Videos by Libora Oates-Indruchova
Is censorship conducive or detrimental to creative work and critical thinking? This question sta... more Is censorship conducive or detrimental to creative work and critical thinking? This question stands in the centre of the book by Libora Oates-Indruchova on state-socialist publishing in social sciences and humanities. Published by Bloomsbury Academic in 2020. 5 views
Book presentation of Censorship in Czech and Hungarian Academic Publishing, 1969-89: Snakes and L... more Book presentation of Censorship in Czech and Hungarian Academic Publishing, 1969-89: Snakes and Ladders (Bloomsbury Academic 2020) by Libora Oates-Indruchova; comments by Padraic Kenney and James Krapfl, moderation: Barbara Falk. 30 views
Papers by Libora Oates-Indruchova
If literary theory helps us to interpret imaginative texts, it should also enable us to construct... more If literary theory helps us to interpret imaginative texts, it should also enable us to construct texts that look like they are imaginative, but everything in them is based in (social) research. The article draws on research into academic publishing under authoritarian conditions: it began as research into language and ended as research into social and personal dynamics of text production. During the research a problem occured with writing up the research findings: academic mode of writing captured only a part of the story. A solution is presented: bringing together analytical methods of qualitative research and imaginative methods of textual presentation. The resulting text reinstates story as a writing mode for research reporting, while this practice additionally draws attention to the research process.
Austrian Journal of Political Science, Feb 1, 2013
In an international research perspective, an increased interest in questions of migration and in ... more In an international research perspective, an increased interest in questions of migration and in the significance of space has contributed to more attention being dedicated to border regimes. The vast field of border studies crosses several disciplines from political science, through geography and anthropology, to history and literature (see e.g. Wastl-Walter 2010). It subsumes a broad range of subjects including both metaphorical and material borders. The study of material borders, which is our concern here, has been a dynamically developing field in the last two and a half decades. After the fall of communist regimes in Eastern Europe and the dismantling of the Iron Curtain, the opening of former communist archives as well as the "spatial turn" in historiography stimulated interest in past border regimes. Karl Schlögel, among others, noted that in the preceding period since the end of World War II, the field was tainted with negative political connotations (Schlögel 2003). The end of the Cold War, the dissolution of the Eastern bloc, and European integration, in particular the Schengen process-research areas highly relevant to Central Europe, including Austria-provided the field with a new impetus (e.g. Andreas/Snyder 2000; DeBardeleben 2007). Globalisation and its attendant discourse of borderlessness on the one hand, and new concerns with demarcation on the other also spurred the discussion of the 1990s, with the latter concern dominating the 2000s (Newman 2006; Ambruster/Meinhof 2011). Geographically, research on Cold-War borders has focused on the Soviet and German cases, in the latter on the inner German border and the German-Polish border. Thematically, the studies cover a broad range of concerns: from the border regime in the Eastern bloc, the specifics of the Soviet border regime and the bordering of the Soviet "empire" (
East European Politics and Societies, Apr 19, 2017
Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2020
Research points at various factors for the low and even decreasing proportion of women in the IT ... more Research points at various factors for the low and even decreasing proportion of women in the IT sector in developed countries, e.g., psychological causes, social factors, or structural conditions. These possible explanations all have one thing in common: they recognize adolescence as the essential confidence-building phase in girls. Girls aged 12 to 15 years old seem to lose interest in computer science (CS). Providing mentors and female role models are two key elements to counteract gender stereotypes in CS. "RemoteMentor", a joint Austrian research project brought these two approaches together and expanded them in the form of "remote tutoring": female students aged 14 to 15 received one-on-one human support through smartphones for their coding project during their regular CS and arts lessons. The aim of the one year investigation was to analyse gender aspects in the tutoring process and the output of the collaborative coding project. This was done with group discussions, the evaluation of the online tutoring units and an analysis of the final games in regard to the applied Computational Thinking concepts. Results showed that the project was a promising approach to support and motivate at least a certain group of female students in coding.
