**Please Note:
The following meeting, March 26, will be on Monday!!**

 Join us for the fourth workshop this semester, on Monday, March 26

Mieke Verloo
professor of Comparative Politics and Inequality Issues,
Radboud University, The Netherlands
director of the multidisciplinary research hotspot Gender and Power in Politics and Management; affiliated with Gender and Diversity Studies

“Understanding Varieties of Opposition to Gender Equality in Europe”

Professor Mieke Verloo is an expert in the fields of gender and politics. She is professor of Comparative Politics and Inequality Issues at Radboud University in the Netherlands, and nonresidential Permanent Fellow at the IWM, Institute for Human Sciences, in Vienna. In 2015, she won the ECPG (European Conference on Politics and Gender)’s Gender and Politics Career Achievement Award. As scientific director of large research projects on gender equality policy making in Europe, she headed the team that produced the final report for the Quality in Gender+ Policy Project, and has edited Multiple Meanings of Gender Equality: A Critical Frame Analysis of Gender Policies in Europe as part of the MAGEEQ Project. She has extensive consultancy and training experience on gender mainstreaming and intersectionality for several European governments and institutions. Her current research is on feminist politics, the meaning of gender in gender policy, and on the opposition to intersectional gender equality in Europe.

*It is ESSENTIAL that you RSVP to Nanette Funk <[email protected]> or Sonia Jaffe Robbins <[email protected]> so that we can leave your name with security at the front desk.
We meet at the Center for European & Mediterranean Studies, NYU, 53 Washington Square South, 3rd floor East, 4:30-6 p.m. After the workshop, we usually continue the discussion over an informal dinner, and all are welcome.

Join us for our third workshop this semester, on March 9.*

Natalie Cornett
Ph.D. candidate in Modern European History
Brandeis University

“TV-PiS: The Right Wing Takeover of Polish Media
from a Feminist Perspective”

Natalie Cornett is a Ph.D. candidate at Brandeis University, in modern European history. Her work focuses on women’s groups in 19th-century Europe and the provisional title of her dissertation is “The Politics of Love: Narcyza Żmichowska and the Enthusiasts of Nineteenth-Century Poland.” After intensive study of the Polish language in 2005, she got her B.A. in history at the University of Toronto, a master’s in cultural studies at Jagiellonian University 
in Krakow, Poland, and began her Ph.D. studies at Brandeis in 2014. She has presented talks at the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) conference and last year’s Berkshire Conference of Women Historians, as well as being a panelist at the Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies, and co-organizing and being at panelist at the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute’s seminar “Women as Agents of Change? Fresh Perspectives on Gender and Religion.” Her research and teaching interests include nationalism, social power dynamics and the history of women and sexuality. Living in Warsaw, Poland, while completing the research for her dissertation, has prompted her to examine her topic for today’s talk.

*It is ESSENTIAL that you RSVP to Sonia Jaffe Robbins <[email protected]> so that we can leave your name with security at the front desk.
We meet at the Center for European & Mediterranean Studies, NYU, 53 Washington Square South, 3rd floor, 4:30-6 p.m. After the workshop, we usually continue the discussion over an informal dinner, and all are welcome.

Join us for the second workshop this semester on February 16.*

Catalina Florina Florescu, Ph.D.
Department of English
Pace University

“Back to Shame: A Talk About Reproduction,
Violated Rights, and the ‘Traditional Family’ ”

Catalina Florina Florescu earned a bachelor’s degree in Romanian Literature with a minor in American Literature from the University of Bucharest and a master’s degree and Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Purdue University, specializing in Comparative Theatre & Medical Humanities. She teaches literature, cultural studies, cinema, and writing at Pace University in Manhattan. Her books include Transacting Sites of the Liminal Bodily Spaces (literary criticism in a medical context); Disjointed Perspectives on Motherhood (concerning mothers in literature and motion picture); Inventing Me/Exercitii de retrait, a memoir; and Transnational Narratives in Englishes of Exile. Her first book of poetry is The Night I Burned My Origami Skin, published last year. She has also written three plays, Mia, a drama, which had a reading at the Romanian Cultural Institute in New York City; The After-Tastes of Life, a farce; and a political parable, Suicidal Dog and Laika. The  plays will be published in  Romanian this year and the English version, by PalmArtPress, in Berlin. And she is currently working on a volume of short stories titled Not Yet.

*It is ESSENTIAL that you RSVP to Nanette Funk <[email protected]> or Sonia Jaffe Robbins <[email protected]> so that we can leave your name with security at the front desk.
We meet at the Center for European & Mediterranean Studies, NYU, 53 Washington Square South, 3rd floor, 4:30-6 p.m. After the workshop, we usually continue the discussion over an informal dinner, and all are welcome.

Welcome to our first speakers for the spring 2018 semester
on January 26*

Eser Selen, Ph.D.
artist and associate professor, Visual Communication Department,
Kadir Has University, Istanbul, Turkey.

Namalie Jayasinghe
Ph.D. School of International Service at American University;
women’s rights researcher, Oxfam, America

“Mapping Gender Equality and Violence Discourses in Turkey” 

Eser Selen received a master’s degree in fine arts from Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey (1999), another in performance studies from NYU (2002), and has a Ph.D. in performance studies from NYU (2010). Her dissertation is entitled “The Work of Sacrifice: Gender Performativity, Modernity, and Islam in Turkish Contemporary Performance.” Her research interests include feminisms, performance studies, theories of gender and sexuality, contemporary art, and visual culture. Her work has appeared in edited volumes and such journals as Gender, Place, and Culture, Women & Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory, and Kybernetes. She has presented at conferences both nationally in Turkey, and internationally. She is also a visual artist whose work encompasses performance art, installation and video, and has exhibited and performed in Europe, the United States, the Middle East, and Australia.

