In October 2020, a ruling by Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal, effectively ending legal abortion, incited massive protests across the country. People around the world saw pictures of Polish women fighting fiercely for their rights.
Join us for a discussion with the author Agnieszka Koscianska about her book Gender, Pleasure, and Violence: The Construction of Expert Knowledge of Sexuality in Poland, recently translated into English. The book recounts the non-linear history of sexuality in Poland under socialism and the changes that have taken place within it as a result of the post-socialist transformation. Gender, Pleasure, and Violence focuses on the expert understanding of sexual pleasure and sexual violence, and shows how in relation to these categories, the notion of gender has been defined and re-defined.
But it also shows how the intentional, both formal and informal, women’s activities influence the transformation of expert discourses – through dialoguing with experts under socialism and through feminist interventions in the 1990s and 2000s, Polish women gained sense of agency and autonomy that paved the way for the current mobilization.
This event is free with registration. Registered attendees will receive the Zoom link in advance.
Presented by the Transregional Center for Democratic Studies, the Democracy Seminar , and the The Gender and Sexualities Studies Institute (GSSI) at The New School for Social Research.
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Leverhulme Visiting Professor, the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies, and Associate Professor, Department of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, University of Warsaw, Poland
Agnieszka Koscianska is the author and (co)editor of several volumes on gender and sexuality, including To See a Moose: The History of Polish Sex Education (forthcoming with Berghahn Books in 2021, Polish version 2017, Wydawnictwo Czarne) and Gender, Pleasure, and Violence: The Construction of Expert Knowledge of Sexuality in Poland (Indiana University Press 2021, Polish version 2014, University of Warsaw Press).
Professor/ Canada 150 Research Chair in Gender and African Politics, CARLETON UNIVERSITY, CANADA, AND UNIVERSITY OF THE WITWATERSRAND, SOUTH AFRICA
professor of sociology, THE NEW SCHOOL FOR SOCIAL RESEARCH, AND director, TRANSREGIONAL CENTER FOR DEMOCRATIC STUDIES
Elzbieta Matynia is Professor of Sociology and Liberal Studies, and director of the Transregional Center for Democratic Studies at the New School for Social Research. Her recent publications include “Is Liberal Democracy Already History?” (East European Politics & Societies and Cultures, August 2020), and “A Halloween Uprising: Poland’s General Strike Over Abortion” (Public Seminar, November 2020).
The Transregional Center for Democratic Studies hosts transregional and cross-departmental research and study programs, conducted both at home and abroad, bring together civic-minded students, junior and senior scholars, and civil society actors from various regional contexts. Our activities — region-based institutes, workshops, conferences, talks, and fellowships — are designed to further strengthen social and human capital, i.e., individuals and organizations concerned with the promise and sustainability of democracy. Our flagship projects have been the annual Democracy & Diversity Graduate Summer Institutes (held in Poland since 1991 and also in South Africa from 1999 to 2015), aimed at a rigorous quest for a more textured understanding of the precariousness of democracy as it arises almost everywhere.
The Democracy Seminar is a project convened by publisher and founding editor Jeffrey Goldfarb and senior editors Elzbieta Matynia and Jeffrey C. Isaac. This world-wide discussion among pro-democracy intellectuals and activists addresses the political, social and cultural obstacles to democratic governance; investigates the rise and appeal of illiberal philosophies and practices; and explores ways for rolling back autocratic politics. Read here about the first international meeting of the DS project.
The Gender and Sexualities Studies Institute (GSSI) is the new intellectual center for people working in the fields of gender, sexualities, and LGBTQI+ studies, providing a home for diverse forms of scholarship, creative practice, and public programming.
Co-founded by Chiara Bottici, associate professor of philosophy, and Lisa Rubin, associate professor of psychology, GSSI brings together faculty and students across the university involved with the Gender and Sexuality Studies graduate certificate program and the Gender Studies undergraduate minor, as well as those teaching, researching, or taking courses in the history of feminist thought and action; masculinity studies; gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender studies; and queer theory.
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Andrew Arato is the Dorothy Hart Hirshon Professor in Political and Social Theory in the Sociology Department at the New School for Social Research. He has taught at L'École des hautes études and Sciences Po in Paris, as well as at the Central European University in Budapest. He had a Fulbright teaching grant to Montevideo in 1991, and was Distinguished Fulbright Professor at the Goethe University in Frankfurt/M,Germany. Professor Arato has served as a consultant for the Hungarian Parliament on constitutional issues (1996-1997), and as U.S. State Department Democracy Lecturer and Consultant (on Constitutional issues) on Nepal (2007). He was re-appointed by the State Department in the same capacity for Zimbabwe (November of 2010), where he had discussions with civil society activists and political leaders in charge of the constitution-making process. He was invited Professor at the College de France (Spring 2012).
