Gender, Generations, Communism in Central and South-Eastern Europe: Concepts, Discourses, Practices

/ Termine

Gender, Generations, Communism in Central and South-Eastern Europe: Concepts, Discourses, Practices

Veranstalter
Institute of Literary Research, Polish Academy of Sciences; Institute of Slavonic Studies, University of Leipzig; Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences
Veranstaltungsort
Staszic Palace, ul. Nowy Świat 72, Warsaw, Room 144
Ort
Warsaw
Land
Poland
Vom - Bis
16.11.2017 - 18.11.2017
Website
Von
Jun.-Prof. Dr. Anna Artwinska (Universität Leipzig)

Although research on socialism/ communism/ state socialism, as well as research on generations and gender, is conducted extensively around the world, scholarship that combines these three theoretical perspectives is still scarce. As an academic and intellectual endeavour, this conference originates from the need for a scholarly perspective that conceptualises communism in Central and South-Eastern Europe as a social and political phenomenon within which various social and political actors (including the individuals and groups working within the communist/ socialist states, and the representatives of opposition movements) articulated their identities through gender and generation. It rests on the observation that, seen through the analytical lenses of “gender” and “generation”, communism may be articulated as a history of individuals and groups of people who define themselves through certain biological and social and cultural affiliations. These articulations span identities such as: “children of the revolution”, “Bolshevik feminists”, “rebuilding (postwar) generation”, “generation 1968”, “women of Solidarity”, and many more.

The objective of the conference is to provide both an academic and a methodological examination of the extent to which the usage of “gender” as analytical category in research on communism implies the usage of “generation”, and vice versa. We are interested in concrete “case studies” illustrating possibilities of such representations and readings of communism that bring to the fore “generations” and “gender” as distinctive and formative aspects of communism in Central and South East Europe. As analytical categories, both “gender” and “generations” should be approached with caution: as categories that regardless of their undeniable descriptive and explanatory potential, still may serve as analytical tools for the production of the fixed, essentialist identities.

The conference is an interdisciplinary endeavour that combines the literary and cultural studies perspective with that of history, anthropology and sociology. It gathers researchers involved in studies on history, politics and culture of the so-called “people's democracies”, including (but not limited to) Soviet Union, Poland, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Yugoslavia. We believe that during the conference we will draw comparisons and parallels that will help us to reframe communism as a diverse social phenomenon spanning various generational and gender identities. We also hope to initiate a debate on new meta-discourses that may help us describe and analyse this diversity. The long-term goal of this event is to search for alternative frames to describe and analyse communism—ones that go beyond the narrative that focus on its “totalitarian” and/ or anti-totalitarian character.

Programm

Thursday
16 November 2017
10:00–10:30 am
REGISTRATION

10:30–11:00 am
OPENING & WELCOME
Mikołaj Sokołowski
(Head of the Institute of Literary Research, PAS)
Anna Plater-Zyberk
(Head of the International Cooperation Department, PAS)
Wojciech Kalaga
(Deputy Head of the Committee on Literary Studies, PAS)

11:00–12:00 am
INTRODUCTION
Anna Artwińska
(University of Leipzig)
Agnieszka Mrozik
(Institute of Literary Research, PAS)
Gender, Generation and Communism: Theoretical Approaches
12:00–12:30 pm

COFFEE BREAK

12:30–2:00 pm
PANEL I: GENERATION AS AN ANALYTICAL CATEGORY
Chair: Francisca de Haan
(Central European University, Budapest)
Dorothee Wierling
(University of Hamburg)
Can There Be Generations under Communism? The Case of
the 1929ers and 1949ers in the German Democratic Republic
Chiara Bonfiglioli
(University of Pula)
Waves of Women’s Activism in Socialist Yugoslavia:
Gender, Generation and Class as Analytical Tools
Piotr Osęka
(Institute of Political Studies, PAS)
Me or We? The Generation Concept and the Memory
of 1968 in the Life Stories of Polish Activists

2:00–3:30 pm
LUNCH

3:30–5:00 pm
PANEL II: LIFE WRITING, WOMEN’S
IDENTITIES AND (ANTI-)COMMUNISM
Chair: Małgorzata Fidelis
(University of Illinois at Chicago)
Anja Tippner
(University of Hamburg)
Refused Identities: Jiřina Šiklová’s Life between
Communism, Gender Theory and Dissidence
Zsófia Lóránd
(Georg-August University of Goettingen)
Women’s Generational Experience in Yugoslavia and Hungary
from Feminist, Communist and Dissident Perspectives

6:00–8:00 pm
KEYNOTE SPEECH
Sigrid Weigel
(Center for Literary and Cultural Research, Berlin)
Figures of Trans-Generational Heritage by Heine, Benjamin,
and Freud: Theory of History and the Biblical Origins of the
Idea of Heritage
Moderation: Christoph Bartmann
(Goethe-Institut Warsaw)

