Kurzus nemzetközi vendég- és részidős hallgatóknak

Kar

Bölcsészettudományi Kar

Szervezet

BTK Történeti Intézet

Kód

BA-ERA-IHS-S-4

Cím

Women under state socialism

Tervezett félév

Őszi

ECTS

6

Nyelv

Oktatás célja

Learning goals and outcomes The course has two goals. First, students will become acquainted with recent, more global and comparative as well as historicizing perspectives on state socialism in Central Eastern Europe. They will develop a knowledge of the key historical and theoretical debates around the notion of “actually existing” socialism, and they practice the skills of assessing historical controversies surrounding the interpretation of state socialism. They will become familiar both with Western critics and the Eastern European debates on the nature and functioning of these regimes. Second, students will develop a critical understanding of how the so called women’s policy functioned under state socialism, and the complex ways in which these regimes influenced class and gender relations as well as other dimensions of social and cultural difference throughout Eastern Europe. By the end of this course, students will have familiarized themselves with literature that approaches state socialism in Central Eastern Europe from a comparative and intersectional perspective. Students will be able to apply critical analysis to the material covered in class, and demonstrate their ability to such analysis in verbal commentary and written work. They will make original arguments with appropriate support and analysis.

Tantárgy tartalma

Course description We will attempt to explore how gender (“women’s policy”) was understood in different parts of the socialist bloc and in different phases of state socialism. In the Soviet Union the 1920s was an era of gender emancipation and experimentation with various family forms. The high Stalinism of the 1930s put an end to this relative liberalization while extensive industrialization created a fresh demand for female labor force, thus leading to the mass employment of women throughout Eastern Europe as a result of the “export” of the Stalinist regime. The 1960s saw the “thaw” under Khrushchev and the beginning of economic reforms, which reoriented industry and socialist thinking towards an increased level of consumerism. We will examine how women’s policy changed in this new context, and how the propagated emancipation worked (or partly failed to work) in education, politics and household. By studying gender history under state socialism, we will get acquainted with the history of an era, which is considered to be even today a contested terrain of competing ideologies and paradigms. The course demonstrates that looking at state socialism through the lens of gender develops our knowledge on crucial themes of social history: the relationship of paid and unpaid work, need and welfare under state socialism, social stratification and its related theories as well as the opportunities and limits of gender equality in the examined countries. Finally, we will take a closer look at the postsocialist era and the complex ways in which it impacted on women’s social and economic position within Eastern Europe. We examine how the category of gender is entangled with other categories such as class, the urban-rural divide and ethnicity. A critical investigation of the history of state socialism also allows us to identify major narratives and paradigms in the study of the postwar history in Central Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. The course will attempt to introduce competing paradigms to the interpretation of state socialism ranging from Western left-wing perspectives on the Soviet Union to the Eastern European critics of “actually existing” socialism. We will also interrogate the question of what ways social history can be interpreted and studied under state socialism, and we will examine case studies, which contributed towards the reorientation of the ideological discourse, which influenced history-writing during the Cold War.

