Please join us for a talk on February 28, 4:30-6 p.m.

Melissa Feinberg

Associate Professor of History, Rutgers University

   “We Don’t Have It Now, But We Will:

Fear, Shortage and Family Values in Stalinist Eastern Europe”

Melissa Feinberg is associate professor of history at Rutgers University. She is the author of Elusive Equality: Gender, Citizenship and the Limits of Democracy in Czechoslovakia, 1918-1950 (Pittsburgh University Press, 2006). This talk is part of her current book project, which examines fear as a means of political mobilization during the first years of the Cold War. Recent articles related to this project include “Fantastic Truths, Compelling Lies: Radio Free Europe and the Response to the Slánský Trial in Czechoslovakia” (Contemporary European History, 2012) and “Soporific Bombs and American Flying Discs: War Fantasies in East-Central Europe, 1948–1956” (Zeitschrift für Ostmitteleuropa-Forschung, 2013). Another recent article in the Journal of Women’s History (2011) was inspired by her fascination with a 1944 survey of rural Bohemian women that delved into their housekeeping secrets and home décor. She is also an editor of Aspasia, a yearbook of women’s and gender history in Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe.

January 31, 2014.

Prosessor Meltem Müftüler-Baç, Professor of International Relations and Jean Monnet Chair at Sabanci University, Istanbul, Turkey                                      
                                                                 
“Pandora’s Box: Gender Based Discrimination in Turkey”

     Meltem Müftüler-Baç  is Professor of International Relations and Jean Monnet Chair at Sabanci University, Istanbul, Turkey. She is also an Affiliate Professor at University of Stockholm for 2013 to 2016. She was Visiting Professor and Fulbright Fellow at the University of Chicago in 1999-2000. At Bilkent University in Turkey she was a faculty member from 1992- 2002 and Associate Dean of the Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences from 2000- 2002. She was Chair of the Standing Group on the EU, the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR), for 2009-2011. She was awarded  the Jean Monnet Professor ad personam title from the European Commission in 2004. In 2011, she was granted a Jean Monnet Center of Excellence for the European Studies Program she coordinated at Sabanci University.

             Prof. Müftüler-Baç has a Ph. D. in Political Science/International Relations from Temple University, USA (1992).

           She has published widely, including: Turkey’s Relations with a Changing Europe (Manchester University Press, 1997), and co-edited with Yannis Stivachtis Turkey and the European Union Relations (Lexington Books, 2008). Her articles have appeared in Women’s Studies International Forum, East European Quarterly, South East European Politics and Society, West European Politics, Journal of European Public Policy, Journal of Democracy, and many others. Since 2006 she has participated in and directed several international projects funded by the European Commission.

     Professor Müftüler-Baç’s talk focuses on the ongoing struggles within Turkish society with regards to gender based discrimination. Turkey constitutes a ‘sui generis’ example of a country with a predominantly Muslim population, yet extensive women’s rights at least in principle. To the outsider, the co-existence of well-educated, professional women along with forced marriages, honor killings present itself as an anomaly. The modernization   process in Turkey since 1923 created a society where gender based discrimination remained rampant but also hidden within thinly veiled layers. Yet, the principle of gender equality is part and parcel of the “EU-niversal” canon which aspirants for membership to the EU must adopt. This would appear in sync with a Turkish national project that long aspired to convergence with European modernity and which flagged women’s emancipation as a symbol of such convergence.  However, in recent years pro-religious cohorts have sought to reconfigure Turkey’s engagement of modernity, including extant readings of women’s rights. The most visible manifestation of Islamic tendencies in Turkey is over the role of women in public life.  The underlying question that seems at the core of the women question as part of the larger democratic puzzle in Turkey is the degree to which women’s presence in the public realm is tolerated.   

Please join us Friday, December 6 for our last talk of 2013:

Magdalena Grabowska (Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology Warsaw University) 

“Demystifying state-socialism: Women’s agency, the Socialist State and the Formation of the Feminist Movements in Poland and Georgia”

This talk is part of a larger project based in the semi-structured interviews with women who were active in communist parties and women’s groups during the 1970s and 1980s in Poland and Georgia. It aims at destabilizing existing paradigms of understanding the relationship between state socialism and post-state socialist women’s mobilizations in terms of disruption and discontinuity and highlighting the impact of local factors, including religion and location (within/outside Soviet Union) on the formation of socialist project(s) on women’s equality.

