Papers by Katharina Wiedlack
V&R unipress eBooks, Apr 15, 2024
De Gruyter eBooks, Jun 17, 2024
This article problematizes ethnic drag in the popular US-American reality TVseries RuPaul&#39... more This article problematizes ethnic drag in the popular US-American reality TVseries RuPaul's Drag Race. Building on prior works that address the racialization of Black contestants and Contestants of Color, it critically investigates the representation of white female Russianness through the Drag Race season seven and Drag Race All Star season two contestant Katya. It makes visible how Russian femininity becomes meaningful through performance, style and mannerisms. Reading Katya's embodiment of Russianness against the context of RuPaul's Drag Race and liberal gay progressive discourses around the concept and artistic form of drag in general, the article aims to demonstrate that although Katya's performance is a form of ethnic drag that could have the potential to unmask racialized signification as cultural construct, it ultimately fails to do so. Moreover, by employing the concepts of orientalism and racialization as well as homonationalism the case study of Katya shows the covert racialization of (female) Russian bodies as one aspect of homonationalism that depends on the very visible and widespread critique of Russian homophobia.
Historical Reflections, 2024
This article analyzes the Netfl ix six-part docudrama The Last Czars as well as the Amazon Prime ... more This article analyzes the Netfl ix six-part docudrama The Last Czars as well as the Amazon Prime anthology drama The Romanoff s for its representations of Russian imperial history and its heritage. Using an intersectional lens, it utilizes a close watching of the TV shows to identify a nostalgia for Russia's imperial legacy as core element of both series. Embedding the fi ndings within popular culture, the analysis further shows that the nostalgic depiction of the last Russian imperial family and the mourning of their loss has a century-long history within American media. Comparing these depictions further to recent commemorations of the last Romanovs through the exhibitions Russia My History points to the Western complicity in Russian imperialist and colonial ideology through the recent shows in liberal American media.
Réfractions: recherches et expressions anarchistes 51, 2023
JAAAS: Journal of the Austrian Association for American Studies, 2022
This article analyzes American pro-Russian revolutionary newspaper and magazine articles, biograp... more This article analyzes American pro-Russian revolutionary newspaper and magazine articles, biographies, political speeches, poems, etc. between roughly 1880 and 1917. It asks what strategies American social progressives, including suffragists and feminists, developed to create empathy for the Russian revolutionaries, and the Russian people more generally, at a time when the American authorities, as well as the public, was rather anxious about foreign and domestic radicalism. The article identifies suffering Russian women at the center of narratives that intended to create sympathy for the Russian Revolution. Particularly vulnerable female bodies were used as veneers to draw the American audience and the world into supporting the revolution. The article approaches the topic of vulnerability through the work of literary scholar Thomas Laqueur, and specifically his analyses of suffering as a literary trope, to explore the narratives' particular structures and the kinds of Russian vulnerabilities that the writers presented. It analyzes the affective attachments to the bodies at the center of these narratives, and the subsequent imaginaries they inspire, thereby crucially influencing American cultural and political imaginaries as such through the application of Laqueur's ideas. Additionally, the analysis will focus on the question why suffragists and feminists were so particularly invested in the creation and dissemination of these humanitarian narratives, suggesting that the support of Russian revolutionary women was as much in solidarity with the Russians as it was a means to further their own causes and ideas, including women's emancipation.
Connections, 2023
We present our art-based research methodology called “The Dream Machine” that aims atanalyzing qu... more We present our art-based research methodology called “The Dream Machine” that aims atanalyzing queer lives in different post-Soviet locations by offering safer ways of creatingevidence of queer forms of existence. We argue that a new research methodology that drawson art practices rather than on more conventional methods of academic research becamecrucial due to the increase in homo- and transphobic violence in post-Soviet regions, and thesurge in precariousness that LGBTIQAP+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex,Queer, Asexual, Pansexual, and other) visibility creates. Building on the decolonial theoristÉduard Glissant’s concept of opacity, our project aims at recognizing queer lives across thepost-Soviet spaces without reproducing the epistemic violence of the Western academicdiscourses on queerness. Drawing from art-based research methodologies and refusingresearch that demands pain narratives, we create, in conjunction with local queercommunities, spaces of resistance, where queer lives can enjoy (relative) safety, buildconnections to each other and imagine better futures together. Moreover, we reappropriate theconcept of the gay closet as a positively connoted magic closet – an open-access digital archiveof traces, that recognizes the queer lives in post-Soviet spaces but does not endanger them.
