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Full-Text Articles in History

Veronica Porumbacu’S ‘Return From Cynthera’ (1966): A Conceptual Manifesto Of Socialist Feminism, Ovidiu Ţichindeleanu Nov 2020

Veronica Porumbacu’S ‘Return From Cynthera’ (1966): A Conceptual Manifesto Of Socialist Feminism, Ovidiu Ţichindeleanu

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

Veronica Porumbacu (1921-1977) was a Romanian poet and translator who has been unjustly forgotten today due to her proletcultist poems of the 1950s. Yet her work was widely published and well-known during the socialist regime, and is especially relevant for the two decades of growth and ideological innovation of the 1960s and 1970s. In my article I analyze a remarkable volume of hers published in 1966, situating it in the context of her work and in the wider frame of the political context of Romania. I argue that Return from Cythera can be considered a conceptual manifesto of socialist feminism, …


The Return Of Jugoslovenka: An Unrequited Love Affair, Jasmina Tumbas Nov 2020

The Return Of Jugoslovenka: An Unrequited Love Affair, Jasmina Tumbas

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

This essay considers women’s emancipation in Socialist Yugoslavia as central to the socialist project. I focus on the feminist art of the 1970s and 1980s, aswell as contemporary engagements with the question of Yugoslavia. I put in conversation performance works by Sanja Iveković, Vlasta Delimar, Marina Gržinić, and Šejla Kamerić. The title of this essay, “Return of Jugoslovenka: An Unrequited Love Affair” points to how contested the position of Yugoslav women was during socialism, and how much it remains so today, albeit for very different reasons. As I show in the article, Yugoslav women in the arts embraced socialism as …


Review Of Gender In 20th Century Eastern Europe And The Ussr, Edited By Catherine Baker. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017, Katharina Wiedlack Nov 2020

Review Of Gender In 20th Century Eastern Europe And The Ussr, Edited By Catherine Baker. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017, Katharina Wiedlack

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

The anthology Gender in 20th Century Eastern Europe and the USSR is a collection of fourteen essays on a wide range of gender-related topics, from motherhood to concepts of masculinity, sexuality, and professional work.


Kristen Ghodsee. Second World, Second Sex. Socialist Women’S Activism And Global Solidarity During The Cold War. Durham & London: Duke University Press, 2018. Isbn 978-1-4780-0181-2 (Pbk), 328 Pp., Renata Jambrešić Kirin Nov 2020

Kristen Ghodsee. Second World, Second Sex. Socialist Women’S Activism And Global Solidarity During The Cold War. Durham & London: Duke University Press, 2018. Isbn 978-1-4780-0181-2 (Pbk), 328 Pp., Renata Jambrešić Kirin

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

While most recent feminist studies on the socialist heritage are preoccupied with the conjunctures of postcolonial and postsocialist conditions of the 1990s and beyond, Kristen Ghodsee’s book Second World, Second Sex (2018) evokes the most vibrant decade of women’s global activism marked by joint initiatives of women from both socialist and decolonized societies from the Global South.


Editorial: Gender Relations And Women’S Struggles In Socialist Southeast Europe, Dijana Jelaca, Nikolay Karkov, Tanja Petrović Nov 2020

Editorial: Gender Relations And Women’S Struggles In Socialist Southeast Europe, Dijana Jelaca, Nikolay Karkov, Tanja Petrović

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

For readers versed in the tradition of North Atlantic feminist theory, the intersection of “socialism” and “feminism” is relatively uncomplicated. As a rule, the theory proffers a critique of the “double oppression” that women experience under patriarchy and capitalism, with the exact relationship between these two systems then up for debate. While often not explicitly thematized, the theory’s geographical roots in North American and Western European struggles and contexts inform its epistemological practice and organizational protocols.