Location: NYU Center for European and Mediterranean Studies, 285 Mercer St., 7th Floor, 4:30 to 6:00 pm.

GENDER AND TRANSFORMATION IN EUROPE WORKSHOP

NYU CENTER FOR EUROPEAN AND MEDITERRANEAN STUDIES

CALL FOR PAPERS SPRING 2014

DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS : DECEMBER 15, 2013

The GENDER and TRANSFORMATION In EUROPE Workshop — a joint project from New York University and the Network of East-West Women – invites speakers to submit proposals for Friday afternoon talks for Spring 2014 at the NYU Center for European and Mediterranean Studies.

Almost 25 years after the end of state socialism, and much writing on gender and women’s movements before and after state socialism, it was inevitable that researchers and activists would turn their attention to gender and women’s organizations during state socialism, including official state socialist women’s organizations. The continuing destructive impact of neoliberalism has even led some young women activists to adopt Marxist approaches to gender questions today. These new directions appear in activities in the region and in research about the region. The research raises many questions of methodology, interpretations of new research, conceptions of feminism, and women’s studies’ approaches to gender research. The activist appropriations of Marxism lead to questions of what kind(s) of Marxism are being adopted.

As is our usual practice, we are looking for speakers to discuss gender, gender and class, sexuality, or women in Europe or Eurasia, For Spring 2014 we are particularly (but not only) interested in speakers addressing such issues, doing research on official state socialist women’s organizations, and examinations of this research on gender and state socialism in east, south and central Europe and the former Soviet Union, and of recent adoptions of Marxist approaches to gender issues.  We are also interested in activists’ reflective accounts and/or analyses of these new Marxist directions. We are interested in papers both supporting and engaging in debate about these recent developments.

Our focus is on the postcommunist countries of East and Central Europe and the former Soviet Union, including the Baltic countries and Central Asia, and in Europe and the European Union more widely.

The workshop is an informal and friendly group of about 20 feminist scholars, activists, and journalists who have been meeting for more than 15 years and are knowledgeable about the region. This is the perfect space to present recent theoretical and/or critical work; empirical research, and critical and scholarly reflections on your activism.

We offer a small honorarium; however, we regret that we cannot cover transportation expenses to New York City.

For more information – and details about how to propose a talk – see http://gendertransformationeurope.wordpress.com/how-to-propose-a-talk-2/.

Please join us Friday, November 15 for our next workshop:

“The Victims of Post-Socialist Economic Transition in the Western Balkans: A Socio-Cultural Panorama” 

Tatjana Aleksic, Associate Professor of South Slavic and Comparative Literature, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

This presentation will discuss the relations of violence against broadly defined “otherness” in post-socialist transitional societies, but also as a cult of masculine aggressiveness that is cultivated through tradition and cultural production. Most post-Socialist European societies have been suffering from a pattern of violence that is gendered at the same time as it is turned against ethno-religious minorities. This discussion will focus on the oversaturation with violence of societies in the Western Balkans, and will be illustrated by examples from political life but also cultural production. Aleksic is specifically interested in the perpetuation of violence, physical, psychological, verbal, collective or individual, directed against perceived gender, sexual, social, or ethno-religious “minorities,” and the responses and reactions given to it by state and political authorities. The alarming rate of violence towards the Roma, immigrant, gay communities, and women, both in forms of domestic or organized violence, suggests that the traditional social/masculine structures, subverted by growing economic and political problems, increasingly choose to turn against fragile social elements forced to absorb accumulated aggression and frustration.

Location: NYU Center for European and Mediterranean Studies, 285 Mercer St., 7th Floor, 4:30 to 6:00 pm.

