Red Valkyries: Feminist Lessons From Five Revolutionary Women

ISBN-13: 9781839766602 / Angielski / Twarda / 2022 / 224 str.

Kristen Ghodsee

Opis

Through a series of lively and accessible biographical essays, XXX explores the history of socialist feminism century Eastern Europe. By examining the revolutionary careers of five prominent socialist women active in the 19th and 20th centuries-the aristocratic Bolshevik, Alexandra Kollontai; the radical pedagogue, Nadezhda Krupskaya; the polyamorous firebrand, Inessa Armand; the deadly sniper, Lyudmila Pavlichenko; and the partisan turned scientist turned global women's activist, Elena Lagadinova-Kristen Ghodsee tells the story of the personal challenges faced by earlier generations of socialist and communist women. None of these women were "perfect" leftists. Their lives were filled with inner conflicts, contradictions, and sometimes outrageous privilege, but they still managed to move forward their own political projects through perseverance and dedication to their cause. Always walking a fine line between the need for class solidarity and the desire to force their sometimes callous male colleagues to take women's issues seriously, these five women pursued novel solutions with lessons for activists of today. In brief conversational chapters-with plenty of concrete examples from the history of the state socialist countries in Eastern Europe and contemporary reflections on the status of women in the world today-Ghodsee renders the big ideas of socialist feminism accessible to those newly inspired by the emancipatory politics of insurgent left feminist movements around the globe.

O autorze

Kristen R. Ghodsee is professor of Russian and East European Studies and a member of the graduate group in anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of ten books and her articles and essay have been translated into over 25 languages and have appeared in The New Republic, The Baffler, Dissent, Jacobin, The Lancet, Le Monde Diplomatique, Foreign Affairs, The Washington Post, and The New York Times. Kristen R. Ghodsee is an award-winning author and professor of Russian and East European Studies at the University of Pennsylvania who has been teaching, researching, and writing about gender issues and left feminisms for more than twenty years. In addition to her 2018 trade title (which has had 13 foreign editions so far, including German, Spanish, French, Russian, and Portuguese translations), she has published seven academic books on gender, socialism and postsocialism. She has relevant by-lines in venues such as The New Republic, The Baffler, Dissent, Jacobin, Ms. Magazine, Project Syndicate, The Lancet, Jewish Currents, The Washington Post, and The New York Times. Her articles and essays have been translated into over 25 languages, and her work featured on radio and television, including Public Radio International's The World, Deutschlandfunk Kultur, and the PBS NewsHour. Ghodsee has won prestigious residential fellowships or visiting professorships in the United States, Germany, France, and Finland as well as a Guggenheim Fellowship in Anthropology and Cultural Studies. She hosts A.K. 47, an episodic podcast on the life and works of the Russian revolutionary, Alexandra Kollontai, and is a frequent international speaker at conferences, seminars, and literary festivals across four continents.