Research Project Modern Women Thinkers: Intellectual Development of Women in the 20th Century Croatia
Symposium
WOMEN AND COMMUNISM IN YUGOSLAVIA – Hommage to Lydia SKLEVICKY
Last decade marked the rise of interest in researching the relations between women and communism in Yugoslavia, as well as other countries of Eastern Europe. This interest prompted attempts at re-examination of engaged women activists in relation to official Communist women’s organizations. Our symposium will evaluate the work of Lydia Sklevicky (1952-1990), the founding mother of research in women’s experiences under communism. Our aim is to stimulate a fruitful discussion of new scholarly contributions to the research of women’s activities in the period of Communist rule.
We invite interested scholars in history, anthropology, sociology, and related fields to e-mail their brief abstracts by the March 22, 2020 to: feldman.andrea@gmail.com, mari.kardum@gmail.com
The participants are encouraged to frame the discussion around the following questions: How important was the phenomenon of “autonomy” in women’s history studies of the Communist period? Was there women’s “agency” in state socialism and can the Communist state’s “pro-women” or women-friendly activities be considered feminist? Did the position of women in state socialism reflect the success of official, top-down state policies toward all women, regardless of their class, ethnic/national, or any other affiliation, or were these policies camouflaging the fake universality in their so-called “successful solution of the woman’s question”? Have political and economic circumstances of post-socialist development created the base for a revisionist, i.e. more positive interpretations of relations between the state and “the woman’s question” before the turn to transition?
https://networks.h-net.org/node/73374/announcements/5862382/cfp-symposium-women-and-communism-yugoslavia
This project has been fully supported by Croatian Science Foundation under the project number IP-2018-01-3732.