Call for Papers

6^th Biennial AWSS Conference: Women, Gender, and Revolution in Slavic Studies

Thursday, April 10, 2014

Ritz-Carlton Hotel, Atlanta, GA

Proposal Deadline: December 15

The Association for Women in Slavic Studies (AWSS) is soliciting paper presentations on the theme of “Women, Gender, and Revolution in Slavic Studies” for its 6^th Biennial Conference to be held on Thursday, April 10, 2014 at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Atlanta, GA.  The conference will be held in conjunction with the 52^nd Annual Meeting of the Southern Conference on Slavic Studies (SCSS), which opens Thursday evening and runs through Saturday.  Participants of the AWSS Conference are encouraged to attend and participate in the SCSS conference as well (a separate CFP will be issued for that conference).  AWSS Conference participants are eligible to receive the SCSS rate for the hotel, $165.00/night.

The theme of women, gender, and revolution can be approached in a variety of ways.  Most concretely, the these addressed the actions of men and women in political revolution, broadly conceived, including (but not limited to) events of 1848, 1905, and 1917, events leading up to the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe, and the post-Community transformations after 1989. The theme also invites the study of gendered representations of revolutionary events, and of significant transformation in gender roles at any time in Russia and East European History.

The keynote talk for the conference will be delivered by Janet Johnson, Associate Professor of Political Science and Women’s Studies at Brooklyn College, City University of New York.  Dr. Johnson (PhD 2001, Indiana University-Bloomington) is an expert on gender, violence, and civil society in post-communist transitions in Eastern Europe.  She has published and spoken widely on these subjects.  Her talk at the conference will be on “Revolutionizing Gender Studies”:  Though not everyone understands it, the study of women in Slavic Studies revolutionized gender studies by clarifying that change of regime–such as from communism to post-communism–radically alters gender.  Russia’s recent move toward authoritarian should also make us re-think gender, this time by highlighting the role of informal networks, practices, and institutions.  Gender-blind social scientists are claiming these notions as their own, even though they have been hidden there all along in gender studies, especially among those of us who study places outside of Western Europe and North America.

The conference organizers invite proposals from scholars at all stages in their careers and in any discipline of Slavic Studies (history, literature, linguistics, political science, sociology, anthropology, economics, gender studies, etc.).  Proposals should consist of a 250-word abstract of the paper (including the paper’s title) and a brief one-page CV that includes author’s affiliation and contact information.  Proposals are due by December 15 to Sharon Kowalsky, Associate Professor of History, Texas A&M University-Commerce, [email protected].  Participants will be notified of their acceptance approximately four weeks after the proposal deadline.

Any questions about the conference or the program should be directed to Sharon Kowalsky ([email protected]) or Karen Petrone ([email protected]).

The presentation by Kristen Loveland on November 1 has been canceled, but may be rescheduled.

Please join us on November 15, when Tatjana Aleksic, Associate Professor of South Slavic and Comparative Literature at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor will present:

“The Victims of Post-Socialist Economic Transition in the Western Balkans: A Socio-Cultural Panorama.” This presentation will discuss the relations of violence against broadly defined “otherness” in post-socialist transitional societies, but also as a cult of masculine aggressiveness that is cultivated through tradition and cultural production. Most post-Socialist European societies have been suffering from a pattern of violence that is gendered at the same time as it is turned against ethno-religious minorities. My discussion in the workshop will focus on the oversaturation with violence of societies in the Western Balkans, and will be illustrated by examples from political life but also cultural production.

All presentations take place 4:30 to 6:00 pm, NYU Center for European and Mediterranean Studies, 285 Mercer Street, 7th Floor (between Waverly and Washington Place)

4:30-6PM, October 18

Nadia Kaneva, Associate Professor, Department of Media, Film, and Journalism Studies, University of Denver

“Pin-Ups, Strippers, and Centerfolds: Gendered Mediation and Post-Socialist Political Culture in Central and Eastern Europe”

Nadia Kaneva is Associate Professor in the Department of Media, Film, and Journalism Studies at the University of Denver.  She holds a PhD in Media Studies from the University of Colorado at Boulder, an MA in Advertising from Syracuse University, and a BA in Journalism and Mass Communication from the American University in Bulgaria.

