Category: Special Presentation
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.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 mara.lazda@bcc.cuny.edu
Questions? Contact Mara Lazda or Janet Johnson johnson@brooklyn.cuny.edu
Join us Friday November 8 from 4:30pm to 6:00pm for
Resistance, Activism and Feminist Art in the GDR: Visions – (In)Visibilities – Commodification
Elisaveta Dvorakk
PhD Candidate in Art History and Theory of Photography
Department of Art and Visual History | Centre for transdisciplinary Gender Studies
Humboldt University of Berlin | Germany
Elisaveta Dvorakk is a PhD candidate in Art History and Theory of Photography at the Department of Art and Visual History at Humboldt University of Berlin. She is an associate member of the Centre for transdisciplinary Gender Studies (ZtG) at Humboldt University of Berlin and an associate at the Research Training Group “Identity and Heritage” of the German Research Foundation at Technical University of Berlin and Bauhaus University Weimar.
She holds a Masters Degree in Art History in Global Context with Focus on Europe and America from the Free University Berlin. Dvorakk studied Art History, Theory and History of Photography, Gender Studies and Protestant Theology in Berlin, Zurich and Vienna.
She is a member of the German Association of Art Historians and the College Art Association of America (CAA). Elisaveta Dvorakk is a board member of the International Association for the Study of Religion and Gender (IARG).
Her dissertation focuses on Journalistic Travel Photography and Political Aesthetics of the Documentary in Switzerland and the Soviet Union in 1937-38. It examines the photographic work of Annemarie Schwarzenbach (1908-1942), the Swiss journalist, writer and historian, in the context of her journalistic travels to the Soviet Union, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Finland and Sweden in 1937-38 from a postcolonial, gender-critical and queer perspective.
Elisaveta Dvorakk’s further research interests include Critical Theory of Photography; Aesthetics of Totalitarianisms; Gender, Postcolonial and Post-Secular Theory; Visual Activisms; Institutional Critique; (Post-)Digital Archiving. She is a scholarship holder of the German National Academic Foundation.
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 mara.lazda@bcc.cuny.edu
Questions? Contact Mara Lazda or Janet Elise Johnson johnson@brooklyn.cuny.edu
| Friday, October 25th – 7:30 p.m. The Auditorium, Alvin Johnson/J.M. Kaplan Hall, 66 West 12th Street The New School |
| Please join The New School community on October 25th at 7:30PM at The Auditorium, Alvin Johnson/J.M. Kaplan Hall, 66 West 12th Street, for a performance of The Flexible Orchestra’s “AnnCela Express” for twelve cellos and wind instruments, composed by Ann’s partner Daniel Goode and conducted by Tara Simoncic. The performance is a celebration in music of Ann Snitow, professor emerita of Literature and Gender Studies. A gathering and reception will follow in Wollman Hall, 5th Floor of 65 West 11th Street, where those who would like to do so are invited to share their remembrances of Ann and of her work for justice and pleasure in the U.S. and all over the world. We look forward to gathering together to honor Ann’s extraordinary contributions to feminist thought, action and The New School, including Ann’s three decades of teaching at Eugene Lang College, twenty-five years of teaching in the “Democracy and Diversity” seminar of the Transregional Center for Democratic Studies, and work over the past ten years to establish and sustain the university’s Gender Studies Program. |
Oksana Kis is a historian, anthropologist, author, and a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Ethnology, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. She is the president of the Ukrainian Association for Research in Women’s History and vice-president of the Ukrainian Oral History Association. She has taught at universities across North America and Ukraine.
4:30-6 p.m.
Center for European & Mediterranean Studies at NYU
53 Washington Square South, 3rd floor
All are welcome, but please RSVP: Janet Elise Johnson johnson@brooklyn.cuny.edu
Eliot Borenstein is Professor of Russian & Slavic Studies, Acting Chair of East Asian Studies, and Senior Academic Convenor for the Global Network at New York University. He also contributes to the Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia’s All the Russias blog.
Pronouns: he, him
4:30-6 p.m.
Center for European & Mediterranean Studies at NYU
53 Washington Square South, 3rd floor
All are welcome, but please RSVP: Janet Johnson johnson@brooklyn.cuny.edu
Categories
Fall 2019 Workshop Schedule
Please join us for the Fall 2019 series
Gender and Transformation:
Women in Europe Workshop
NYU Center for European & Mediterranean Studies
Fridays 4:30 to 6:00pm
October 4
Post-Soviet Masculinities: Sex, Power, and the Vanishing Subject
Eliot Borenstein
Ph.D. Slavic Languages and Literatures
Professor of Russian and Slavic Studies, Collegiate Professor, New York University
October 25
Feminism in Independent Ukraine: From an Allergen to the Last Hope
Oksana Kis
Ph.D. History/Ethnology
Senior Research Associate, Senior Scholar Department of Social Anthropology Institute of Ethnology national Academy of Sciences of Ukraine http://social-anthropology.org.ua/
November 8
Resistance, Activism and Feminist Art in the GDR. Visions – (In)Visibilities – Commodification
Elisaveta Dvorakk
PhD Candidate in Art History and Theory of Photography
Department of Art and Visual History | Centre for transdisciplinary Gender Studies
Humboldt University of Berlin | Germany
December 13
From Homophobia to Homonationalism… and Back?: Russian-speaking LGBTQ Migrants in New York City in the Pursuit of the American Gay Dream
Alexandra Novitskaya
Doctoral Candidate
Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, State University of New York at Stony Brook
Visiting Scholar, Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia, New York University
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 mara.lazda@bcc.cuny.edu
Questions? Contact Mara Lazda or Janet Johnson johnson@brooklyn.cuny.edu
GENDER AND TRANSFORMATION: WOMEN IN EUROPE WORKSHOP
NYU CENTER FOR EUROPEAN AND MEDITERRANEAN STUDIES
CALL FOR PAPERS 2019-2020:
DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS: JULY 15, 2019
The GENDER and TRANSFORMATION: WOMEN in EUROPE Workshop-a project at New York University with support from the Network of East-West Women-invites speakers to submit proposals for Friday afternoon talks for the next academic year at the NYU Center for European and Mediterranean Studies.
