Political Thought, Memory, and Biographies from Women’s Intellectual History in East Central Europe

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

The panel presents different aspects of the rich history of feminist political thought and women’s rights discourses in East Central Europe. We showcase findinds from the project HERESSEE – “The History of Feminist Political Thought and Women's Rights Discourses in East Central Europe 1929-2001”, which builds on a solid base of existing scholarship, but does more than weave the stories of individual women or fragmented national case studies in the existing scholarship into a coherent narrative. Instead, it reinterprets the story of feminism in the region in relation to state socialism and the history of state socialism through the lens of feminism. It treats the interwar pre-history of debates between socialism and feminism, as well as the post-1989 struggles to deal with the state socialist past as integral parts of the history of state socialism.

Sub Unit

• History: 1945-1990

Chair

• Zsófia Lóránd, U of Vienna (Austria)

Papers

• The Invisible Yet Essential Roles of the Forgotten Socialist and Communist Women in Interwar Yugoslavia - Manca G Renko, U of Ljubljana (Slovenia)

• Peasant Women and Women's Rights in Yugoslavia, 1930s–1950s: Seeking Peasant Women’s Voices - Isidora Grubacki, Inst of Contemporary History (Slovenia)

• Women’s Rights Discourses in Early State-Socialist Poland (1944-1956): Forgotten Voices and Ideas - Katarzyna Maria Stanczak Wislicz, Inst of Literary Research PAS (Poland)

• 'Time was Pressing': Women Activists, Memory and Regimes of Historicity in the Early 1990s in Romania and Moldova - Alexandra Ghit, U of Vienna (Austria)

Discussant

• Ying Qian, Columbia U