Nadia’s research draws on critical theories of communication and culture to explore the construction of national and gendered identities in post-socialist Europe. She is particularly interested in critical perspectives on promotional culture and is currently working on a book about the media’s role in advancing consumerism in Eastern Europe.  Nadia is the editor of “Branding Post-Communist Nations: Marketizing National Identities in the New Europe” (Routledge, 2011), and author of multiple scholarly articles and chapters.  This year she is also guest-editing a special issue on post-socialist femininities for the journal Feminist Media Studies, forthcoming in 2015.

 You can read more about Nadia’s work and download some of her publications at: https://portfolio.du.edu/nkaneva

Center for European and Mediterranean Studies

New York University

285 Mercer Street, 7th floor

(between Waverly and Washington Place)

Sex and Gender Politics in Putin’s Russia
Tuesday, October 15, 2013, 6:00 pm
Garden Room 1, Faculty House, Columbia Univerity

Please join the Harriman Institute for a panel discussion with Valerie Sperling (Clark University) and Janet E. Johnson (Brooklyn College), moderated by Kimberly Marten (Barnard College).

This event is co-sponsored with the Institute for Research on Women, Gender, and Sexuality.

Thorgerdur Einarsdóttir, Professor, Gender Studies, University of Iceland;  Gyda Petursdóttir, Assistant Professor, Gender Studies, University of Iceland;  Jyl Josephson, Associate Professor, Political Science and Women’s and Gender Studies, Rutgers University; and Janet Elise Johnson, Associate Professor, Political Science, Brooklyn College

Thorgerdur Einarsdottir is Professor of Gender Studies at the University of Iceland.  She received a PhD in Sociology from University of Goteborg in Sweden.  She researches gender and the labour market, welfare and family policy, women in politics, gender equality policies and the feminist movement. Her most recent research areas are the gendered dynamics of the financial crises, and transgender issues. She is spending the Fall 2013 semester at Rutgers Newark as a Fulbright research scholar, affiliated with the Institute for Research on Women.

Janet Elise Johnson is Associate Professor of Political Science and Women’s Studies at Brooklyn College, City University of New York.  She holds a BA from Duke University in Public Policy and a PhD in Political Science from Indiana University.   Her most recent articles are published in the journals Politics & Gender, Communist and Post-Communist Studies, and Signs: Journals of Women in Culture and Society.   Her most recent book, Gender Violence in Russia: The Politics of Feminist Intervention (Indiana University Press, 2009), analyzes the development of the women’s crisis center movement in Russia.  Recently returned from fieldwork in Iceland (July 2013) and Russia (May 2013), she is working on a book project on gender and informal politics.

Gyda Margrét Pétursdóttir is Assistant Professor of Gender Studies at the University of Iceland.  She received PhD in Gender Studies from University of Iceland.  She researches gender, i.e. femininities and masculinities, gender relations and family responsibility, work cultures and gendered organizations. Her most recent research areas are the gendered dynamics of the financial crises in collaboration with Einarsdóttir, and emphasized and pariah femininities.

Jyl Josephson is Associate Professor of Political Science and Women’s and Gender Studies at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, Newark campus.  From 2004 to 2008, she served as Director of the Women’s and Gender Studies program at Rutgers-Newark.  She spent the spring 2011 semester at the University of Iceland as a Fulbright lecturing scholar, and while there taught a course on the politics of sexuality.  She has written on gender, sexuality, and public policy, primarily in the context of U.S. social policy.  She has published books on child support policy, and on gender and American politics.  Her work has also been published in journals such as Women and Politics, Journal of Poverty, Politics and Gender, and Perspectives on Politics.

Johnson, Einnarsdottir, and Pettursdottir published “A feminist theory of corruption: Lessons from Iceland” in Politics & Gender (June 2013).  Einarsdottir and Pettursdottir are working on a joint project on masculinity and Iceland’s crisis.  Einarsdottir and Josephson are involved in a project comparing LGBT movements in Iceland and the United States.

at the Center for European and Mediterranean Studies

New York University

285 Mercer Street, 7th floor

(between Waverly and Washington Place)