Journal of Gender Studies
Edition Kulturwissenschaft
For more than 40 years, hardcore and punk have promised to offer an alternative to what is percei... more For more than 40 years, hardcore and punk have promised to offer an alternative to what is perceived as the norm and the mainstream. Hardcore Research: Punk, Practice, Politics provides a comprehensive insight into some of the most active, outspoken, and widely received scholarly positions in the academic discourses on hardcore and punk and combines them with a variety of new and emerging voices. The book brings together scholars with personal ties to past and present hardcore and punk scenes, who present both insightful and critical examinations of the rich and varied histories of this subcultural phenomenon and its current reverberations at the intersection of cultural practice and academic research.
LGBTQ+ Activism in Central and Eastern Europe, 2019
The article discusses Western and Russian discourses on lesbian lives during the period of the in... more The article discusses Western and Russian discourses on lesbian lives during the period of the introduction of the so-called anti-homosexual propaganda law. It introduces representative examples of American solidarity writing that narrates stories of Russian homophobia and LGBTIQ+ dissidence. Mediatized Western solidarity efforts’ focus on LGBTIQ+ visibility as only form of intelligible resistance privileges gay men, who comply with Western models of representation. Discussing two rare media examples that centre on lesbians, it shows how this focus on identity and visibility renders lesbians as powerless victims and pitiful objects without any agency. It contrasts these Western representations with two projects by Russian lesbian artists and activists. It argues that these latter examples are representative of the negotiation of in/visibility of lesbian desires and lives on the intersection of self-preservation and political resistance.
Journal of Autoethnography
Win: The EAAS Women’s Network Journal, 2022
This article takes a fresh look on twentieth-century US feminist history for the international cl... more This article takes a fresh look on twentieth-century US feminist history for the international classroom and beyond. It focuses on the engagements of US feminists with Russian revolutionary thought and the pivotal role that early Russian feminists and the 1917 Russian Revolution played for both the US Women's Suffrage movement, and the emerging intersectional Black feminist thought.
Feminismo/s, 2020
This article follows the socialist activist Louise Thompson (later Patterson) and the writer Doro... more 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 t...
“American Boy, American Joy”—Gendered National Imaginations between Russia and the United States ... more “American Boy, American Joy”—Gendered National Imaginations between Russia and the United States of America This paper addresses the existence of gendered national representations that influenced popular discourses, and arguably politics, during the dissolution of the former Soviet Union (USSR). This work focuses especially on the construction of the United States of America as a potent male heterosexual nation in contrast to a feminine and promiscuous post-Soviet Russia by analyzing a selection of popular songs by Kombinaciya, a 1990s Russian female pop band. This investigation of gendered national identities is accomplished through an analysis of the songs “American Boy” (1990), which tells a tale of a Russian girl dreaming about an American boy who will take her abroad, as well as “Russian Girl” (1990), which describes the love between foreigners and Russian women.
Abstract: This paper analyses the discursive intersection of homosexuality, Russia and Austria... more 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,...
Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, 2020
This article offers a visual discourse analysis of the Marvel comic superheroine Black Widow in t... more This article offers a visual discourse analysis of the Marvel comic superheroine Black Widow in the 2010 miniseries Black Widow– Deadly Origins, the 2016 Black Widow–S.H.I.E.L.D.’s Most Wanted series and issues 103 and 104 of Tales of Suspense from2018. Focusing on issues of gender and cultural representation, it identifies the Widow as a figuration of Russia through the tropes of the ballerina and the trauma patient. It shows how the comic books deploy the comic form to create visual narratives on the intersection of gender and trauma. Furthermore, it analyzes how the images of the Widow bring forward trauma and at the same time confirms symbols, images and ideas about Russia. To argue that the meaning of trauma embodied by the Black Widow is a symbol for Russia as such, the article contextualises the individual visual and textual narratives of current Black Widow iterations within the long history of the Black Widow figure as point to negotiate the relationship between the USA and Russia within the Marvel comic universe. Thereafter, it relates contemporary imaginations about Russia through the figure of the Black Widow to current and long-standing cultural ideas about the Russian country, history and its people.
