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Regular version of the site

Was There Sex Under Socialism? Public talk with Kateřina Lišková

Event ended

On April 29 Kateřina Lišková, gender sociologist and gender historian the Masaryk University in Brno, will speak on 'Was There Sex Under Socialism?'

Abstract:
The common tale about the sexual revolution speaks about it happening only in Western Europe. The common tale about the Soviet Block says that there was no sex and sexuality in the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact countries. Recent research about gender, sexuality and cultural history of Eastern Europe has countered such historical commonplaces. It is time now to criticize the widespread myths about sexuality under socialism, to find new documents and try to figure a new narrative about socialist sexuality.

At the next meeting of the Culture of Critique project, the gender sociologist and historian from the Czech Republic Kateřina Lišková will talk about the sexual revolution in the countries of the Soviet bloc and the new ideas about sexuality that appeared in these societies in the postwar period. Together with Kateřina, we will discuss her book, "Sexual Liberation, Socialist Style: Communist Czechoslovakia and the Science of Desire, 1945-1989", which was published in 2018 by the Cambridge University Press. The book is devoted to the discourse about sexuality that has developed among doctors, demographers and psychologists in post-war Czechoslovakia and Central Eastern Europe in general. Additionally, we will contrast Kateřina’s book with Kristen Ghodsee popular book “Why is sex better for women under socialism?” (2018) and try to understand how its main thesis corresponds to historical reality. 

Moderators:
Ella Rossman — gender historian, invited lecturer at the School of Cultural Studies HSE. 
Daria Petushkova — PhD-student at the School of History, HSE.
The meeting will take place on Myasnitskaya 11, room 325.
Start time: 18:30.