarasiewicz, Executive Director, NEWW-Polska; Nanette Funk, Professor Emerita, Brooklyn College, and founding member of NEWW; and TBA

May 1
“ ‘Complainants, Citizens, Sisters’ — Ways of Empowering Marginalized Roma Women in Hungary: Strategic Litigation, Nonadversarial Actions and Community Building”
Lidia Balogh
Research Fellow, Research Centre for Social Sciences (Hungarian Academy of Sciences Centre of Excellence); Visiting Lecturer, ELTE University, Budapest

The workshop is located at the  Center for European & Mediterranean Studies at NYU, 53 Washington Square South, 3rd floor, 4:30-6 p.m. All are welcome, but you must RSVP to either Nanette Funk or Sonia Jaffe Robbins. For further information, contact Nanette Funk or Sonia Jaffe Robbins.

 

Please join us on December 13, 2019 for our last workshop of the fall semester!

The Gay Immigrant American Dream: Post-Soviet LGBTQ Migrants in New York City between Cold War Legacies and Contemporary Geopolitics

Since 2012-2013, New York City has been a site of emerging community and grassroots activism for LGBTQ migrants from the former Soviet Union who come to the United States primarily as asylum seekers escaping homo- and transphobia in countries of origin. They embark on their migration journeys against the backdrop of major social and political changes in the United States with the country’s immigrant and LGBTQ policies in flux. In this presentation, I will discuss the ethnographic research of the Russian-speaking LGBTQ migrant community that I have been conducting since 2015. I will begin with an overview of the Russian/post-Soviet LGBTQ migration to the U.S., addressing the problems migrants commonly face, as well as the changes they experience.

I will focus on the reasons for migration from Russia and other former Soviet states and the reasons why my informants have chosen New York City and the United States. I argue that the case of post-Soviet LGBTQ migrants and asylum seekers in the United States adds the Cold War perspective to the study of queer migration which, up to date, has been largely drawing on postcolonial frameworks. I will conclude by thinking through the question of whether Russian-speaking LGBTQ migrants, as they pursue the “Gay American Dream,” have been caught in the middle of the U.S.-Russia geopolitical power play of sexual politics and competing exceptionalisms still haunted by the lasting legacies of the Cold War.

Alexandra Novitskaya is a doctoral candidate in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. She is also a Visiting Scholar at the Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia, New York University.

She recently published “Patriotism, Sentiment, and Male Hysteria: Putin’s Masculinity Politics and the Persecution of Non-heterosexual Russians.” NORMA: International Journal for Masculinity Studies 12 (no. 3-4, 2017).

Workshop Location:  

Center for European & Mediterranean Studies at NYU

53 Washington Square South

3rd floor, 4:30-6 p.m. 

All are welcome, but please RSVP:

Mara Lazda [email protected]

Questions? Contact Mara Lazda or Janet Johnson [email protected]