Exercises: [BA-VM/MA-IntPol-GPO] Sex under Socialism: Queering the History of People's Poland - Details

Exercises: [BA-VM/MA-IntPol-GPO] Sex under Socialism: Queering the History of People's Poland - Details

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General information

Course name Exercises: [BA-VM/MA-IntPol-GPO] Sex under Socialism: Queering the History of People's Poland
Semester SoSe 2025
Current number of participants 6
maximum number of participants 20
Home institute Leitung des Instituts für Geschichte
Courses type Exercises in category Offizielle Lehrveranstaltungen
Preliminary discussion Tuesday, 08.04.2025 16:00 - 18:00
Next date Friday, 11.04.2025 13:00 - 18:00, Room: (Besprechungsraum 1.06, Emil-Abderhalden-Str. 26/27)
Type/Form Blockveranstaltung

Rooms and times

(Besprechungsraum 1.06.0, Emil-Abderhalden-Str. 26/27)
Tuesday, 08.04.2025 16:00 - 18:00
(Besprechungsraum 1.06, Emil-Abderhalden-Str. 26/27)
Friday, 11.04.2025 13:00 - 18:00
Saturday, 12.04.2025 10:00 - 18:00
Friday, 25.04.2025 13:00 - 18:00
Saturday, 26.04.2025 10:00 - 18:00

Module assignments

Comment/Description

The goal of this course is to look at the history of post-war Poland through the lens of sexuality and investigate various ways in which queering the dominant historiography can offer a productive way of understanding the socialist past as well as its present implications. The course will be of interest to historians, but also to sociologists and political scientists interested in the origins of contemporary discussions on sexuality and LGBTQ+ rights in Poland. After participating in the course, the students will gain understanding of the key debates in the field of history of sexuality of the Cold War period. The students will also develop transferable skills through short presentations and close engagement with primary sources.
The first section of the workshop focuses on the key debates in the literature on sexuality in post-war Poland and Eastern Europe in general, namely the discussion on sexual cultures in the East and the West. We will survey the scholarship on sexology, popular culture, contraception. In the second section of the course, we will focus on recovering queer memories of the state-socialist period. By looking at the history of gay and lesbian emancipation behind the Iron Curtain we will analyze the applicability of Western theoretical frameworks of ‘liberation’ for understanding the complexity of queer histories in Eastern Europe. We will also focus on the memory of the violence against queer people to inquire into the role the communist past plays in the contemporary discussions on LGBTQ+ rights, both at the national and European level.

Diese Lehrveranstaltung ist im Studienbegleitprogramm von gender*bildet (Zertifikat Gender Studies) anrechenbar.

Literature:
Ghodsee, Kristen. 2018. Why Women Have Better Sex under Socialism and Other Arguments for Economic Independence. London: The Bodley Head.
Klich-Kluczewska, Barbara, ‘Making Up for the Losses of War. Reproduction Politics in Post-War Poland’, in M. Röger and R. Leiserowitz (eds.), Women and Men at War: A Gender Perspective on World War II and Its Aftermath in Central and Eastern Europe (Osnabrück, 2012), 308–29.
Fidelis, Małgorzata. 2010. Women, Communism, and Industrialization in Postwar Poland. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Chapters 1 and 4).
Kościańska, Agnieszka. 2021. To See a Moose: The History of Polish Sex Education. Translated by Philip Palmer. New York, N.Y.: Berghahn Books. (Introduction).
Dobrowolska, Anna, ‘“Why Don’t They Display Male Nudes?” Nude Photography, Women’s Art, and the Redefinition of Socialist Morality in 1970s Poland’, Aspasia, 17 (2023), 164–82.
Szulc, Lukasz. 2018. Transnational Homosexuals in Communist Poland: Cross-Border Flows in Gay and Lesbian Magazines. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Studienleistung: Aktive Teilnahme an den Sitzungen, kleinere schriftliche 
Ausarbeitungen und mündliche Präsentationen

Admission settings

The course is part of admission "Beschränkte Teilnehmendenanzahl: [MA-MII/MA-IntPol-GPO] Sex under Socialism: Queering the History of People’s Poland".
The following rules apply for the admission:
  • A defined number of seats will be assigned to these courses.
    The seats will be assigned in order of enrolment.
  • The enrolment is possible from 10.03.2025, 10:00 to 06.04.2025, 23:59.