Sawyer Seminar: “Transnational State Feminisms: Bulgarian, African, and South Asian Women’s Movements during the Cold War"

Kristen Ghodsee, John S. Osterweis Associate Professor and Program Director of Gender and Women’s Studies at Bowdoin College presents her talk “Transnational State Feminisms: Bulgarian, African, and South Asian Women’s Movements during the Cold War.” This presentation critiques the course of the current history of the United Nations Decade for Women which has completely ignored the influence of East-West tensions between women during the Cold War period. Ghodsee explores the transnational socialist solidarity networks forged between the Committee of the Bulgarian Women’s Movement and women from Africa and South Asia between 1975 and 1985 and talks about the theoretical and logistical challenges of doing research to fill in the glaring historiographical gaps.