East-South Women Internationalism at the Cold War Periphery

CBEES Advanced Seminar with Yulia Gradskova, Associate Professor in History, Senior Researcher at the Department of Gender Studies, Södertörn University, and Research Coordinator at CBEES.

Speaker: Yulia Gradskova, Associate Professor and Lecturer, Department of History, Södertörn University.

Discussant: Christian Noack, Associate Professor of Eastern European Studies, University of Amsterdam.

Chair: Oleg Antonov, Associate Professor in Political Science and Visiting Researcher at the School of Social Sciences, Södertörn University.

Abstract: East–South Women Internationalism at the Cold War Periphery: Coming Together in Tashkent, Havana, and Beyond examines women's gatherings, internationalism, political travel, and networks through questioning established geopolitical categories. While female “political tourists” coming to cities like Tashkent and Havana cannot be seen as free from neither the superpowers' open and hidden confrontational agendas nor from Cold War surveillance and pressures, Gradskova demonstrates that they significantly contributed to the advancement of transnational women's rights (for more information about the book: https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/eastsouth-women-internationalism-at-the-cold-war-periphery-9781666943436/ External link. )

The seminar presentation focuses on chapter 2 of the forthcoming book: “Women Going Places: between Political Duties and the Tourist Gaze”. This chapter aims to explore the multiple—and often invisible—economic, political, and ideological constraints, hindrances, and pleasures of transnational mobility in the context of South–East women coming together.

Yulia Gradskova is Associate Professor in History. She is the Principal Investigator in the project “Maternity in the Time of “Traditional Values” and Femonationalism” External link. supported by the Baltic Sea Foundation. Her research interests include postsocialist gender history, transnational history and women’s internationalism during the Cold War as well as decolonial perspective on Soviet politics of emancipation of “woman of the East”. She is the author of The Women’s International Democratic Federation, the Global South and the Cold War. Defending the Rights of Women of the ‘Whole World’? (Routledge 2021). Gradskova is the author of Soviet Politics of Emancipation of Ethnic Minority Women. Natsionalka (Springer, 2018) and co-editor of several books, including Gendering Postsocialism. Old Legacies and New Hierarchies (Routledge 2018, with Ildiko Asztalos Morell). Among her recent publications is the book chapter : “With the Help of the Great Russian People”: the (invisible) Whiteness of Soviet anti-colonialism and gender emancipation from Central Asia to Khartoum. (in the book edited by Baker, C., B.Iacob, A.Imre & J.Mark, Off White. Central and Eastern Europe and the Global History of Race, Manchester University Press, 2024). 2022 to August 2025 Gradskova also worked as Research Coordinator at the Center for Baltic and East European Studies and a Senior Researcher at the Department of Gender Studies, Södertörn University.