¿Un despertar feminista? La estancia soviética de Louise Thompson Patterson y Dorothy West

This article follows the socialist activist Louise Thompson (later Patterson) and the writer Dorothy West on their infamous journey to Soviet Russia to shoot a film about North American anti-Black racism in 1932. The film about the US history of racial oppression was ultimately never made, but the women stayed in the Soviet Union for several months, travelling to the Soviet republics, meeting famous Soviets, and experiencing Soviet modernization. Looking at the travel writings, correspondence, and memoirs of Thompson and West through the lens of intersectionality, this article analyses the women’s distinctly gendered experiences and their experience of socialist women’s liberation movements. It argues that a close reading of the literary writing, travel notes, letters, and memoirs and their biographical trajectories after they returned to the United States reveals how their experiences in the Soviet Union created a feminist consciousness within the two women that crucially altered their political and personal views of Black women’s agency and significantly altered their life trajectories.Este artículo sigue a la activista socialista Louise Thompson (después Patterson) y a la escritora Dorothy West en su viaje a la Unión Soviética para filmar una película sobre el racismo contra la gente de color en Norteamérica en 1932. La película sobre la opresión racial nunca se hizo, pero las mujeres viajaron unos meses por la URSS y las Repúblicas Soviéticas, juntándose con famosos y experimentando la modernización. Evaluando las descripciones del viaje, correspondencias y memorias de Thompson y West desde un punto de vista interseccional, el artículo analiza sus experiencias –claramente marcadas por su género– y encuentros con el movimiento de liberación de mujeres socialistas. Argumenta que sus obras durante el viaje y después del regreso revelan cómo sus experiencias en la URSS crearon una conciencia feminista en ambas que cambió radicalmente su visión sobre la agrupación de mujeres de color y alteró la trayectoria de sus vidas.The research for this article was conduction within the framework of the project «Rivals of the Past, Children of the Future: Localizing Russia within US National Identity Formations from a Historical Perspective» (V 741) funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF)

Review of The Economies of Queer Inclusion: Transnational Organizing for LGBTI Rights in Uganda, by S.M. Rodriguez. Lanham, Boulder, New York, London: Lexington Books, 2018

The Economies of Queer Inclusion interrogates the politics of international LGBT activism and its effects on the kuchu (LGBTQIA) people in Kampala, Uganda. It deconstructs Western ideas about Uganda, using counter-storytelling from an anti-racist, decolonial, feminist and queer people of color perspective, merging historic discourse analysis, qualitative sociology and various ethnographic forms such as autoethnography

Review of Gender in 20th Century Eastern Europe and the USSR, edited by Catherine Baker. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017

The anthology Gender in 20th Century Eastern Europe and the USSR is a collection of fourteen essays on a wide range of gender-related topics, from motherhood to concepts of masculinity, sexuality, and professional work

Queer-Feminist Punk

This history makes use of anti-social theory to take a broad and multifaceted look at queer-feminist punk—from its origins in the 1980s to its contemporary influences on the Occupy movement and Pussy Riot activism

'The Beast from the East'

This article analyzes characters in North American popular culture who migrated from the post-socialist world to the United States and other western countries. It focuses on the Anglo-Ukrainian clone Helena in the television show Orphan Black (Space/BBC America, 2013-2017), the Russian girl Esther in the horror movie Orphan (2009), and the psychopathic Russian assassin Villanelle in the television show Killing Eve (BBC America, 2018-2022). All these fictional characters are orphans. Moreover, they all share the same pathology: a mental disorder or disability that predestines them to become ruthless killers. I argue that the fictional killers embody North American fears surrounding the mobility of the Cold War Other in the aftermath of the fall of the so-called Iron Curtain and the dissolution of the Soviet Union

Ver/Kvir(t)e Opazität : Migration und Un_Sichtbarkeit in Masha Godovannayas Film „Countryless and Queer“

Der Artikel beschäftigt sich mit queeren Sichtbarkeitspolitiken und solidarischen Repräsentationen queerer Lebensweisen im postsowjetischen Kontext. Im Anschluss an eine theoretische Problematisierung nordwestlicher queerer, feministischer und antirassistischer Sichtbarkeitspolitiken wird am Beispiel von Masha Godovannayas Film „Countryless and Queer“ (2020) gezeigt, welche Alternativen Darstellungsformen queere Solidarität haben könnte. Godovannayas Film beschäftigt sich zentral mit Problemen der queeren Repräsentation in Gesprächen mit Migrant_innen aus verschiedensten Kontexten in Wien. Anhand ihrer filmischen und narrativen Darstellungsformen wird die Strategie der Opazität oder Un_Sichtbarkeit, die es den Zuschauer_innen verweigert Opfer zu identifizieren als Möglichkeit solidarischer queerer Praxis mit marginalisierten Menschen erläutert. Darüber hinaus wird gezeigt, wie diese und weitere Strategien in Godovannayas Film queer-feministischen solidarischen Praxis des Community-Building erlauben

We are Conchita, not Russia – or the Austrian version of homonationalism

Abstract: This paper analyses the discursive intersection of homosexuality, Russia and Austria’s commitment to European values in the contemporary Austrian media. It focuses on discourses about the so-called “anti-homosexual propaganda law” and homophobic violence in Russia in online and print media (Kurier, Kronen Zeitung, Die Presse, Der Standard, etc.). Moreover, it analyzes reports in LGBT media (Pride, Lambda Nachrichten, XTRA) and the solidarity campaign To Russia with Love Austria. The article focuses on media publications between the introduction of the “anti-homosexual propaganda law” in June 2013 and the victory of Conchita Wurst at the Eurovision Song Contest in May 2014, since this was the period where most news examples were published on the matter. It discusses how Russian homophobic violence and the victims of such violence are discursively produced in the Austrian media as being in opposition to Austria, which in turn, apears as a progressive, homo-tolerant nation and as a genuine part of the European value system. Abstract: This paper analyses the discursive intersection of homosexuality, Russia and Austria’s commitment to European values in the contemporary Austrian media. It focuses on discourses about the so-called “anti-homosexual propaganda law” and homophobic violence in Russia in online and print media (Kurier, Kronen Zeitung, Die Presse, Der Standard, etc.). Moreover, it analyzes reports in LGBT media (Pride, Lambda Nachrichten, XTRA) and the solidarity campaign To Russia with Love Austria. The article focuses on media publications between the introduction of the “anti-homosexual propaganda law” in June 2013 and the victory of Conchita Wurst at the Eurovision Song Contest in May 2014, since this was the period where most news examples were published on the matter. It discusses how Russian homophobic violence and the victims of such violence are discursively produced in the Austrian media as being in opposition to Austria, which in turn, apears as a progressive, homo-tolerant nation and as a genuine part of the European value system.&nbsp