Biljana Jovanović, A Rebel With A Cause Or: On ‘A General Revision Of Your Possibilities’, Tijana Matijević Nov 2020

Biljana Jovanović, A Rebel With A Cause Or: On ‘A General Revision Of Your Possibilities’, Tijana Matijević

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

By analysing Yugoslav writer Biljana Jovanović’s early novels, the essay follows her possible literary speculations on the capacity of the Yugoslav society to fulfill the promises of the revolution, together with her imagining of an alternative form of sociability, as that which could result in universal, human emancipation. Offering a peculiar portrait of the urban society of the late seventies in Yugoslavia, in her novels Jovanović tests if and how the problem of women’s emancipation is connected to the problems of class. Yet, a failure of class emancipation, an ‘impossibility to revise’ the society is antagonized from the scrupulous and …


Towards Women’S Minor Cinema In Socialist Yugoslavia, Dijana Jelaca Nov 2020

Towards Women’S Minor Cinema In Socialist Yugoslavia, Dijana Jelaca

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

This essay theorizes the concept of women’s minor cinema in socialist Yugoslavia, conceptualized through examples of cultural texts that circulate within the so-called women’s genres: romance films, “chick flicks,” and TV soap operas. Women’s cinema is here not defined solely as films made by women, but rather, films that address the spectator as a woman, regardless of the spectator’s sex or gender. I argue that, in the context of Yugoslavia, such works frequently articulated emancipatory, feminist stances that did not demarcate a dichotomous opposition to the socialist state as such, but rather called for the state to fulfill its original …


Agency, Biography, And Temporality: (Un)Making Women’S Biographies In The Wake Of The Loss Of The Socialist Project In Yugoslavia, Tanja Petrović, Jovana Mihajlović Trbovc Nov 2020

Agency, Biography, And Temporality: (Un)Making Women’S Biographies In The Wake Of The Loss Of The Socialist Project In Yugoslavia, Tanja Petrović, Jovana Mihajlović Trbovc

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

This essay seeks to deepen our understanding of women’s agency in socialist societies. Focusing on socialist and post-socialist Slovenia, it explores the ways agency reveals itself in interviews with and biographical portraits of the socio-politically active women – or “political workers” (politične delavke), as they were called during Yugoslav socialism – Mara Rupena Osolnik and Aleksandra Kornhauser Frazer. In these texts, agency unfolds as a mosaic of multiple, naturally intertwined activities and engagements aimed at the common good and at improving the position of women and other socially marginalized groups. This kind of agency – understood as the ability to …


The Other Side Of Everything, Dir. Mila Turajlić (Hbo Europe, 2017), Dragana Obradović Nov 2020

The Other Side Of Everything, Dir. Mila Turajlić (Hbo Europe, 2017), Dragana Obradović

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

The Other Side of Everything is a documentary about an apartment in Birčaninova 20, a leafy street in Belgrade, Serbia. It is the family home of Mila Turajlić, the film’s director (known for her much-lauded film Cinema Komunisto from 2010), who uses this well-appointed interior to explore the intimacy of history.


General, Dir. Antun Vrdoljak (Hrvatska Radiotelevizija, 2019) The Diary Of Diana B., Dir. Dana Budisavljević (Pff, 2019), Sanjin Pejković Nov 2020

General, Dir. Antun Vrdoljak (Hrvatska Radiotelevizija, 2019) The Diary Of Diana B., Dir. Dana Budisavljević (Pff, 2019), Sanjin Pejković

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

Ideologically charged arguments about truth, often linked to fabrications of the past, have been discussed for decades in post-Yugoslav countries. They have also contributed to memory conflicts in different discourses. In addition to relativizing historical facts, marginalization of one’s own crimes and enlargement of others have also contributed to fragmentation of the truth and the emergence of parallel stories about the historical past.


Lilijana Burcar, Restavracija Kapitalizma: Repatriarhalizacija Družbe [Restauration Of Capitalism: Re-Patriarchization Of Society], Sophia, Ljubljana 2015, Iva Kosmos Nov 2020

Lilijana Burcar, Restavracija Kapitalizma: Repatriarhalizacija Družbe [Restauration Of Capitalism: Re-Patriarchization Of Society], Sophia, Ljubljana 2015, Iva Kosmos

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

In her book Restavracija kapitalizma: repatriarhalizacija družbe (Restauration of capitalism: Re-patriarchization of society), Lilijana Burcar compares the systemic and structural conditions of women’s position in socialism and capitalism.


Chiara Bonfiglioli, Women And Industry In The Balkans. The Rise And Fall Of The Yugoslav Textile Sector. (I.B.Tauris 2019, 230 Pages, 1st Ed.), Agata Zysiak Nov 2020

Chiara Bonfiglioli, Women And Industry In The Balkans. The Rise And Fall Of The Yugoslav Textile Sector. (I.B.Tauris 2019, 230 Pages, 1st Ed.), Agata Zysiak

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

“For us it was much better, for us personally, for people it was much better during socialism than it is today, in any case.” (p. 1) This quote from a textile worker opens Chiara Bonfiglioli’s book, but the story presented is by no means a nostalgic tour exploring collapsed factories or reproducing homo-sovieticus stereotypes.


