"Material culture is especially relevant for the analysis of gendered identities"

On September 30 and October 1, 2021, the Sciences Po Centre for History helds an international interdisciplinary conference on Gender and Materiality in Central and Eastern Europe in the 20th century. Anna Sidorevich, Justina Smalkyte, Ph.D. students at the Sciences Po Centre for History, and Iva Jelušic, Ph.D. student at Central European University, tell us all about this Junior Colloquium they orchestrate.

What is material culture? What is its relevance for researchers?

Iva: The term material culture has its origins in anthropology and archeology. By seeking to define artifacts, the way they are used in a particular location or period, and what they mean to an individual or a group, we try to comprehend and explain how they are understood in relation to a particular cultural and historical context, communities and/or belief systems. The study of material culture has developed into an area that allows for an interdisciplinary approach that uses the methodology and insights of the social sciences and humanities.

Justina: The premise of the material culture approach relies on the anthropological dictum that “objects mean different things to different people”. The ways individuals or groups make, modify, use, exchange, aestheticise or destroy material things reflect their cultural preferences and political, social and economic structures within which they exist. Scholars adopting the material culture approach therefore seek to understand present and past societies through analysis of material objects that are not limited to human-made artefacts, but also includes natural objects and human bodies or body parts.

In which ways does material culture relate with gender studies?

Anna: We opened our call for papers with a quote from Christine Bard’s Une histoire politique du pantalon (FR): “The political struggle is also a cultural struggle, a struggle for the reappropriation and transformation of symbols of the dominant”. Material culture has the power to create, preserve, and modify social identities and power relations, and it is especially relevant for the analysis of gendered identities and gender order. At our conference, we will look at the interconnection between gender and materiality from different angles: we will explore the relationship between gender and corporeality, as well as gender and violence, analyze material expressions of gendered norms and deviations, and examine gendered spaces in the context of Central and Eastern Europe in the 20th century.

Justina: As Anna explained, material objects have a certain agency – they can “act” upon us by maintaining, constructing and transforming social identities, and thus, the gendered social order. But we can also turn this other way around: if we agree that gender is a constitutive element of social relations, it also means that gender conditions to some extent social uses of material objects. Our conference invites scholars from various disciplinary backgrounds to reflect upon the materiality/gender interaction from both perspectives: how things make people (understood as social and gendered beings) and how people make (gendered) things. We have set this intellectual inquiry in a particular historical context – that of Central-Eastern Europe in the 20th century.

The conference focuses on Central and Eastern Europe in the 20th century, which relates to your own Ph.D. theses. Why are you interested in this particular area and era?

Iva: The primary focus of my research is the politics of remembering partisan women who fought in the Yugoslav People’s Liberation Struggle during World War 2 in Yugoslavia. I discovered this topic during a relatively long period, that is, during a year while I was searching for the right master’s programme for me. I finally decided to apply for and was accepted to MATILDA European Master in Women’s and Gender History at Central European University, which was at that time located in Budapest. It was then that I discovered that the question of the relationship between gender and war fueled my investigative curiosity the most. And how complex and controversial the issue of the People's Liberation Struggle is. The more I learned about it, the more I had to say on my own. And now I am trying to write some of it down.

What is the purpose of such a Junior Colloquium?

Anna: The format of a Junior Colloquium – Colloque junior in French – is a specific format of a conference supported by the Sciences Po Centre for History for many years. The idea is to provide a possibility for the Ph.D students of the Center to come up with their own ideas for a conference and to acquire the experience of organising a scientific event on their own. Students can send in their project once a year, and if it is approved by the Council, the Centre for History provides all the necessary financial and administrative support for the organising committee. Junior Colloquium organised by Ph.D students is a great platform for rich scientific exchange and networking, where Ph.D students and early-career researchers can receive feedback from more advanced researchers and have stimulating discussions among themselves.

Justina: Indeed, the format of Junior Colloquium enables young scholars to present their ongoing research and exchange with established scholars chairing their panels. Although we have not expected it, this year we have received a few applications from senior scholars. We have therefore mixed established researchers and doctoral students within thematically arranged panels to have a stimulating discussion between scholars in different career stages.

What does interdisciplinarity bring to your work?

Anna: My research is focused on the history of a grassroot feminist initiative in the USSR in the late 1970s and early 1980s, which means that it can be situated at the intersection of history and gender and feminist studies. The interdisciplinary approach in my work is what allows me to encompass and analyze the issues that otherwise I could not even formulate. The same can be said for our conference's topic: we want to examine a variety of themes and methodological frameworks, and interdisciplinarity looks to be the most fruitful method. Besides, the proposals we received also demonstrate that the issue of gender and materiality in Central and Eastern Europe in the 20th century can be dealt with in papers that belong to various fields of knowledge: history, anthropology, literature, as well as gender, women’s and feminist studies.

Iva: I am primarily a historian. Traditionally, the work of historians takes place in an archive, where they pore over the primary sources that are stored there. Such an approach, as Anna has already pointed out, has long limited the questions we could ask as well as the answers we could find. “The archival turn” and then opening up of historical science to interdisciplinarity led to the possibility of an open dialogue (between sciences and scientists) that can then lead to new, innovative readings of the past. I think Ranajit Guha, one of the initiators of the Subaltern Studies, illustrated that nicely when he wrote: "There is no one given way of investigating this problematique. Let a hundred flowers blossom and we don't mind even the weeds." (Williams 2006, 164) In order to create further opportunities for the development of the mentioned dialogue, the organization of an interdisciplinary conference seems to be a completely logical step.

More

• Check out the Conference’s Programme
• Register for the conference
• Anna Sidorevich (FR), Ph.D. candidate at Sciences Po-CHSP works on The Leningrad Women’s Movement (1979-1982): between Soviet Emancipation and Second Wave Feminism
• Justina Smalkyte, Ph.D. candidate at Sciences Po-CHSP works on Resisting Nazism: Gender and Inter-Ethnic Relations in Lithuania under German Occupation (1941-1944)
• Iva Jelušic, Ph.D. candidate at Central European University works on the development of remembrance practices with particular focus on the figure of the female soldier, the partizanka, in the popular media of socialist Yugoslavia