Women's Studies International Forum, 2019
Journal of Contemporary History, 2015
The end of the Cold War and the subsequent opening of the territories of the former Eastern Bloc ... more The end of the Cold War and the subsequent opening of the territories of the former Eastern Bloc countries and their archives acted as a trigger for border research of the communist and post-communist periods. Departing from the concept of the Cold War division of Europe by a barbed wire fence, the special section reflects on the ideological significance of borders for the communist regimes, as well as on everyday practices of bordering. Recent scholarship has demonstrated that the regimes inherited and further developed from the very beginning a specific mode of governing borders and border regions. Sophie Cœuré and Sabine Dullin assembled, for instance, a comprehensive overview of historical perspectives on the practices and representations of the Soviet border from the 1917 revolution to the construction of the Berlin Wall. The articles in this special section concentrate on the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, from the establishment of communist rule after the Second World War to the dissolution of the Eastern bloc in 1989. They retrace what Coeuré and Dullin called the ‘stages and modalities of territorialisation of communism’, and foreground the innovations in the Soviet system of bordering and border-zone creation – with the dual purpose of promoting the revolution outside and defending it inside.
Introduction 1. Expropriated voice: transformations of gender culture under state socialism Czech... more Introduction 1. Expropriated voice: transformations of gender culture under state socialism Czech Society, 1948-1989 Hana Havelkova and Libora Oates-Indruchova Part One: Gender as a social category 2. The three stages of gender in law Barbara Havelkova 3. Women's organizations in the Czech lands, 1948-1989: an historical perspective Denisa Necasova 4. State approaches to homosexuality and non-heterosexual lives in Czechoslovakia during state socialism Vera Sokolova 5. Between femininity and feminism: negotiating the identity of a 'Czech socialist woman' in women's accounts of state socialism Katerina Zabrodska Part Two: Gender as a symbolic category 6. The body of the nation: the Czechoslovak Spartakiades from a gender perspective Petr Roubal 7. Dispositives of silence: gender, feminism, and Czech literature between 1948 and 1989 Jan Matonoha 8. The Beauty and the Loser: cultural representations of gender in late state socialism Libora Oates-Indruchova 9. The feminist style in Czechoslovak cinema: the feminine imprint in the films of Vera Chytilova and Ester Krumbachova Petra Hanakova 10. The AIDS-ed perestroika: discourses of gender in negotiations of ideological consensus in late-socialist Czechoslovakia Katerina Kolarova
Cultural Studies, Dec 10, 2021
East European Politics and Societies, Nov 18, 2021
gender is rarely considered in the works on state socialism in Czech history writing. given the p... more gender is rarely considered in the works on state socialism in Czech history writing. given the prominence of the equality of the sexes in communist rhetoric and the heated anti-and pro-feminism media and intellectual debates of the 1990s, the omission stands out as a remarkable loss of opportunity in historical research. It also defies logic. For if "emancipation" and "equality" were so strongly present in pre-1989 discourse and women constituted half the population, does it not follow that the plain demographic fact should drive the interest of researchers to inquire where this population was, what it did, and what it had to say? The question has so far attracted primarily sociologists, but how does it fare in historiography? What are the losses of the absence and the gains of the inclusion of a gender perspective on the history and memory-making of state socialism? This article will first consider the status quo of gender blindness in Czech historiography and its possible reasons in the context of the legacy that state socialism left to social sciences and humanities: the legacy of expertise, disciplinary legitimation and epistemological legacy. a discussion of the consequences of the near absence of gender history and analysis from post-1989 interpretations of state socialism in historiography follows: blind spots and loss of knowledge, lack of precision and a gender bias of historical accounts, and perpetuation of false legacy. Finally, the article discusses the gains to Czech historiography, memory-making and international discussion, if scholars do consider gender.
V&R unipress eBooks, Sep 6, 2021
Masaryk University (Brno, Czech Republic).
Masaryk University (Brno, Czech Republic).
Masaryk University (Brno, Czech Republic).
Tato kniha svou strukturou volně navazuje na antologii Divci valka s ideologii: Klasicke texty an... more Tato kniha svou strukturou volně navazuje na antologii Divci valka s ideologii: Klasicke texty angloamerickeho feministickeho mysleni (Praha: Sociologicke nakladatelstvi, 1998). Obsahem se ale zaměřuje specificky na literaturu a snaži se představit zejmena nove teoreticke přistupy feministicke a genderove perspektivy. Zaroveň vsak zařazuje i mensi pocet textů, ktere slouži pro formulaci východisek genderově citliveho přistupu k literatuře. Jednotlive texty poukazuji na problemy genderově nerozlisujici literarni kritiky hlavniho proudu (Dale Spender), stejneho druhu slepoty vůci jinakosti v připadě hlavniho proudu feministicke kritiky (Zimmerman, Mohanty), vyrovnavaji se s důležitými teoretickými a kritickými směry (Waugh, Pearce, Mills), navrhuji ci kriticky třidi nove metodologie (Coward, Showalter, Radway) a využivaji feministických přistupů pro nove kriticke oceněni mužske tvorby z pohledu reflektovane maskulinity (Schoene a Lea, Schoene).