Számonkérés és értékelés

Course requirement: one seminar paper to be submitted at the end of the semester

Irodalomjegyzék

Topics and weekly schedule of recommended readings Week 1. Introduction Introduction to the course (an outline of the themes, the overall aims and major concepts framing the course, an introduction into the history of state socialism) Week 2. Research paradigms in the study of state socialist Eastern Europe The totalitarian, revisionist and post-revisionist paradigms Fitzpatrick, Sheila: “Revisionism in Soviet History,” History and Theory 46, 4 (2007): 77-91. Lynne, Viola, “The Cold War in American Soviet Historiography and the End of the Soviet Union”, The Russian Review, Vol. 61. no. 1. (2002): 25-34. Siegelbaum, Lewis: “Historicizing Everyday Life under Communism: the USSR and the GDR.” Social History, vol. 26. No. 1 (2002): 72-79. Additional readings Leffler, M. “The Cold War: What Do ‘We Now Know’?” American Historical Review 104, 2 (1999): 501-524. Fitzpatrick, Sheila and Michael Geyer (eds.): Beyond Totalitarianism: Stalinism and Nazism Compared. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009 (Introduction). Gleason, Abbott: Totalitarianism. The Inner History of the Cold War. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995, 121-142. Week 3. Class and gender reconsidered Fitzpatrick, Sheila: “Ascribing Class: The Construction of Social Identity in Soviet Russia”, The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 65. No. 4 (1993): 745-770. Massino, Jill: “Constructing the Socialist Worker: Gender, Identity and Work under State Socialism in Brasov, Romania”, Aspasia, Vol. 3. (2009): 131-160. Yeo, Eileen: “Gender in Labor and Working-Class History. In: Lex Heerma van Voss and Marcel van der Linden (eds.): Class and Other Identities: Gender, Religion and Ethnicity in the Writing of European Labor History. Berghahn, 2002, 73-87. Rudd, Elizabeth: “Reconceptualizing Gender in Postsocialist Transformation. Gender and Society, vol. 14. no. 4 (2000): 517-539. Additional reading Fitzpatrick, Sheila: “The Problem of Class Identity in NEP Society,” in: Fitzpatrick, S., Rabinowitch, A. and Stites, R. (eds). Russia in the Era of NEP: Explorations in Soviet Society and Culture. Bloomington and Indianapolis, Indiana University Press, 1991, 12-33. Week 4. Industrialization and gender struggles Goldman, Wendy: Women at the gates: gender and identity in Stalin’s Russia. Cambridge, 2002, 1. chapter 2. Pittaway, Mark: “The Social Limits of State Control: Time, the Industrial Wage Relation and Social Identity in Stalinist Hungary, 1948-1953,” Journal of Historical Sociology 12, 3 (1999): 271-301. Fidelis, Malgorzata: Women, Communism and Industrialization in Postwar Poland. New York, Cambridge University Press, 2010, chapter 1. Additional reading: Pittaway, Mark: “The Reproduction of Hierarchy: Skills, Working-class Culture and the State in early modern Hungary” The Journal of Modern History, vol. 74, no. 4 (2002): 737-769. Week 5. Rural transformation Jarska, Natalia: “Rural Women, Gender Ideologies and Industrialization in State Socialism: The case of a Polish Factory in the 1950s”, Aspasia, vol. 9 (2005): 65-86. Fitzpatrick, S. Stalin’s Peasants: Resistance and Survival in the Russian Village after Collectivization. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. “Introduction,” pp. 3-18 and chapter 3 (Exodus), pp. 80-102. Lynne, Viola: “The Second Coming: Class Enemies in the Soviet Countryside 1927-1935”, In: J. Arch Getty and Roberta Manning (eds.): Stalinist Terror: New Perspectives. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1993, 65-98. Additional readings Kingston-Mann, Esther: “Claiming Property: The Soviet Era Private Plots and Women’s Turf”, in: Lewis Siegelbaum (ed.): Borders of Socialism: Private Spheres of Soviet Russia. New York, Palgrave, 2006, 25-46. Kligman, Gail and Verdery, Katherine. Peasants under Siege: The Collectivization of Romanian Agriculture, 1949-1962. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2011. Week 6.  Politics of social reproduction Goldman, W.Z. “Working-Class Women and the “Withering Away” of the Family: Popular Responses to Family Policy,” in: Fitzpatrick, S., Rabinowitch, A. and Stites, R. (eds). Russia in the Era of NEP: Explorations in Soviet Society and Culture. Bloomington and Indianapolis, Indiana University Press, 1991, 125-143. Harsch, Donna: The Revenge of the Domestic: Women, the Family and Communism in the German Democratic Republic. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007, chapters 3 and 4. Neary Balmas Rebeca: “Domestic Life and the Activist Wife in the 1930’s Soviet Union”, in: Siegelbaum (ed., 2006), 107-122. Additional reading Goldman, W.Z. Women, the State, and Revolution: Soviet Family Policy and Social Life, 1917-1936. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Week 7. The construction of need and welfare Haney, Lynne. Inventing the Needy: Gender and the Politics of Welfare in Hungary. