Seminar Description

The project aims to provide a space for established researchers and scholars at a very early stage of their careers to network academically on a topic of mutual interest. This course structure not only enables the dissemination of new knowledge gained through the participants’ research and exchange of information relevant to the seminar’s theme (available resources, events, etc.), but also creates the potential for joint projects in the future.

The “Gender Politics and the Art of European Socialist States” research seminar will cover the period between 1945–1989. The “Gender Politics and Art” formulation refers to our interest in relationships between the visual arts and various discourses related to gender that circulated in socialist states, including debates about education, sexuality, architecture, health, state security, etc., all of which contributed to how gender roles were conceptualized. The seminar will focus on the way artists addressed, examined, and questioned the socio-political construction of gender (masculinity and femininity) and heteronormativity. It will also examine how private lives and intimacy were regulated by communist governments as well as the ideas of home and family propagated by communist governments, but also supported by national and religious traditions, along with gender relations in education and the workplace. It will also offer a study on the way feminist art (history) discourse functioned in communist countries and how it manifested itself in individual works and women’s collective action.

The seminar will consist of three one-week meetings—September 2019 in Poznań at the Adam Mickiewicz University, January 2020 in Zagreb at the Institute of Art History, and May 2020 in Timișoara at the West University of Timișoara. All these seminar meetings will be co-taught by three senior researchers—Agata Jakubowska (Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland), Ljiljana Kolešnik  (Institute of Art History, Zagreb), Ileana Pintilie Teleagă (West University of Timișoara), with the help of their teaching assistants.

Each one-week meeting will comprise a varied set of activities: lectures, discussions of the readings (and, possibly, documentary films), presentations of the participants’ research, meetings with faculties from the host institutions and study visits to galleries, museums, and artists’ studios. Guest speakers from countries other than those of the senior researchers will be invited for single lectures. Each guest session will consist of presentations by two guest speakers, one from East-Central Europe and one from South America/Asia/Africa

The research seminar will maintain an interactive e-learning site where each participant and faculty member can create a personal profile, post learning materials, and circulate information relevant to the subject of the seminar before and during the course.