Sociologický časopis, Sep 12, 2022
The article ties in with the scholarship on the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on gender equalit... more The article ties in with the scholarship on the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on gender equality. Based on a qualitative analysis of interviews with parents of children under 12, we examine the processes that led to the increase or dismantling of the gender division of labour in families during the first nationwide lockdown. Using the concepts of path dependency and 'doing' and 'undoing' gender, we explain the strategies couples with children used to adapt to the enormous increase in reproductive work in the family during lockdown. 'Doing gender' practices witnessed during lockdown included an acceptance of the increased care work as the responsibility of women, ensuring 'a room of one's own' only for men, and separating the public and private sphere only for men. Practices that led to 'undoing gender' involved mainly the explicit negotiation between partners of the division of labour during the lockdown and the organisation of reproductive work in 'shifts'. The division of labour within a couple before the pandemic proved to be crucial for what strategy they chose to adapt to the lockdown. According to our findings, extending the egalitarian division of labour has led to greater satisfaction among partners and indicates greater societal resilience to crises.
Aspasia, 2014
Edited by Francisca de Haan p Although historians have established that gender was a crucial elem... more Edited by Francisca de Haan p Although historians have established that gender was a crucial element of the Cold War competition between the United States of America and the Soviet Union, there is not much historical literature yet exploring that aspect of the Cold War. 1 Even less literature specifi cally addresses the role of gender and/in the Cold War in Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe (CESEE), the region that Aspasia covers. Since Aspasia's fi rst issue (2007), each volume has had a Forum, though in diff erent formats. This Forum, based on an email exchange conducted over several months between four regional experts, addresses questions about gender and/in the history and historiography of the Cold War in Czechoslovakia, Poland, Romania, and Yugoslavia. Of these countries, the fi rst three were Soviet dominated, but Yugoslavia, a er the Tito-Stalin split in 1948, developed its own branch of state socialism. Based on the limited but nonetheless growing scholarship about gender and the Cold War, Bonnie Smith's introduction to the recent collection Women and Gender in Postwar Europe (2012) summarizes some of the consequences of that confl ict for women and men in "the Soviet bloc" as follows. In the early Cold War, "individual women activists [were] purged [and] women's organizations, including feminist ones, were closed down. … From the 1950s on, the eastern and western blocs carried out the Cold War over consumer issues such as which side could provide the best domestic appliances and styles in furniture, dishware, and household decoration." 2 Smith continues that, in order to enhance the birth rate, popular culture across Europe was resexualized.
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Videos by Libora Oates-Indruchova
Papers by Libora Oates-Indruchova
From the publisher's website:
How did writers convey ideas under the politically repressive conditions of state socialism? Did the perennial strategies to outwit the censors foster creativity or did unintentional self-censorship lead to the detriment of thought? Drawing on oral history and primary source material from the Editorial Board of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences and state science policy documents, Libora Oates-Indruchová explores to what extent scholarly publishing in state-socialist Czechoslovakia and Hungary was affected by censorship and how writers responded to intellectual un-freedom.
Divided into four main parts looking at the institutional context of censorship, the full trajectory of a manuscript from idea to publication, the author and their relationship to the text and language, this book provides a fascinating insight into the ambivalent beneficial and detrimental effects of censorship on scholarly work from the Prague Spring of 1968 to the Velvet Revolution of 1989.
Censorship in Czech and Hungarian Academic Publishing, 1969-89 also brings the historical censorship of state-socialism into the present, reflecting on the cultural significance of scholarly publishing in the light of current debates on the neoliberal academia and the future of the humanities.
