2019-20 Academic Catalog

This course examines the historical emergence and contemporary conditions of women’s, feminist and LGBTQ activisms in four different Western and East Central European countries. We will study the impact of the European colonial heritage on the lives of women and minorities in various European communities, as well as the continuing legacies of the Second World War, the Cold War and of the EU expansion into Eastern Europe. We will zoom in onto such topics as reproductive rights, LGBT and queer politics, homonationalism, backlash against “gender ideology,” sex work, trafficking, immigrant/refugee issues, challenges faced by women of color and by Jewish people in Europe, the legacy of state socialism in Eastern Europe, as well as the implications of European feminisms in the history of colonialism. These topics will be addressed both comparatively and historically, stressing the ‘situated’ nature of women’s, feminist and LGBTQ issues and responses and taking into account the different sociopolitical national frameworks in which they occur. Prerequisite: Acceptance into the WGST Europe Program required