The Gaslighting of Eastern Europe
Oct
10
5:00 PM17:00

The Gaslighting of Eastern Europe

The majority of former socialist countries in Eastern Europe experienced an economic decline longer and deeper than the United States’s Great Depression of the 1930s. This was a devastating upheaval in the lives of about 420 million people, or about nine percent of the world’s population in 1989. Whether measured by the fall in economic output, the explosion of hyperinflation, the collapse of birth rates, the sudden growth of inequality and violent crime, or the massive increases in unemployment, displacement, and excess deaths linked to the neoliberal policies, the human collateral damage of the creation of market economies was unprecedented in peacetime. But even as populations struggled to survive the chaos and social pains of this transition, Western economists, international experts, and local elites conspired to downplay the deleterious effects and convince people that it wasn’t actually happening.

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Kristen Ghodsee discussing Everyday Utopia
Sep
30
5:30 PM17:30

Kristen Ghodsee discussing Everyday Utopia

Kristen Ghodsee, the Professor and Chair of Russian and East European Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, discussing:

Everyday Utopia: What 2,000 Years of Wild Experiments Can Teach Us About the Good Life

In the 6th century BCE, the Greek philosopher Pythagoras--a man remembered today more for his theorem about right-angled triangles than for his progressive politics--founded a commune in a seaside village in what's now southern Italy. The men and women there shared their property, lived as equals, and dedicated themselves to the study of mathematics and the mysteries of the universe.

Ever since, humans have been dreaming up better ways to organize how we live together, pool our resources, raise our children, and determine who's part of our families. Some of these experiments burned brightly for only a brief while, but others carry on today: from the Danish cohousing communities that share chores and deepen neighborly bonds, to matriarchal Colombian ecovillages where residents grow their own food; and from Connecticut, where new laws make it easier for extra "alloparents" to help raise children not their own, to China where planned microdistricts ensure everything a busy household might need is nearby.

One of those startlingly rare books that upends what you think is possible, Everyday Utopia provides a "powerful reminder that dreaming of better worlds is not just some fantastical project, but also a political one" (Rebecca Traister, New York Times bestselling author of Good and Mad). This "must-read" (Thomas Piketty, New York Times bestselling author of A Brief History of Equality) offers a radically hopeful vision for how to build more contented and connected societies, alongside a practical guide to what we all can do in the meantime to live the good life each and every day.

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Choice Words: Writers on Abortion
Apr
18
7:00 PM19:00

Choice Words: Writers on Abortion

Featuring Annie Finch with contributors Mahogany Browne, Desiree Cooper, Camonghne Felix, Kristen Ghodsee, Katha Pollitt, and Manisha Sharma:

The debate about the morality, legality, and politics of abortion has reached a tragic impasse in the United States. What fresh perspectives, complex insights, and wisdom can poets, dramatists, and fiction writers bring to this crucial cultural discussion? BPL Presents and Annie Finch invite you join a discussion to examine what diverse literary artists have to say on this fundamental issue of reproductive and human freedom.

Brooklyn-based poet Annie Finch will facilitate. Finch is editor of Choice Words: Writers on Abortion, the first major collection of literature about abortion by writers from the sixteenth through twenty-first centuries and across cultures, ethnicities, genders and sexualities. The book’s classic and contemporary writers—including Audre Lorde, Margaret Atwood, Lucille Clifton, Amy Tan, Ursula LeGuin, Gwendolyn Brooks, Ntozake Shange, Anne Sexton, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, and Langston Hughes—show us how class, patriarchy, race, ethnicity, and faith traditions impact our understanding and experience of abortion—and how we can reclaim the power to define abortion for the coming world of freedom and justice.

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Why Women have Better Sex Under Socialism
Mar
27
7:00 PM19:00
Events

Why Women have Better Sex Under Socialism

Northern Arizona University

Dr. Kristen Ghodsee from the University of Pennsylvania, author of Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism, will be speaking to us via zoom on March 27 at 4 PM! Zoom in to learn how Marx can help your sex life, or join the live watch party in LA room 201. This lecture is hosted by the Department of History, and the Commission on the Status of Women in honor of Women’s History Month.

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LENINIST DAYS / JORNADAS LENINISTAS
Mar
7
11:00 AM11:00

LENINIST DAYS / JORNADAS LENINISTAS

Thursday 7 March 2024

12:30 PM – 2:15 PM (EST) — Conversation 3: Comrades in arms: Lenin and women

Liza Featherstone (“Comrades: Lenin and Kollontai on Sex, Work and Women’s Liberation“) in conversation with Kristen R. Ghodsee (“Lenin’s Red Valkyries: Krupskaya, Armand, and Kollontai: Shaping Early Soviet Social Policy”)

Chair and discussant: Jodi Dean

Venue(s): Brooklyn (NY), Geneva (NY), Sofia (Bulgaria).

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