Key words: censorship, state socialism, Czech normalization, academic publishing, oral history of censorship, Aesopian language, self-censorship, science policies, authorship, Hungarian academia
Table of contents:
List of Illustrations
List of Figures and Boxes
Acknowledgements
Note on the Translation
Chapter 1. Introduction
Chapter 2. The Limits: Regulation of Czechoslovak Scholarly Life in Policy Documents
Plate. 'Four Sheets of Stories': The Beginnings
Document. Dramatis Personae
Chapter 3. People and Institutions: Surviving in Normalized Academia
Chapter 4. The Work: 'Driving' a Manuscript on the Highways and Byways of State-Socialist Academic Publishing
Chapter 5. The Author: Censoring and Authoring under State Socialism
Chapter 6. The Language: Research Topics, Vocabulary, Writing in Code
Chapter 7. The Review: Loss of Memory, the Ghosts of Academia Past in the Present
Plate. 'Four Sheets of Stories': The Ends
Chapter 8. Snakes and Ladders: A Theory of State-Socialist Censorship
Chapter 9. Coda
Bibliography
Index
Reviews:
““What did censorship mean for scholars’ lives and work in late-socialist East Central Europe? Did their efforts to outwit the censors stimulate intellectual creativity or coarsen academic discourse? How, when, and why did scholars seek spaces of solidarity and freedom within a framework of constraints – and/or mobilize an atmosphere of fear to further their own interests? Theoretically sophisticated and methodologically bold, this multivocal study engages with Czech and Hungarian scholars' memories of censorship in the 1970s-80s. Besides offering a vivid reimagining of state socialist power relations, it raises questions about the ethics of knowledge production in academia more generally - a problematic within which Oates-Indruchova brilliantly situates her own study.” – Katherine Lebow, Associate Professor of History, Oxford University, UK
“Systematic censorship in England was a consequence of the Reformation and the war of vitriolic words it unleashed. Elizabeth I herself warned against ‘slanderous words and railings whereby charity, the knot of all Christian society, is loosed’ and mechanisms evolved in her reign to curb such uncharitable language both in print and in public performance. Their last vestiges did not disappear until the Lord Chamberlain ceased censoring plays in 1968, a year before Libora Oates-Indruchová’s meticulous study of the censorship of academic works in Soviet-era Czech and Hungarian academic publishing begins. It is based largely on the testimony of those who were required to submit to such oversight, expertly cast against wide-ranging research into the evolution of such practices across the Soviet bloc, and it presents many striking parallels with the English experience. Here it is ideology, the knot of all socialist society, that is at stake, and what unfolds is a story partly of the mechanisms different regimes generated to keep that ideology unchallenged and partly of the strategies which authors used to circumvent them. The book ends with chilling suggestions that these battles did not end when the Berlin Wall came down in 1989 but have developed anew in current illiberal regimes such as Viktor Orbán’s Hungary.”
– Richard Dutton, Professor of English, Queen’s University Belfast and Academy Professor of English, Ohio State University
Záleželo komunistické vládě na rovnoprávnosti žen, anebo je jen “nahnala do práce”?
Podporovala KSČ ženské hnutí?
Má genderově citlivé myšlení v české společnosti tradici nebo je takové přemýšlení až polistopadový “import ze Západu”?
Co udělalo komunistické právo pro ženy a co proti nim?
Měly Československé spartakiády gender?
Nakolik se česká věda zabývala genderovými otázkami již před listopadem 1989?
Jaké představy o manželství nabízela čtenářstvu za socialismu populárně naučná literatura?
Jak se žilo za socialismu neheterosexuálním lidem?
Podařilo se českému filmu a literatuře překročit genderové stereotypy?
This book will be of interest to students and scholars of gender studies, socialism, Cold-War politics and Eastern European politics and culture.
Table of contents:
1. Libora Oates-Indruchová, Feministická literární teorie a procesy hledání [Feminist Literary Theory and Processes of Searching].
2. Dale Spender: Ženy a literární historie (1986) [Women and Literary History].
3. Rosalind Coward: Jsou ženské romány feministické romány? (1980) [Are Women's Novels Feminist Novels?].
4. Bonnie Zimmerman: Co nikdy nebylo: přehled lesbické feministické kritiky (1981) [What Has Never Been: an Overview of Lesbian Feminist Criticism].
5. Elaine Showalter: Feministická kritika v divočině (1981) [Feminist Criticism in the Wilderness].
6. Janice A. Radway: Čtení romancí: ženy, patriarchát a populární literatura (1984) [Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature].
