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Ethyle R. Wolfe Institute for the Humanities 2023-24: Feminist Futures Events

Feminist Futures Events

Feminist Futures/Studying Eastern Europe
After more than a year and a half of full-scale war by Russia against Ukraine, this series centers feminist insights from the study of Eastern Europe. Can we still appreciate the utopian ideas about love and care from socialist feminists, such as Alexandra Kollontai? What lessons can Ukrainian feminists teach us about war and activism?

Book Launch and Conversation for:
Kristen Ghodsee’s Everyday Utopia: What 2,000 Years of Wild Experiments Can Teach Us About the Good Life (Simon & Schuster 2023)
Moderator: Liza Featherstone, columnist at Jacobin and The New Republic, as well as a contributing writer at The Nation.
 
Tuesday, October 10, 2023 | 2:15-3:30PM
Brooklyn College Library | Woody Tanger Auditorium
 
Everyday Utopia whisks you away on a tour through history and around the world to explore those places that have boldly dared to reimagine how we might live our daily lives: from the Danish cohousing communities that share chores and deepen neighborly bonds to matriarchal Colombian ecovillages where residents grow all their own food; and from Connecticut, where new laws make it easier for extra “alloparents” to help raise children not their own, to China, where planned microdistricts ensure everything a busy household might need is nearby. It offers a radically hopeful vision for how to build more contented and connected societies. In this conversation, we will focus on feminist utopian visions of love and care, including on the radical imagining of St. Petersburg-born (and half Ukrainian) Alexandra Kollantai. 
 

Kristen R. Ghodsee is a Professor of Russian and East European Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and the critically acclaimed author of Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism: And Other Arguments for Economic Independence, which has been translated into fourteen languages. Her writing has been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Republic, Le Monde Diplomatique, and Jacobin, among other outlets, and she’s appeared on PBS NewsHour and France 24 as well as on dozens of podcasts, including NPR’s Throughline and New York magazine’s The Cut. She lives outside of Philadelphia.

Liza Featherstone is a columnist at Jacobin and The New Republic, as well as a contributing writer at The Nation. Featherstone’s work has also been published in Lux, TV Guide, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Ms., The American Prospect, Columbia Journalism Review, Glamour, Teen Vogue, Dissent, The Guardian, In These Times, Newsday and many other publications. Featherstone is the author of Divining Desire: Focus Groups and the Culture of Consultation, published by O/R Books in 2018, and Selling Women Short: The Landmark Battle for Workers’ Rights at Wal-Mart (Basic Books, 2004), among other books. She teaches journalism and opinion writing at NYU and Columbia, respectively. From 2013 to 2015, she was the Belle Zeller Visiting Professor at Brooklyn College. Featherstone is a member of New York City Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).

 
Book launch and Conversation:
Cynthia Enloe’s Twelve Feminist Lessons of War (Footnote Press, 2023)
Moderator: Janet Elise Johnson, Endowed Chair in Women’s and Gender Studies, Brooklyn College
Co-hosted by Institute on Gender Law, and Transformative Peace Imitative, CUNY Law School
 
Monday, Oct. 30, 2023 | 2:15-3:30PM
Brooklyn College Women’s Center | 227 Ingersoll Hall Extension
 

Twelve Feminist Lessons of War draws on firsthand experiences of war from women in places as diverse as Ukraine, Myanmar, Somalia, Vietnam, Rwanda, Algeria, Syria, and Northern Ireland to show how women's wars are not men's wars. Professor Enloe demonstrates how patriarchy and militarism have embedded themselves in our institutions and our personal lives. As the book is dedicated to Ukrainian feminists and includes a chapter on the lessons Ukrainian feminist have to teach us, there will be a particular focus on Russia’ s war in Ukraine in the conversation.

Cynthia Enloe is Research Professor at Clark University and author of fifteen books, including Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics. In 2018, Enloe's name was installed on the Gender Justice Legacy Wall at the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

Janet Elise Johnson is Professor in Political Science at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center.. Her most recent book, The Routledge Handbook of Gender in Central-Eastern Europe and Eurasia (co-edited with Katalin Fábián and Mara Lazda, 2022), won the Heldt prize for the best book from the Association for Women in Slavic Studies. 

Sponsored by Brooklyn College’s Ethyle R. Wolfe Institute for the Humanities, the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Departments of Political Science, History, Judaic Studies, Modern Languages and Literatures, Philosophy, and Sociology, Women’s Center, and Phi Beta Kappa Chapter.

 

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