31203a
Advanced Seminar
Queering Soviet History
Alexandra Oberländer
Comments
This seminar is an introduction to current debates in gender history. It briefly discusses the – if you will – “classic” binary histories of Soviet men and women, yet aims at incorporating fresh research on queer histories and asks primarily how classic histories could be queered as well. For language reasons we will focus on visual sources and ask whether and how the Soviet Union was open to other forms of gender representation. We will also discuss sexuality and bodies, questions of reproduction, contraception and illness. Among others, the peculiarities of the Soviet discourse on HIV will be examined (AIDS was not considered a “gay disease”, unlike in the West). With the approaching of the end of the term we will discuss methodologies and theories of visual history as the aim for the seminar paper is to deliver a source interpretation of your own. This seminar is reading intensive. Every week at least two texts will be read. For half of the meetings the submission of response papers is expected. close
Suggested reading
Dumancic, Marko. Men Out of Focus: The Soviet Masculinity Crisis in the Long Sixties. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2021.
Ilic, Melanie. Soviet Women - Everyday Lives. London: Routledge, 2020.
McCallum, Claire E. The Fate of the New Man: Representing and Reconstructing Masculinity in Soviet Visual Culture, 1945-1965. Dekalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2018.
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16 Class schedule
Regular appointments
Tue, 2025-10-14 12:00 - 14:00
Tue, 2025-10-21 12:00 - 14:00
Tue, 2025-10-28 12:00 - 14:00
Tue, 2025-11-04 12:00 - 14:00
Tue, 2025-11-11 12:00 - 14:00
Tue, 2025-11-18 12:00 - 14:00
Tue, 2025-11-25 12:00 - 14:00
Tue, 2025-12-02 12:00 - 14:00
Tue, 2025-12-09 12:00 - 14:00
Tue, 2025-12-16 12:00 - 14:00
Tue, 2026-01-06 12:00 - 14:00
Tue, 2026-01-13 12:00 - 14:00
Tue, 2026-01-20 12:00 - 14:00
Tue, 2026-01-27 12:00 - 14:00
Tue, 2026-02-03 12:00 - 14:00
Tue, 2026-02-10 12:00 - 14:00