Spring reading: Gender, Generations, and Communism

I am so happy I get to write “Spring Reading” since we are officially in the spring of 2021. This was an interesting edited collection with a wide variety of perspectives on the historical memory of communism in Eastern Europe.

“…[T]oday anticommunism is part of the mainstream public debate in many countries of Central and Eastern Europe; it is also part of the identity politics of many milieus, groups, and socio-political movements, including women’s movements.”
— Gender, Generations, and Communism, page 20
“...the biographies of women who belonged to the pre-war communist generations are often perceived as biographies of losers, who wasted their lives in the fight for a misguided cause.”
— Gender, Generations, and Communism , page 20
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New Video of KU Keynote Lecture for IWD 2021 →

Dr. Kristen R. Ghodsee on the Socialist History of International Women's Day

In honor of Women's History Month 2021, KU's Emily Taylor Center for Women & Gender Equity and Center for Russian, East European & Eurasian Studies welcomed Dr. Kristen R. Ghodsee (she/her) — author of Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism: And Other Arguments for Economic Independence — to speak on the socialist roots of International Women's Day. This recording of the event features Dr. Ghodsee's lecture followed by an audience Q&A moderated by Dr. Megan Williams (she/her), Assistant Director of Emily Taylor Center for Women & Gender Equity.

Watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tL0DuM0xibM

International Women's Day Events and Interviews Roundup

Okay, well I have been REALLY very busy in the last few days with a wide variety of events and interviews. Below you will find links to all of the fun things I have been doing to celebrate the socialist holiday this year.

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Watch: A special event for the Democratic Socialists of America International Committee (co-sponsored by the socialist feminist working group and Lux Magazine): “Love and Sex Behind the Iron Curtain: 20th Century State Socialism in Eastern Europe.” 7 March 2021

Listen: Revolutionary Left Radio Podcast, Interview with Kristen Ghodsee,“Socialist Feminism, Class Struggle, and the Cold War.” 7 March 2021

Listen: It's Not All In Your Head Podcast. "Do Women Have Better Sex In Socialist & Communist Countries? (ft. Kristen Ghodsee)," 22 February 2021

Listen: Katie Halper Show Podcast, “Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism” March 8, 2021

Listen: A.K. 47 Podcast, “International Women’s Day, Part 2” 8 March 2021

Read [In French]: Carla Biguliak. “Le socialisme est-il bon pour la sexualité des femmes?” Revolution Permanente, 6 March 2021

Read [In Russian]: Братерский Александр, “Профессор Кристен Годси: "Феминизм сегодня стал ругательным словом" finam.ru, 8 March 2021

8 March 2021 (18:00 GMT-5): Jacobin Talks, “The Socialist History of International Women’s Day” (with Kristen Ghodsee and Meagan Day)

10 March 2021 “A World to Win Podcast with Grace Blakeley, “Love Kills Capitalism”

Upcoming Events:

9 March 2021 (19:00 GMT-5): A keynote lecture for IWD at the University of Kansas: Women's History Month Lecture: Dr. Kristen R. Ghodsee on International Women's Day

11 March 2021 (10:30 GMT-5) Guest Lecture, Kristen Ghodsee: "State socialist women's organizations and their role during the U.N. Decade for Women (1975-1985)" Center for History, Sciences Po, Paris

16 March 2021 (11:00 GMT-5) Discussion: "Socialism in the Age of AOC and Bernie Sanders: A Conversation with Bhaskar Sunkara and Kristen Ghodsee" New York Writer's Institute

17 March 2021 (12:00 GMT-5) "Love and Sex Behind the Iron Curtain: What Can We Learn from the Experiences of 20th Century State Socialism in Eastern Europe?" University of Pennsylvania

31 March 2021 (12:00 GMT-5) "Socialist Sexualities: Expert Knowledge and Intimate Revolutions in Poland and Czechoslovakia" Harvard University

Winter Reading: Cafe Europa Resisted

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“…in all former communist countries in eastern Europe, it is difficult to mention the merits of communism, a system that, in a short time, brought modernization and changed an agrarian society into an urbanized, industrial one. It meant general education as well as the emancipation of women; this has to be recognized, even though such changes were accomplished by a totalitarian regime.”
— Slavenka Drakulic, 2021

New Event with the DSA International Committee →

Get more info here

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Join us on International Women’s Day for a fascinating discussion!

Speakers:

Prof. Agnieszka Kościańska, author of Gender, Pleasure, and Violence: The Construction of Expert Knowledge of Sexuality in Poland (Indiana University Press 2021). Visiting Professor at the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies and Associate Professor in the Department of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, University of Warsaw.

Prof. Kateřina Lišková, Masaryk University, Czechia, and author of Sexual Liberation, Socialist Style: Communist Czechoslovakia and the Science of Desire, 1945–1989 (Cambridge University Press, 2019)

Prof. Kristen Ghodsee, University of Pennsylvania, author of Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism: And Other Arguments for Economic Independence (Bold Type Books, 2018).

Moderated by Dr. Polina Aronson (Germany/Russia), freelance Journalist is a sociologist and the debate editor of openDemocracy Russia. She was born in St Petersburg and lives in Berlin. She is working on a book about perceptions of love in Russia and in the West.

Sponsored by Democratic Socialists of America International Committee Europe Subcommittee, DSA SocFem Working Group, and Lux magazine.

Anatomy of a Zoom background

So now that I am teaching again and appearing on a lot of podcasts with video components, I have had a lot of questions about the room (my home office) that I sit in when I am in front of my computer’s camera. I will have to admit that I thought about buying one of those room dividers or a green screen, but in the end I decided to clean up the space and decorate my bookshelves with some of my favorite things. A few notable items in the background:

Two of my favorite typewriters on top of the bookshelves: my 1930s Urania QWETZ typewriter from Dresden on the right and my 1950s Model T Groma typewriter (from the former GDR) on the left. There is a bust of David on the floor (who will beat the Goliath of capitalism eventually), hiding some storage boxes hidden between the corners of the bookshelves. There is a framed and signed photo of the first woman in space, Valentina Tereshkova, given to me by the late Elena Lagadinova, as well as an unframed photo of Alexandra Kollontai. I still have my original Rubik’s Cube from the 1980s (designed by a Hungarian architect during the Cold War) and a variety of books on various utopian movements and ideologies. On my walls are a poster of the Acropolis in Athens and the Oxford Cartographers World History Timeline that I have often lectured and written about. The big plant behind me is a fake one that adds a little depth to the room.

It’s not the most exciting background, but I feel like it is at least visually more interesting than a paper screen.

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