Friday, January 28, 2pm Budrytė on Gender & Partisan War in Lithuania

Join us Friday, January 28, 2022, from 2pm to 3pm on Zoom when we welcome

Dovilė Budrytė, Professor of Political Science at Georgia Gwinnett College, on

Gender, War, and Remembrance: ‘Points of Memory’ in the Narratives of Women Participants in the Partisan War (1944-53) in Lithuania

This presentation is part of a larger project, the goal of which is to develop a gender perspective on remembrance of Lithuania’s partisan war. The goal of the presentation is to build a model of gendered memory entrepreneurship. The analysis will be based on points of memory, a concept developed by Marianne Hirsch who defined them as “points of intersection between past and present, memory and post-memory, personal remembrance and cultural recall.” The theoretical inquiry is enriched by examining the narratives of two former partisan messengers—Aldona Vilutienė (neé Sabaitytė, 1931-2020), who created the first museum commemorating the anti-Soviet resistance and the deportations carried out under Stalin, and Elena Žilvytienė (neé Aleliūnaitė, 1925-2020) whose story (focusing on her father) was covered by the mass media in 2019. Both testimonies revealed the complicated realities of Lithuania’s partisan war with betrayals and dangers associated with the “feminine” tasks of a partisan messenger, such as finding buttons for partisan uniforms or delivering packages. These complexities and difficult moral choices that people who were alive during the partisan war had to make are absent from simplified public narratives about the period.

Dr. Budrytė is Professor of Political Science and Chair of Faculty (Political Science) at Georgia Gwinnett College, USA. She was the recipient of research fellowships at Europa University Viadrina (Germany) and Carnegie Council on Ethnics and International Affairs.  In 2019, 2018 and 2015 she was a visiting professor at Kaunas Vytautas Magnus University and Vilnius University in Lithuania. Her articles on minorities, women and historical trauma in Lithuania have appeared in The Journal of Baltic Studies, Gender and History, and Journal of International Relations and Development. Her most recent book is Crisis and Change in Post-Cold War Global Politics: Ukraine in a Comparative Perspective, co-edited with Erica Resende and Didem Buhari-Gulmez (Palgrave, 2018). Her other publications include books and articles on minority rights and historical memory in Eastern Europe. She is President-Elect of the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies (AABS).

Workshop format: We ask that workshop participants read the paper in advance. The paper will be available one week before the workshop. Please email Mara Lazda mara.lazda@bcc.cuny.edu for the paper. At the workshop, Prof. Budrytė will provide a brief introduction, after which most of the session will be devoted to discussion. Participants will be invited to ask questions based on the written paper and introductory remarks.

The workshop meets from 2pm to 3pm New York time. Workshops are not recorded.

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

Questions? Contact Co-coordinators Mara Lazda (Bronx Community College, CUNY) mara.lazda@bcc.cuny.edu or Janet Elise Johnson (Brooklyn College, CUNY) johnson@brooklyn.cuny.edu

Feb. 18 Vojvodic on gender quotas 2PM EST via Zoom

Please join us Friday February 18 at 2 pm (ET)  for the next virtual meeting of the Gender and Transformation in Central-Eastern Europe and Eurasia Workshop when we welcome:

Anja Vojvodic, Ph.D., CUNY LaGuardia Community College

“Failed Adoptions: International Norm Rejections and the Case of Gender Quotas”

Gender quotas have been adopted by over 115 countries around the world. Although present in varied forms, quotas are provisions that promote the numerical increase of women in legislative bodies, namely Parliaments and Congresses. Quotas have aided descriptive or numerical representation across regions of the world. Currently, women make up an average of 25.5% of Parliamentarians worldwide, up from 13.8% twenty years ago. Given the importance of this mechanism and given the fact that most countries have adopted quotas, what explains the decisions of countries to not adopt them? The international norm literature has mostly focused on norm adoption, but what factors can explain norm rejection? Using gender quotas as an example of an emerging international norm, this research aims to explain quota rejection by first analyzing quota adoptions worldwide, then across regions, particularly the CEE region, and finally within selected cross-regional case studies, where a more detailed process-oriented analysis will lead to a working explanation of quota rejection.

Anja Vojvodic is an Adjunct Assistant Professor at CUNY LaGuardia Community College. At LaGuardia, she teaches courses on global politics and law and human rights. Anja received her PhD from Rutgers University in May of 2020. Her dissertation examines why some countries in Central and Eastern Europe adopt gender quotas and why some do not. In her dissertation, Anja argues that gender quota adoption is aided by women’s movement advocacy in adopter countries and is hindered by elite-level resistance to gender quotas and often limited social movement activity within non-adopter countries. Anja’s academic areas of interest are women in politics, social movements, international norms and Central and Eastern Europe. After receiving a master’s degree in Global Affairs from NYU in 2011, Anja received a Fulbright Fellowship to conduct research in Serbia. In Serbia, she completed over 15 interviews with women Parliamentarians to document their role in the gender quota adoption process in Serbia. This research ultimately led her to pursue a PhD in Political Science.

Workshop format: We ask that workshop participants read the paper in advance. Please email Mara.Lazda@bcc.cuny.edu for the paper.

At the workshop, Dr. Vojvodic will provide a brief introduction, after which most of the session will be devoted to discussion. Participants will be invited to ask questions based on the written paper and introductory remarks.