Professor Arato's scholarly research is widely recognized, and conferences and sessions have been organized around his work at University of Glasgow Law School (Spring 2009) and Koc University, Istanbul (December 2009), as well as at the Faculty of Law, Witwaterstrand University, Johannesburg, South Africa (August 2010). Arato was appointed Honorary Professor and Bram Fischer Visiting Scholar at the School of Law, University of Witwatersrand Johannesburg (June 2010-June 2011).
Agnieszka Kościańska participated in Democracy & Diversity Summer Institute in Krakow in 2004 and spent a semester at the New School in 2006. She is now Leverhulme Visiting Professor at the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies and Associate Professor in the Department of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, University of Warsaw. She is the author and (co)editor of several volumes on gender and sexuality, including To See a Moose: The History of Polish Sex Education (forthcoming with Berghahn Books in 2021, Polish version 2017, Wydawnictwo Czarne) and Gender, Pleasure, and Violence: The Construction of Expert Knowledge of Sexuality in Poland (Indiana University Press 2021, Polish version 2014, University of Warsaw Press).
Maria Bucur is the John W. Hill Professor of East European History and Gender Studies at Indiana University. She is the author of Birth of Democratic Citizenship. Women and Power in Modern Romania (2018) and many other articles and several books focusing on East European history and gender. Her newest book, The Nation’s Gratitude: War and Citizenship in Interwar Romania is forthcoming from Routledge University Press.
Elzbieta Matynia is Professor of Sociology and Liberal Studies, and director of the Transregional Center for Democratic Studies at the New School for Social Research. Her recent publications include “Is Liberal Democracy Already History?” (East European Politics & Societies and Cultures, August 2020), and “A Halloween Uprising: Poland’s General Strike Over Abortion” (Public Seminar, November 2020).
Daniel Tourinho Peres teaches undergraduate and graduates courses on Political Philosophy at the Philosophy Department, Federal University of Bahia (UFBA). He is also a member of the Centre of Studies in Humanities (CRH-UFBA) and a research fellow at the Brazilian National Council of Scientific Research (CNPq). He works mostly on modern political thought.
Paulo Fábio Dantas Neto is Associate Professor of the Department of Political Science of the Philosophy and Human Science School at Federal University of Bahia (UFBA), teacher of the Post-Graduation Program of Social Sciences (PPGCS/UFBA) and a researcher at the Center of Studies and Research on Humanities (CRH/FFCH/UFBA). Leads the research group “Ecos do Subsolo” (Echoes from Underground) on the thematic area of Brazilian Political Thought. He has prior trajectory of research on elite and political parties with emphasis on Brazilian and Bahian politics. He was a councilman in Salvador (1983-1988), state deputy in Bahia (1989) and Secretary of Education in Salvador (1994).
Shireen Hassim is Canada 150 Research Chair in Gender and African Studies at Carleton University, Ottawa, and Visiting Professor, WiSER, Wits University.
She has written and edited several books including No Shortcuts to Power: Women and Policymaking in Africa, Women’s Organisations and Democracy: Contesting Authority and Go Home or Die Here: Violence, Xenophobia and the Politics of Difference in South Africa. Her interests lie in feminist theory and politics, collective action and histories of mobilization of women in Africa, and social policies and gender. Her most recent book was an archival recuperation of the work of the South African sociologist, Fatima Meer.
Alessandro Pinzani is professor for ethics and political philosophy at the Federal University of Santa Catarina, Florianópolis (Brazil) and since 2006 he is a fellow researcher of CNPq (Brazilian Research Council). He writes on Critical Theory, social philosophy, poverty, and democracy. He got his PhD and Habilitation in Philosophy at the University of Tübingen. He was a visiting professor at the universities of Dresden (2013), Bochum (2016 and 2020) and Graz (2019) as well as at the Czech Academy of Sciences (2019), and a visiting scholar at Columbia University, NY (2001/02), at the Humboldt University, Berlin (2010) and at the University of Florence (2015/16). Among his books: Jürgen Habermas (München: Beck, 2007), An den Wurzeln moderner Demokratie (Berlin: Akademie, 2009), Money, Autonomy, and Citizenship with W. Leão Rego, Dordrecht: Springer, 2018).