Women’S Rights Are Human Rights: The Story Of Abortion Laws And The Women Affected, Skylar Locke, Allison Burk May 2020

Women’S Rights Are Human Rights: The Story Of Abortion Laws And The Women Affected, Skylar Locke, Allison Burk

Transformations: Research Papers

The purpose of our project is to educate viewers on the history of abortion in the United States and the women affected by abortions. In the 21st century, the topic of abortion is over-politicalized and as a result, we tend to overlook the suffering and obstacles women encounter and are forced to overcome in these situations. We aim to de-stigmatize abortions with our project. Our unique abortion timeline includes three different components: the abortion laws and events beginning in the mid-1800s, the true, personal stories of women who are affected by these laws and abortions, and the different abortion resources …


The Guano Age: How Bird Poop From Peru Led To The Imperialistic Expansion Of The United States, Christina Barry May 2020

The Guano Age: How Bird Poop From Peru Led To The Imperialistic Expansion Of The United States, Christina Barry

Transformations: Presentation Slides

No abstract provided.


Strikes On Central Ave- The Closure Of Brockway Motor Trucks And The End Of Huskietown, Usa, Lucas Kaczynski May 2020

Strikes On Central Ave- The Closure Of Brockway Motor Trucks And The End Of Huskietown, Usa, Lucas Kaczynski

Transformations: Research Papers

My essay discusses the end of Brockway Motor Company in Cortland, New York in 1977 and the events that lead to the shutdown of one of America's most dependable and iconic brands of heavy duty trucks. The death of Brockway Trucks represented not only a tremendous loss for the Cortland community, but also trends throughout the United States of consolidation and deindustrialization in American industry in the 1970s. Through an examination of local newspapers and employee accounts of labor disputes and conflict with Brockway's parent company, Mack, this essay explains how the company that produced "the most rugged truck in …


Actors As Engineers: The Reconstruction Of Antifascism In Defa Films, 1949-1961. [2020], Jonathan Herr May 2020

Actors As Engineers: The Reconstruction Of Antifascism In Defa Films, 1949-1961. [2020], Jonathan Herr

Master's Theses

The East German film industry (led by state film company DEFA) had, since its inception in 1946, focused heavily upon the theme of antifascism. However, the meaning and definition of antifascism changed dramatically over the course of East Germany’s early history. In DEFA’s earliest days, antifascism was a confrontation of Germany’s Nazi past and argued that capitalism was a forebearer to fascism. As the East German state formed, antifascism evolved, casting America and its unchecked capitalism as the enemy to democracy. Here DEFA films still confronted Germany’s dark past, though the end goal of the films was to promote hope …


Why A Woman Was Against Her Own Equality: Understanding Phyllis Schlafly's Opposition To The Equal Rights Amendment, Bailey Iaccarino Apr 2020

Why A Woman Was Against Her Own Equality: Understanding Phyllis Schlafly's Opposition To The Equal Rights Amendment, Bailey Iaccarino

Transformations: Research Papers

This paper analyzes right-wing women’s resistance to the Equal Rights Amendment by using Phyllis Schlafly as a case study. It questions her reasoning, and by extension the anti-ERA women she represents, for opposing an amendment widely understood to make progress toward achieving gender equality. This analysis asserts that Schlafly denounced the amendment because she believed it would attack the rights of housewives, give the federal government excessive power, and hurt women already equal before the law in the ways that mattered. Books and articles about conservative women’s stance against leftist women’s movements and interviews where Schlafly discussed her anti-ERA agenda …


The Bare Bones Of Paleontology, Thomas Keely Apr 2020

The Bare Bones Of Paleontology, Thomas Keely

Transformations: Research Papers

When discussing an occupation such as paleontology, we imagine professional people with PhDs and a knack for getting a little dirty in the pursuit of discovery. Never do we imagine cutthroat tactics and destruction for the sake of discovery. The professionalism of paleontology has gone through both of these stages from its humble beginnings as early as the sixth century B.C.E. to the modern day. “The Bare Bones of Paleontology” examines how paleontology became a professional career with distinguished scientists rather than scientists who only wanted glory. This paper examines this change in professionalism with the backdrop of “The Bone …