The workshop meets from 2pm to 3pm New York time on Zoom. Workshops are not recorded.

Register in advance for this meeting:
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZAlcemprDsvGdbKb_2uDr_Hhj6XsaWRgVjQ

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

We look forward to our discussion Friday, February 18, 2pm (ET)!

Spring 2022 Lineup

Jan. 28, 2022

Dovilė Budrytė, Georgia Gwinnett College

“Gender, War, and Remembrance: ‘Points of Memory’ in the Narratives of Women Participants in the Partisan War (1944-53) in Lithuania”

Feb. 18, 2022

Anja Vojvodic, CUNY LaGuardia Community College

“Failed Adoptions: International Norm Rejections and the Case of Gender Quotas”

April 1, 2022

Masha Beketova, Humboldt University in Berlin 

“Queer/kvir post-Soviet Diaspora in Germany”

Discussant: Alexandra Novitskaya, SUNY Stony Brook

April 29, 2022

SPECIAL SESSION ON UKRAINE

co-sponsored by the Temerty Contemporary Ukraine Program, Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute

Oleksandra Tarkhanova, University of St. Gallen, Switzerland

“Shades of Protracted Displacement: Reconciling citizenship and the status of internally displaced in Eastern Ukraine”

Olga Sasunkevich, University of Gothenburg, Sweden

“Building transnational feminist solidarities in the times of war: Women’s Dialogue for Peace in Donbas” 

May 13, 2022

Yanara Schmacks, CUNY Graduate Center

“The socialist mother beyond the ‘working mom’: Motherhood in GDR women’s literature and activism”

Via Zoom. 2-3PM New York Time on Fridays. Details to follow.

December 10, Korolczuk on Anti-Gender Politics in the Populist Movement

Please join us Friday December 10 at 2pm (New York Time) when our speaker will be

Elżbieta Korolczuk, University of Warsaw and Södertörn University

Prof. Korolczuk is a sociologist, commentator and women’s rights activist working at Södertörn University in Stockholm and at the American Studies Center, Warsaw University. She analyzes social movements, civil society, reproduction and gender. Recent books include a co-authored volume Bunt Kobiet. Czarne Protesty i Strajki Kobiet (2019, European Solidarity Centre) and a monograph Anti-Gender Politics in the Populist Moment  with Agnieszka Graff (2021, Routledge). Her workshop session will be based on her collaborative research with Graff.

2pm to 3pm (New York Time) on Zoom:

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

Workshop format: We ask that participants read the paper in advance. Please email Mara Lazda mara.lazda@bcc.cuny.edu for the paper. At the workshop, Prof. Korolczuk will provide an introduction (5-10 minutes) after which participants are invited to ask questions based on the introduction and paper.

November 5 2pm: Balogh on Roma Women in Hungary

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

Lídia Balogh works for the Centre for Social Sciences (Budapest, Hungarian Academy of Sciences Centre of Excellence) as a Research Fellow. She is a visiting lecturer at the ELTE University Faculty of Social Sciences in Budapest and serves as a national expert in the European Network of Legal Experts in Gender Equality and Non-discrimination. She provides supervision to a regional women’s rights NGO, Regina Foundation Miskolc, relating to projects implemented with the involvement of women from a marginalized rural community. In 2018-2020 she contributed to the project “Civil Society Monitoring of National Roma Integration Strategies” (funded by the European Commission) as a gender expert, and in 2016-2019 she supported the work of the European Roma Rights Centre relating to women’s rights issues. She defended her PhD dissertation in 2016, at the Media Theory Program of ELTE University, Budapest. She holds MAs in Nationalism Studies and in Communication Studies.

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 (mara.lazda@bcc.cuny.edu) for the paper.

Zoom link for workshop:

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

Oct. 22: Gapova on women in Belarus protests

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 Mara.Lazda@bcc.cuny.edu for the paper.

Sept. 24: Bucur on disability in Romania

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 Mara.Lazda@bcc.cuny.edu for the paper.

Fall 2021 Lineup

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

Call for Papers 2021-2022

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 johnson@brookyn.cuny.edu

Mara Lazda, Bronx Community College, City University of New York mara.lazda@bcc.cuny.edu

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

Mar. 13, Anna Ehrhart, “Women’s Organizations in Contemporary Turkey: Linking Formal Politics and Civil Society in Times of Undemocratic Uncertainty”

CANCELED

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

Friday, March 13

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)

“Women’s Organizations: Linking Formal Politics and Civil Society in Times of Undemocratic Uncertainty—Experiences from Contemporary Turkey”

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

Anna Ehrhart is a PhD candidate in political science at Mid-Sweden University in Sundsvall, Sweden, and a visiting PhD researcher at the Department of Political Science and International Relations at Boğaziçi University in Istanbul, Turkey. In 2018–2019, Ehrhart was a research fellow at the Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul (SRII), conducting fieldwork in Turkey as part of her PhD research. Her research interests include women’s political representation, women’s civil society engagement, de-democratization processes, and gender politics. In her PhD dissertation, “Women’s political representation and civic engagement in contexts of democratic transition,” Ehrhart studies practices of linking and building relationships drawing on the experiences of women’s organizations and women politicians in contemporary semi-democratic Turkey.

All are welcome, but you must RSVP to Sonia Jaffe Robbins
The workshop meets at NYU’s Center for European and Mediterranean Studies
53 Washington Square South, 3rd floor East
4:30–6 p.m.

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