8:00 pm
DINNER

Friday
17 November 2017

9:30–11:30 am
PANEL III: YOUTH AND MODERNITY
Chair: Barbara Klich-Kluczewska
(Jagiellonian University, Cracow)
Małgorzata Fidelis
(University of Illinois at Chicago)
Modern Girls in the Village: Gender and Generation
in the Polish Countryside during the Global Sixties
Libora Oates-Indruchová
(University of Graz)
Growing Up as a Girl in Normalization Czechoslovakia:
A Nightmare or Utopia for Postsocialist Youth?
Tomasz Żukowski
(Institute of Literary Research, PAS)
The 1970s in the People’s Republic of Poland:
A Generational Notion of Modernization
Andrea Bělehradová
(Masaryk University, Brno)
Marriage and Intimacy in Old Age in Czechoslovakia
during State Socialism and Beyond

11:30–12:00 am
COFFEE BREAK

12:00–1:30 pm
PANEL IV: BETWEEN GENDER,
JEWISHNESS AND COMMUNISM
Chair: Anja Tippner
(University of Hamburg)
Anna Muller
(University of Michigan-Dearborn)
Comradeship and the Search for “Home”: Tonia Lechtman
and Her Plight Between Poland, Palestine and Revolutionary
Spain, 1919–1938
Anna Zawadzka
(Institute of Slavic Studies, PAS)
Narratives of Jewish Communists’ Children:
Polish-American Comparative Analysis
Karolina Krasuska
(University of Warsaw)
Gendering Generationality in Post-Soviet Jewish
American Writers

1:30–3:00 pm
LUNCH

3:00–4:30 pm
PANEL V: WOMEN IN POSTWAR EUROPE
Chair: Chiara Bonfiglioli
(University of Pula)
Natalia Jarska
(Tadeusz Manteuffel Institute of History, PAS)
Old Women and (Old) Revolution: The Role of Gender
and Generation in Postwar Polish Women Communists’
Political Biographies
Krassimira Daskalova
(Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski)
A Woman Politician from the Cold War Balkans
Eloisa Betti
(University of Bologna)
Italian Communist Women and the Struggle for
a Women’s Rights Agenda in the Cold War (1945–68)

4:30–5:00 pm
COFFEE BREAK

5:30–8:30 pm
MOVIE SCREENING
“Solidarność według kobiet”
/ “Solidarity according to Women”
(2014) dir. Marta Dzido and Piotr Śliwowski
Discussion: Alina Cała, Kinga Dunin,
Marta Dzido, Agnieszka Grzybek (moderation),
Piotr Śliwowski

Saturday
18 November 2017

9:00–12:00 am
WARSAW SIGHTSEEING WITH NATALIA SARATA

12:00–12:30 pm
COFFEE BREAK

12:30–2:00 pm
PANEL VI: SEX, GENERATION
AND KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION
Chair: Karolina Krasuska
(University of Warsaw)
Barbara Klich-Kluczewska
(Jagiellonian University, Cracow)
Katarzyna Stańczak-Wiślicz
(Institute of Literary Research, PAS)
Biographical Experience and Knowledge Production:
Women Sociologists and Gender Issue in Postwar Poland
Kateřina Lišková
(Masaryk University, Brno)
Divorcing during Communism in Czechoslovakia: Expert
Discourses on Gender and Sexuality and Their Uses in F ront
of Divorce Courts from the 1950s until the 1980s
Magdalena Grabowska
(Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, PAS)
From PWP (Polish Workers’ Party) “True Believers” to
“Practical Activists”: Communist Genealogies of the
Contemporary Women's Movements in Poland

2:00–3:30 pm
LUNCH
3:30–5:00 pm

PANEL VII: POLITICAL ACTIVISM
AND CULTURAL MEMORY
Chair: Krassimira Daskalova
(Sofia Univ ersity St. Kliment Ohridski)
Aránzazu Calderón Puerta
(University of Warsaw)
Intergenerational Transmission within or without the
Literary Text: The Memory of the Anti-Francoist Resistance
Communist Movement in Women’s Novels by Dulce Chacón
and Almudena Grandes
Raluca Popa
(Central European University, Budapest)
Transforming Gender through State Socialist Cultural
Production in Romania, 1944–1960: Women’s Communist
Activism in the Memoirs of Two Female Writers
5:00 pm

CONCLUDING REMARKS
Francisca de Haan
(Central European University, Budapest)
Magdalena Grabowska
(Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, PAS)

Kontakt

Agnieszka Mrozik

Instytut Badań Literackich PAN

agnieszka.mrozik@ibl.waw.pl

Redaktion
Veröffentlicht am
Autor(en)
Beiträger
Zitation ⇓
Klassifikation
Epoche(n)
Region(en)
Thema
Weitere Informationen
Typ
Land Veranstaltung
Sprach(en) der Veranstaltung
Englisch
Sprache der Ankündigung