[spectre] CFP: Revisionist turn in Post-socialist Feminist Art History (Warsaw, 4 Sep 26)

[Andreas Broeckmann LEU]

From: Karolina Majewska-Güde
Date: Jan 20, 2026
Subject: CFP: Revisionist turn in Post-socialist Feminist Art History 
(Warsaw, 4 Sep 26)

Institute of Art History, University of Warsaw, Sep 04, 2026
Deadline: Mar 1, 2026

To keep one's ear to the ground: Revisionist turn in Post-socialist 
Feminist Art History. International workshop focused on Emerging 
Methodologies, Agendas, and Knowledges.
Organized by Dr. Karolina Majewska-Güde, in collaboration with Prof. 
Agata Jakubowska and Dr. Wiktoria Szczupacka.

In recent years, post-socialist feminist art history has been shaped by 
several converging trends in historical research: the social-historical 
scholarship on emancipation under state socialism; the decolonial turn, 
which has opened important pathways for rethinking East-Central Europe 
semi-periphery—both through engagement with the histories of global 
socialism and through a critical reassessment of regional feminist 
research agendas; and, finally, contemporary critiques of the capitalist 
art institution from a reproductive feminist perspective. As a result, a 
growing body of scholarship has emerged that can be described as 
revisionist in its approach to state socialism. This research neither 
follows Western-centred narratives nor relies on nostalgia for 
socialism; instead, it is grounded in a more analytical understanding of 
women’s emancipation that considers women’s agency in socialism,  and 
rethinks the role of culture within state socialist societies. During 
the first two decades following 1989, feminist art historical discourse 
predominantly aligned with the agendas of Second Wave feminism as 
articulated in the United States and Western Europe. This process 
involved both the active forgetting of socialist scholarship on gender 
and training by proponents of what Françoise Vergès terms in a 
completely different context 'civilizational feminism'—into the gender 
studies methodologies developed at metropolitan universities. Today, 
researchers of the socialist past are beginning to 'discover' the 
richness of feminist-oriented research from state socialism, including 
women-led sociological studies on unpaid feminized domestic labour that 
demonstrated the significant contribution of women’s work to the 
centralized socialist economy. Moreover, new approaches to studying the 
socialist past reveal the specificities of socialist art institutions, 
which integrated diverse artistic practices and knowledges across both 
mainstream and marginalized countercultural spheres.

While earlier feminist scholarship emphasized the recovery of 
marginalized histories and forgotten artists, more recent research 
sustains this essential work while also developing new critical 
frameworks that re-theorize art and its infrastructures as integral to 
the modernizing and transformative project of state socialism. The 
workshop aims to bring together feminist researchers working with these 
new agendas and methodologies, and those who are exploring forms of 
knowledge production beyond established paradigms. It seeks to connect 
feminist art historians for a collective discussion about emerging 
theoretical frameworks, methodological tools, and research directions in 
post-socialist feminist art history. The workshop will also offer an 
opportunity to discuss concrete needs and potential models for 
establishing a more permanent network among colleagues specializing in 
post-socialist feminist art history.  One of the aims of the meeting is 
to develop a publication with the potential to evolve into an academic 
periodical devoted to research on post-socialist feminist art history.

We invite papers that problematize, but are not limited to, the 
following topics:
- Critical reassessments of the first wave of post-socialist feminist 
art history, particularly debates surrounding the category of “feminist art”
- Reflections on methodological challenges involved in studying state 
socialist emancipation
- New archival sources and approaches to the study of art in the context 
of state socialist emancipation
- New perspectives on emancipatory artistic practices in socialist Europe
- Gendered analyses of artistic working conditions under socialism and 
problematizations of art as a form of labour
- Transnational narratives of feminist art in socialist Europe
- Methodological approaches capable of incorporating vernacular 
realities and cultural productions, accounting for plural voices, and 
embracing embodied as well as affective modes of knowing

We welcome scholars to share their recent research (published or 
unpublished), discuss their questions, and engage with colleagues 
exploring art under state socialism from feminist perspectives.
Please submit an abstract for a 20-minute presentation, along with a 
short biographical note, to Karolina Majewska-Güde at 
k.majewska-gude at uw.edu.pl by 1 March 2026. We look forward to reading 
your proposals and will notify applicants of acceptance on 15 March 2026.


Reference / Quellennachweis:
CFP: Revisionist turn in Post-socialist Feminist Art History (Warsaw, 4 
Sep 26). In: ArtHist.net, Jan 20, 2026. <https://arthist.net/archive/51529>.