As is our usual practice, we are looking for speakers to discuss gender, sexuality, or women in Europe or Eurasia. For the academic year 2019-2020, on the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of state socialism in Central and Eastern Europe and Eurasia, we are particularly (but not only) interested in speakers addressing the question: how do we best advance the field, given the attacks on gender studies and gender activism?
Themes might include (but are not limited to):
- What new coalitions/new forms of political action have gender activists and scholars created, e.g., with immigrants?
- How do political parties, e.g., the Greens and environmental organizations, offer possibilities for collaboration for gender activists and scholars today?
- How successful has grassroots mobilization been? Have other forms of mobilization been more or less successful?
- Why and how have questions of intimacy, sexuality, and pleasure become a part of the field and politics now?
The workshop’s focus is on the 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. Recent workshops have included such topics as legal and discursive practices of sexual violence in Poland, the connections between “charismatic masculinity” and populism in Turkey and Russia, the politics of human trafficking, and anti-gender movements. Recent speakers have included Elizabeth A. Wood, Betul Eksi, and Agnieszka Koscianska.
The workshop is an informal and friendly group of about 20 feminist scholars, activists, and journalists who have been meeting for more than two decades 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. We regret that we cannot cover transportation expenses to New York City or offer assistance for visas or accommodations.
To propose a talk, please email the following to Janet Elise Johnson (Johnson@brooklyn.cuny.edu) and Mara Lazda (Mara.Lazda@bcc.cuny.edu):
1. a title for your talk
2. an abstract of less than 200 words describing your proposed talk
3. a one-page curriculum vitae or resume.
4. your schedule clarifying which weeks or months you plan to be in or near New York City and would like to present (proposals for the Spring semester will be passed on to the spring coordinators Nanette Funk and Sonia Jaffe Robbins)
All proposals are welcome from the region and experts from the U.S. or elsewhere, activists or scholars. We will get back to you as soon as possible.
For more information, see http://gendertransformationeurope.wordpress.com.
Leda Sutlovic
lecturer and Ph.D. candidate
Departent of Political Science, University of Vienna
“The Impact of Neoconservative Activism on Backsliding of Croatian Gender Politics”
4:30 to 6 p.m.
53 Washington Square South,
3rd Floor East, Room 324
All are welcome, but please RSVP to co-moderator Sonia Jaffe Robbins (sjr1991@gmail.com) so we can leave your name at the door.
Leda Sutlović is a Ph.D. candidate in the program of Social Sciences and lecturer at the University of Vienna’s Department of Political Science. She holds a master’s degree in political science from the Central European University and her undergraduate degree is from the University of Zagreb, also in political science. She has been a project coordinator at Zagreb’s Center for Women’s Studies, a member of the working group implementing Croatia’s national policy for gender equality in the city of Zagreb, and an associate for an international development aid project with a Tunisian organization, the Citizen’s Association for Democratic Participation. She is a coeditor of Widening the Scope of the Political—New Perspectives on Political Participation of Women, published by the Zagreb Center for Women’s Studies, as well as contributing chapters to several works, including “The Impact of Neoconservative Activism on Gender Policies and Women’s Movement in Croatia,” to be included in the forthcoming The Gender Politics of Backsliding in Central and Eastern Europe from the Central European University. She has participated in many conferences, including Longing for “Communism”? 21st Century Youth Cultures in Past, Present and Future Eastern Germany, and Southeast and Eastern Europe, where she presented on “The ‘Woman Question’ in Transition: Between Socialist Experience and Future Prospects” and at the House of Europe, Information Office of the European Parliament, where she spoke on “Motivated, Educated, Unemployed? Challenges of the Labor Market for Young Women in Croatia.” She was also at the World Social Forum in 2013. Her Ph.D. research focuses on (post)socialist transformations of Croatian gender policies, bringing together the approach of discursive and historical institutionalism with the role of knowledge and ideas in politics. The working title for her dissertation is “After the Socialist Experience, Beyond Europeanization: Transformations of Gender Politics in Croatia, 1970-2010.”