Namalie Jayasinghe has held a postdoctoral fellowship at the Gender and Women’s Studies Research Center at Kadir Has University in Istanbul, where she conducted an analysis of discourses of violence against women in Sri Lanka and Turkey. Her Ph.D. is on the gendered impact of natural disasters in Sri Lanka.  She holds a B.A. in economics from NYU and an M.Sc. in environment and development from the London School of Economics. Active in the field of sustainable development, she has worked on integrating gender equality and social inclusion into natural resource management programs in West Africa, monitoring local community approaches to tsunami recovery and biodiversity conservation in Sri Lanka, and supporting women-led organizations focusing on post-disaster reconstruction on the U.S. Gulf Coast.

*It is ESSENTIAL that you RSVP to Nanette Funk <[email protected]> or Sonia Jaffe Robbins <[email protected]> so that we can leave your name with security at the front desk.
We meet at the Center for European & Mediterranean Studies, NYU, 53 Washington Square South, 3rd floor, 4:30-6 p.m. After the workshop, we usually continue the discussion over an informal dinner, and all are welcome.

Join us on December 1st for our last presentation of the fall semester.

Zorica Siročić (Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Sociology, University of Graz; M.A. Central European University; Diploma University of Zagreb) will speak on “Croatian Resistance to Contemporary ‘Anti-Gender Mobilizations: A Local Example of a Trans-Nationalized Movement-Counter Movement Interaction.”

 Siročić’s project is a study of contemporary feminist mobilizations in Southeastern Europe from a perspective of political sociology. This research project has been financed by the Steiermärkische Sparkasse and the University of Graz (Scholarship for Young Researchers), the European Commission (Erasmus Mundus) and the Johanna Dohnal Archive (Johanna Dohnal Scholarship).

Friday, December 1, 2017

4:30 to 6:00pm

Center for European and Mediterranean Studies, New York University

53 Washington Square South, 3rd Floor (the new location).

Everyone is welcome, but please RSVP so that we can leave your name at security. RSVP to [email protected]

Julie A. Cassiday
Willcox B. and Harriet M. Adsit Professor of Russian Williams College

“Charisma, Camp, or Kitsch?
Gender in Putin’s Russia”

Co-sponsored by the
Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia

Friday, November 17, 4:30 to 6:00PM

Center for European and Mediterranean Studies, NYU
53 Washington Square South, 3rd floor
(the new location)

Everyone is welcome, but please RSVP to [email protected] so that we can leave your name at security.

Julie Cassiday is a Professor of Russian at Williams College, where she has been a member of the Department of German and Russian for over twenty years.  She currently serves as the department Chair, as well as Chair of the Executive Committee of Williams’ Center for Foreign Languages, Literatures, and Cultures. She is Vice President (and President-Elect) of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies.   Her recent work includes a collaboration with Emily Johnson on a study of the cult of personality surrounding Vladimir Putin and published on Russia’s participation in the Eurovision Song Contest.  Cassiday has also written on performance artist Vladislav Mamyshev-Monro, widely hailed as Russia’s first drag queen, and she anticipates discussing drag, camp, kitsch, and charisma in a book-length study of gender during the Putin era. Cassiday advocates diversity of all types in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, and she works actively to promote the inclusion of underrepresented groups in the field.

Janet Elise Johnson, Professor, Political Science, Brooklyn College, CUNY

“The Gender of Informal Politics:

Russia, Iceland and Twenty-First Century Male Dominance”

Co-sponsored by the Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia

Friday, 4:30 to 6:00

CEMS, 53 Washington Square South, 3rd floor (new location)

Janet Elise Johnson is Professor of Political Science at Brooklyn College, City University of New York, and Visiting Scholar, Center for European and Mediterranean Studies, New York University.  Her books include Gender Violence in Russia: The Politics of Feminist Intervention and Living Gender after Communism.  In the last few years, she has published articles in Perspectives on Politics, Journal of Social Policy, Politics & Gender, Communist and Post-Communist Studies, and Signs: Journals of Women in Culture and Society as well as online in The Washington Post’s Monkey Cage, Boston Review, and The New Yorker.

http://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9783319602783

Barbara Havelková
Shaw Foundation Fellow in Law, Lincoln College and Faculty of Law, University of Oxford

Book talk: “Gender Equality in Law: Uncovering the Legacies of Czech State Socialism”

http://www.bloomsburyprofessional.com/uk/gender-equality-in-law-9781509905867/

Session Chair: Grainne de Burca,  Florence Ellinwood Allen Professor of Law &  Director of Jean Monnet Center

Discussant: Melissa Feinberg, Associate Professor of History, Rutgers University

Co-sponsored by The Jean Monnet Center for International and Regional Economic Law & Justice

Friday, September 8, 2017
4:00pm to 5:30pm
Jean Monnet Center
22 Washington Square North

Note: Special place and time
All are welcome!  Please RSVP to Mara Lazda ([email protected]) Janet Johnson ([email protected]) so that we can put your on the list to get in the door.

Barbara Havelková is the Shaw Foundation Fellow in Law at Lincoln College and Faculty of Law, University of Oxford. She teaches EU Law, public law, human rights, comparative equality law and feminist jurisprudence. Her research concentrates on regulation of gender during State Socialism and in post-communist transition in Central Europe.

Barbara completed her first degree in law at the Charles University in Prague, and also holds an LL.M. from Europa-Institut of Saarland University and a DPhil from Oxford. She was previously a lecturer and fellow at the University of Cambridge and visited several law schools as a guest researcher, including Harvard University and University of Michigan as a Fulbright scholar.

Barbara acts as an advisor to the Prime Minister of the Czech Republic on issues of gender and law.