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002, pp. 1-62; 237-248. Zimmermann, Susan: “Gender Regime and Gender Struggle in Hungarian State Socialism,” Aspasia: International Yearbook for Women’s and Gender History of Central Eastern and Southeastern Europe 4, 1 (2010): 1-24. Additional readings Zavirsek, Darja. “You will Teach Them Some, Socialism will Do the Rest!’ History of Social Work Education in Slovenia during the Period 1940-1960,” in: Schilde, K. and Schulte, D. (eds). Need and Care: Glimpses into the Beginnings of Eastern Europe’s Professional Welfare. Opladen and Bloomfield Hills: Barbara Budrich Publishers, 2005, 237-270. Hagemann, K. “Between Ideology and Economy: The ‘Time Politics’ of Child Care and Public Education in the two Germanys,” Social Politics 13, 2 (2006): 217-260. Bicskei, E. “Our Greatest Treasure, the Child: The Politics of Childcare in Hungary, 1945-1956,” Social Politics 13, 2 (2006): 151-188. Kirschenbaum, Lisa A. Small Comrades: Revolutionizing Childhood in Soviet Russia, 1917-1932. New York, London: Routledge, Falmer, 2001. Week 8. Consumption and consumer goods Siegelbaum, Lewis: “The Shaping of Soviet Workers’ Leisure: Workers’ Clubs and Palaces of Culture in the 1930s”, International Labor and Working-Class History, no. 56 (1999), 78-92. Siegelbaum, Lewis: “On the Side: Car Culture in the USSR, 1960s-1980s”, Technology and Culture, vol. 50, no. 1 (2009), 1-23. Castillo, G. “Domesticating the Cold War: Household Consumption as Propaganda in Marshall Plan Germany,” Journal of Contemporary History 40, 2 (2005): 261-288. Reid, S. E. “Domesticating the Scientific-Technological Revolution,” Journal of Contemporary History 40, 2 (2005): 289-316. Hilton, Marjorie: “Retailing the Revolution: The State Department Store (GUM) and Soviet Society in the 1920s”, Journal of Social History, vol. 37, no. 4. (2004), 939-964. Additional readings Stitiel, J. Fashioning Socialism: Clothing, Politics and Consumer Culture in East Germany. Introduction, Chapters 1-3, and 7, pp 1-77. Oldenziel, R. and Zachmann, K. (eds). Cold War Kitchen: Americanization, Technology, and European Users. Cambridge, MS and London, England: The MIT Press, 2009, pp. 1-26. Week 9. Sexuality and domestic violence Fitzpatrick, Sheila: “Sex and Revolution”, in: id. The Cultural Front: Power and Culture in Revolutionary Russia. Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1992, 65-90. Livschiz, Ann. “Battling “Unhealthy Relations:” Soviet Youth Sexuality as a Political Problem,” The Journal of Historical Sociology 21 (2008): 397-416. LaPierre, Brian: “Private Matters or Public Crimes: The Emergence of Domestic Hooliganism in the Soviet Union”, in: Siegelbaum (ed., 2006), 191-210. Muravyeva, Marianna: “Bytovukha: Family Violence in Soviet Russia”, Aspasia, vol. 8. (2014): 90-124. Additional reading Starks, T. The Body Soviet: Propaganda, Hygiene, and the Revolutionary State. Madison, WC: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2008, Introduction, pp. 3-11 and chapter 6. The Body: Hygiene, Modernity, and Mentality, pp. 162-201. Week 10. Political mobilization Long, K. We All Fought for Freedom: Women in Poland’s Solidarity Movement. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996, chapters 3 (pp. 28-44), 9 (pp. 125-144) and 10 (pp. 145-158). Popa, R. M. “Translating Equality between Men and Women across Cold War Divides: Women Activists from Hungary and Romania and the Creation of International Women’s Year,” in: Penn, S and Massino, J (eds). Gender Politics and Everyday Life in State Socialist Eastern and Central Europe. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009, 59-74. De Haan, Francesca: “Continuing Cold War Paradigms in Western Historiography of Transnational Women’s Organizations: The Case of the Women’s International Democratic Federation (WIDF),” Women’s History Review 19, no. 4 (September 2010): 547-573. Additional reading: Nowak, B. A. “Where Do You Think I Learned How to Style My Own Hair?’ Gender and Everyday Lives of Women Activists in Poland’s League of Women,” in:  Penn, S and Massino, J (eds). Gender Politics and Everyday Life in State Socialist Eastern and Central Europe. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009, 45-58. Week 11. Postsocialism: Emancipation or retreat? Haney, Lynne: “From Proud Worker to Good Mother: Women, the State and Regime Change in Hungary”, Frontiers: a Journal of Women Studies, vol. 14. no. 3 (1994), 113-150. Lutz, Helma: The New Maids: Transnational women and the care economy, New York, Zed Books, 2011, chapters 1 and 2. Hoerder, Dirk et al (ed.): Towards a Global History of Domestic and Caregiving Workers. Brill, Leiden, 2015, chapter 2. Hauser, Amy: “The Gendered Rice Bowl: The Sexual Politics of Service Work in Urban China”, Gender and Society, vol. 19 (2005), 581-600. Todorova, Maria: “From Utopia to Propaganda and Back”, In: id and Zsuzsa Gille (eds): Post-communist Nostalgia. New York and Oxford, Berghahn Books, 2010, 1-13. Week 12. Pulling strings together

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