Gender and Sexuality Representations in (Post)Soviet Space: Celebrating Dan Healey's Work on Queer History

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

The panel is dedicated to historian Dan Healey, who inspired these papers with his research into the history of Russian/USSR gender and sexuality, medicine, and the LGBT community in the long 20th century. Drawing from his pioneering work with archival materials that shaped the queer history of the region significantly, the panelists turn to the representations of gender and sexuality in three temporalities of Russian imperialism: the aftermath of the Revolution of 1905, Stalin's time, and Putin's Russia. Jānis Ozoliņš and Kārlis Vērdiņš read the Latvian literary fairy tale by Kārlis Skalbe, "The Tale of the Coin" (1912), and its interpretation in an animation movie for adult audiences (1969) through Healey's research into the historical sources of the subculture of commercial sex in metropolitan tsarist Russia's men's bathhouses. Megi Kartsivadze explores the situation of Georgian female writers in the time of Stalin's cult of personality, when Georgian writers instrumentalized Socialist Realism as a form of colonial resistance, using the Stalin-era archival documents of the Writers' Union of Georgia. Richard Mole analyzes the role of the Russian radical-conservative daily newspaper Zavtra as a securitizing actor in Russian political and media discourse, where the LGBTQ community is presented as a threat to the Russian state. 

Sub Unit

• Gender/LGBTQ Studies

Chair

• Vitaly Chernetsky, U of Kansas

Papers

• Queering the Fairy-Tale: Bathhouse Sex and the Little Devil of Money in the Periphery of the Russian Empire - Janis Ozolins, University of Latvia (Latvia); Karlis Verdins, Art Academy of Latvia (Latvia)

• Silenced Voices of the Soviet Periphery: Georgian Female Writers and Stalin’s Cult of Personality - Megi Kartsivadze, U of Oxford (UK)

• The Securitisation of Sexuality in Putin’s Russia: A Media Analysis - Richard Mole, U College London (UK)

Discussant

• Dan D.B. Healey, U of Oxford (UK)

Session Manager

• George Andrei, Indiana U Bloomington