56-008 (OESt) Gender in Eastern Europe (OESt)

Lehrende: Dumitrita Lunca

Veranstaltungsart: Vertiefungsseminar

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Unterrichtssprache: Englisch

Min. | Max. Teilnehmerzahl: - | -

Kommentare/ Inhalte:
„By providing women with full-time employment and equal wages, Friedrich Engels believed, equality between the sexes would be achieved. Men’s recognition of women as equal workers would in turn abolish patriarchal behaviors and attitudes, transforming how the sexes related to one another at work and at home.” (Massino 2010: 41)

Some, although not many, of the early proponents of socialism indeed placed an emphasis on equality between the genders* and their complimentary contributions in their fight towards a better society.
Men and women would be colleagues, companions, sexual partners and political equals, benefiting from the same education and access to employment. However, these initial ideas were abandoned in both theory and practice. In fact, state-socialism across the Eastern Bloc has affected men and women in sometimes profoundly different ways. After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the toppling of all state-socialist regimes, the subsequent transition to the free market again impacted men and women asymmetrically (Gal and Kligman 2000: 4). Some of these effects are still visible today, three decades on, forming a crooked foundation on which capitalism and consumerism, globalization and mass mobility have piled on, forming the shaky structures of today’s gender identities in Central and Eastern Europe.
In this course, we will look at different former state-socialist countries, from Poland, Bulgaria, GDR and Hungary to former Yugoslavia, Romania and the former Soviet Republics. These countries have many things in common due to their socialist past. However, in each of the cases, the previous local social, cultural, economic, political and religious structures have led to distinct flavour of state-socialism. We will therefore explore the ways in which men and women have navigated and have been shaped in these countries, both before and after 1989. We will maintain a focus on gender, but always at the intersection with other factors, such as class, age, ethnicity, reproduction, economic power, sexuality, wage labour and politics.

*I refer mostly to men and women, since former state-socialist societies have been and for the most part continue to be strongly heteronormative. During the course, I aim to be inclusive and touch upon gender non-binarity and non-heterosexuality as well.

Literatur:
Gal, Susan, and Gail Kligman. 2000. “Introduction.” In Reproducing Gender: Politics, Publics, and Everyday Life After Socialism / Susan Gal and Gail Kligman, Editors, edited by Susan Gal and Gail Kligman, 3–19. Princeton, N.J., Chichester: Princeton University Press.
Massino, Jill. 2010. “Something Old, Something New: Marital Roles and Relations in State Socialist Romania.” Journal of Women's History 22 (1): 34–60.

Modulkürzel:
Bachelor
FSB 16/17: ETH-V1, ETH-NF-V, ETH-WB-FV (Fachliche Vertiefung)
FSB 16/17: ETH-V1, ETH-NF-V, ETH-WB-FV (Fachliche Vertiefung)
FSB 12/13: ETH (FSB 12-13)-V1, ETH-NF-V
FSB 12/13: ETH (FSB 12-13)-V1, ETH-NF-V
OESt-BA-NF: OESt-3, OESt-4 (Bitte das Lehrprogramm für OESt beachten!)

Master
FSB neu (20/21): ETH-MA-FWB
FSB neu (20/21): ETH-MA-FWB
FSB alt (10/12): ETH-MA-FWB
FSB alt (10/12): ETH-MA-FWB
OESt-M2, OESt-M3, OESt-Master-WB (Bitte das Lehrprogramm für OESt beachten!)