7. Patricia Waugh: Ženské fikce: návrat k postmoderně (1989) [Feminine Fictions: Revisiting the Postmodern].
8. Lynne Pearce: Nalézt místo, odkud psát: metodologie feministické textové praxe (1995) [Finding a Place from which to Write: The Methodology of Feminist Textual Practice].
9. Sara Mills: Feministická teorie a teorie diskursu (1997) [Feminist Theory and Discourse Theory].
10. Chandra Talpade Mohanty: Očima Západu: Feministický výzkum a koloniální diskursy a Ještě jednou k textu „Očima Západu“: Feministická solidarita prostřednictvím antikapitalistických úsilí (1984 a 2003) [Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses” (first published 1984) and “Under Western Eyes Revisited: Feminist Solidarity through Anticapitalist Struggles].
11. Berthold Schoene a Daniel Lea: Maskulinita v tranzici: Úvod (2003) [Masculinity in Transition: An Introduction].
Berthold Schoene: Unie a Jack: Britské maskulinity, pomofobie a post-národ (2002) [The Union and Jack: British Masculinities, Pomophobia, and the Post-Nation].
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Práce Gerlindy Šmausové se vyznačují tvrdošíjně logickou dekonstrukcí teoretických pojmů a analytických kategorií ústředních pro každé dané téma. Její texty se zabývají například otázkami:
Jsou společenská funkce a důsledky aplikace trestního práva stejné pro obě pohlaví?
Je kriminalita askriptivní charakteristika podobně jako gender?
Jsou feministické epistemologie důsledné ve zkoumání genderovanosti struktur a pojmů vztahujících se ke kriminalitě žen?
Dochází-li ve vězení k sexuálním vztahům mezi osobami stejného pohlaví, jde o homosexualitu nebo o hraní heterosexuálních genderových rolí za účelem vytvoření mocenských vztahů?
Jestliže sociologická teorie zpochybňuje přirozenost a ustálenost sociálních jevů, proč sociologie genderu tvrdošíjně trvá na stabilní a homogenní genderové identitě?
Jak se pohled na „socialisticky emancipovanou“ ženu může lišit v závislosti na osobní zkušenosti s podobou emancipace v 60. letech a v období normalizace—a jak podle zkušenostního stanoviska „před“ nebo „za“ železnou oponou?
Obsah (Table of Contents):
1. Libora Oates-Indruchová, Feministická a genderová teorie v trajektorii jedné vědecké biografie
2. Alena Wagnerová, Laudatio
3. John Blad a René van Swaaningen, Společný studijní program Trestní spravedlnost a kritická kriminologie: Po pětadvaceti letech (Feminismus, trestní právo a abolicionismus)
4. Lydia Seus, Kontinuity a zvyky: Sociální kontrola žen (Sociální kontrola)
5. Dagmar Oberlies, Feministka a kriminoložka (Feministická kriminologie)
6. Rüdiger Lautmann, Segregace pohlaví a kulturní androgynita, sexualita mezi vězni (Kulturní androgynita)
7. Libora Oates-Indruchová, Tak pěkně od začátku: o vztahu sociologie a kategorie gender (Teorie genderu)
8. Hana Havelková, Mezi pragmatismem a ideologií – obrana socialisticky emancipovaného ženství (Gender a socialismus)
9. Gerlinda Šmausová, Feministický pohled na abolicionismus (1989) (Feminismus, trestní právo a abolicionismus)
10. Gerlinda Šmausová, Sociální kontrola a vztah mezi pohlavími (1993) (Sociální kontrola)
11. Gerlinda Šmausová, Feministická epistemologie a kriminologie z ženské perspektivy (1995) (Feministická kriminologie)
12. Gerlinda Šmausová, Znásilnění muže mužem jako prostředek k ustavení řádů (2003) (Kulturní androgynita)
13. Gerlinda Šmausová, Proti tvrdošíjné představě o ontické povaze gender a pohlaví (2002) (Teorie genderu)
14. Gerlinda Šmausová, Emancipace, socialismus a feminismus (2006) (Gender a socialismus)
15. Gerlinda Šmausová, Bibliografie k genderovým studiím
16. Gerlinda Šmausová, Bibliografie k ostatním tématům
17. Jmenný a věcný rejstřík
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