Twenty years after the emergence of “queer” as a political concept, the contributions to this ant... more Twenty years after the emergence of “queer” as a political concept, the contributions to this anthology discuss the radical potential of queer theory and activism within different spatial, cultural, and sociopolitical contexts. Both the term “queer” as well as initial concepts of queer critique are not only closely connected to the English language but also to the Anglo-American socio-political context. Nevertheless, queer has traveled a lot since its emergence in the 1990s. Therefore, this collection explores how and for what purposes the term “queer” is and has been appropriated within different settings and locations, such as academia, activism, and popular culture. The volume opens up a space for transregional, intersectional, trans-disciplinary, and genre-transgressing exchanges about queer theory, queer critique, and queer activism.
Feminist Critique: East European Journal of Feminist and Queer Studies, 2021
This article introduces some of the questions, activist and theoretical concepts featured in the ... more This article introduces some of the questions, activist and theoretical concepts featured in the special issue “Fucking solidarity: Queering Concepts on/from a post-Soviet Perspective”. It reflects on the usage and applicability of the term queer and queer concepts within post-Soviet and postsocialist spaces, by playfully using the “fucking” as critical term, to emphasize queer’s original potential to offend and disrupt within English language. It reflects on the possibilities of queer and feminist solidarities across the East/West divide that do not fall into the trap of (Western) hegemony or anti-Western sentiments. Framing queer solidarity as “working together,” it looks for the possibilities of egalitarian mutual support across national and cultural borders. Finally, it gives an overview of the texts collected in the special issue.
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Papers by Katharina Wiedlack
The organizers of Close[t] Demonstrations chose a title that playfully introduces and signals elements of transparency, publicness, opacity, invisibility and visibility and their liminalities. Closets and the communities they hold are featured ‘closely’; What it means to be public and to demonstrate for equality becomes reflected; And even monsters are ‘(de)monstrated’ and contained by the title.
The exhibition comprises the work of artists from around the world showcasing work that addresses the relationship between the political and the visual, and explores visual aspects of today’s queer lives, struggles and imaginations. The artworks attempt to unearth the power dynamics, pleasures, and desires involved in queer in_visibilty, and the diverse ways queer in_visibilities manifest within (post)colonial, authoritarian, neoliberal, capitalist regimes.
Close[t] Demonstrations includes zines, videos, installations, films, drawings, embroidery, sculptures, ceramics and illustrations, all of which will be in conversation with each other addressing the topic through different techniques and methodologies. The artworks presented are by invited artists as well as artists selected through an open call.
The exhibition showcases 18 artworks by artists from Kyiv, Berlin, Vienna, Hamburg, Helsinki, Athens, Erzurum, Dhaka, Dnipro, Mexico City, Johannesburg, Oaxaca, Almaty and London. The Close[t] Demonstrations exhibition space and catalogue are in some combination of Arabic, Austrian Sign Language (ÖGS), Bangla, Bashkir, Belarusian, Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian, Brazilian Portuguese, Chinese, Cypriot Turkish, East Frisian, English, Fante, French, Georgian, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, IsiXhosa, Kurdish, Nahuatl, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Tatar, Turkish, and Ukrainian.
This anthology presents some of the radical approaches that emerge at the intersection of activism, community organizing, art and academia, through transnational exchange, migration and collaborations. It is a celebration of alliances and solidarities between activism, community building, art, culture and academic knowledge production. Yet, the collected work also brings forward the necessary critique of Western hegemonies involved in contemporary queer-feminist solidarity activism and theory between the ‘East’ and ‘West.’ It is an important thinking about, thinking through and thinking in solidarity and the East/West divide, setting new impulses to fight oppression in all its forms.
This paper addresses the existence of gendered national representations that influenced popular discourses, and arguably politics, during the dissolution of the former Soviet Union (USSR). This work focuses especially on the construction of the United States of America as a potent male heterosexual nation in contrast to a feminine and promiscuous post-Soviet Russia by analyzing a selection of popular songs by Kombinaciya, a 1990s Russian female pop band. This investigation of gendered national identities is accomplished through an analysis of the songs “American Boy” (1990), which tells a tale of a Russian girl dreaming about an American boy who will take her abroad, as well as “Russian Girl” (1990), which describes the love between foreigners and Russian women.
This exciting edition of the GJSS emerged from the 2012 8th European Feminist Research Conference: The Politics of Location Revisited